Personal Development for Smart People^TM

A great way to overcome fear is to educate your fear into oblivion.
Consider most people’s greatest fear — public speaking. Public speaking has a lot of variables — writing and organizing the speech, delivering it with confidence, vocal variety, voice volume and pitch, gestures, body language, eye contact, visual aids, achieving the speech objectives, […]

The hard work vs. laziness productivity blog showdown between myself and Fred Gratzon has begun at Slacker Manager. Brendon Connelly first invited each of us to provide our own definitions of certain terms: success, hard work, passion, happiness, laziness, productivity, work ethic, efficiency, and motivation.
Here is my response, and here is Fred’s.
It seems […]

Here’s another great post from Curt Rosengren over at Worthwhile. Curt writes about balancing nonwork with work to cultivate experiential diversity so your life doesn’t become overly monodimensional. A worthwhile read.

Here’s a nice article on overcoming fear by Brian Tracy (via Curt Rosengren). I especially like the story about halfway through the article where Brian Tracy explains how he dealt with his fear of poverty as well as the “Corridor Principle.”
Life is perverse in the sense that, the more you seek security, the less of […]

Last night I competed in my Toastmasters division speech contest. I took third place. While I was certainly aiming for first, I feel good that I did my best and ran up against my limits again. The first place winner was George Gilbert, a professional speaker/comedian who’s been speaking and performing about […]

Brendon Connelly of Slacker Manager has challenged Fred Gratzon and me to a blog showdown. Fred is a long-time entrepreneur and the author of The Lazy Way to Success. I’d never heard of Fred until Brendon issued this challenge, but I’m looking forward to a fun debate. It looks like Brendon will […]

Yet another updated article: “Cultivating Burning Desire.” This one is originally from 2002 and is about ways to increase your motivation.
The most commonly misunderstood quote from this article is the recommendation to “burn the ships.” Burning the ships means cutting off escape routes to your goals so you won’t turn back. […]

A reader suggested I write about this topic: Explore the tension between being satisfied with what you have and your accomplishments vs. the desire to do better.
Being too complacent would yield suboptimal results because you’re drifting and not getting close to your true potential. But push too hard, and you may never enjoy […]

I updated another of my old articles and reposted it on this site. This one is about goal setting and is called “The Power of Clarity.”

If I could say that I have a superpower, it would be that I learn very quickly. More than any other skill, this one has been the most valuable to me over the longest period of time. Even when I’m not particularly good at something initially, I’m usually able to learn it and […]