Suppose you set a goal to write a book, but you aren’t already in the habit of writing on a regular basis (ideally daily). Most likely you’ll never complete the book. That goal will just sit on your to-do list for years.

Suppose you set a goal to quit your job and run your own Internet business, but you aren’t in the habit of developing websites. That goal is also unlikely to be achieved. It will simply remain a fantasy, overridden by the habit of showing up to work each day.

Identify Habits to Support Your Goals

When you set a new goal, think about what habits would enable you to put that goal on autopilot, thereby making it a done deal.

It’s usually best to think in terms of daily habits, especially for big goals. Daily habits are easier to install than less frequent habits. (For details on successfully installing irregular habits, see the article How to Maintain Not-Quite-Daily Habits.)

It’s also wise to think in terms of simple habits, not incredibly complicated ones. Simple habits are easier to install and maintain. You can always add complexity later, but focus on getting the basic habit successfully installed first.

If one of your goals is to write a book, a simple daily habit would be to work on your book for at least one hour per day. If you can install and maintain that habit, completing your book is practically a done deal. Even if you write only on weekdays and take two weeks off, that’s still 250 hours per year you’ll be investing in your book. This simple discipline is enough to build a career as a professional writer.

Ask yourself: What daily discipline(s) would make this goal a done deal? The answer to that question will tell you what habit(s) to install. If you can condition and maintain those habits, you’ll very likely achieve your goal. It’s only a matter of time.

Be Specific

Make your habits specific. Identify when, where, and how you’ll implement them. Leave nothing to chance.

If you’re going to exercise daily to support your weight loss goal, specify when you’ll exercise and for how long, where you’ll exercise, and what type of exercise you’ll perform. Doing yoga in your living room from 4pm to 4:45pm daily is a clear habit. Adding “go to the gym” to tomorrow’s to-do list is not a clear habit.

One of the most basic habit properties is time. To install any new habit, you must put in the time.  Carve out a dedicated block of time to spend on your new habit. Even if the habit doesn’t require any extra time to maintain, such as the habit of not biting your nails, you’ll still need to devote time to conditioning the habit.

Start With a 30-Day Trial

Use the 30-day trial approach to kick-start your new habit. This method has a high success rate and can be adapted for virtually any habit you’d like to install. (For details on how to do this, see the article 30 Days to Success.)

Focus on achieving a perfect record with your habit for 30 days straight. Don’t worry about Day 31. If you can make it 30 days, you can usually coast from there because the habit will be on autopilot by then.

Even if you later get off track, it will also be easier to re-establish a habit when you’ll already completed at least 30 full days in a row. At the very least, you’ll know you’re capable of making it 30 days and beyond when you start anew because you’ve already done it.

Eliminate Interference

Nuke any obstacles that may interfere with your new habit. Clear commitments from your schedule that would overlap the time you’ve allotted for your habit.

Notify other people that this time is sacred and that they do NOT have permission to disturb you at these times.

Make sure you have all the equipment and supplies you’ll need to implement your habit. You don’t want to start on Day 1 with lots of enthusiasm, only to discover you’re missing something important and can’t proceed.

Give yourself every advantage before you begin. Review the article Habit Change Is Like Chess to make sure you account for the early game, middle game, and endgame of habit change. Don’t fall into the trap of blitzing for Scholar’s Mate and putting yourself in a disadvantaged position from Day 1.

Identify Supporting Habits

Take time to identify any supporting habits that will support your main habit, thereby supporting your primary goal as well.

For example, if you want to change your daily eating habits, you’ll also need to change your grocery shopping habit to make sure you buy the right foods consistently. This is especially important if your new diet will incorporate lots of fresh produce.

Another example: If you want to build a successful blog, writing is an important daily habit, but for optimal results, you may want to spend time each day promoting your work as well. This is especially important when you’re just starting out and hardly anyone knows about your blog.

Work on installing your main habit and all critical supporting habits at the same time if possible. If this is too much to handle, then install the supporting habits first. You can tackle them one by one with consecutive 30-day trials if you wish. Once the supporting habits are in place, you can then tackle the main habit.

For example, first you could install the habit of restocking your kitchen with healthy food every Tuesday evening. Then you could install the habit of preparing meals every day (to reduce your desire to eat out). And finally you could install the habit of changing your diet to whatever you want it to be. This simple progression can lock in a collection of supportive habits to help you achieve goals for weight loss and better overall health.

Commit Yourself Publicly

If you need some extra incentive to stick with your 30-day trial, get other people involved to help you. Commit to your new habit publicly. Put yourself on record, so it will be harder to wimp out.

Many people announce their latest 30-day trials in our discussion forums. Some also post daily updates to let others know of their progress. This is an excellent idea because it increases accountability. You’re less likely to slack off when you know others are watching out for your progress updates.

If that isn’t enough, then make a promise or bet with someone — with a significant consequence if you fail. Add some pain to the mix to ensure that you’ll do your best to follow through. This kind of positive stress can be very motivating, especially if you consider yourself somewhat lazy.

Goals Into Habits – A Personal Example

One of my top professional goals for this year is to develop and release a line of downloadable information products on a variety of personal growth topics.

This is a big goal that will require a significant time investment. Unfortunately, my current work routine doesn’t support this goal at all.

I have lots of experience selling info products online. I used to sell downloadable PC games for several years, so I already have the know-how to create and publish downloadable info products. I remember the daily rhythm I experienced while developing and releasing new games, and it’s very different than my current work routine which is centered around instant publishing of much shorter content.

Achieving this goal requires that I invest a serious amount of time and energy in product development. But up until this time, I haven’t been in a good position to install the necessary habits I’d need to make this goal a reality. I managed to write a book of course, but that was a one-time release, not a complete product line.

Starting this week, I’m going to devote several hours every weekday to developing new information products. Initially I plan to create a downloadable audio program. I’d also like to write more books, but I intend to release at least one audio program first.

In order to achieve this goal, I must radically change my daily habits. Here are some of the changes I’m making:

1. Continue to get up at 5am, but instead of going to the gym first, go straight to my home office to get started on my work day. Review my goals and plans, and get to work on product development tasks by 5:30am every weekday.
2. Dedicate every weekday morning to product development, working straight through until lunch time. I normally have lunch around 1pm, so with a few breaks, this should give me a solid 6-7 hours per day on product development. If I start feeling burned out, I can always cut back on the hours or take extra days off as needed.
3. Devote one hour per day to writing and editing new blog posts. I can write short posts more frequently or long posts less frequently. Adapting to shorter writing sessions will be a major change in my blogging rhythm.
4. Limit the time I spend on routine communication to no more than 60 minutes per day, including email, forums, phone calls, etc. Do these tasks in the afternoon.
5. Exercise in the early evening after my workday and before dinner. Favor exercises I can do at home instead of going to the gym. This saves driving time.
6. Run errands on weekday evenings around 8pm (especially Tuesdays). Stores are less crowded because people are at home watching TV. This habit saves me as much as 30 minutes on a typical errand run vs. running the same errands on a weekend.

It may take me a while to successfully install all these new habits to support the achievement of my goal, but once they’re up and running, I’ll be able to develop new products with a steady rhythm, much like the blogging rhythm that allowed me to write hundreds of new articles year after year.

