It’s easy to forget where we’ve come from. As the political season swirls around us, politicians are making bold, sweeping plans for the future. Yet, time and again leaders’ “plans” are thwarted because they forget their history.

They forgot to look back.

***

My wife and I went on a cruise a few weeks ago to celebrate our first year of marriage together. It was a fantastic chance to get away and look back on the year. I took a few (5!) books that I wanted to read, and a few sturdy notebooks to jot down ideas and future plans.

While I only read two of the books, my wife and I were inspired to plan out large chunks of our next year.

The beauty of a cruise ship is that you’re forced to disconnect from the outside world due to lack of (cheap) internet and phone connectivity. This kind of environment is perfect for planning and fleshing out details. No distractions, no outside influences, just my wife and myself and a pen. Not to mention an awesome view of the water 24/7.

It was an insanely valuable experience, but not in the way that I expected. I’m a nostalgic guy, but it turns out that looking back helped us far more on making future plans.

After all, how can plan where we’re going, if we haven’t taken stock of where we’ve been?

You see, the dirty little secret about planning is looking back first. Looking back allows you to get perspective so you can get a base for future plans.

By default I’m a nostalgic guy, but it had never occurred to me that in order to see where we wanted to go as individuals and as a family, we needed to look back on what happened over the past year. So we started recalling things like

• memorable moments
• things we loved doing
• things we hated doing
• things that needed to be improved in our marriage
• and things we never got around to doing that we wanted to

In my case, I’ll fall all over myself trying to make plans. I love making yearly plans, but without really looking back on the previous day/week/month/year on a consistent basis, anything I plan for the future is pretty much worthless.

Right now I’ve got a lot going on. (Heck, who doesn’t?) Planning is the thing that’s going to be keeping me on task and sane, and if I didn’t take this opportunity to take a deep breath and look back on the previous year, my future planning wouldn’t have stuck.

Without that introspective review, I would have planned for things differently. I wouldn’t have taken key things into account that would have changed how I executed, keeping me from ultimately accomplishing what I want to do.

So what about you? Do you find looking at the past as a way to help “right the ship” and keep you on track?

Some people call it “expanding reach”, others call it “building relationships”, but peel away the jargon and you’re left with what it’s really called: more eyeballs.

The idea is that as more people visit your site, then more people are going to be influenced by you. So, if you want to be an influencer (who wouldn’t?), then you need to have more traffic. Simple, right?

Yet, every day new and seasoned site owners alike will all make the same mistake: they don’t set or track any goals. They have no goals for site traffic, or new subscribers, or any other metric. They don’t set posting goals for each month (I try to average two posts a week here). Not surprisingly, their sites don’t grow like they hoped.

It’s not hard to overlook measuring goals. After all, one might rightly say that there is no way to know just how many people will come to your site, so why make a goal? It’s all chance. But if you’re smart and a bit creative, you can create some metric that will indicate improvement for just about any goal.

The thing is, defining goals forces us to take the next (hardest) step and figure out how we’re going to actually achieve those goals.

Through high school and college I was a long distance runner. (If you run longer distances, the real training happens when you start to put hours of practice into each day.)

However, now that I haven’t been running as often as I’ve liked, it’s starting to show a bit around the edges. So, one of the things that I’ve been trying to do is pay more attention to what I eat.

My wife and I decided to download a little iPhone app that let us log how many calories we burned and consumed throughout the day. Thanks to paying attention to one important metric, we started to see results quickly.

The key to goals is measuring a really specific factor.

How many calories you consume is vastly different than ambiguous goals like “I’m going to exercise more this year”. There’s nothing that can easily be tracked about that goal. Without the ability to measure something concrete like calories or pageviews or sales, we’ll never achieve the goal.

You can’t have a goal unless you’re tracking something. And the more specific, the better.

The truly amazing thing about goals is that when we work towards them every day, measuring the results carefully, things get accomplished. Successes grow when we cultivate and measure them.

True goals deserve the daily cultivation that they need.

###

If you live in Kansas City/Lawrence area, I’ll be hosting Chris Guillebeau for his Kansas stop on his 50 state book tour. We’ll be meeting at Signs of Life (map) in downtown Lawrence at 7pm, and it’s going to be a fun time.

Chris will talk about non-conformity, among other things, and it’ll be a great opportunity to meet someone who has positively mastered goal-setting. Chris’ method for his yearly reviews has been a huge influence on how I plan my goals and life.

