Keep up the good work!!
Catherine
Words of Wisdom 4 U!

If you want more specifics on shareware marketing, check out my articles section at Dexterity.com. There’s an article on market research there, among other topics covered.

Well, I learned very hard in college. I learned so hard, that I didn’t have time to look around me and see what the job prospects are.

I graduated with honors… and then discovered that in my chosen field (which I discussed with my father before going to college) very few jobs are available, and most of them are very low pay, lots of work jobs, and with little chance of advancement.

Please note that I’m not in the USA – in USA the economy works better. In my country the economy is so and so.. and in my chosen field, things absolutely suck, I can’t get at a decent job.

So I had a HUGE disappointment. I busted my butt for 4 years in college, and it was all for nothing. For years after that I couldn’t work hard or set goals for myself because of the HUGE disappointment.

I’m writing you this because I know that some people around me have had similar experiences – maybe not with college, but with a job, with a spouse, with starting a business, etc.

Now, avoiding hard work and not setting goals is NOT normal. At least, it’s not normal for the kind of person I tried to be.

So, I struggled for years to wash off my disappointment, and to be able to work hard and set goals again. I am happy to report that I have succeeded.

How did I succeed?

1. One of the main factors is the fact that I read the “First Things First” book by Covey. I have read the book over a 6 months period. I used to read a little, and then think a lot about what I read. Now, in my opinion it is a BAD book, but is does have a very useful point: it keeps hammering in your head the fact that you must think and find out what is important to you personally.

After this 6 month of hard thinking experience I was changed. Finding out what was important to me was NOT easy, but it helped to improve my motivation a lot.

2. I started enjoying myself more, going to movies, parties, walks, etc. This washed away some of the stress.

3. Also, I started setting small and easy goals – goals for a week, etc. Achieving these easy goals helped me feel good about myself. So after a few months of this I had a general feeling of power.

4. I started being realistic about what I can accomplish and what I can’t accomplish. When writing my goals, I started to estimate how long each TO DO item would take, and discovered that what I thought could be accomplished in a week, in fact could take 1 month. After practicing this for about 1 month, I learned to set myself realistic goals which I could accomplish in the allocated time. This also changed my opinion on myself – instead of failing to accomplish my goals every week, I started succeeding.

So, my point is that if you want to cure disappointment states, you can, but it’s not instant – it took me about 2 years to get back to my former self. I think that because of this experience I’m a lot wiser than I was before it.

I have a few questions:

1- I know a lot of people who run successful businesses on the internet. but a time came when they were getting a LOT of emails all the time from potential customers, etc. But instead of working hard, staying at the computer 24/7 answering emails, they installed an autoresponder. Now they go out, have fun, and yet make more money than they used to when they were answering all email personally.

2- A friend of mine has been working as a consultant. One day he realized that all of his clients wanted the same thing, with a few small changes. To be specific, they all wanted an Internet Explorer toolbar. So what he did was to build one main internet explorer toolbar, and whenever he met a client who wanted a toolbar of that kind, he would offer him a copy the toolbar he already had. if the client wanted any changes, he would make them in less than an hour and sell it to the client, while his competitors were writing the same toolbar again and again for each client (working hard). Now he only works a few hours a day, and makes a lot more money than the competitors who work all day long.

Whats your opinion about those things? or am I missing something?

P.S you need to give me some specific examples of how you did the market surveying for DWEEP. I’m a consultant planning to get into shareware development, but i just don’t have a clue about how to do things like market research, doing SWOT analyses, etc. If you can give me some specific examples of how you did it for your product, i’m sure i can get the idea

cheers.
Ali.

Go find your right foot and you’ll improve your effectiveness.

Here is my current understanding regarding self-discipline. And I’m open to any thoughts and critiques anyone may have.

I’m now realizing, with the help of Steve of course, that self-discipline is really just a tool. It isn’t good or bad, in and of itself, but just a way of getting things done and making things happen in your life. And like any tool, it can be used masterfully or foolishly.

Used correctly, self-discipline helps you to feel like you are flying through your day, riding on rails so-to-speak, like like a well-oiled, goal-seeking machine. But used incorrectly or unintelligently, you feel like a mindless drone running on a treadmill, working hard for someone elses goals or goals that you think you should want, but don’t really care about. So in order to go from novice to mastery, self-discipline takes practice. A person should try out and see which applications of self-discipline feel empowering and which feels disabling.

In addition, if self-discipline is a tool, then it can also be over-used.

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”
–paraphrased from Gerald Weinberg

So to balance out your use of self-discipline, I think intuition can be seen as a tool as well. It isn’t just an excuse for laziness, but it isn’t the holy grail I once thought it was either.

I mean, a lot of times “going with the flow” (personally, I think “working with the flow” is a better way to say it) is the optimal method to reach your goals. Sometimes following your hunches and gut feelings can save you a lot of time and effort and can reveal solutions to problems you never even considered before.

But of course, like self-discipline, you can foolishly use your intuition as well, by wasting precious time and effort trying to find the meaning in the smallest of coincedences. And intuition can be over-used too, by sitting around waiting for “the flow” to take you where you want to go, rather than doing the necessary leg-work yourself. It’s like waiting around for hours and hours for the right bus to arrive, when you could simply get off your butt and walk the half-mile yourself to your destination.

If you are unhealthy and have a low energy level, then everything will seem 10x harder, and you will just give up.

People with low energy can gain self-discipline too. There was an entrepreneur who worked on his next company while being able to stay awake only 3-4 hours because of hepatitis C and while awaiting a liver transplant. He started the company while having extremely low energy because of the disease, and developed it after his liver transplant. So, it’s possible.

But if a person with low energy manages to solve his or her health and energy problems and become energetic, then everything will seem A LOT easier.

For me, activities which make me more energetic in the long term are sports and meditation (a non-religious form of meditation since I am an atheist).