By reclaiming more time from my daily routine, I’ll have more time and especially more creative energy to invest in developing information products. I can continue to release abundant free content like articles, podcasts, and newsletters, but I’ll save the more complex messages for structured products.

Blogging is a great medium for expressing certain ideas, but it’s a weak medium for covering topics that are too big or too complex. This is one of the reasons I decided to write the book Personal Development for Smart People. Writing a book enabled me to explain the fundamentals of personal growth in much more depth than I could do in a handful of articles or podcasts. I was finally able to share the big picture instead of always hacking away at the branches. I was delighted with the final result, as were the vast majority of the book’s reviewers, so this encouraged me to develop more products.

Other topics that would be better served by full-length products as opposed to blog posts and podcasts include time management, subjective reality, polarity, the Law of Attraction, the raw food diet, polyamory, and polyphasic sleep. These topics are all sufficiently complex that an article or series of articles can never do them justice.

Erin is also interested in developing and releasing her own info products. In fact, last week we made a bet with each other to see which of us would release a new product first. This is a win-win situation because our combined readers will benefit from a new product release from either of us, and obviously our family will enjoy the additional income as well. I won’t share the exact details of the bet (it’s kinda kinky), but suffice it to say I’m very motivated to win.

What new goals can you achieve by installing a few simple daily habits?

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Linear Growth

Linear growth is when you can see the next steps ahead of you fairly clearly. Figuring out where you should go next isn’t that hard. Implementation is the biggest challenge here. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can see ten steps ahead, but the next step in front of you is at least visible. Once you complete that step, the next step will soon present itself.

An example of linear growth is my long-term path of improving my diet. I started on a variation of the SAD diet, and gradually progressed to vegetarianism, veganism, and raw foodism. There was some exploration along the way of course, but most of the time I had a pretty clear idea of the “next level” I wanted to reach.

There were two independent lines of development here, but they basically pointed in the same direction. The first line was shifting from animal-based foods to plant-based foods. First I eliminated all animal flesh, and later I dropped eggs and dairy products. I’ve been eating a 100% plant-based diet for about 12 years now.

The second line of development was to graduate from processed to unprocessed foods. I progressively dropped manufactured and cooked foods and began eating closer to nature (i.e. fresh, raw whole foods). Cooking does increase the bioavailability of a few nutrients, but that can’t compensate for the hundreds of other nutrients it simultaneously destroys; on the whole cooking is nutritionally devastating to food.

Linear growth is wonderful. When you can clearly see the next steps ahead of you, you can focus on making changes instead of second-guessing your decisions. This doesn’t mean that it’s easy, but at least you can see where you’re headed.

It’s important to recognize when you’re on a linear growth track in some area of your life. Often when we’re on a linear path that’s very challenging, we’ll have a tendency to second-guess our decisions. “There must be an easier way,” we proclaim. But when we rehash the decision, we keep coming up with the same answer. We’re on the right path; it’s just a very challenging path. This is good for us though because these are the paths that push us to build focus, self-discipline, and a strong work ethic.

If you think that if a path is too hard, it must automatically be the wrong path, you’re buying into weak-mindedness and turning your back on truth. Training yourself to lift heavier weights makes you stronger. Avoiding heavy weights only makes you weaker.

Growth Forks

A growth fork is when you see two or more mutually exclusive paths ahead of you, and it’s tricky to decide which path to take. Your challenge here lies in choosing the “correct” path. Implementing your decision may still be hard, but the up-front decision is the major limiting step.

Should you attend college or start your own business? Should you marry your current relationship partner or break up and go your separate ways? Should you move to Los Angeles or New York City?

Should you choose Option A or Option B? What’s the right choice? How do you decide?

Growth forks can be very frustrating. The problem with a tricky growth fork is that it can cause your growth to stall, sometimes for years.

I’ve faced some very difficult growth forks in my life. Some of them absorbed hundreds of hours trying to figure out the correct decision, and I still felt unsure about what to do.

You can seriously wrack your brain trying to figure out the best choice. You can use different diagnostic and analytical tools to help you decide. You can ask other people for advice. You can consult with your intuition. Sometimes this helps, but in many cases the more you try to analyze the situation, the more you feed your ambivalence.

One way to visualize a growth fork is to imagine two or more alternate timelines stretching into the future, one timeline for each possible branch leading away from your decision point. Once you make the decision, you lock yourself in to a certain branch. From that moment onward, you’ll never have the freedom to experience the other branches, at least not in the same way you can now.

Indecision at Growth Forks

One reason it’s so easy to get stuck at a growth fork is that the pre-fork position offers the illusion of greater freedom than any of the post-fork decisions. This freedom often feels better than making a commitment to any one path.

For example, suppose you’re married, and you’re also having an affair on the side. Your spouse and your lover find out about each other, and now you’re pressed from both sides to choose one or the other. Many people in this situation will delay making a choice, stringing along both spouse and lover as long as possible. Why? Because the freedom of keeping both possibilities open feels better than the instant loss of either partner. Neither path seems like a clear improvement over the state of perpetual indecision.

Unfortunately, when you stay stuck at a growth fork for too long, you often lose the freedom to make a choice at all. For example, your spouse and lover both get fed up with you and dump you at the same time, so you get nothing. Your freedom to decide has been taken away. The choice has been made for you. Letting fate decide isn’t a good idea because fate often makes crappy choices.

Growth forks needn’t be huge. You may get stuck at a growth fork when faced with the question, “What should I do today?” If you remain stuck in a state of indecision for too long, pretty soon you’ll lose the freedom to decide at all. Perhaps your TV or the Internet will make the decision for you. Such indecision can cause you to waste a large portion of your life, often by letting it slip away one day at a time.

Overcoming Indecision

So how do you overcome the trap of indecision at a growth fork?

Suppose you’re playing a computer role-playing game where you control an avatar in the game world. In this game you have a lot of decisions to make. What character class will you choose? Will you explore Arendia or Algaria? Which quests will you undertake? What guild will you join?

There are a lot of decisions to be made, but few people would consider such decisions paralyzing. Can you imagine someone complaining, “I bought this game three years ago, but I haven’t started playing yet because I just can’t decide what character class I should play. I don’t know what to do!”

Instead most people will just dive in and start playing. They’ll give a little consideration to such decisions, but they’ll decide fairly quickly, perhaps even impulsively. And for the most part, the consequence is that they’ll have fun.

Sure there may be some regrets along the way. “Dammit! I never should have picked up that cursed item!” But most people will just take any setbacks in stride and keep pressing on. As a result their character goes up in levels, and they get to tackle bigger and bigger challenges. When the game gets boring, it can be retired, and the player can move on to something else.

So why do we face situations in real life that can cause us to remain terribly stuck in indecision, but when we’re just playing a game, major in-game decisions are regarded as no big deal?

Consequences

Perhaps the main factor is that in an artificial game world, the consequences of your actions are considered minimal. Regardless of what you decide, you’re not really going to be hurt. No one else is likely to be hurt either. A bad choice affects only your character, but it doesn’t affect your real self. The whole thing is just pretend. No matter what happens to your character, the real you will still be okay.

But in the real world, things are different. Your actions have bigger consequences. People can get hurt. If you screw up, you could be socially ostracized, and that can create serious consequences for you.