Anyway, It’s going to be a great time. Hope to see you there!

1. How to Grow Your Ideas With a Project Incubator
2. How To Grow Your Idea (While Staying Out Of its Way)
3. Persistence Needs a Metric

(This could be because I just made the term up. Not sure.) Regardless, it seems there is a stigma in the creative community that you can’t be Rich and Happy and Creative at the same time.

Or can you? Other smart people like Danielle LaPorte know that money is crucial to creative success.

Tim Brownson’s fantastic book How to Be Rich and Happy turns everything we think we know about money, happiness and the relation to our Work upside down.

Tim was kind enough to answer some questions about how creative people might shift what they think about the relationship between money and happiness.

Glen: So, “rich” and “happy” are words that people might have weird associations with. In the book, you talk about how rich isn’t necessarily money, and happy isn’t necessarily, well, what we think makes us happy. Can you go a little further and tell us what you’ve found about the two words?

Tim: When John first mentioned the title to me I was really worried people would think it was a get rich quick scheme or even worse, a scam. It took me a long time to come to terms with the title because I’m a long way from being rich as most people define it, I don’t even own my own house!

It was John who finally convinced me when he said something like “Tim, you love your job, you walk the dogs when you want, you work when you want, you play golf when you want, you live in a house you love, you have good health and a lot of fun. Is that not a rich existence?”

He was right, I could go back to a 6-figure salaried job like I had before and I’d have more money, but I’d not feel richer.

Happiness is a tough one to define, after all, philosophers have wrestled with the concept for centuries and about all they have come up with, is that happiness is completely subjective and will mean different things to different people.

With the book we try to help people find out what will make THEM happy by studying their values and understanding what drives them at a level of identity. We also go to great pains to help people understand that happiness is never wrapped up in material things.

Glen: Why do people just stick with the status quo? What do you think keeps people from doing what they truly love?

Tim: The only constant in life is change, yet it’s the one thing most people tend to resist the hardest.

There are any number of reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that changes feels awkward. When we do any task for the first time we access our pre-frontal cortex. This area of the brain uses lots and lots of energy and gets tired very quickly. That’s why when you start a new job, no matter how similar it was to your previous job you’ll be exhausted at the end of the day. Everything has to be done at a conscious level to begin with and until the tasks become ingrained in longer-term memory it will take a lot of effort.

So doing nothing is often an easy option for people.

I also know peoples belief systems keep them stuck. The belief that they aren’t good enough, old enough, sexy enough, wealthy enough, tall enough, experienced enough or whatever other limiting belief they care to throw out there.

Often these beliefs go back years and are very difficult for them to break because in their own mind they see them as facts. If you think it’s a fact that you’re not clever enough to go to University, you’ll never apply.

If you then add fear of failure (or success) and apathy in to the mix you can see why most people prefer to stay inside their comfort zone as long as they can.

Glen:What is the most interesting fact you’ve learned about humans and lifestyle choices? (I love all the studies and facts you’ve got sprinkled through the book.)

Tim: The Iowa Gambling Test was amazing, but I’m not going to go into that here as it would take to long (people will have to buy the book), but it shows the true power of our unconscious mind.

I think the stat that people who win a 7-figure lottery payout are statistically no happier 6 months after the event than people that were paralyzed in a road traffic accident is fairly mind-blowing.

I researched that from multiple sources because it was so amazing to me and I doubted its veracity.

The weird thing is, most people get that money doesn’t buy happiness, but they get it for other people, not for themselves. They’ll still take that well paid job they hate, or work insane overtime hours to afford a vacation or waste money on lottery tickets or whatever else they think will make them happy.

Once you drag people out of poverty, the link between wealth and happiness is so small as to be statistically irrelevant. If people can truly embrace that they’ll live a much happier and peaceful life.

Glen: What was your process for writing the book? Would you do anything differently next time? (We’re pretty interested in goal setting with respects to creative work around here.) :)

Tim: Oh man it was tortuous trying to marry our writing styles. John is a LOT more serious than I am as I use a lot of humor in my writing. He’s also a better technical writer than me as I tend to write the same way as I talk.

Originally we both wrote the material that we were the most comfortable with on our own and over a period of several months.

