A few months ago I wrote a post on personal analytics. There I discussed how more and more people make their life decisions based on numbers. They don’t make their decisions based on what they feel but based on facts. This way their decisions are well-informed and based on strong foundations.

How can we apply personal analytics to our lives? The key is to track your life metrics. Only by tracking them can you get the numbers upon which to make informed decisions.

Unfortunately, the tracking process is still mostly manual these days (with a few exceptions like Nike+ that can automatically track your running speed and distance). Because of that, if you track too many metrics you risk spending too much time on the tracking process at the expense of doing real work.

So the best thing to do is to track just a few important metrics. This way you can get the benefits without spending too much time on the tracking process. Here are three essential things you should track:

1. Income and expenses

You should know how much money you make and how much money you spend on different things. Many people aren’t aware that they have financial problems until everything is too late. Or perhaps they’re aware, but they don’t know how it happened. Consequently, they have no idea how to solve it.

That’s why it’s important that you take note of your income and expenses. Doing that helps you spot the weak areas in your personal finance so that you can take the necessary actions.

To track your income and expenses, you can use a spreadsheet or a personal finance application. Here are a few personal finance applications you can use:

• Quicken
• Mint
• Wesabe
• GnuCash

One simple rule on money management that I find useful is to spend your money to buy assets whenever possible.

2. Time

Have you ever had days where you wondered why you’ve accomplished so little? That’s one reason why you need to track your time. You need to know where your time went.

There are many ways to do this. You can create a time log where you record all your activities during the day along with the time and duration. This could be burdensome though. A simpler way is to just track how many productive sessions you have in a day. The Now Habit (here is my review) suggests a session to be thirty minutes long but it’s up to you. The important thing is to make sure that the productive session is indeed productive. Reading e-mails and random browsing don’t count. Alternatively, you can track your time indirectly by tracking your goals for the day or week. If you achieve your desired goals then you know that you’ve used your time productively.

To track your time, you can use a timer and spreadsheet or use a dedicated time tracking application like Klok and RescueTime. If you choose to track your goals, you can use a to-do list application like Remember the Milk or even just a text file.

3. Habits

Do you have a good habit that you want to build or a bad habit that you want to break? As Peter Drucker said, what get measured get managed. So tracking it is a good way to reach your goal.

You can do it simply by taking notes of how many times you do the habit in a certain period of time. You can then see how your score is for that period of time. With good habit, the goal is to maximize the score while with bad habit the goal is to minimize it. If you want to, you can reward yourself whenever you make an improvement. A spreadsheet or a text file is enough for tracking your habits.

***

The first and second metrics deal with your personal resources: money and time. They are limited so you must make sure that you use them wisely. There’s still one more important resource actually, which is your energy, but I don’t know how to track it (any idea?). The third metric deals with your habits which, of course, are essential for an effective life.

By tracking your personal finance, time, and habits, you increase your awareness of your life. This helps you not only to figure out what problems you might have but also to take the necessary actions to solve them.

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

There’s an interesting talk at TED by Stefan Sagmeister titled The Power of Time Off. In the talk, Sagmeister shared his experience of how he takes one full year off every seven years to recharge his creative life. During the sabbatical year, he closes his design company and doesn’t accept any design request. It might seem strange to take one full year for sabbatical, but he argued that it gives him more than what it costs.

There are at least three things he gets from his sabbatical years:

1. He gets fresh ideas for his creative work. Referring to one sabbatical year of his, he said that all the ideas in the following seven years came out from that one year.
2. It benefits him financially. Though he didn’t accept any request for one year, the improved quality of his work allowed him to ask for higher prices in the following years. He could eventually make more money than what he lost.
3. It made his work a calling again. This is my favorite of the three. In the talk, Sagmeister talked about three levels of work: job (when you do your work just for money), career (when you pursue advancement and promotion), and calling (when you do your work simply because it’s fulfilling). Even if your work is something you love to do, the daily routine could make it a job. Sagmeister said that taking a sabbatical year makes his work a calling again.

As you can see, these three things solve three common problems that many people have at work:

• Lack of creative ideas.
• Lack of financial improvement.
• Lack of purpose and fulfillment. This one affects not just your work, but also your life in general.

