But these do not necessarily go hand-in-hand—they often make for a risky and stressful formula.  If you want freedom, impact, or authority, let’s talk about some paths to these beyond the “go launch a business” suggestion we hear all too often.

What Part of Entrepreneurship Excites You Most?

Before you go on, consider first what’s most important to you: freedom of time/location, making an impact, or running and growing a business?  These are interrelated and far from mutually exclusive, but most of us want one more than the others.  If it helps, you can place “the thrill of…” before any of these as that may help you to see it clearly—“the thrill of independence,” “the thrill of changing the world,” or the “thrill of building a business.”  Which do you seek most?

The Danger In Going All Out

Nevermind that 90% of businesses don’t make it five years and 50% don’t make it past year one (SBA statistics).  I want to talk more about lifestyle here:

If you want to bake bread, work at a bakery.  If you want to sweep the floor, start a bakery.  In other words, if you want to practice a craft then often times that gets put on the backburner for all the other minutiae that’s involved in running a business.  Maybe you won’t have to sweep the floor, but you will have to manage projects, keep track of the finances, help with workplace conflicts, etc.  (I believe this metaphor was in Michael Gerber’s E-Myth, a great book on this topic)

If you want cash and freedom, don’t build a startup. Don’t hire a dozen employees. Don’t start borrowing a bunch of money to invest in your idea.  Being a consultant may be a good approach to banking some buck.  Selling an information product or becoming a reseller online may be a way to build recurring revenue.  (If you really want to know about how to find a market online and build recurring revenue, my good friend Clay just launched his freedom business school – and I can vouch for the program.)  The thing is, while it’s possible for there to be a (freedom) light at the end of the tunnel, most forms of building businesses take an insane amount of work to get you there.

Another Approach to Changing the World

I’m not trying to dissuade you from doing The Next Big Thing (TNBT), but I believe there are other ways to realize our dreams than by starting a business.  Here’s the gist of a recent conversation with a good friend:

Friend: I have this awesome way of [insert her special talent] that local communities really need to keep publishing alive and even thriving.

She really might have this talent—she’s been in the publishing industry forever.

Me: That’s awesome, but how is that going to scale?  How are you going to build all the other stuff needed before you can do that?

Friend: Well, I guess I’ll build a product and…

Me: So you’re going to build a platform for local news?

Friend: I’ll start with one city, like Craigslist. I’ll just have to find some people who understand the technology and I think I can figure out the business side of this as I’m studying that stuff and…

Me: Have you looked at the way Yahoo Local News and Topix.com and others are trying to do what you’re talking about?  Have you looked into all the geolocation services out there that have a hand in local?

Friend: No.

Me: I don’t want to turn you away from your idea, but what if you looked into whether there was a place for you at all these places that already have platforms?  So you could maybe kick ass doing the part you’re good at, the part you’re passionate about…rather than the grunt work and high risk part of trying to build (yet another) platform?  Or maybe you could build a plug-in for them that…

I’m not saying that this works for everyone.  But the thing is, we all get really excited about our ideas, but we don’t consider the market enough:

• What’s already out there?  This is not a 15 minute Google exercise.
• Do you want to compete with the existing companies in the space or could you possibly join one of them or offer a niche service to them?  (in which case you could immediately focus on the thing you’re good at?)

It’s somewhat naive to think we can easily land a job with authority at the incumbent or sell something to them.  But it is possible to effect change without starting from scratch or being at the top.

Just ask yourself, if impact is your goal is there a way to make the same impact without being a CEO of something that doesn’t presently exist?  Maybe you can have a greater chance of success with an existing group?

(and for all you 20-somethings who rushed to join not-for-profits at 25k per year as an office manager—this is not what I’m talking about—more on that later)

And as for Freedom…

Well, changing the world and finding extra time or money for oneself don’t always go hand in hand.  If you read The Four Hour Workweek, you’ll see that the types of businesses Ferriss advocates aren’t always in line with solving the world’s biggest problems.

But those aren’t for everyone—we all have loans to pay, mouths to feed, and ambitions outside of work.  Freedom businesses may be the best path to that—it’s not the traditional approach to entrepreneurship, but it is a valid one.  (Again, Clay’s program is one of many to learn more about that.)

