On my personal blog I wrote of my hopes for 2008; here I’ll explain how they relate to “lifestyle design,” a concept made popular in The 4-Hour Workweek. I mention them to you as I hope you can look to 2008 as a chance to not only accomplish things but really make life easier and more fun.

Here are my ambitions, as I mentioned on dancingwithwords:

For my sanity and social life:

• A sense of completion on a daily basis
• To buy fewer books (and better figure out what I should be reading for fun and work)
• A trip abroad
• To entertain every other month

For my work and dreams:

• 5000 users of AwayFind by 2009 (still in private beta)
• To be invited to speak at a national, non-local conference
• To have someone else handle the majority of sales and proposals for SET projects
• To blog (or have someone else working with me to blog) three times per week (mostly on technotheory.com)

Sense of completion: The first ambition is my most important one–every day I need to feel that I’ve accomplished things. There are times when responding to emails, managing others tasks, and making phone calls gets in the way of thought-intensive, tangible accomplishments. If I don’t have something concrete I’ve finished, then I’ll typically keep working and working and never feel good about it. Shutting out the outside world to get more accomplished sooner should help me with that immensely…and I’ll be a much happier person because of it. Here’s some advice for how to pull this off…

Fewer books: (more…)

Filed under: 4-Hour Workweek, AwayFind, Business, Productivity
Article Tags: 4-Hour Workweek, 4HWW, AwayFind, information diet, lifestyle design, new year's resolutions, outsourcing, Productivity, resolutions
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It’s almost a new year and it’s time to remember why we work. To find a little balance. To live.

Now that it’s June, we’ll sleep out in the garden
And if it rains, we’ll just sink into the mud
Where it is quiet and much cooler than the house is
And there’s no clocks or phones to wake us up
Because I have learned that nothing is as pressing
As the one who’s pressing would like you to believe.
(Bright Eyes, Nevaeh)

It’s not June. And even though people seem to think St. Michael’s is in the Carribbean, it really is just Maryland. But tomorrow marks my annual escape to the Eastern Shore–warm weather or not–and this time I’ve exchanged my laptop for a girlfriend.

It is kind of insane how much of a role technology has played in 2007, but I have to remember sometimes that it’s just an efficient facilitator for connections, work, and entertainment. I’m so thankful for those connections, for that business, and for the aforementioned girlfriend (more than entertainment ;-).

But once again technology is just a means, and work is just a means; we don’t need to read Tim Ferriss to figure that out. (more…)

Filed under: 4-Hour Workweek, Happiness, Productivity, Technology
Article Tags: 4HWW, AwayFind, Bright Eyes, Productivity, relaxing, vacation
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