If you had any of these problems, here is a simple way to recharge your life: take time off. Of course, it doesn’t have to be one full year since most people (including me) can’t afford it without any serious consequences. But taking even short periods of time off is useful. Here’s what I suggest you to do:

1. Take time off every day. You should set aside time in your day where you can be away from your routine. Cut your communication with the outside world for a while. Use the time to get a sense of clarity of your life and work. Reconnect with your life purpose and look at the big picture of your life. Are you on the right track? Are you doing the right things? You can do this by meditating, praying, walking in the garden, or any way you like. The important thing is that you to reflect on your life with a clear mind. You don’t have to spend much time on it. Half an hour is enough, in my experience. Doing this helps you live your daily life with clarity.
2. Take a few days off every now and then. During that time, try not to do your routine that might introduce noise into your life. For me that means not connecting to the Internet. Though it’s not necessary, going out of town could be helpful. I can attest from personal experience that such time is really rewarding. I often see my life and work from a new perspective. I can see the forest rather than the trees. This, of course, will happen only if you spend time to reflect on your life and work.

It reminds me of the story of two woodcutters. One of them sawed down the trees all the time without ever sharpening his saw. The other person spent time to sharpen his saw and only then did he saw down the trees. Which one do you think would cut more trees at the end?

Don’t let the busyness of your life lead you to the wrong direction. Allocate time to reconnect with your purpose and calling. Allocate time to see the big picture of your life. Taking time off helps you stay sharp.

Photo by notsogoodphotography

Note: This is a guest post from Armen Shirvanian of Timeless Information

If you want to see if and how you waste time, compare your current productivity to that which you have had at a winning time in your days. There is much benefit to gain from looking at a time when you felt like you were doing all the right things for a short time. You can see and reflect upon why that period of time came out feeling so good, and get new sense of how the time period you are now in is going.

You Can Stay At Your High Production State

The first thing to accept here is that you can maintain the high level of production that you have put out at some point. There is no reason you are weaker or less able now. You might have some distractions or pressures that you didn’t have when you were at your peak, but those can be pushed aside by your bigger vision. Let’s say you are a student who had a period where you were really focused on your schoolwork, and had a time where you were doing all the assigned reading given to you for a couple of months, and then slowed down since then. After a sizable amount of time passes from this period of success, you might start to feel like you can’t reach that state again. This isn’t the case, as you can reach that state, and even add to it, with new abilities you have strengthened since then.

Look At Your High Production State As The Goal

You want to view it like the high production state is where you need to be staying at, and any period where you are not at that state is a period where you are wasting some of your time and potential. This is an uplifting way to look at your effort usage. If you were once trying to sell a product to about 3 different customers every day for a few weeks, you have to now look at any time where you are not marketing at that rate as a time when you aren’t doing what you know you can do. This will keep you on an upward slope. No one wants to be told that they are wasting their time. It makes them feel like their actions are starting to look irrelevant to the masses. Using this knowledge, remind yourself when you do see yourself wasting time, according to the description I pointed out above. You won’t like the feeling, and will quickly build up some self-discipline to avoid that label, and self-discipline is the big deal.

Piano Practice Example

Let’s say you used to play a new piano song every week, and now haven’t played piano for a few years. You might think your past learning ability is out of reach, or that you have missed your opportunity. These thoughts don’t help much. Taking the experience gained from the past piano-playing, along with the confidence received from knowing this habit has already been tackled before, you can return to the routine again. There’s nothing stopping you from getting back your momentum by learning Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” within the next seven days, followed by Brahms “Brahms’ Lullaby” the next week, and Mozart’s theme from “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” the week after. You already have the skills to do so from your experience, and have more goal-setting resources at your disposal today, so you can be back in action in no time. Everyone always says “time flies”, and that means that the period of struggle to get the habit back in place will also fly by.

Work At The Level You’ve Already Shown You Can

Once your mind reaches a certain understanding, your mind will never go back to not having that understanding. In the same way, you can always return to a production ability, or winning streak, that you once had. Toss aside any blame on others, or views of yourself as no longer having the capacity, and you can again be rolling the ball up the mountain, soon enough.

Armen Shirvanian writes words of wisdom about mindset, communication, relationships, and related topics at Timeless Information. You can follow him on Twitter at @Armen.

Photo by madmolecule

Do you want to make extra money? I believe knowing a few ways to supplement your income won’t hurt. You might not need them now, but when you needed them it’s nice to know the available options.