It’s understandable to fear such consequences because at one time in human history, if you were socially ostracized by your peers, that could be a major threat to your survival. Getting kicked out of your community for incompetent decision-making might even be a death sentence.

Today, however, the consequences of being socially ostracized aren’t nearly as severe. For example, in the USA most marriages end in divorce. And interestingly, marital satisfaction has been on the rise for decades, keeping in step with the relative ease of getting a divorce. At one time getting a divorce was considered socially unacceptable (and of course still is in some cultures), but now it’s not such a big deal. Even if your divorce messes up the lives of many people, society is robust enough to absorb the impact, and you can still press on and achieve post-divorce happiness.

Of course there are other consequences aside from being socially ostracized. You could really mess up your finances, for instance. That could put a big crimp in your lifestyle plans.

When you apply some sort of analytical process to decision-making, you’re trying to assess and compare the consequences of different possible paths. The path with the best consequence is deemed the correct choice.

Unfortunately, assessing and comparing consequences requires predicting the future. To some degree we can pull this off, but it’s tough to be accurate. Real life will seldom fit our predictions.

So we really have two problems that lead to the state of indecision. First, we consider the consequences of certain real-life decisions to be serious and important. Second, we try to predict which consequences are best. This is how we try to make a decision.

The problem is that this decision-making process often fails. The more you magnify the importance of a decision, the more you’ll paralyze yourself. Eventually external factors will force you down a certain path, and you’ll lose your freedom to decide altogether. By refusing to decide, you get assigned the character class of Peon by default.

An Alternative Decision-Making Process

How can you make a decision if not by comparing future consequences?

This might sound like a subtle distinction, but a different way to make decisions is by comparing immediate present-moment consequences.

What does this mean?

Instead of trying to predict the future to determine the long-term implications of each possible path, drop the whole branching timeline model. Instead of regarding time as a line, consider time as a single fixed point. In other words, assume that only the present moment is real, and nothing beyond that exists.

Your decision point no longer involves the selection of a long-term path. Now it’s merely a state change to your present moment.

As you consider the alternative choices you might make, ask yourself this question: If I were to commit to this choice, how would it affect me right now? What immediate changes would I experience?

Imagine each possible choice as real, as if you’ve already made it. Pay attention to how the choice makes you feel. Does it feel good, or does it feel wrong somehow?

From Growth Forks to Linear Growth

When I use this process, I often find that my growth forks transform into linear growth. The indecision fades away, and I begin to see that the fork itself was merely an illusion. It was a mental construct — a distraction — that my mind created because on some level I didn’t feel ready to face the next logical step on my linear path. Because I thought the step was too big for me to handle, I created the growth fork as a way of putting my progress on pause.

For example, for many years while I was running my game development business, I was stuck at a growth fork. I debated whether I should keep growing my games business or quit that field and build a career in the field of personal development.

I kept trying to decide by predicting the future consequences of each path, but that led to analysis paralysis because I was comparing apples to oranges. It was tough to decide on that basis. Because of the difficulty of changing careers, my mind had a tendency to keep me stuck. Remaining in a state of indecision was actually easier and gave me the illusion of more freedom.

However, when I compacted each alternative to a present-moment decision, considering how each option made me feel in the present moment, the right choice was clear. When I thought about continuing to build my games business, I felt trapped. When I thought about working in the field of personal development, I felt excited. I didn’t need to predict the future. The present-moment difference was clear enough.

This helped me see that deep down, I already knew the right decision. But I was having trouble coming to terms with it, so I created the decision fork to keep myself stuck. Once I saw that the decision fork was a self-created illusion, I realized that I was dealing with a linear growth challenge all along.

Although it might not seem like a linear progression to shift from game development to personal development, it was for me. While running my games business, I began writing articles on the side to help out other game developers. Eventually my articles became more popular than my games. Switching from creating games to creating articles was therefore a semi-logical “graduation” for me. It became clear that I could provide more value through writing articles than I could through producing games.

Since that time, whenever I’ve faced a tricky growth fork, it has eventually revealed itself as a false dichotomy. It was an illusion I created to avoid dealing with a major growth challenge. Sometimes I created growth forks as a way of giving myself permission to pause and gather my strength.

Making the right decision wasn’t the real issue. Deep down I knew the correct decision. I could see the correct path just by focusing on the present-moment effects of each alternative. The challenge was being able to accept the correct path and to stop resisting it.

Is it possible that your own growth forks are merely illusions? Could they simply be delay tactics? Might you already know the correct choice, but you’re having a hard time accepting it?

Can you recognize the pattern that whenever you get stuck at a growth fork, you use the state of indecision as a way of putting your forward progress on pause? Do you see that this is a way you avoid what you know is coming up because you don’t feel ready to deal with the consequences yet? Can you see that making the correct decision isn’t the real issue? Can you see that the real issue is being able to fully accept the path you’re already on?

Even when you’re on a fairly linear path, you may have a tendency to create growth forks as a way of putting your progress on pause. If you don’t feel strong enough to take on the challenges ahead of you, a growth fork is a tempting option. By placing yourself in a state of indecision, you get “credit” for trying, even though your forward progress is halted.

When you face a tricky growth fork and you feel stuck in a state of indecision, pull back for a moment, and reconsider your challenge from a different perspective. Instead of trying to choose the correct path, consider that your task is to fully accept the path that deep down, you’ve already chosen.

Accepting Your Path

Accepting your path can give rise to some interesting emotions. I’d call it a combination of relief, excitement, and surrender. It feels good to leave the state of indecision behind, but it can also feel uncomfortable because now you have to get to work. You can no longer hide behind the excuse of indecision.

The feeling that “Crap… this is gonna be hard! I’m not even sure I can do this…” is perfectly normal. I experience that feeling every time I get past a growth fork. On the one hand, I know the decision is correct. But on the other hand, I don’t feel quite ready for the path ahead. I glance at the level 30 monster down the road, and I’m concerned because my character is only at level 20.

But once you stop asking, “Am I really supposed to tackle that level 30 monster?” and you fully accept that yes, you’re the hero assigned to it, this helps to shift your focus. The indecision evaporates, and you surrender to the path ahead. You realize you’re going to have to build your character beyond level 20, so you can prove a match for that monster.

“I don’t know what to do” is an excuse that really means, “I don’t feel strong enough to take the next step.” In other words, “I don’t know what to do” is pure nonsense. Of course you know what to do. You’re just scared that you won’t be able to handle it.

The funny thing is that if you poured all the energy being wasted on worry and indecision into building your character, the monster ahead would soon be no match for you.

Which path of your growth fork makes you think, “Gosh… I dunno if I can do that. That looks pretty tough. That’s a pretty scary monster”? Is it the entrepreneurial path? The path of improving your diet? The path of marriage? Which path will push your character to progress from level 20 to level 30?

Take heart that other heroes have already defeated that same monster you must face. Others have already reached the level you’re trying to reach. You can train up to their level if you work at it. Your level 30 challenge looks difficult because you’re looking at it through the eyes of a level 20 character, but you don’t have to remain a level 20 character forever.

