Richard “RichE” Otey

5/7/2025

I first realized I had a problem when everything was going right for me. The day was May 2, 2007, just after 5:30 p.m. in New York, when I received a phone call I’ll never forget. My editor at Random House wanted to inform me that my debut book, The 4-Hour Workweek, had hit The New York Times bestseller list. As her words sunk in, I staggered backward and collapsed against the wall in shock, gratitude, and relief. Overnight, I was transformed from a guy begging people to answer his emails to someone on the other side. All kinds of requests and offers poured in. Speaking gigs, interviews, consulting, partnerships, brand deals—it was a tsunami. Flattered, unprepared, and afraid this might be my only 15 minutes of fame, I said “yes” to nearly everything, especially anything six, nine, or twelve months off in the distance. My calendar seemed like pristine water, clear as crystal for a brief lull. Then I had to pay the piper. Rarely in the same place for more than a week, I felt more like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman than a jet-setting rock star. My assistants and I were getting hammered with hundreds, then thousands, of emails per day. 90% of the time, I had no idea how people got my private email addresses. We were drowning. The irony was that my systems worked great. It was pure operator error. In the deluge, I had slipped from a mindset of JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) and following my own priorities, to a mindset of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and reactively grasping at shiny objects and shiny people. I was succumbing to what the Germans call Torschlusspanik: literally, “door-closing panic.” The term comes from the time of walled medieval cities, when the gates would close at night—and any resident left outside would be forced to fend for themselves. Getting through those doors often meant survival. In survival mode, I panicked. I stopped following my own rules. Once I made the first exception, the game was lost. It was death by a thousand paper cuts. So, what the hell happened? Why didn’t I see it coming? These habits are formed early and embed themselves deeply. I come from a family full of lovely and conflict-avoidant folks. This isn’t true for everyone in the extended clan, but it’s enough for my default to be people-pleasing. Or, more accurately, people-fearing—a distinction we’ll dive into later. Before the publication of my book, with little inbound, the effects of people-pleasing were negligible. I came up with wild plans, went out hunting for opportunities, cold-emailed people to pitch ideas, and knocked things off my to-do list. After the success of the book, with 1000x more inbound, the effects of people-pleasing were catastrophic. The underlying fear and guilt came out in full force and wreaked havoc. I was being emailed and called by a Genghis Khan army of versions of myself (surprise, bitch!), and I didn’t have a playbook. Saying yes to other people’s priorities made mine vanish like sand through my fingers.