I have a question for you. One that may not have an answer. Or maybe the answer is simply another question. "What will you do on the day after you achieve the thing that you are working so hard for now?" I'm not looking for an "I'm going to Disneyworld!" answer. Yes, assume that you are going to celebrate your hard-won victory. But then what? Each Goal is Just a Chapter On a trip to Lisbon, Portugal, I was struck by the history of the place. The country was reaching it's dominance on the world stage around 500 years ago. So go back to the founding of the United States, and then go back that same amount of time again. That's … [Read more...]
How Many Seeds Did You Plant Today?
The 8 Things You Must Know or Your Life Will Totally Suck
If you don’t understand sarcasm, then please, for your own mental and emotional safety, don’t read any farther: Always remember: You are the victim. Everyone who tells you that their life is tough is full of crap because they don't understand how really tough your life is. They’ve obviously never been in your shoes for a day. If you feel that the universe is conspiring against you, it's because it is. You can’t go 20 minutes without someone deliberately making your life harder than it has to be. Throughout your life, you’ve always been the wrong height, weight, gender, ethnicity, and even when it seemed like you’ve had all of the … [Read more...]
Act Like You Control Your Time
This article isn't going to solve all of your time-management agonies. It's not full of lists on how to maximize your time, minimize your email inbox, or how to set your priorities the right way. There are other blogs, books, and online courses that will make you a time-management wizard. I am going to ask you a question that will put you on the right path. It's the first step to making the most of the time you have. Most people think that the reason they don't get everything done is because they haven't stumbled upon that right tip, tool, or lifehack. (Oh, I can separate an egg yolk with an empty plastic bottle, now my life is going … [Read more...]
And We’re Back at the Beginning
In the closing days of 2014, are you looking back at the year that passed or are you looking forward into the next? I've found that most people do one or the other. They rehash the previous year, the good or the bad. And they rate themselves on how it went. Or they plan out the upcoming year, with goals, resolutions, and dreams. Sometimes, in a fit of introspective intensity, they do both! Which is better? I'm sitting at my desk, thinking about what I want 2015 to look like and the goals of 2014 that I hit (wrote a book) and missed (did not learn Spanish fluently). And I realized that the analysis of the past and the dreaming of … [Read more...]
Gamification Won’t Help Me Achieve My Real-World Destiny
Every few months I read another article on why gamification is the new tool to achieve success. Sometimes it's a social media dashboard that promises to make engaging with your network fun and easy. Or a smartphone app for creating better habits that will give you medals and awards for exercise or some other personal development goal. But they all claim to tap into the same psychology that makes video games so addictive and use that power for professional and personal change. But I'm not sold. Like many of my friends who grew up in the 80's and 90's, I'm a bit of video game nerd. OK, I'm a big video game nerd. From late-night … [Read more...]
The 30 Minutes Between You and Your Dreams
I sent my latest draft of Networking in the 21st Century: Why Your Network Sucks and What to Do About It to the editor last week. I have to admit that I'm pretty excited about it. And a little surprised. If you had asked me at the beginning of the year if I could write a nearly 200-page book, I would have demurred and said that I didn't have the time or the patience to do it. Writing a book was a pipedream. So how did I do it? And why should you care, even if you don't plan on writing a book anytime soon? One Step at a Time Like many of us in this information-soaked age, my attention span is not the greatest. In addition I run my … [Read more...]