The only point I want to leave you with on this is that the fastest way to freedom or reliable revenue is not to go out on your own trying to build something big.

So What?  And Tying It All Together

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about lessons-learned in business.  I get paid to offer business advice and I organize a group to help entrepreneurs succeed (come to our next event Oct 29th!).  But the first step is not to just start your business.  The first step is to figure out whether you want to make an impact, find more freedom, or just build a business.  Then the next step is to figure out what’s already out there.

Putting those two steps together you have all kinds of options for what type of career is for you and whether it makes sense to go it alone or to join something else that’s already off the ground.

(I went off on a little tangent earlier about the unrealistic not-for-profit change-the-world path, and that’s because just joining a company is not the best way to make an impact there and beyond.  The best way is to build rapport with the exact company you want to be involved with and use the tactics in Charlie Hoehn’s Recession Proof Grad free eBook to land a respected job where you get to make the impact you want to make.  Seriously grab that eBook.)

So don’t just build TNBT.  Do what’s right for you.

Flickr photo credit: futureshape

The following is a video of me from WordCamp Mid-Atlantic talking about both productivity at work and balance in life.  Though the presentation was initially geared toward blogging, there are 13 minutes I’ve highlighted that I hope you’ll enjoy.

Below the video I’ve listed out the timestamps to skip to, as well as some articles that cover the concepts in greater, actionable detail.  And below that, the slides.  Enjoy!

First off, I hate that I look like Steve Ballmer’s monkey dance at the beginning, but otherwise I was pretty happy with this (huge thank you to Joe Corbett of iStrategyLabs for filming this!).  Here are the hotlinks:

Blogging Tips: 4:45 – 24:20.  I talk about things like using visual text editors, applications like Texter and Q10, etc.  If you write a lot (even it’s not on a blog), there should be some useful tips in there.

The meat of the presentation about BALANCE starts around 24:40 / slide 17 and goes to about 37 minutes:

• Purge your mind: 24:40 / slide 17: how to make a big ass list
• Masturbatory statistics 25:20 /  slide 18-19
• 50:10 Time management 27:25 / slide 20
• Social media fame vs. real life 29:00 / slide 21: avoiding online popularity
• Unplugging 29:50 (and some talk about SF vs. Barcelona) / slide 23
• In the stream, how to deal with Twitter, etc. 31:15 / slide 22
• Batching email and a cone of silence 32:00 / slide 24: AwayFind
• Identifying your critical path 33:45
• Circadian Rhythms – scheduling around your energy 34:50 / slide 26
• When you’re done with work, go home 35:50 / slide 27

I hope you enjoyed the video : ).  If you have any tips on balance, feel free to share.

Flickr photo credit: SashaW

Tonight I delivered a presentation at Ignite Baltimore that addressed applying concepts in productivity to make for a happier life.

If you’re relatively new to this blog, this will be an overview of many of the concepts I hold dear.  If you’ve been here for a while this will serve as a refresher.  Either way, I’m very happy with the slides Keith (a co-worker at SET) helped to design for this—and I think you’ll enjoy looking through them.  Without further ado, you can learn why I used that photo of me and Suzanne above…

6 Minute Video from the Talk (the core starts at 1 min in)

Special thank you to Mike Brenner for filming this, and for the amazing organizers at Ignite Baltimore who put on such an energizing event: Mike Subelsky, David Adewumi, and Patti Chan.

Slides from the Talk

Further Elaboration and Notes

• A lot of people asked about Fonolo.  It lets you quickly choose a company you’d like to call (from their menu), select where in their phone menu you’d like to be, and then it calls your phone at exactly that point.  Yeah, it rocks
• The other two products mentioned were mine, AwayFind, and Mike Subelsky’s OtherInbox
• You might want some videos for how to turn off notifications on the social networks
• This was my first experience only checking email twice in a day
• Why you should turn off auto check on your BlackBerry or iPhone
• The value of extreme friendships for extreme growth
• How the company you keep can force you to be accountable
• My riff on loneliness and solitude was inspired by last week’s “The End of Solitude,” by William Deresiewicz in the The Chronicle Review [via @superfem].  I intend to write a post about this sooner or later
• And lastly, go home

–

Each time I link back to old articles it amazes me how much content is up here, and how much I’ve gotten to grow by bouncing ideas off and learning from you all.  Thank you for that.