Then when we had done that, John took it all and slotted it in some type of order, but it just didn’t work at all. There were too many jokes and snarky comments in my writing and it was obvious when you were reading my stuff and when it was Johns. There was also a lack of flow to the book, it was
very disjointed.

At the time John was in China so trying to work anything out was tricky at best. When he got back we got together in my office to talk it through and had a huge breakthrough.

We decided to think of it more of a manual for life charting the course I would tend to walk an ‘average’ client through, rather than a book simply delivering ‘how-to’ information. Once we started to think about it in that light it was a lot easier.

We set mini-goals for different sections and an overall deadline to get the book finished and on the whole we stuck with these, but as we had nobody to answer to we were fairly relaxed about the process.

When we had it finished at about 100,000 words we went back in and ripped out 25,000 words. We wanted to make it uncondensible (made up word). Most self development books can be condensed into sometimes as little as a quarter of their original length without losing any of the message.

We were determined to remove any filler or anything that may slow down the flow of the book. Every story we have used or research we have referred to is necessary to get the individual messages across.

I think the process had to unfold as it did so I’m not sure I’d change anything although at the time I probably wanted to!

Glen: Your idea for giving away books is incredible. Can you explain a little about what it is and why you’re doing it?

Tim: When we sat down together after the book first came out as an ebook we started to talk about goals because up until then the only goal we’d had was to get the book finished and published.

John has had a couple of best sellers so we wanted to aim really high and decided we’d like to sell 1,000,000 copies which is a huge amount for a self-development title.

We ran the goal through the SMARTER method we explain in the book and got stuck on the last ‘R’. What was our reward for selling that amount of books?

I’m about as un-money motivated as it’s possible to be this side of kipping under a cardboard box, so I knew it wasn’t the money. John is well enough off to spend half his life traveling the globe, so money wasn’t the driving force for him either.

Then we asked ourselves why it is we do what we do? John speaks all over the world and I coach people all over the world. The answer came back that we love to help people and both get a huge buzz out of it.

What bigger buzz than to help people that wouldn’t normally be exposed to such material by giving them the book and hopefully positively impacting their lives.

At that point we knew our real goal and decided that 90% of every book we sold would go straight back in to printing up free copies to give to good causes. At the time of writing we have given over $60k’s worth of free books away, but we still have a looooong way to go to make this happen.

That’s also the reason you can’t buy the book from Amazon as they require 55% from each sale and that’s a non-starter for us. It’s also the reason we are self-published (much to the chagrin of our agent who could sell the rights tomorrow) as no publisher would be onboard with such a project.

I have had a couple of people tell me it’s just a clever marketing ploy, but that comes with the territory and the people that know us and matter to us get what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

***

Check out How to Be Rich and Happy, and many thanks to the venerable life coach Tim Brownson for the awesome interview.

1. Interview With Tim Ferriss of The 4 Hour Work Week
2. The Tiny Things That Make Us Happy (and Convince Us to Buy)
3. Interview With Martin Edic Of BlueTie

Yesterday I had the incredible honor of having a guest post published on The 99 Percent about finishing masterpieces. Tons of fresh faces subscribed here because of the article (hi there!), and lots of traffic was sent this way.

In a weird twist of luck, an article on Mashable also ran yesterday that featured yours truly spouting off nonsense about freelancing.

When it rains it pours, I guess.

If there’s something you should know about me, it’s that I’m a stats guy. Actually, it’s deeper than that. I like to figure out exactly why people are doing things on my site, like leaving or subscribing. I like to really dig deep and analyze data, looking for trends or things that I think I could improve around here.

It’s also a way for me to tell if people are engaging with my writing. I want to provide the most bang for your buck. Stats can be a useful yardstick to help gauge the fruits of my labor, if you will. But when a monolithic traffic day like yesterday happens, I can turn into a twitchy, compulsive stat checker. I’m not proud of it.

Yesterday I caught myself checking email subscriptions and site analytics on an hourly basis. I’d officially entered the “Obsessive Zone” of blog ownership.

***

There is a fine line between being “attentive” and “obsessive”. No matter what site owners tell you, they love checking stats. It’s like almost like a game. (I’m sure there are a few weirdos who deep down don’t really care, but they are definitely a minority.)

But more importantly, things like compulsively checking stats are really detrimental to our creative output. We all have something that steals our focus and attention away from the bigger picture.

In Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky talks at length about how the nitpicky, obsessive stuff that we seem to gravitate towards might actually be how we avoid doing the really important stuff. It’s a form of self-sabotage. (Cue Beastie Boys!)

We place a fake “importance” on little stuff that doesn’t really do anything but steal our attention from the things we should be doing.

Did checking my site stats obsessively somehow lure more people into subscribing? Nope. All it did was satisfy that ADHD little boy in me and waste my time.

Committing is hard. Really hard. Having timelines, goals, accountability, and all that other good stuff is what keeps ideas alive and into motion. But the fact that committing ain’t easy means that you’re going to be more vulnerable to distractions. You’re going to want little escapes to keep you distracted from reality.

Even worse than a blatant distraction (viral video, anyone?) is a small, nitpicky task that looks like something you might “need” to do. These are the real wolves in sheep’s clothing. They could be tasks like checking stats, or organizing planners, or trying out a new productivity tool. Tiny, small, unsuspecting things that add up to ginormous wastes of time that only distract from our masterpieces.

But in the end, if you can power through the nitpicky stuff and focus on what’s needed to create fantastic things, then you’ll gain momentum. You’ll gain clarity and focus, and most importantly, you’ll finish.

###

I know I’ve touched on this before, but you’ll want to buy or steal Making Ideas Happen (affiliate). It’s fantastic. (Just don’t tell Scott I told you to steal it.)

Photo by Janine

1. Are You Too Busy Working? You Might Suffer From Work Tunnel Vision
2. This Just In: The News Is Crap
3. That’s Funny… I Thought Traffic Was Up

Annabel Candy has a great mind for helping people do what they love through their work, and the topic of money is a major factor whether we want to admit it or not. I love this post. I’ve also got a complimentary post on shipping successful ideas over at her blog. Enjoy!

Are financial problems stopping you from living your dream and sapping your creativity?

Finance is a huge part of our lives yet it remains something that many people struggle with, especially creative types. These days, maybe more than ever before, people all over the world are getting into financial difficulties and debt.

The recession has been going on for a few years and people’s houses are still being repossessed. They’re still losing their jobs. Worst of all, they’re losing their freedom and independence.

What saddens me most about people getting into debt is the ties it causes. It you’re in debt you’re often forced to stay in a job or an area you don’t like in order to repay the debt and your creative energy is sapped by worry and the grind of daily living.

There’s an incredible freedom that comes from being free of debt. Only when you’re debt free can you actually live the life you want and be the master of your own destiny.

So here are my tips on how you can avoid getting into debt, simplified and repackaged in a way that I hope makes you see the true value of living within your means.

Remember, if you want to travel, set up your own business or follow any other life dreams, being debt free will help you get there. Over spending will only hold you back in life.

Never borrow money to buy unnecessary toys

Living within your means brings happiness and freedom that expensive new gadgets don’t. If you can’t afford to buy the car or TV of your dreams then don’t buy it. Get what you can pay for in cash now and be happy with it. If you really need to buy a car to get from A to B then buy one you can easily afford.

Don’t be tricked into finance plans that offer “18 months interest free”. If you can’t afford to buy the item for cash now you may not be able to in 18 months either. If you buy something on those crazy “free credit” terms you’ll be paying over the odds for it and you won’t be free anymore. You’ll be tied down to making those repayments until they’re paid off. Much better to save up, pay cash and live free.

Maybe you’re worried about what people will think about your unfashionable car or clunky TV? Don’t be. Anyone who judges you by that isn’t worth worrying about anyway.

Non-Essentials

Little things like clothes, skincare, toiletries add up. Just get what you need. I’m sure that many of us in developed countries have many more clothes than we can actually wear. That’s why I’ve classified clothes as non-essentials here. How many pairs of jeans and tshirts does one person actually need? I’d be prepared to bet that it’s not as many as you’ve already got, especially if you’re female. Sorry girls!

I’ve just spent a year without buying any new clothes, apart from some new sports socks when my old ones had gone to holes and a pair of shoes for a wedding. It wasn’t as if I was going to be naked. I had more than enough clothes to see me through the year and I think I even managed to look quite nice most of the time too.

It was great not to bother going to shops and shopping centers and also good at the end of the year to evaluate what I actually needed clothes-wise and spend a few hours clothes shopping. If you can’t cut down your clothes shopping to once a year try shopping for clothes only twice a year, maybe when the sales are on.

