Change your mindset. Often times, just deciding to feel differently about an obligation can improve the situation. Instead of believing you have to do something, you change your thoughts to acknowledging you get to do it and the stress goes away.
via Tips for reducing your commitment to unwanted obligations | Unclutterer.
This got me thinking about my career, because even though I am a copywriter, author and journalist, I rarely seem to make time to work on the types of projects that bring me the most happiness. I then thought about all of the creative people out there who have established their businesses—but still seem to let “business” get in the way. Or all of those other things in life that detract from our creative time.
And by creative time, I mean the time that you can really enjoy yourself, not just work. Perhaps you have a side project you enjoy. Perhaps you have a project you can’t seem to make time for. Even though I write most of the day, only a fraction of that includes work that is my passion and counts as quality “creative time.” (Many of you know that I want more time to devote to my books and magazine writing projects–something that doesn’t pay immediately, but I know will have a huge payoff if I can juuuust maaake moooore tiiiime for.)
The sad truth is most of the content on the Web doesn’t deserve to be linked to. And that’s not Twitter’s fault. It’s funny to me that we can have simultaneous conversations about the death of links and the mass farming out of content and no one draws the line between them.
If you want links, you need content that is remarkable in the eyes of your customers, not content that meets “good enough relevancy” standards. That content should be found as the clever 404 page people love a wacky product page, a press release that’s actually interesting, etc. And it should appear throughout your Web site.
Lisa’s exactly right. Check out the post on LifeDev over creating powerful online content for a similar argument.
What happened was that when I had brainstormed this huge list of activities and actually figured out what they cost per hour, I began to spend more of my time on the lower cost activities (like taking a walk or yard work or reading a book or playing games) and less of my time on the more expensive things for the time invested (like going to movies).
It wasn’t even a conscious choice, really. Just by raising my awareness of the implicit cost of engaging in various activities I enjoy, I began to migrate towards the ones that drained my wallet at a slower rate.
Naturally, my entertainment and hobby budgets have dropped over the last year or so at no cost to my enjoyment of life at all. I just simply improved my awareness of the real cost of many of the things I enjoy and started making my choices of how to spend my scant free time from a more enlightened perspective.
Way to go, Trent! I’m sure this book is going to be fantastic. Can’t wait to tie into it.
“I’m working up the outline.” “I’ve almost got the business plan.” “I’ve got a little more research to do.”
When Resistance hears phrases like that, it can hardly contain its glee. Resistance knows that the longer we noodle around “getting ready,” the more time and opportunity we’ll have to sabotage ourselves. Resistance loves it when we hesitate, when we over-prepare.
The answer: plunge in.
I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.
Jeff Bezos’ Princeton University 2010 Baccalaureate remarks.
Many of us are on quests, either real or representative. Since my quest is real, I like the metaphor of journeying.
Going on a journey involves unexpected surprises, challenges, setbacks, and rewards. And I tend to think that any good journey is as much about the process as the destination.
Each participant read a short story by Ernest Hemingway on each of the devices. Nielsen found that those using an iPad were 6.2 percent slower than those reading a standard book, and the Kindle 2 was 10.7 percent slower.
via Ebooks are slower to read than paper, survey shows | TG Daily.
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I'm a web developer and writer who's been blogging about creativity, organization and funneling passion since 2006.
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