Drop the excuse of indecision, and start working on level 21 today.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

This is a majorly long article. At about 8,600 words, I’m pretty sure this is the longest article I’ve ever written. It’s more like a free book chapter. The length is because my goal is to share one of the most comprehensive articles ever written on this topic. If you actually read the whole thing, you should gain many helpful insights from it. There are many subtle ideas here. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to print it out for later. It goes good with peppermint tea.

Calibration for Long-term Success

When you begin any new activity or endeavor, initially you won’t be calibrated for success, so you’ll experience mostly failure. However, if you keep moving forward with a clear goal in mind, and if you progressively adjust your thinking and actions along the way, you’ll eventually calibrate yourself to get the results you want. This calibration only occurs from directly applying a skill under real-world conditions, not by reading about it.

When you’re in the pre-calibration period, achieving even a small degree of success in a new field requires a massive, all-out effort. Post-calibration, success is practically on auto-pilot; you can consistently achieve the results you want with minimal effort.

Calibration Examples

It’s easiest to understand calibration by way of example, so here are some detailed examples to consider:

Social Dynamics, Making Friends, and Dating

In the field of social dynamics, calibration is the process of learning how to meet new people, initiate conversations, keep conversations going, make new friends, get dates (second meetings), and basically achieve positive social interactions.

How you calibrate your social skills will depend on your personal goals for this area. A salesperson may focus on learning how to build rapport, generate interest, close sales, and construct a database of quality contacts. A professional speaker may learn how to get attention, arouse emotion, generate laughter, and inspire people to action. A pick-up artist may study how to initiate conversations, demonstrate value, build attraction, and achieve successful closes (a close could be getting a phone number, a date, or a sexual encounter).

In high school I was comfortable within certain social circles, but I was still more introverted than I wanted to be. So when I started at college, I decided to remake myself into a more extroverted person. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I just dove in and attempted to be as social as possible. I accepted any and all opportunities for social interaction. If anyone invited me to go out, I always said yes. I made a huge commitment to elevate this part of my life, and I stuck with it for my entire freshman year.

This strategy actually worked. I hadn’t read any books on social skills at the time, but I quickly calibrated my social skills via trial and error.

Within a few weeks, I’d made dozens of new friends, and I was going to parties every week. If I ever wanted to hang out and do something fun, I could always find someone willing. Not including sleep time, I’m sure I spent more time in other people’s dorm rooms than my own. I was always going out — for parties, poker games, volleyball, ping pong, or just for pizza. I created an absolutely amazing social life and packed more fun into each month than I used to enjoy in a year. I practically became like a different person.

What I found interesting was that in the beginning, it seemed like I was always the one to initiate new connections, but once I felt comfortable doing that, additional connections began flowing into my life almost effortlessly. During my first week at college, I noticed a party across the hall and asked if I could join in the fun (and got a quick yes). After that I was always getting invitations to parties and virtually never had to ask. During the first few months, I initiated a lot of social experiences (Wanna join me for dinner at the dining commons? Wanna grab a slice? Wanna get a poker game together?). But eventually I had so many invites coming to me passively that I didn’t have to initiate as much.

Looking back, I probably went way overboard. The good news was that I really took control of this area of my life. By throwing myself into it with a passion, I quickly became comfortable meeting new people, and I learned to make friends easily. The bad news was that I totally blew off my studies and was flunking out of school. In retrospect it wasn’t such a bad trade off though. I got expelled after my third semester, but the social calibration I gained during that time has served me well ever since. I went to a different school later and still earned my college degrees, but I think the social calibration has proven more valuable in the long run. I don’t feel intimidated in new social situations, and it’s normally easy for me to make new friends and connect with people. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a wife without even trying.

When Erin and I moved to Las Vegas in 2004, we didn’t know anyone in the city. We went from having a lot of friends in L.A. to having zero local friends in Vegas. It was just the two of us and our kids in a big city of strangers. But part of the reason I was happy to move to a new city was that I knew I could make new friends easily. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I had plenty of great local friends. The bigger challenge for me has been feeling over-socialized at times. There have been some weeks where I’d have preferred more alone time.

This social calibration has benefited me tremendously in business. I can go to a mixer or conference where I don’t know anyone, and I have an easy time making new friends and contacts. I remember when I first started attending the Game Developer’s Conference many years ago, most of the attendees seemed shy and socially awkward. They’d mostly keep to themselves or cling to their co-workers, especially at meal times. Meanwhile, I was going around making new friends, which just felt natural to me. Some of those chance encounters led to new opportunities and deals that helped grow my business. It was also nice to have more friends with similar interests.

One year at that conference, I hung out so late that the shuttles had stopped running. It was pouring rain outside, but a new friend offered me a ride back to my hotel. In fact, something similar happened at a different conference this year. It’s nice to know that my social calibration can keep me out of the rain when necessary.

To some people this may not sound like a big deal. Many people develop such skills in high school or younger. But for a shy kid like me who went to an all boys Catholic high school, it was indeed a big deal.

Although I use my social skills mainly to make friends and business contacts, you can use a similar process to develop dating and relationship skills. For example, if you want to go on more dates, you can calibrate your skills to get good at opening conversations with strangers, develop fun and interesting conversations, build attraction, and at least close with a phone number. There are lots of people teaching this stuff online now, with varying degrees of credibility (and sanity), but the most important thing is to just dive in and start experimenting. You’ll experience some rejection at first, but if you just keep learning and adapting, your skills will calibrate to the point where you’re able to get consistently good results.

If you happen to be suffering from loneliness, most likely it’s because you never took the time to adequately calibrate your social skills. Consequently, you may avoid making new friends because you don’t understand the social nuances of how to do it. You probably feel socially awkward and suffer from an amplified fear of rejection. The solution is to focus on a different goal first. You need to calibrate your social skills before you can apply them. Go out and socialize for the sake of learning how to socialize. Don’t worry about whether or not you make any new friends. Once your social skills are calibrated, which may take a few months, then you can focus on building the kinds of friendships you desire, and it will be much easier for you. Aim to get good first. Then aim to get results.

Martial Arts

If you study martial arts and begin learning to spar, you’re going to be pretty bad at it initially. You’ll have no sense of timing, and you won’t grasp the rhythm of a sparring match. You’ll probably bang knees with your opponent a lot. All the newbies do that.

For the most part, you can expect to look and feel like a total dork. The first time I sparred, which was more than 10 years ago, I was laughing during the match, mostly at how awkward I felt. I’m sure I looked like a total dork.

This is to be expected. You can try to play it cool, but the truth is that the first few times you attempt any new sport, you’re virtually guaranteed to look and feel like a dork. This is because your mind and body aren’t calibrated to that sport.

Within a few months of regular training, your sparring should be fairly well-calibrated for an intermediate level of skill. At the very least, you won’t embarrass yourself. You’ll have sparred many different opponents, and you’ll have a good sense of what to expect. You’ll be able to use different moves successfully, land punches and kicks, and pull off the occasional surprise. I remember how cool it was when I stripped an opponent’s helmet off with an axe kick during a sparring match.

While sparring at the beginner level feels awkward and intimidating, once you gain a little competence, it becomes a fun challenge. At this point the subtleties of the skill begin to reveal themselves. Once your basic sparring moves and tactics are calibrated, you can begin to calibrate your strategic decisions, and this is where the richness of sparring really opens up. The game becomes less physical and more mental. Some would even say it becomes spiritual at a certain point.