Or have a clothes and accessories swap party. Invite about 10 friends of varying sizes and tell them to bring the clothes and accessories they never wear. You’ll be laughing over each others’ disaster buys and amazed to see how good your unflattering trousers look on someone else. This is a cheap, fun night in and a great way to bond with friends.

When it comes to skincare and toiletries get cheaper brands. The pricier ones aren’t worth it, you’re just paying for the expensive advertising campaigns and the supermodels who promote them. Now why would you want to do that?

So you really need something?

Do you really need it? Really? Truly? It’s amazing how many things I think I need and write on my list but never get round to buying because I don’t go to the shops very often. If you go shopping every week, apart from to the grocery store or food market, then you’re probably spending more than you need to just by being in the shopping mall. Avoid shopping malls like the plague, especially if you have kids with you.

But let’s say you’ve convinced me there’s something you really need, your bike’s broken beyond repair and you really need a new one to get to work. Please, never buy anything, new or used, without taking the time to ask these two questions:

What’s the best price you can do for me?

Can you do a better deal for cash?

You’ll probably get one discount this way but you might even get two price cuts.

If you can wait until the annual sales you might get a better deal that way. Or put a search on Ebay, go to garage sales and tell your friends and colleagues you’re in the market for a new bike to see if anything comes up.

Housing

Sometimes renting can be cheaper than buying, especially if house prices aren’t increasing. Don’t be pressurized into buying a house or buying a more expensive house than you can easily afford the mortgage repayments on. You’re not buying a better house, you’re buying worry and financial pressure.

Grocery Shopping

Forget silly food coupons, just make sure you bulk buy and buy the supermarkets own brands. With most items (basmati rice, virgin olive oil, canned tomatoes, pasta etc) some of the cheaper brands taste just as good as the more expensive brands to me. There are only a few things I’m fussy about – I have to have the more expensive brand of mayonnaise – but for most things you’ll probably find the no name brands are just as good. Pick and choose your products carefully.

Be Patient

For example, go to the movies on cheap Tuesdays or wait for the DVD to come out. Most things have promotions at certain times of the year or on certain days, you’ve just got to wait for them.

Banish takeouts

I love eating out. I don’t do it as often as I’d like but it’s a real treat for me to go to a cafe or restaurant and eat a meal someone else has cooked and will clear away for me too. I just don’t get the idea of takeouts though. Most of them don’t taste as good as the food you’d make at home and it’s not that hard to wash up a chopping board and a couple of saucepans. Most healthy food it quick to make at home too (things like stir-fries and omelets) or can be prepared in bulk so you can freeze some to reheat on another day (curries and soups.)

I know often you may want to socialize without feeling you need to kill yourself with cooking and shopping. Try having a curry night and asking everyone to bring along one dish. Or just a pot luck and see what happens. Or a fun sushi night where everyone knuckles down and learns how to make their own sushi.

Start making these life changes to stay out of debt and save money today. There’s no time like the present.

Like any addict you’ll suffer a bit at first, but when you get used to spending less you’ll be glad you did. Leave your credit cards at home and reassess how to cut down your spending and what you’ll do when you’ve controlled your spending and earned your own freedom.

What will you do when you’re out of debt and in control of your finances? How will your creativity be unleashed?

Keep your prize on the goal and you’ll get there in the end.

Annabel Candy writes the personal development blog, Get In the Hot Spot, to inspire and inform people on how to live their dream. If you dream of travel, writing, self-employment, or just being happy, then subscribe by email or to the RSS feed

Photo by Vaguely Artistic

1. How To Grow Your Idea (While Staying Out Of its Way)
2. Don’t Be Afraid to Change the Dream
3. Casual Friday Video: Lucky To Be Alive Compilation

When I ran long distance track competitively in high school, there was always a point in the race where our coach pushed us where other coaches didn’t: the halfway point.

You see, most everyone’s heard of the “bell lap”. When the leaders in the race have one lap to go, they ring a bell. Long distance races have multiple laps and can be boring to watch, but the Bell Lap is the part where the race gets interesting. It’s where runners see what’s left in their tank and give it all they have to the finish, hopefully ahead of their competitor. The Bell Lap is where the race is won.

Well, not exactly.