PS I’m in NYC this weekend, so feel free to get in touch -– maybe we can get a cup of coffee.

If you’re like me, much of your information comes from the web, and you choose who to subscribe to.  And if you’ve been online for a while, there’s a good chance that those you paid attention to way back when are less relevant to who you are today.

As an advocate of information dieting, there came a point when I stopped subscribing to new blogs because my RSS reader was overfull.  I even hesitated to subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog for a while, which is kind of like visiting Switzerland and abstaining from chocolate.  A better solution was to periodically go through all my subscriptions and cut what I no longer needed.

Reviewing & Removing RSS Subscriptions

Over the last week I’ve been analyzing my blog subscriptions (and Twitter follows, but that’s a topic for another day) and re-evaluating, asking the following questions of both my existing feeds and potential new ones:

• Does the site contain a topic I want to learn about?  (which in some way translates to who I want to be)
• Is the author someone with whom I want to build a relationship with? (for either business or personal growth)
• Is this site testing my comfort zone or just offering an agreeable and only slightly different way of re-learning the same thing?  (it’s very easy to read stuff we’re familiar with and agree with, but we grow a great deal more from new ideas)
• Does the writing inspire and/or delight me? (I’ll save textbooks for the offline world, if I don’t really enjoy this author’s writing, I’ll never bother to read it)

These questions above all relate to my own hopes for growth and relationships: deepening my knowledge, connecting with great people, and surrounding myself with new ideas.  Well, that and the last point about enjoyment relates to whether or not I’ll actually read it.  And if I don’t read it then it’s wasting mental and physical space, like a To Do that remains forever unchecked.

I’m of course writing this to encourage you to do the same—to take the time to rethink your influences.  To not just keep subscribing or unsubscribing as time passes, but to examine and re-prioritize your whole reader.  If your reader is not up to date then you’re losing valuable time and many opportunities to learn (or laugh, or connect).

Expanding your RSS Subscriptions

If you’re not ready to cut, you can start by adding.  In addition to the questions above, here are a couple questions to get you started with new sites:

• Are there people you’ve met in the last year who you really want to keep in touch with? Assuming their blog fits some of the criteria above, what are you waiting for in adding them?  (I know I waited to add awesome sites like Micah Baldwin’s Learn to Duck?  Thanks, Chris, for reminding me…and thanks for the mention, too).  If you’re having trouble remembering people, consider skimming through your sent emails a week after some of the big events you attended, assuming you remembered to send a follow-up (if not, shame on you)
• Is there something more specific or strategic you’re looking to learn about your subject area? If you build web apps, do you want to delve into the metrics side of things?  If you’re involved with social media, do you want to focus on uses for Twitter or perhaps consider some of the bigger questions?  It’s easy to stick with the the big-name, more generalist bloggers, but sometimes depth is better than breadth.  If you’re having trouble finding sites, try visiting AllTop, searching Technorati, or searching for “favorites sites x” or “top sites x” in Google where x is a very specific subject area (get more general if x doesn’t work on the first try).  More on finding sites is in step 1 of my Guide to Social Media.  Or, better yet, ask your friends in that industry what they read

The Goal: Make this Stuff Useful, Make it Make You

Time and again I’ve heard people say, “I don’t use RSS anymore” or “I hear about all the good stuff from Twitter.”  If you’re looking for news, that’s fine.  But I call bullshit if you’re looking to educate yourself and grow relationships.  You can be the sheep or you can be the shepherd: your choice.

RSS is the best way for you to conveniently gather information from exactly the sources you choose while getting an opportunity to ask questions and participate.  (It’s not the only piece of the puzzle, but I think Twitter is complementary and not a replacement.)  If you’re not using RSS, it’s because you haven’t found a way that works for you.  My suggestions above may not be in line with your use for it, but there’s no denying that we’re influenced by the words we read everyday.

If you’re reading the right stuff, then you’re growing into becoming that right stuff, too.  I hope you’ll consider doing a big review of your RSS reader (just don’t cut me!) since now is a good time.  You’ll be astonished at how refreshing it feels to read new people…and how quickly you start growing.