Calibrating to a particular sport is a lot like learning to ride a bicycle. Even if you don’t train for a while, the mental calibration remains, and you can easily pick it up again later.

I trained for about three years in Tae Kwon Do in the late 90s with a mix of group classes and private lessons. Over time I got pretty good at sparring and really enjoyed it. I moved away from the studio and stopped training, but several years later, I started training in a different martial art, Kempo, starting as a white belt. Kempo is geared toward self-defense, while TKD is more sporty. Fortunately, all the moves that are legal in TKD are also legal in Kempo, and Kempo allows you to do some things that aren’t legal in TKD, such as punching to the face. (Protective gear is worn during sparring, but there’s still some risk. I suffered a bruised rib and a split lip on different occasions.)

Even though I’d lost most of my flexibility, the first time I sparred in Kempo, I did amazingly well, certainly far beyond the white belt level. From my first Kempo sparring class, I was able to hold my own against one of the black belts in the studio. I was sparring TKD-style, not Kempo-style, but that actually gave me an advantage because the other students weren’t calibrated to that style. TKD is mostly kicking, but Kempo uses more hand techniques. My preference for kicks surprised the other students because they would hover just outside of punching range, but they were still within my TKD-calibrated kicking range, so I hammered them with kicking combos until they figured out they needed to back up. This threw them off mentally, and it took months for many of them to adapt to my style. Of course, it also took me a while to get used to having punches thrown at my head.

After a year of training in Kempo, I was fairly well-calibrated to that style, but I had to unlearn some of my TKD habits that were ineffective in Kempo. I had to work on my speed, defensive maneuvers, and incorporating punches, strikes, and backfists into my sparring.

The point is that once you gain calibration at a particular skill set, you may very well lock in that skill for life. I feel as if basic competence in sparring is so ingrained in me that even if I didn’t spar again for 20 years, I’d be able to quickly pick it up again. I can actually feel that calibration in my body.

Blogging

Since blogging is still a fairly new medium, it usually takes new bloggers a while to properly calibrate. The failure rate is pretty high for newbies because most of them give up before they calibrate for success. I’d say you need to write at least 200-300 posts before you get a decent calibration going, and that assumes you’re making a solid commitment to getting better. For some people it will require more than 500 posts to achieve reasonable calibration, especially if they aren’t very good writers. There’s just a lot to learn.

In particular, there’s a huge gap between writing posts that people read and forget vs. writing posts that people will remember well enough that they’re still referring their friends, family members, and co-workers to read a year later. One of the key calibrations for long-term blogging success is to learn how to write the latter type of post; that’s how you get your archives working for you, and your traffic can still grow even when you aren’t posting anything.

For example, of the top 10 articles on my website that generate the most referrals, only one was written this year. Articles I wrote years ago continue to attract new readers today. However, it took me a long time to learn to write the kinds of articles that would produce such results. I’ve publicly shared how I do this, and that’s been helpful for some people, but it still takes time for new bloggers to “get it” to the point where they can apply it.

Not long ago I was at a party, chatting with a woman who got started blogging after attending a blogging workshop I did a couple years ago. She was telling me some of the mistakes she made with her blog during that time, all of which were mistakes I explicitly said to avoid during the workshop. For example, she wrote lots of timely content instead of timeless content, so she felt like she was on an endless treadmill, and her archives were largely worthless. She remembered that I said to avoid those mistakes too, but that wasn’t enough to stop her from making them. Despite having the opportunity to learn from my experience and avoid the pitfalls I described, she still had to go out and make those mistakes in order to refine her own calibration. I’ve seen countless bloggers make the same mistakes. They seek my advice, I tell them what to do and what not to do and why, and they do exactly what I tell them not to do and then wonder why it isn’t working. Oy vey! This is okay though, as long as they keep plugging ahead and learn from those mistakes. We human beings aren’t known to be the best listeners in the galaxy. We learn much better by doing something than by reading about it.

Different bloggers will naturally calibrate themselves toward different goals. For example, I wanted to calibrate my blogging skills to the goal of having a deep, long-term impact on my readers. I want to change people’s lives for the better. This is partly why I do things differently than most bloggers. I blow off many practices that other pro bloggers defend as sacred. My articles tend to be very long and detailed. I typically avoid posting shallow short info-crack pieces. I post less frequently, sometimes going a week or more with no fresh content. I largely ignore current events. I don’t often link to other blogs. This is all because I’m calibrating my skills toward a certain type of result. Those popular strategies just aren’t very helpful at achieving the results I desire, so I don’t use them. If you want this to become yet another info-crack blog, get used to disappointment. I want to change your life, not provide you with a five-minute distraction.

So be careful when taking advice from others. If you’re calibrating toward a different goal than they are, their advice may hurt you more than help you. It’s best to learn from people who’ve already achieved a similar calibration to what you want to achieve. For example, if you just want to make as much money as possible and don’t care how you get it, then you probably wouldn’t want to model my blogging methods because I’ve calibrated myself toward a different goal. But you might want to follow those bloggers who proudly proclaim they’re in it for the money — there are plenty to select from. On the other hand, if you believe you’re here for a reason and that blogging could potentially become a sustainable expression of your life purpose, then you’d probably benefit greatly by studying my style, since I’ve been getting positive results in this area for years. The point is that if you decide to model someone, be sure you’re modeling someone with compatible goals (and thus a compatible calibration).

One thing I’ve learned from 4+ years of blogging is that it really isn’t that hard in principle to become a successful blogger; however, it’s very hard in practice. Newbies’ minds are typically filled with many false notions. In some ways they need to unload more useless ideas than they need to absorb useful ideas. I’ve raped quite a few pro blogging sacred cows, yet my blog is still going strong.

There are a lot of blogging success factors that are somewhat counter-intuitive. You won’t realize this if you just read sites about blogging because they’ll rarely write about these factors. For the most part, it’s not that anyone is intentionally withholding information. The ideas are simply too subtle for most bloggers to be consciously aware of them. Many calibration issues are like this — they’re just too subtle to appear on any “top 10″ or “how to” lists. Sometimes people who succeed can’t document all the specific reasons they’ve succeeded. They can’t consciously unearth every detail of their unconscious calibration. There are some things I do as a successful blogger that I’ve never seen anyone write or speak about publicly, myself included. Some of the concepts are so subtle or intricate that even if I explained them in detail, nobody but other successful pro bloggers would even understand what I’m talking about, and some people would accuse me of lying.

Yesterday another blogger emailed me a link to a post he wrote, explaining why he personally dislikes my writing style. This is a blogger who says he gets significantly less traffic than I do. His main criticism is that I state my opinions too directly, as if they’re facts. This is a perfectly valid criticism of course; I confess to doing this liberally. The attitude of that blogger was that this is a personal defect I should correct. However, what he probably doesn’t realize is that this is a trait I developed over time as part of my calibration process for blogging success. I’m sure his advice is well-meaning, but I know that if I take his advice, my results will actually decline. I can say he’s wrong and that I’m right because I’ve learned which approach works best for me via trial and error. As a generalization, I know that making strong statements works better than making weak statements.