My coach loved the halfway point. When I was running the mile, right after the first two laps my coach would tell me to “start rolling”. I wasn’t supposed to wait for the final lap like everyone else to start picking it up. I was supposed to pick it up at halfway. This was where I picked off other runners that were saving up for the Bell Lap.

Halfway was my new Bell Lap.

(Oh, and as a side note: My coach wasn’t crazy. He knew exactly what he was doing.)

It’s easy to get excited about the sexy Bell Lap, when we can give everything that’s left in us to finish, whatever it is we’re pushing ourselves to do. (They ring a bell, for crying out loud!) It’s exciting to blow by the competition in the last ten meters, with everyone in the stands on their feet cheering.

But it’s not easy to push yourselves when others aren’t, or when there’s no bell telling everyone to pay attention. It becomes a true test of finishing and mental hardness.

But you get used to pushing at halfway. And when you start gaining success, it becomes easier and a part of who you are.

Today is July 1, exactly halfway through 2010. Time to start kicking.

Photo by StuffEyeSee.

1. Fall In Love With Your Strengths
2. Track Your Running Progress Online

Photo by dawvon

Post by Ibrahim Husain. Follow him on Twitter.

One thing that I push my readers to experience is living proactively instead of reactively. A prolific lifestyle is one where you create your own opportunity, you take responsibility for your life and you go into your world and shape it into what you want it to be. A reactive lifestyle is just the opposite; you go out into the world and wait for life to interact with you, then you just react to each stimulus as it comes. People who live prolifically are more satisfied with their life, and I’ll tell you why.

People who live a prolific lifestyle decide what they want and create ways get it, rather than deciding what they want and waiting for the opportunity to arise. The difference isn’t necessarily in the end product, because with a little bit of luck they may both end up in the same place. Rather, the prolific one creates his own journey and therefore finds more satisfaction in it. It isn’t about the final product, the satisfaction comes from every step it took to get there.

With that in mind I urge you to try this little experiment. I started in 2008 and last year I experienced more stories worth telling than the rest of my years combined.

Make the Bucket List

Photo by Christabelle????

A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you “kick the bucket.” I imagine you all know what that means, but just in case, a bucket list is a list of things to do before you die. You might have seen the Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman flick of a couple years ago with the same title. In the movie the two men escape from a cancer ward and take a road trip to check off all the things they want to do before they die.

I decided to put a little twist on my own personal bucket list. I make a yearly bucket list. What my list consists of is things that I want to accomplish or experience by the end of each year. And I make my list LONG. Last year is was 75 lofty accomplishments and experiences I wanted to have. I didn’t finish the list, but I enjoyed crossing off each one that I did finish. And this year I reassessed the ones that i didn’t get to last year, and the things that I still wanted to experience made their way to this year’s list.

The reason behind my yearly bucket list is twofold; if we wait for death, it may sneak up on us, leaving us unable to complete our lists, and if we make a list each year we will have accomplished life goals every year of our lives. Life will be richer, we will be happier, and we will have never lived stagnantly, because we always had a great experience or accomplishment just ahead of us.

Try my yearly bucket list this year. Print it out and hang it somewhere where you can see it each day, with a highlighter to mark things off as you experience them. And for even more enjoyment, make one of your goals to write the story of everything on your list. It will be such a wonderful peice to look back on, and it will motivate you to continue when life tries to slow you down. When you reach the finish line, you’ll have so many experiences under your belt that you won’t regret not doing the little things. And If we meet at the end, I’ll be looking forward to hearing your stories.

To read more of Ibrahim’s writing, check out his excellent blog ZenCollegeLife or follow him on Twitter.

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2. Brighten up your life: 3 Tips from Thomas Edison on Living Optimistically
3. The Balance Between Motivation and Creativity

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Post written by Cath Duncan.

Photo by brewedfreshdaily

For the creative person, fear is always nearby. But in spite of the close proximity, it’s usually a very strained relationship. Fear is one of those emotions that most of us are trying not to have. Because it doesn’t feel good, it’s been coded as a so-called “negative” emotion. And we’re so keen to avoid this negative emotion that we find ourselves avoiding situations that elicit fear for us, so we code the fear-inducing situations as “negative” as well.

What happens then is we end up being afraid of fear, so we start building meta-levels of fear. And then we’re no longer just scared, but we’re scared of feeling scared. And we can even make ourselves scared of feeling scared of feeling scared… can you see how easy it is to end up with more fear, instead of less fear, when we see feeling fear as a bad thing?