How do you ensure that the right information is coming to you?  Are there other tools you use, such as Popego (example)?

Flickr photo credit: wili_hybrid

I’m going to explore what expectations were met and what themes reoccurred.  Thank you again for your time.

Results from 2007’s Resolutions

First, I want to start with the specifics (if you’re looking more for what I’ve learned, feel free to skip to the next heading).  I began this year with several concrete goals, and I succeeded with many:

• Almost all the books I’ve read have been ones I really enjoyed, a stark contrast from 2007.  In particular, I’ve read a great deal of Murakami and Fitzgerald…and outside of the election, I’ve ignored most of the not-very-pleasant world/local  news
• I wanted a trip abroad, and I’ve been out of this country for more than 2 months this year (and of town more than 3), visiting Iceland, Thailand, Spain, Hong Kong, and France
• I did speak at a national conference (TechCocktail) and will be speaking at SXSW in March

In some of my goals I didn’t exactly succeed:

• It took longer to launch AwayFind than I expected, which means that we do not have the 5,000 users I hoped for.  But we have a lot of users and I recognize the necessary tactics to grow my user-base in 2009
• My hopes for having someone handle sales/proposals for SET is no longer a goal—I want the company to remain small and to continue to focus on referrals
• I have entertained at my house many times but not 6 big gatherings.  At a certain point it related to financial reasons, but at other times it was my state of mind.  I need to figure out what sort of entertaining I want to do in 2009
• I did not blog 3 times per week, but did post 95 times here (and many more if you consider other sites), which I consider respectable…especially since my goal shifted to once per week as the year wore on.  About halfway through the year I stopped writing for social media and focused just on writing what I wanted to.  That slowed my growth in readership, but I’m still happy knowing that my words do not go unread (the audience here has quadrupled in size).  I also was published twice at Lifehacker, linked by them once, and have written for Dumb Little Man

The one goal where I do not feel I succeeded was perhaps the most important, and probably the reason I still blog.  That goal was “to find a sense of completion on a daily basis.”  I will continue to concoct systems that make this easier for me, and I’ll continue to seek out balance.  But daily completion (or to the extent to which I’d be satisfied) remains elusive.

What I’ve Learned About Myself in 2008

Ha!  Like I could fit that in a few paragraphs.  But I will break it out into a few ideas, all of which were poignant and in some ways new to this year.  I plan to touch on how to apply some of these lessons in my next post, which will be my ambitions for 2009.  But in the mean time, here’s some of what I’ve realized:

• You are the company you keep.  I wrote 5 or 6 articles about this, but this bears repeating: if you want to grow, you need to surround yourself with people who are in that position or are growing toward it.  You will be like your friends, for better or worse.  There’s nothing better than investing in these relationships, but be careful to choose them wisely. People like Clay Collins, Stever Robbins, Lokesh Dhakar, and Tim Koelkebeck are just a few of the people who have inspired me and with whom I’ve been lucky enough to get to know this year.
• Travel, like people, can change who you are.  I never studied abroad in college, so I’ve been kind-of catching up this year.  But as much as I enjoy learning about other cities, I particularly enjoy immersing myself in a new way of life.  Not just meeting people there, but living that way, if at all possible.  I have spent nearly a month in Barcelona this year, and I’ve fallen in love with the culture.  The Catalan approach to work and relationships are different than those in the US.  I’m not saying I agree with all of it, but it’s changed me, slowed me, awoken me.  Much as the company I keep changes me, the location that hosts the company and the greater context can also play an important role
• Moving on or giving up are sometimes the first steps.  Even though I’ve put my heart and soul into something, that doesn’t mean I have to continue with it.  Just like not all debt is bad debt, walking away may be the first step forward in a long time.  So I’ve learned to give up, go home, and be especially careful about the necessary evils I hold on to
• Nothing happens quickly, but everything happens someday.  There are two very important lessons here: however long you expect to spend on a major endeavor (that’s unlike one you’ve completed in the past), it’s always going to take more (sometimes 10x more time and money).  You may be unaware that AwayFind was the smallest of the projects I wanted to take on, rather than the product idea that I’m most passionate about.  But the wisest decision I’ve made was to create AwayFind first, since it’s been a rather long and involved endeavor for as supposedly simple as it was.  The consequences of beginner mistakes on the other project would have come at a far higher toll.  The same thing goes with changing my behavior for specific goals.  In all cases, it’s possible to grow and achieve, but serious growth and serious achievement cannot take place linearly or in a short while, at least not for me.
• Even when not tied to a goal or a life mission, some things shape you and should be embraced.  While it’s not always possible to stimulate the senses: eating well, visiting art, experiencing live music, whatever… there are some things that really affect my mood and ability to produce, even without an obvious reason.  For instance, the week of my product launch I had sushi every day, because I feel healthy and energized when I eat good sushi, and I wanted to perform my best that week.  Similarly, dancing or photography are sometimes just the right medicine.  I’m also considering moving to the city, for similar reasons.  These things may cost extra money or defy common sense for what I should be focusing on, but I guess it’s just part of taking care of oneself