There are many ways to earn extra income, but here I make a few restrictions to prevent this post from being too broad:

1. I only cover how to make extra money online. This way you can work wherever you are in your spare time.
2. I only cover ways to make money in relatively short time. I don’t include anything that takes weeks or months to get results. That’s why I don’t cover things like blogging or revenue sharing with article sites (because building the necessary traffic could take a long time). On the flip side, most of the ways I discuss here won’t give you passive income. They require you to actively work to earn.

For each of the ways I’m about to share, I list some relevant web sites you can use. I don’t test all of them, so please read their terms before you decide to use them.

Without further ado, here are 9 ways to make extra money online:

1. Writing

Writing is a popular way to earn side income. The world is always hungry for good content and if you have writing skills you will find many opportunities online. Here are some sites that offer article writing jobs:

• Associated Content
• Demand Studios
• TextBroker
• Constant Content

You can also write tutorials. Tutorials are more difficult to write than ordinary articles since they contain step-by-step guide on a topic. But they also pay more. The sites below pay between $150 to $300 for each published tutorial:

• Tutorial9 (design and blogging)
• Tuts+ (design, photography, web development)
• Gomedia (design)

2. Designing

Graphic design skill has a lot of demand these days. You could design logos, posters, or even entire web sites. Browse the sites below to find design jobs:

• Envato Marketplaces
• Graphic Leftovers
• 99Designs

3. Programming

Do you know how to program? Then what about taking some programming jobs online? You can find them at:

• Rent A Coder
• ScriptLance

4. Tutoring

If you liked to teach then online tutoring is perhaps the way to go. The nice thing here is you don’t need to physically go to a certain place to tutor. You can do it in the comfort of your home. Here are some web sites that offer the opportunity:

• Tutor.com
• TutorVista
• TransWebTutors

5. Selling stock photos

Many people like photography. If you happen to be one of them, why don’t you sell your photos for profit? These sites help you sell your photos:

• iStockPhoto
• Fotolia
• Shutterstock
• Dreamstime

6. Microworking

With microworking, you make money by doing simple tasks that you can usually finish in a few minutes. They pay you a little for each completed task, but because the tasks are simple, you could complete a lot of tasks in a day. Here are two sites for microworking:

• Amazon Mechanical Turk
• Microworkers

7. Selling stuff

Obviously, you can make money by selling stuff. Do you have items in your home you no longer need? Other people may want to buy them from you. Just list them at:

• eBay
• Craigslist

On the other hand, you can also sell your own creations. They could be T-shirts, post cards, bags, and pretty much anything you can imagine. Here are some places to sell them:

• Etsy
• CafePress
• RedBubble

8. Website flipping

If you’re good at making web sites, you can sell them for profit. It could make you more than $100 for a few hours of work. Here are two popular places for website flipping:

• Flippa
• Digital Point

9. Translating

Do you master foreign languages? If you do then translating is something you might want to consider. There are a lot of translation jobs online. Here are some sites that offer them:

• ProZ
• TranslatorsCafe
• Translatorsbase

***

In addition to the specialized sites listed above, there are sites that offer opportunities in more than one category. Browse them to find various opportunities:

• Guru
• Elance
• Freelancer

Do you know other ways to make extra money online? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Photo by Don Hankins

I recently read an interesting article titled Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem. It tells the story of how 3D Realms, a video game company in Texas, developed Duke Nukem Forever, a 3D first-person-shooter game that they hoped would set new standards for the industry.

The development was started in 1997, just a year after the company released the wildly successful Duke Nukem 3D. Sadly, the company eventually shut down the project in… 2009. That’s 12 years of failed development! It sounds like a nightmare project to be in. Devoting so much time to a single project (as compared to the typical two to four years for game development) and yet ended up in failure. This is not to mention the estimated 20 million dollars wasted on the project.

But why did it happen? What turned the project into such a nightmare? The story contains a lot of lessons on what not to do to get results. These are expensive lessons for those involved, so hopefully we don’t need to go through such experiences to learn them.

Taking the moral of the story, here are four lessons I learn on how to get things done (along with relevant quotes from the story):

1. Avoid perfectionism

Broussard simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of Duke Nukem Forever coming out with anything other than the latest and greatest technology and awe-inspiring gameplay. He didn’t just want it to be good. It had to surpass every other game that had ever existed, the same way the original Duke Nukem 3D had.

But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill.