This is one of many subtle calibration refinements I learned from years of blogging. I discovered that prefacing every opinion with phrases like “I think…” or “I feel…” or “In my opinion…” leads to the creation of wimpy content. So this was actually a personal defect I learned to correct, and I intentionally make strong statements. My readers aren’t stupid. They know that since this is my website, such statements represent my thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. When I offer up my thoughts directly, as opposed to watering them down with qualifiers, people are challenged to agree or disagree with me. This helps people question their beliefs, strengthening some while weakening others. This is what I like to see.

Another benefit to making strong statements is that other bloggers, including the one critical of my posting style, will take the time to write posts just to disagree with me, thereby sending traffic to my website and actively helping me achieve my goals. Yet because their content is usually wimpier, they don’t benefit equally from this same mechanism. There are a lot of subtle interactions going on here, and I’m only offering a cursory overview here, but the net effect is that by posting strong statements, I enjoy more blogging success, but I also attract more criticism. However, the criticism actually benefits me. This is pretty counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Part of the reason I’ve been so successful as a blogger is that people remember what I’ve written, especially if they disagree with it. If you look at the comments written about my work throughout the blogosphere, you’ll find that most people have very polarized opinions about my work. Some people love my work. Some absolutely despise it. Very few are neutral. However, love it or hate it, these same people keep discussing my work, constantly spreading the word to those who don’t know about me. Such controversy makes people curious and brings new readers to my website every day. Isn’t this just insidious? The more people dislike me, the more they actively go out and market my work to others, and the more they help me achieve my goal of helping people grow. This is so effective that I can even tell such people how they’re helping me, and they’ll keep right on doing it.

I could certainly write more agreeable posts that few people would find objectionable. I could apologize for every opinion of mine that isn’t mainstream. But that’s totally the wrong calibration for my goals, not to mention for my personality. It’s way too cowardly. I don’t want to calibrate as a wimpy blogger that nobody can find fault with. It’s more effective to calibrate as a blogger who challenges people and makes a difference, even if it sends some people running the other way (to go out and promote my work instead of reading it themselves).

Uncalibrated newbie bloggers often blog scared. They try to please everyone and avoid taking risks. Consequently, they write posts that are easily forgotten and which will generate few referrals. Then some new upstart blogger comes along with a better calibration, breaks all the newbie rules, and surges ahead in traffic. And the other newbies think it’s luck. It’s not luck though. A good example is the blog Stuff White People Like. I first happened upon it shortly after it launched, and I knew it would become successful. I could see it had a great calibration for building traffic quickly — it was only a matter of time before it took off. The posts were politically incorrect to the max, but they were witty and memorable. Sure enough, that blog became a hit and even led to a book deal. If this sort of success surprises you as a blogger, it means your calibration is off. If your calibration is solid, you should be able to browse through the early posts on that blog and NOT be surprised by its success. Overall, if you’re often surprised by the success of others in your field, it means your calibration isn’t very good yet. As your own calibration matures, you’ll get better at being able to predict successes.

One of the keys to success in any field, especially blogging, is to accept that there are good reasons the successful people are succeeding, and it has nothing to do with luck. If you see someone who’s getting better results than you, even if it’s someone with less experience who started after you, chances are they have a more accurate calibration than you. You can rail against that, feel jealous, and call them names, but it’s better to take a step back, eat your humble pie, and learn from such people if you can. I’ve learned some pretty cool things from bloggers who started long after I did. Although my current calibration is obviously working, I know I can always improve, and I never want to think of myself as such as expert that I can’t keep learning and growing.

One of the worst things you can do in blogging is to write in such a manner that will offend no one. If you don’t offend or challenge anyone, you’re probably writing content that isn’t very memorable or meaningful. If you write what people expect, their minds won’t store it. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any highly successful bloggers that don’t have multiple negative rants written about them somewhere. All of them piss people off. Most of them aren’t intentionally trying to upset people. It’s just that upsetting people seems to be a natural consequence of the calibration required for blogging success.

This isn’t unique to blogging either. Think of any successful media personality, and I’m sure you can find some rants about them with a quick online search. In fact, the biggest stars will have tons of rants. Consider Tom Cruise for instance.

Some people might assume this sort of controversy is a side-effect of success, like perhaps that celebrity got a big head after enjoying some success (causing people to turn against him/her), or maybe the rants appeared as a side effect of the celebrity’s popularity (like it’s just a numbers game). I’d say that’s the wrong way to look at this. It’s more likely that generating controversy was part of the celebrity’s early calibration process. If anything, the ability to handle controversy probably helped them become a celebrity in the first place.

Some of the first articles I ever wrote, even before I launched StevePavlina.com, generated controversy that helped turn them into fast hits. An example was the article Do It Now, which I wrote in 2000. Lots of people love that article, but some people find it disturbing and feel compelled to rant about it (even eight years after it was first posted online), perhaps because it makes them realize just how unproductive they are compared to what they could be achieving if they really made an all-out effort. Unfortunately, it took me years to figure out why that article became a hit and to learn how to reproduce the kind of impact it had. It also took me a long time to realize that the negative backlash generated by that article was actually helping me grow my readership… and that I should accept and embrace such critical feedback rather than worry about it. What I initially interpreted as negative feedback (i.e. I did something wrong) was actually positive feedback (I did something right). Interpreting emails from people saying “you are wrong” as evidence that you did something right is again pretty counterintuitive, isn’t it?

This is a key point of calibration. When you’re building a new skill, you have to look at the big picture in terms of the results you’re getting. You might do something that seems to generate immediate negative feedback from people, but when you step back and look at the big picture, you may see that the overall feedback is overwhelmingly positive. This happens a lot in blogging, where a reader may chew you out for something you wrote, and then six months later, they’re singing your praises for helping them achieve a breakthrough they never thought possible. And even if they aren’t singing your praises, they’re out there telling people why they hate you, thereby making people curious and sending you more traffic.

A similar effect also happens in social dynamics, where the “bad guys” can actually attract more success because they have so many detractors unwittingly doing their marketing for them.

Newbie Fear

Perhaps the toughest part of calibration is dealing with newbie fear. This is the fear of failure or rejection we experience when learning a new skill. Initially we suck, we know full well that we suck, and we really don’t want to deal with the embarrassment and humiliation of other people witnessing just how badly we suck. This is most distressing with skills that must be calibrated in public, such as dating skills and public speaking.

There are some ways to mitigate newbie fear. One of the best ways is to connect with other newbies and go through the initial training together. When you look up to experts who are already well-calibrated, it’s easy to become intimidated and psyche yourself out. You’ll tend to hold yourself to an unreasonable standard of performance. But if you befriend and hang out with other newbies, the learning process can be a lot more fun. It’s comforting to have buddies that suck just as badly as you do. You can blow off steam together, share your latest insights, and poke fun at each other as you learn. “Misery loves company” isn’t such a bad idea in this case.

The key is to associate with newbies who are committed to learning and growing. If you hang out with flakes, it probably won’t help you much. Try to identify other newbies that you predict are likely to stick with it and succeed, and hang out with them if you can. This will help increase your commitment without making you feel too intimidated.