So How Do I Feel About 2008?

For most of 2008, I learned a bit about myself while accomplishing some ambitions.  I haven’t found all the answers and there’s a lot of hard work ahead, but even with our current economic forecast, I’m comfortable being idealistic.  I’ll let you know in my next post what I’m hoping for, but I’ll give you a hint: I hope that 2009 is about impact on others (since I think that a lot of ‘08 was mostly valuable for me).

And how about you—is there a lesson learned from 2008 you’d be kind of enough to share?  Feel free to link to your own reflections or resolutions.

Perhaps you should strongly consider just how ‘necessary’ the ‘evil’ is.

I’m sitting in an apartment in Barcelona (view from my terrace above), where I’ll be for the rest of the month.  The last two days have been a whirlwind of Spanish, dancing, and discovery.  I already feel totally immersed, enough to recognize how important and different this world is.  (perhaps more on that in another post)

Then tonight I’ve once again gotten caught up on the web.  This past week I’ve been at the Le Web conference, where I got to spend serious time with really frickin’ smart folks.  It made me realize that if I want AwayFind to succeed I have about 6 million things I need to do.  And I want to do them.

So these are examples of priorities.  I have others, as well as many responsibilities, some of which I enjoy and some that are necessary evils.  As we get older, that seems to become our realities.  And yet.

Which of these financial, practical, and always-been-there responsibilities are weighing me down too much?  What would happen if I just changed?  4,034 miles away, things back in the States feel unreal.  The truth is, reality is what you make of it.  And I doubt I could screw up that bad.

How about you—what do you want to do next year?  It’s almost 2009.  When you start plotting out your ambitions, what’s holding you back?  Do you really need that extra job or new device?  What can you do so that your day is free from necessary evils but instead is aligned with things you’re passionate about?

If a necessary evil is against who you want to be, is it really necessary?  I think many of my assumptions about what needs to continue as-it-always-was were unfounded.  How about yours?

The rest: an immediately practical, very readable, and quite beautiful 26-page guide that may not be available in 48 hours…

As I was working with beta testers of AwayFind, it became apparent to me that removing email interruptions and emptying our inboxes was not a technology problem.  It was one of education.  If you haven’t fully digested Getting Things Done or other time & email management systems, then it might be a challenge to really put AwayFind into practice.

Thus I wrote a guide to complement AwayFind’s technology…but the truth is that there are few mentions of AwayFind.  It’s an accessible summary of mine and many smarter people’s recommendations around email.  If you like what I write about here, this is the juiciest stuff, with pretty diagrams, too :-).

The catch?  It won’t be free after tomorrow (it may come back again, but not sure in what form…).  It’s downloadable as part of the Basic AwayFind setup process (the last step).  So if you want it, now’s your chance—just sign up for AwayFind here.

Along with getting the guide for free, the 30% discounts for being an early-adopter also end tomorrow.  So if you were considering the Professional version of AwayFind, now’s a good time to try it—after all, you won’t get charged for 30-days and can cancel anytime, so there’s nothing to lose.