You, of course, should try to be the best that you can be. But there’s a difference between wanting to be as good as possible and being obsessed with perfection. The truth is, you may never achieve the level of perfection you want. This is especially true in the story because technology keeps getting better all the time. By the time 3D Realms got close to the perfection they wanted, technology already evolved that raised the standard once again. This, at the end, turned the project into a never-ending one.

You should be careful not to let perfectionism get into the way of delivering results. Be as good as possible, but understand that you can never be perfect. At some point, you need to sacrifice something in order to get the product done. Don’t forget that your responsibility is to deliver results.

2. Have realistic expectations

Mike Wilson, a former games marketer with id Software and 15-year veteran of the industry, suspects that Broussard was paralyzed by the massive success of Duke Nukem 3D. “When Duke came out, they were kings of the world for a minute,” Wilson says. “And how often does that happen? How often does someone have the best thing in their field, absolutely? They basically got frozen in that moment.”

So you had been successful before and you want to reach the same level of success in the future. That’s good, except for the fact that it could give you unrealistic expectations.

The truth is, you can’t always be successful. Even the best athletes in the world still lose every now and then. Is it realistic for an athlete to expect to always win the competitions he participates in? No, of course. So you need to have realistic expectations. Don’t let your past success paralyzes you.

3. Change the way you work

But in the years that Broussard had spent tweaking Duke Nukem Forever, games had become bigger and bigger…

They were still designing “with a 1995 mentality,” as one former employee told me — trying to produce a modern, massive game with a stripped-down little group.

Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean it works in the present. The world changes, and if you don’t change you risk being obsolete.

The problem is many people expect the same level of success they had before but don’t change the way they work to match the world around them. How can they expect to get the same level of success if they work with five-year-ago mentality? How can you expect it if you don’t keep up with the rest of the world?

4. Set limits

“When it’s done” became their defiant reply whenever someone asked when Duke Nukem Forever would be finished.

The story is an extreme example of Parkinson’s law at work. Parkinson’s law states that:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

In the story, there is no deadline which means that there is unlimited amount of time available. According to Parkinson’s law, it means that the work will expand infinitely.

The situation was made even worse by the fact that the company had so much money in the bank.

Broussard was also cursed with money.

Normally, game developers don’t have much cash… 3D Realms was flush with cash.

Yet the truth is, Broussard’s financial freedom had cut him off from all discipline. He could delay making the tough calls, seemingly forever. “One day, Broussard came in and said, ‘We could go another five years without shipping a game’” because 3D Realms still had so much money in the bank

When you have practically unlimited resources for a project, you have a lot of room to waste them. So, if you want to deliver results, set limits. Give yourself a short deadline and a tight budget. That’s how you get things done.

Photo by blupics

Note: This is a guest post by Mark Foo of 77 Success Traits

If you’re leading a group of people towards success, you must learn how to motivate others. If you concentrate on understanding what motivates others and you meet the needs of these people, you’ll be on the right track for a positive and enlightening experience for all involved.

Once a person’s base needs are met, they usually move on to working on certain needs of self fulfillment. For example, if someone is hungry, they won’t be able to concentrate on a critical thinking task. In this case you’ll need to make sure that this person has had lunch before the task needs to be completed. But how can you motivate them to complete certain tasks once base needs have been fulfilled?

Try one or more of the following ways of motivating people:

1. Treat People Kindly. As a leader you need to treat the people helping you with the utmost respect and kindness. Hand out praise when it’s warranted. You might not know it, but it’s a big motivation booster when people are treated right. People enjoy knowing when they’re doing a good job and enjoy working with people that treat others with kindness.

2. Give People Responsibility. If there are certain tasks that you’re allowed to delegate to others, by all means choose someone to take responsibility for that task. When people are fully responsible, they’ll be more likely to find the motivation to complete the task. This is because, as a part of a group, they may not feel like their hard work matters, but when they’re responsible it certainly matters. They also know that they’re being held accountable for the success or failure of the project.

3. Be a Good Listener. No one likes to feel like they don’t matter. Just because you have final say doesn’t mean that you can’t get some help with important decision making. People enjoy feeling like they’re making a difference. Always keep an open ear and you’ll be motivating your team to come up with solutions and creative ideas.

4. Set Stretched Goals. Think long and hard about how your goal setting abilities can teach you how to motivate others. You don’t want to set goals that are too easy. Your team might reach them quickly but they won’t be pushed to become the best they can be. On the other end, you don’t want to set goals that are unattainable either. Your team will quickly lose motivation because they’ll never get the feeling of having met their goals. You want to find a goal that would push them to achieve just a little more than they have in the past and keep going from there.