But, fear isn’t bad at all. All emotions have a positive purpose that serves us. Have you ever thought about the positive purpose of your fear?

Fear alerts us to threats

Sometimes our fear can be a really useful gut-response that helps us anticipate and respond more quickly to a genuine threat. If something is unfamiliar, it might be dangerous, so, whenever we’re in unfamiliar territory, fear crops up and alerts us to pay attention. And of course, from a survival point of view, that’s really useful.

Fear is a signal you’re learning

Because we’re designed this way, we tend to respond to ALL unfamiliar experiences with fear – even if they’re not dangerous. So long as you’re taking yourself into new territory, and growing, you’ll always feel some fear along the way. From a creativity point of view, fear is useful because it makes you more alert when you’re learning and growing. And fear is a signal that you’re learning. In fact, if you’re telling yourself you’re learning in a particular area of your life, yet you’re not feeling any fear in that area of your life, you’re probably not learning.

Fear lets you know what’s important to you

A third purpose of fear is that fear let’s us know what’s really important to us. Think about it: when something isn’t important to you, you probably don’t care what happens with it, and you won’t feel fear then. It’s the stuff that’s closest to our hearts, that we really care about, that we feel the most fear about – because it matters to us how things work out. With so many choices available to us these days, alot of creative people find it difficult to figure out what’s really important to them and decide what they want in life. A really counter-intuitive, but easy way to figure whether something is genuinely important to you is to notice how much fear you have about it. The more important it is to you, the bigger your fear will probably be.

Fear holds creative tension

When there’s an unresolved problem or a gap between where we are and where we want to be, a tension develops. The bigger the gap, the greater the tension, and fear we’ll feel. Alot of the time, in order to relieve the tension, we change our vision of where we want to be or stop asking that unresolved question. Successful creatives embrace this tension, knowing that tension is an important part of the creative process. Creative tension motivates our unconscious mind to continue searching for a resolution, even while we go on with our other tasks or go to sleep at night, those epiphanies that you have, where the idea just seems to have popped into your head out of nowhere.

So next time you feel afraid, stop and remind yourself that fear works. And then check which purpose your fear is serving, and ask yourself, “Knowing that this is the purpose of my fear, what would I love to do next?” (hint: if you’re still standing there, the purpose of your fear is probably not nr 1!). Thank your fear for working for you, and honor it by taking the next action you’d love to take.

Cath Duncan helps knowledge workers to master their WHOLE MIND so that they can confidently do what they love and be more productive at it. You can find more of Cath’s self-coaching resources at Mine Your Resources, or follow Cath on Twitter.

photo credit: elle_rigby

This post was helped along by tips from amazing (and punctual) designer Grace Smith of PostScript 5.

I’ve struggled over the years as a freelancer trying to find the best way to gauge a deadline. It’s safe to say that creating an attainable deadline is more than just picking a date. There are lots of factors that go into projects, and gauging how long they will take is a hard thing to do. The more complicated a project is, the harder it is to create realistic deadlines. Have you ever known a contractor to finish construction of a house on time? It’s a rare thing, my friends.

No matter how much experience you might have, you just can’t plan for every delay. Strange things happen when working on deadlines. Much like you can’t predict the weather, you can’t know everything that might cause a hitch with finishing the project on time. And hitches will happen. But you can still create an attainable deadline with lots of unknowns too.

Perfect deadlines, (at their core), consist of 3 factors: Full understanding of the project at hand, realistic assessment of skills/tools needed, and proper time allotment. If you can get these factors aligned, you’ll be well on your way to creating a perfect deadline. Here are some ways to really assess a project and give ample time to finish it.

Know your specs inside out. Knowing everything that needs to be done on the project is absolutely critical. Make sure you and the client agree to everything that has to be done in writing before you even start to think about timeframes. Hashing this out right from the start clears up any confusion later on.

Leave no stone unturned. Getting to know the client a little bit can be helpful in not only deciding whether or not you want to work with them, but also for getting a feel of their preferences. Grace uses a client worksheet that really allows her to get a deep understanding of who she’ll be working with and what they expect. There’s no such thing as getting too much information about the client and the project.

Overshoot. Not giving yourself any wiggle-room on a deadline is just plain crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever had a project that went without a hitch. There’s always something unexpected that goes wrong, from sickness to equipment malfunction. (Ever heard of Murphy’s Law?) Make sure to give yourself plenty of padding. Both you and your client will be glad you did.