When I first started learning about blogging, I enjoyed connecting with other newbie bloggers. In the old days (old as in four years ago), we swapped links with each other, shared advice, and found ways to help each other gain traffic. Many of those people gave up and quit of course, but a few are doing very well today. It’s cool to watch your newbie friends improve their calibration right along with you, even though everyone improves at different rates.

Ultimately, you’ll only get so much mileage out of trying to reduce newbie fear. The fastest way to overcome it is to simply charge straight at it. Just accept that you’ll suck, that some embarrassment will happen, and that the only way out is through. This is especially important for building good social skills.

You’ll only get so far by sitting at home reading, listening to audio programs, and watching videos. Such educational aids can help, but they can never substitute for real-world experience. Use them as supplemental materials to refine your in-field experimentation. If you want to become a successful blogger, start blogging immediately. If you want to build an online business, get some kind of website online right away. If you want to improve your social skills, go outside and meet people tonight. Yes, you’re going to suck at first. But if you push through the newbie fear and do it anyway, the fear will subside, and you’ll begin to calibrate your skills very quickly.

Even if you read all the books in your field, you will still suck on your first in-field experience. You won’t even be able to apply what’s in those books. So get out in the field and start calibrating.

Get that first crappy “Hello, World” blog post under your belt. Let out that inane “Hey, baby. What’s your sign?” pick-up line. Bang shins with your sparring partner as you scream, “Ouch!”

Newbie Pride

If you’re a newbie at something, and you’re feeling hesitant to go after some live in-field experience, realize that this is very normal. Many newbies resist being newbies, but this resistance only makes them more nervous. So realize that a big part of the problem is your own resistance to being a newbie. You’ll get into the field sooner if you can accept this phase of your learning curve.

My advice for turning this around is to fully embrace your newbieness. Don the badge of Newbie Pride. Instead of fearing that you’ll look like a total dork, take this the other way. Embrace and even exaggerate your dorkiness. Don’t try to resist it. Blow it up even larger.

In martial arts classes, there’s no hiding your newbie status. You wear a white belt, so everyone knows you’re a beginner. This actually makes it easier because you know people don’t expect much of you. The lower belts may be nervous about sparring, but since they know that nobody expects much of them, most are able to get out on the mat and spar without undue hesitation.

However, in other fields, people don’t wear white belts. This has positive and negative side-effects.

In online business, for example, many newbies try to hide their newbieness. I made this mistake when I started my first business. I pretended to be an experienced business person when I just started. I talked about my staff even when I was the only person in the business. That was totally unnecessary, not to mention really dumb. When I started blogging, however, I didn’t try to hide my newbieness. I embraced that dorky beginner phase and had fun with it. And because of that, more experienced bloggers reached out to help me. Back then, “more experienced” meant they started blogging a month before I did.

I still maintain this attitude today. If I’m new at something, I’ll openly share my newbie dorkiness and hesitation. It doesn’t embarrass me to share my weaknesses. On the contrary, it actually invites a lot of help and advice from non-newbies who want to help me calibrate.

The Master Newbie Pick-up Artist

Suppose you’re a guy who wants to learn how to pick up women at night clubs, but you’re terrified of going out, and you can’t imagine walking up to a woman and delivering an opener. Realize that so much of your resistance is because you’re trying to appear cooler and more experienced than you really are. Do you realize this is totally unnecessary? It’s better to embrace your newbieness and use it to your advantage.

If I were trying to develop this particular skill, here’s what I’d do. I’d go up to women and tell them the plain and simple truth. I’ve never actually done this, so take my advice with a grain of salt because this isn’t a calibration I’ve bothered to develop, but I’ll bet you it would work well at initiating fun conversations.

I’d walk up to a group of women with a big smile on my face. I’d get their attention and say to them, “Hey guys, I’m currently learning how to meet women at night clubs, but I’m a total newbie at this. Would you mind if I practice on you just for fun for a couple minutes? And would you give me some honest feedback afterwards?”

I suspect you’ll probably get a laugh if you do this, and if you don’t, then the women aren’t likely worth talking to anyway, so you can quickly disqualify them as boring or humorless. You’ve taken the pressure off by initiating a “practice session,” so it doesn’t even matter what you say next. Your next line could even be, “Okay what do you think of this? [Switch to deep voice] Hey, baby. What’s your sign?” That would probably get another laugh, but even a groan isn’t bad. You can keep saying other funny lines. You could also kick off a meta conversation about meeting women at night clubs, such as by asking a question like, “Okay, after I do the opener, what should I talk about next? Would this be a good time to tell you a quick story to demonstrate that I’m a cool guy? Should I tell you about the time I …?” The context is that you’re just practicing, but in truth you’ve already opened the group.

This is an untested suggestion of course, so you’ll have to try it yourself to see if it works for you. The general idea is not to hide your newbieness. It’s perfectly okay to be a newbie and even to admit it to people. When you’re a newbie, your initial goal is to calibrate your skills, not to achieve a particular result. So take the pressure off as to whether or not you succeed or fail. You can go for results after you’ve calibrated your skills.

If you pretend to be an expert when you’re not, you’ll just stress yourself out. Wear the badge of Newbie Pride.

Incidentally, if you actually try this, please let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear how people react to it. I think this could work for men and women alike.

In fact, if a woman came up and used this opener on me, I’d probably laugh and say, “Sure, let’s practice.” I’d be pretty impressed by a woman who used such a line because it demonstrates a high level of awareness with a certain playfulness. I’d probably fall in love on the spot.

Great… now I’ve gotten myself all riled up to the point where I totally want to go to a night club and try this for real just to see what happens.

The Skill of Calibration

Being able to calibrate yourself to a new skill set is a skill in itself. The more skills you learn, the faster you’ll be able to achieve competence in each new skill you attempt.

One thing that happens as you calibrate to many different skills is that you become more comfortable being a newbie in general. Once you’ve gone through the newbie phase enough times, it ceases to bother you so much. You can start from rock bottom in a new field and be mostly okay with how badly you suck. You get used to it, and you know you’ll eventually get better. This makes it easier to put in the time as a newbie, so you can quickly progress to intermediate. For me the newbie phase is often the most fun and exciting because I learn the fastest during this time.

Another benefit of having lots of calibration experience is that you’ll be less intimidated by the experts. You’ll accept that they fine-tuned their calibration over many years. This will help you develop the patience necessary to keep hacking away in order to build long-term competence.

When I became a raw foodist earlier this year, I spent a lot of time communicating with successful long-term raw foodists. Initially, the information I gained was just overwhelming. I was offered thousands of pages of text to read (books, e-books, articles), plus audio, video, and live lectures to attend. There were some weeks where learning this skill practically became my full-time job. I had to unlearn many bad habits that were holding me back, not to mention breaking a lifelong addiction to cooked food. This was a total lifestyle overhaul, not just a minor diet change.

After months of study and practice, I eventually calibrated myself to being a successful raw foodist, well enough that I felt I could maintain it on autopilot. I’d probably label myself an advanced intermediate at this point. I have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, cooked foods are no longer appealing to me, I feel fantastic, and I love the foods I eat. As part of this re-calibration to raw foods, my taste buds have shifted a lot. I actually crave fresh greens now. I feel mildly deprived if I don’t eat at least a pound of greens each day. Now that I’ve achieved a decent calibration, maintaining this lifestyle is pretty much a no-brainer for me. But during the first few months, I had to invest a lot of thought and effort into it.