I’m sorry for making what’s quite clearly a pitch here…but I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to you if I didn’t share this guide.  I’ve never been so proud of something I’ve written…and I want you to have a chance to benefit from it.  However, I don’t feel comfortable leaving it up for free indefinitely since I’ve put so much work into it.

Thanks for reading and I hope the guide helps.  You can grab it on the fifth step of the wizard here.

In the next post I promise to rant about something completely unrelated :-)!

Our body forces moods and energy levels upon us that just don’t work with real world schedules.  Or perhaps those schedules are insufficient.

Sometimes it’s better to be a slave to your body: the benefits are huge.

Ever felt like your body, not your head, was in control?  Ever been tired when you had thought-intensive work, antsy when you were waiting for things, or lethargic at the gym?  I can’t speak for everyone, but time and again when I’ve felt one of these ways, I could’ve predicted it.

I’ve thought a bit about this and now know my body’s rhythms much better: when I’m going to have the most focus, when I’ll have a short attention span, when I’ll likely want to nap, when I’m most creative, etc.  And I’ve got somewhat of a handle on how food and exercise play into these states.

Scheduling Around My Body Rhythms

More and more over the past year I’ve scheduled my days around this.  Have you thought long and hard about your daily rhythms?  By understanding some of mine, I’ve been able to be both more productive and comfortable throughout the day.

For instance, I try to never schedule with people in the morning, even phone calls.  And no email.  The morning is when I have the focus to get something creative or thought-intensive accomplished.

I almost always schedule phone calls or meetings after 2:00, when I have some energy but don’t need to be at my absolute best: when working directly with people, it’s easier to stay engaged and focused (whereas it’s not so easy when you’re, say, alone and writing out a specifications document).  (Conference calls might be the exception—sometimes you need to schedule them when you’ll be able to stay awake.)

A few hours after lunch I’ll be tired…so I never work on the really hard stuff then.  If I have to do intensive work with a client, I’ll make sure a soda is handy.  If I’m at the home office, I might take a nap, watch a movie, or run some errands.  I’d rather sleep from 4-5 and work from 7 -8 if it’s the difference of that hour actually being useful.  And if I never make up that hour later, I didn’t miss much.

When I mention this to others, they often raise the point that working during business hours helps them to not work all the time.  They’re fearful that not observing the business hours constraint might lead to working all the time.

I generally work during traditional hours, but I think it’s more important that I monitor the results of my work and quantity of hours than the specific hours when things took place.

In short, I want to work when it’s most pleasant and when I’m most likely to succeed.  Caffeine can help, but it’s not a perfect substitute.

Putting that Rhythm Information to Good Use

Once you get a handle on your energy-levels, moods, and other quirks about how you are at different times of the day, you can make better educated decisions about scheduling your time. 

To get started with this, try considering some of the following:

• The price of skipping a meal or eating certain foods (in relation to your mood or energy level)
• What role exercise has on your energy levels
• Is taking a nap or siesta possible
• Working when you have energy and not working when you don’t, even if it means stepping outside of “business hours”
• (Intentionally) doing personal stuff (like running an errand or going for a walk) during the business day when you’re not particularly focused
• Doing mindless tasks or errands when you know you’re low energy (filing, going to the post office / bank, reading blogs, making calls about bills, responding to quick emails, even running to the grocery store, etc)
• Specifically not doing mindless tasks when you do have energy (often people forget this, but the opposite of all this stuff is true: you shouldn’t do trivial tasks when you have a lot of focus.  Instead, find something more challenging and do the trivial task when you’re tired)

It’s dramatic how different my energy, attention, focus, capacity to learn, and other states can be during different times of the day.  For years I never considered this, but now it dictates much of my scheduling.

Have you given much thought to or had success with scheduling around your body’s rhythms?

Flickr photo credit: littledan77

Someone a couple steps ahead might bring you forward a few inches.  Someone a mile in the distance can change your life.

If you’re the product of the people around you, then it makes sense to have a few outliers in your friends.

A Product of Other People

I’ve always looked at myself as the product of the people I’ve known.  While some of that is their actively pushing me to become certain things, much more has been learning by their example.  Not only have my relationships affected the expressions I utter and the clothing I wear, but more importantly they’ve played a role in my personality, my career choices, my values, and how I treat people.