5. Get to Know People. You may not want to be personal friends with your colleagues, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get to know them as people. Keep lines of communication open and get to know your team by paying attention to their wants, needs, strengths and weaknesses. People are smart and they’ll know when they have a leader that cares and a leader that doesn’t. They’ll certainly be more motivated to work hard for somebody that cares about them.

6. Keep Everyone in the Know. Nobody likes to be left in the dark. Make sure that you’re open about your thinking and decisions with the people you’re motivating. Sure, sometimes there will be things that you’re not supposed to share. You just need to make an effort to spread the word around when you can communicate important issues.

Remember that when you’re working on motivating others, it’s definitely important to strengthen their sense of belonging. You’re leading a little family and when everyone’s happy, they’re motivated to achieve big things.

Mark Foo has brought together 48 personal development bloggers and writers to co-author The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People eBook that spells out all of the success secrets of the very successful people. This eBook is available to you FREE and you can grab your free copy now at http://www.77SuccessTraits.com.

Photo by Darcy McCarty

Do you want to make your career crisis-proof? Do you want it to thrive even in difficult times? The key is to be quick to adapt to changing conditions. Change is the only constant in the market and you are crisis-proof only if you can quickly adapt to new conditions.

As I wrote in my post about learning and people skills, these quick-to-adapt people are called versatilists. But how can they be crisis-proof? And how can we be one of them? We will answer these two questions here.

Wikipedia has a good description of versatilists:

To illustrate this using a math phrase, the versatilist has a higher area under the curve rating. Think of a person having some level of knowledge/experience in 15 knowledge areas. That person may have a very high competency (score 5) in 3 areas, a medium level of competency (score 3) in 5 areas an introductory level of competency (score 1) in 4 areas and no competency (score 0) in 3 areas. This creates an area under the curve of 34. This is different from a specialist who may score very high in 1 area and have no competency in others. This is also different from a generalist who may score a 1 or 3 in every area. This breadth of knowledge and experience is what enables faster changes to other roles.

From the description, there are two characteristics of versatilists:

1. Versatilists have wide interest
   Unlike specialists, versatilists don’t limit their interest to only one area. They are interested in many things. You can quickly recognize such people when you talk with them. They show enthusiasm for many different topics and not just one or two.
2. Versatilists build competencies in their areas of interest
   Generalists also have wide interest. But unlike generalists, versatilists build competencies in their areas of interest. They are not satisfied with just knowing a little about those fields. Instead, they improve themselves to the point where they can do something meaningful. Of course, their level of competency is not the same from one area to the other, but they improve their competencies in more than just one area.

The magic of versatilists is they can combine their different competencies into unique offerings. It’s like cooking with many available ingredients. If you have only one or two ingredients, the number of combinations you can create is very limited. But if you have many ingredients, there are a lot of possible combinations. Let’s say there are three ingredients you could have: A, B, and C. Here are the possible combinations for different numbers of ingredients:

• With 1 ingredient (A), there is only 1 possible combination (A).
• With 2 ingredients (A,B), there are 3 possible combinations (A,B,AB).
• With 3 ingredients (A,B,C), there are 7 possible combinations (A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, ABC)

As you can see, the number of possible combinations increases exponentially with each additional ingredient.

That’s why versatilists are crisis-proof:

Versatilists are crisis-proof because they can quickly create new offerings that meet new market demands.

This, in my opinion, is the main advantage of versatilists. When market changes, they can quickly create a new combination to adapt to it. People might be astonished with how fast they switch roles but they actually just create a new combination from their portfolio of competencies. Their portfolio of competencies becomes a base upon which to create many potential offerings. They can then choose one of them based on market demands. Specialists, on the other hand, have a hard time to adapt since they have only one – or a few combinations – to offer.

So how can we be a versatilist? As you can see above, the important thing to have a portfolio of competencies. It’s just like investing. Financial experts suggest you diversify your investment and not put all your eggs in one basket. Similarly, you should diversify your competencies and not bet your future on just one. Add to this a strong network of friends and you will always have good opportunities come your way.

Here are some tips to build your portfolio of competencies:

1. Start early

As with investing, the earlier you start the better. The reason is that it takes time to build your portfolio. You can’t have a strong portfolio overnight.