Be a pessimist, but only when making deadlines. The worst thing that you can do is to be an optimist when planning deadlines. If you see a possible hiccup, plan for it to happen. It’s better to be surprised when bad things don’t happen than when they do happen.

Plan to the smallest detail. There’s a quote from the movie The Patriot that I love. Mel Gibson’s character is reminding his sons that when shooting a gun they should “aim small, miss small”. If you can “aim small” by planning every detail that needs to be done, your proposed completion date will be much closer to the mark.

Constantly review what needs to be done. It’s easy to miss little steps throughout the duration of the project. However, if you’ve planned to the smallest detail, it’s harder to miss small elements. This also ensures that everything is done in order, without missing any steps.

Create smaller deadlines for yourself. By creating project milestones for yourself, you can ensure that the work gets done without too much procrastination. I’ve found that if I don’t impose small deliverables on myself, I just drag my feet and create stress for myself.

Keep a separate calendar for projects. Don’t try to fit all of your self-imposed deadlines on your personal calendar. You’ll need as much space as possible to put all the project information on there. You should never mix business with pleasure ;)

Be honest with yourself. Being realistic with our abilities and work paces is incredibly important when creating deadlines. Knowing what you’re capable of will allow you to only pick clients that really fit your expertise, and allows you to gauge the time needed to complete the project.

Know your pace. It’s human nature to think we can get projects done faster than what we’re capable of. For me it’s an issue of pride. I reckon I’m an efficiency monster, when I’m really not. If I swallow the pride and give myself some realistic deadlines, it works out better for everyone. I don’t put out shoddy work due to running out of time, and the client isn’t upset because I’m late on the deliverable.

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Photo by Grant Neufeld

We all have ambitions of working that dream job or buying that shmancy X, yet we often find ourselves nowhere near that goal. Life, it seems, has a funny way of quickly putting the kibosh on our dreams.

When people fantasize about doing their dream job, the fantasy isn’t that they couldn’t be in that occupation, but that it would happen overnight. Like winning the lottery. But everyone knows the chances of winning the lottery are like 1 in Never, so that’s why it’s called a “dream”. More of a fantasy than anything else. But what if the dream could be a reality with a little bit of spit and stick-to-it-ivness?

Chasing your dreams

Ever wonder why it’s called “chasing your dreams”, and not “waking-up-smack-dab-in-the-middle-of your dreams”? It’s because your dream job probably won’t land in your lap. Odds are you’ll have to work for it.

But the work towards your dreams doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, the best way to achieve your dreams is to work a little bit at them (yes, each one) every day. This, in a nutshell, is what I call Dreamwork.

Life is a Garden… Dig it

Think of Dreamwork as a form of gardening. You don’t just walk out one day and have a healthy, lush garden sitting in your backyard. You have to plant the seeds, water, and tend it at consistent intervals. The best gardens are tended to every day.

Getting started with Dreamworking is as simple as creating a list for each of your dreams and goals, and taking baby steps each day to achieving them. Once you’ve got your lists, immediately start populating the list with action steps that can be done right away. They could be as small as “check out book on woodworking” if your goal is to carve a kayak.

Now, for the easy part. Do at least one task each day on each dream list. (If you’ve got a butt-load of dreams, than maybe not all of them. Just be consistent on the amount of time you spend on each list.)

You’ll need to keep populating these lists with todos on a regular basis (I try to do it weekly), and pretty soon you’ll start to see major breakthroughs, and (Warning! Cliche alert!) eventually your dream will become a reality.

The whole process may take longer than you’d like. But if it’s your dreams we’re talking about, the wait will be worth it.

Using dreamwork to become a freelancer

I’ve been using the concept of Dreamworking for the past year in hopes of launching my own business, allowing me to develop my own ideas and projects full time. I’m not gonna lie to you smart people… it was a bit daunting at first. But I started small and daily worked a little bit on each project. Fast-forward a year later to last week when I signed the papers that officially formed my company Midnight Pineapple LLC. The only way it could have worked was with a little effort each day.

And lastly… this is nothing new

Remember the tortoise and the hare? Or that corny saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”? Yep, those same principles apply here. In fact, this post is based on some of the oldest rules in the book. Sorry to disappoint ;)

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