This is more from osmosis than active choice.  As Clay Collins pointed out a couple weeks back, there’s no better indication of where you’ll end up in life than the company you keep–you’re almost always near the average of your friends in terms of wealth and health, for instance.

In the last year I’ve altered my definition of happiness, and changed my perspective on business.  I can see the roots of these changes in the new people I’ve become close with.  These new people are from the communities I’ve taken part in: productivity, lifestyle design, web 2.0, and social media.  They’re different than many of my local friends, and now I am, too.

Extreme Changes

The most conspicuous of these personal changes has come from the people who were most extreme.  An example of this you might guess has been Tim Ferriss of The Four Hour Workweek.  His book gets a lot of criticism for ideas that are at times outrageous.  I’ve also heard people complain that much of the book is about him and not just an approach.  But that’s the point: Ferriss has led by example, thereby humanizing and proving his ideas possible.

I’ve met Ferriss a few times and built relationships with others who have succeeded in similar "lifestyle design."  The more I’ve gotten to know these people, the more I’ve respected and come to believe just how possible these approaches are.

Similarly I’ve built friendships with people who have nontraditional approaches to consulting, dating, social media, and friendship.  I’m not saying I’ve adopted all of their views…but their examples have rubbed off, broadening my perspective and affecting some of my core values.

The Formula for Change

I’ve long been a big fan of the concepts in The Medici Effect and this past week got to meet the author, Frans Johansson.  His book discusses how the greatest ideas and innovations come from mixing people of different backgrounds (culturally, educationally, etc).  I mentioned this idea about extremes affecting our own developments, which is similar to the ideas in his book, and he was very curious.  The way I look at it, it’s something like this:

[Change in yourself] = [Distance of someone's approach from your own] * [Your respect for that person] * [Your exposure to that person]

That is, the more different someone’s approach is from your own, assuming you respect them and spend enough time around or thinking about them, the more effect it has on your own perspective.

This isn’t exactly a new thought, but there are some components I find interesting.  Conventional wisdom says:

• You identify with and are surrounded by people who are like you
• It’s easier to change into something that’s not very foreign from your current approach or perspective

Thus we’re not really surrounded by people who are particularly likely to change us…and we’re more apt to reach for things within our view than those that seem far in the distance.

Embracing Differences

But if you do surround yourself with differing people you’ll start making progress toward goals that before seemed far out.  The power of The Four Hour Workweek was that Ferriss was so extreme that any steps toward his approach were outside of most people’s comfort zone…and thus often led to huge progress.

I would encourage you to build relationships with people who you would like to emulate in some way, and to pay attention to (rather than ignore) their differing approaches, even ones that seem unrelated or innocuous.  Sooner or later you may find that’s the core of the difference you’re seeking.

Even if you’re not actively trying, you’ll have taken some of their perspective as your own.  You may even grow a bit in the process.

Has this worked for you?

Flickr photo credit: ben matthews :::

Rather than a dozen ninja lifehacking tips, this post will help you to identify the core strengths and weaknesses in your process. I feel that these five things define the workflow of a productive knowledge worker:

1. Use lists to keep track of the stuff you need to do (tasks)
2. Use a tool that notifies you of time-specific activities when you need to do them (calendar)
3. When working with inputs (inbox, voicemail, RSS, custom homepage, etc), don’t skim and revisit them, process them (do them, assign them, get em out of site, or place them in 1 or 2)
4. Commit time to responsibilities (1 & 2) while minimizing interruptions (from 3)
5. Trust the above system

My biggest challenge is staying away from distractions (4).  Many people have an incomplete way of organizing themselves (1 & 2), so they rely on memory or hopefully revisiting what they need to remember in one of the places mentioned in 3.  A lot of people can pull off 1 & 2 but don’t trust the system (5) enough to stop checking their inputs all the time (3).

I know this is far from a comprehensive guide to accomplishing any of the above (perhaps that will come), but I hope it helps you to identify where you’re strongest, or could use more work.  Like when we revisited the Two Minute Rule in July, sometimes it helps to get back to basics.

If you have thoughts on your own personal experiences with these, or would like to suggest other core components to consider, please feel free to offer them in the comments.

Flickr Photo Credit: dhepnar