2. List your base competencies

Base competencies are the competencies that become the elements of “combined” competencies. In my case of blogging, for example, the competency needed can be broken down to at least three base competencies: writing, personal development, and information technology.

What you need to do is listing all your base competencies regardless of your level of expertise.

3. Develop your base competencies

After listing your base competencies, you should work on improving them. Read books, practice, and learn from other people. You don’t have to be a world-class expert in any of them. Remember, the strength is in the combinations.

4. Add new base competencies

Besides developing your current base competencies, you should consider adding new competencies to your portfolio. Find something that’s related to what you already have. Or find something that can complement what you have.

5. Watch the market

Market always changes so you need to watch it closely. Where is it heading? What new demands might occur in the near future? This post has some ideas on how to do that.

6. Develop unique offerings based on market demands

When you see a growing demand, you can look at your portfolio of competencies and find how you can combine them to make something that meets the need. It’s like trying to combine available ingredients to create the kind of meal requested by your customer. The more ingredients you have, the bigger the chance that you can find the right combination. This post gives you an example.

Photo by muha

In The Importance of Being Smart, I wrote how smart people can achieve much more – with much less effort – than those who just work hard. There’s a comment there by Frode that I’d like to discuss:

… lazy people seem to be smarter, as they use a lot of brain energy on finding an easier way to do stuff.

Interesting, isn’t it? Lazy people seem to be smarter. But I agree that thinking like lazy people is a good way to work smart. Here are two reasons:

1. Lazy people find ways to accomplish something with the least amount of effort. If you are lazy, you will diligently find ways not to work. Applied to finishing tasks, it means that you try to accomplish it with the least amount of work possible.
2. Lazy people ensure that when they work, they do things that have impact. Why? Because it allows them to gain more with less. They don’t bother doing something that won’t give them results.

Of course, what I mean here is thinking like lazy people, not actually being lazy. You still need to have strong work ethic. But you also need to do things the smart way.

Here are four things you will do if you think like a lazy person:

1. Question whether or not something is worth doing. Don’t do something just because everyone else does it. Ask yourself: is it really necessary? Is it really worth doing? If the answer is no then there is no reason to do it.

2. Do only things with the most impact. Your resources are limited so invest them only on things that give you the most return. Think ROI.

3. Take the shortest path. Don’t waste your time on unnecessary bells and whistles. Do only the things that are necessary to get the job done. Cut everything else.

4. Use as much leverage as possible. Before doing something, find the things you can leverage. Do you know someone in your network who can do it better or faster than you? Can you market it to your existing customers? Can you achieve more than one thing at once? Whatever you do, always use the power of leverage to your advantage.

Photo by Per Ola Wiberg

Note: This is a guest post from David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek

I live in the future. No, this isn’t a McFly-moment, it’s a always-have-my-thoughts-in-the-future moment. And it’s a problem.

Living with your mind focused on the future causes you to miss out on the now and our lives are made out of moments of now, not of moments of the future. By living in the future you don’t actually live at all.

Of course, it’d be nice to live so I’m trying to enjoy the journey – the present. Here are some ways to do that:

1. Focus

Pure focus is bliss. When your thoughts, actions and emotions are all directed towards a single function you are focusing and you are in the present. You should get lost in your work. Set a deadline for yourself to finish a task and see your level of focus skyrocket.

Right now I’m using e.ggtimer.com and have it set for 20 minutes to finish this article (which I’ve pre-outlined). Perhaps the deadline is too tight, but that’s great, because it’s a challenge that doesn’t allow for procrastinations or over thinking. Set a task and do it.

Go with the flow.

2. Mastermind

Two of my friends and I meet up every now and then to talk about business, ideas, and just random stuff really. It’s fairly flexible and unprofessional, but we still label it as a mastermind.

Although the very concept of a mastermind is focused on getting results in the future I feel there’s also a sense of living in the moment, because we all just sit around a table or outside on the grass and talk. There’s no fancy technology, very little note taking and it’s just pure discussion. And perhaps most importantly: it’s fun.

When we mastermind time flies. Just a couple of days ago we spent 6+ hours just talking about stuff and it was the most enjoyable 6 hours I’ve had in a while.

Find like-minded individuals and bump your heads together (figuratively – don’t get all Pachycephalosaurus on me).

3. Take it slow

Being in a rush doesn’t give you a chance to appreciate the present. I understand the various apparent urgencies you may feel in your life. For some time I was rushing to earn an income online and although a degree of hustle is required for any form of achievement, I find taking things slower and simply being patient more rewarding.

I’ve accepted that my writing career isn’t going to explode overnight and that any side businesses I build aren’t going to be insanely popular at launch. And with that comes a sense of calm. Yes, it may take years to reach goals I’ve set, but years I have, moments I need.

Slow down the speed of life. Urgency is rarely urgency.

4. Find balance

Or “The Middle Way” as it’s known in Buddhism. Anything in excess is dangerous. Practice the art of work-life separation and strive to do everything in moderation.

When you introduce balance into your life you become mindful of what you’re doing, giving you a chance to acknowledge moments for what they are: precious gifts of chronology. Don’t let anything consume your life.

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Balance your life.

5. Be certain

Where are you going? Understand what you want the future to hold and set a plan to accommodate for that. This gives you perhaps the most powerful tool in achievement: certainty.

If you believe in something, are passionate about it and can visualise the end result so clearly that you can taste it, you feel certain that it’s inevitable. You’re no longer wondering if, but when. And this is powerful.

With this certainty you can stop stressing over what may or may not happen in the future because there’s simply no wondering – you’re going to achieve it and that’s final. Achievement simply becomes a matter of doing X to achieve Y.

This may seem like a cold way to approach life, but when the outcome Y is understood, each moment X can be fully appreciated as they aren’t bombarded by self doubt or uncertainty. You can live in the present because your future becomes a predetermined (but still open to spontaneity) mass of wonderment.

Set a direction for your life and enjoy the ride.

6. Unfocus

Productiveness isn’t always beneficial. It’s great to get stuff done, but at times it’s even better to sit back and lose yourself in something that has no tangible result, something that is simply fun.

Personally I love getting fish and chips with a friend and just watching the world go by, or playing some co-op video games if I’m in the mood for fighting hordes of aliens. You don’t need to dominate your life with getting things done.

Embrace unproductivity. Do things “just because”.

David Turnbull writes about peace of mind, simplicity and geekery at his blog, Adventures of a Barefoot Geek. He enjoys long walks and writing about himself in 3rd person.

Photo by lepiaf.geo

Persistence is important to achieve success, but giving up is also important. I’ve written about persistence before, so here I want to look at giving up.

Why is it essential? Why is it necessary to give up? Because it allows you to focus your energy on the few things that are truly important. By giving up, you:

1. Stop unfruitful effort. What’s the point of spending your time and energy on something that doesn’t work? The more you spend your time and energy there, the more you waste your resources.
2. Avoid spreading yourself too thin. There are probably many things that you want to achieve. But you can’t achieve everything you want. Your resources are limited so you need to choose and prioritize. If you try to do too many things at once you will end up achieving nothing.
3. Reduce your stress. Pursuing too many things means giving yourself unnecessary pressure. Don’t let your ambition stop you from enjoying your life.
4. Free up time for your loved ones. Don’t be so busy that you don’t have time for your loved ones. By giving up, you ease your burden and free up time to build meaningful relationships.

In essence, here is what you need to do:

Give up the less important things so that you can focus and persist on the few important ones.

Here are several tips to help you apply it:

1. Find what matters to you

You need a way to know whether or not something is important. That’s why you need to find what matters to you. What makes you feel fulfilled? What gives you inner satisfaction? Be persistent on things that matter to you and give up the others.

2. Assess your life every now and then

Even if you already find what matters to you, the busyness of life can obscure it. As a result, you might get distracted by superficial things. So find time to reflect on your life every now and then. Look at how your life is going. Are you staying true to what your heart is saying?

3. Learn to let go

You may know that you need to give up something, but it might not be easy to let it go. This is especially true if you already spend a lot of resources on it.

This is where the concept of sunk costs is helpful. Don’t get caught in sunk cost bias. The fact that you’ve spent your resources on the wrong thing doesn’t justify spending even more resources on it. Those resources are already spent. Now you need to find the best way to spend the resources that are left.

The concept of opportunity costs may also be helpful. Holding on the wrong thing means losing better opportunities. The more resources you spend on it, the more opportunities you lose.

4. Refocus your effort

Once you’ve given up the less important things, renew your focus and effort on the few important ones. Now that you are focused, you have a chance to make a real difference.

Photo by Japokskee