Immersion and Experimentation

When learning new skills, my preference is to get through the newbie phase as quickly as possible, so I can start enjoying some good results. In order to accomplish this, I’ll often put other areas of my life on hold, so I can devote the bulk of my time to building competence in the new skill. I don’t always do this, but if the skill is important to me, I prefer the strategy of total immersion instead of working on it a little bit each week.

The danger of being stuck in beginner mode for too long is that your early motivation may fade, and more self-discipline will be required to keep going. Many new bloggers give up within the first few months, well before they’re getting any results. It takes them too long to calibrate their skills to what is required for success in blogging, so they never make it past the beginner phase. After a few months, they still haven’t calibrated, so they continue to make the sorts of mistakes that a well-calibrated blogger could spot within seconds. For example, they write boring posts that nobody cares to read, or they write time-bound posts that will be worthless a year later. It takes too much discipline for them to keep going with no results to show for it, so they give up. Then they repeat the same process again in a different field. Hopefully by now you can clearly see that this is a loser strategy.

On the other hand, I’ve seen bloggers who’ve built a lot of traffic very quickly, earning $1000+ per month within a few months after they started. They threw themselves wholeheartedly into learning everything they could about blogging, and they were willing to be open-minded and flexible. They learned what worked for them and did more of it. They learned what didn’t work and stopped doing it. They understood that if they wrote a blog post, and it generated no increase in traffic whatsoever, then perhaps they should write something totally different instead of sticking with more of the same.

Proper calibration requires a lot of experimentation. If you don’t get a good result, you can interpret that as a negative result, and change something — change anything. But don’t keep doing what didn’t work, expecting that it’s just a matter of time before things pick up. It’s not really a matter of time. It’s a matter of skill.

When you immerse yourself in learning a new skill, don’t focus on trying to get results with the skill — at least not right away. Instead, focus on getting good at the skill.

For example, if you’re learning to blog, focus on writing posts in a variety of styles. You want to calibrate yourself to get good at writing blog posts that generate referrals. Don’t worry about trying to make money with your blog. Don’t even worry about trying to build a certain level of traffic. You can focus on those goals later. But initially, aim to figure out how to semi-consistently write awesome posts that generate referrals. If you can’t figure out how to do that, your blog will surely fail. But if you can calibrate yourself to this skill, then you can shift from building your skill to applying your skill. That’s where you can start really building your traffic and generating income from your work.

A New Equilibrium – Post-Calibration

The funny thing about calibration is that once you reach a certain point, you’ll tend to let go of all the tricks, tactics, and techniques you learned along the way. Now you’re able to maintain a certain level of success just by being yourself.

This happens because the skills you learned have been internalized. You no longer have to think about the details because your subconscious mind takes care of them for you. Applying your skill becomes much easier when you reach this point.

Blogging is largely effortless for me these days. I can crank out a detailed new article with fairly little effort. I got the idea for this particular article while I was at the gym this morning. I outlined it in my head while I took a shower. Later I sat down to write, and the words just flowed. It took me a while to write an article of this length of course, but the process was easy and effortless. The reason it was easy is that I’ve already calibrated myself to the skill of writing articles. There are lots of details that go into writing an article of this length, but I don’t have to consciously think about the process of how to write. It’s all internalized. I can just sit down at my desk, the ideas start flowing, and my fingers automatically start typing. I can chunk the task of writing an article as a single to-do item, even an article of this length, and it isn’t a big deal to me.

When I write a new blog post, I don’t consciously think about all the details that other pro bloggers would tell you are important. I just blog. It feels like a very simple thing to do, not nearly as complicated as it might seem. However, the reason I can keep it simple and still do well in this field is because I went through that complicated newbie phase years ago. I internalized the techniques that proved effective for me, so today I don’t even think about them anymore.

Putting a skill on automatic pilot is the long-term benefit of good calibration. Once you gain this calibration, you can’t really lose it. You may need to re-calibrate your skills from time to time to adapt to changing conditions, but that usually isn’t as hard as acquiring the initial calibration.

If you took away my blog and all my articles, and I had to start over from scratch as an anonymous blogger today, do you think I could repeat my success? I’m sure I could do so very quickly because I’ve already calibrated my blogging skills. I typically experience quick success when I can rely on a previous calibration, such as learning to spar in a new martial art or building a social network of friends in a new city. One of the reasons I achieved quick success as a blogger was that I benefited from my previous calibration of running a profitable online business for years, so I was able to adapt much of that skill to the medium of blogging. I was also able to adapt my blogging calibration to writing a book.

When you calibrate, you lock in a new skill. Then you can use that skill to generate consistently good results. This is a wonderful place to be. Post-calibration, you’ll typically feel very confident within the realm of that skill. You have every reason to feel confident because you’re genuinely competent. I’d feel comfortable starting a new online business. I’d feel comfortable moving to a new city where I didn’t know anyone. I’d feel confident studying a new style of martial arts. I’d feel confident giving a new speech. However, the first time I did these things, I hadn’t yet calibrated myself for success. The only kind of confidence I was able to muster back then was the “fake it till you make it kind,” which is more false bravado than genuine confidence.

Calibrate Is a Verb

Don’t let the newbie phase get you down. Everyone has to go through it. Get a newbie training partner if you must, but turn toward that newbie fear, and run straight at it. The fear will soon go away. It’s not a big deal to fail or to get rejected. That’s part of being a newbie. Accept it. You will get better.

In order to calibrate your skills, you have to take action. You can’t just sit at home reading or studying training materials. You must go into the field and do field work under real-world conditions.

As Mike Tyson said, “Everybody’s got plans… until they get hit.”

I know so many people who’ve spent months reading about and talking about starting an online business. They still don’t have an online business. But they just keep talking about it and planning it, as if that’s some form of phantom progress. Their calibration is still at zero. They think they’re getting closer to their goal. From my perspective, they haven’t even started yet. They’re just procrastinating.

Such people would do much better if they stopped reading and planning and started doing. Nobody earned a black belt from reading about martial arts.

Which approach do you think will generate the best results? Reading about a diet for 30 days? Or doing a 30-day trial of that diet?

Which will improve your social skills the most? Watching social skills videos for 30 days? Or going out every night for 30 days and starting up conversations with strangers?

Which will generate the best blogging results? Reading blogs on blogging for 30 days? Or starting your own blog and posting your own blog entries for 30 days?

Which will generate the best physical results? Read about weight training for 30 days? Or hit the gym and do 30 days of weight training?

Reading and studying will give you knowledge and information that sits in your mind. That seems like a good thing, but you’ll still have zero results to show for your efforts. You’re actually no closer to your goals. You’re still at the starting line. But if you go out and do the best you can to apply what you know right now, even if your understanding is full of holes, you’ll quickly learn what works under real-world conditions, and you’ll adapt. You’ll make a huge leap forward in your calibration. You’ll also generate some real-world results that may benefit you.

Get your nose out of the books and onto the field. Take your licks as they come, and learn from them. Build your skills under real-world conditions, so you can actually apply them to get results. Don’t just read about life. Live it.

Reading and learning are awesome, but make sure you’re using these as supplements for in-field experience, not substitutes. If you’re reading about any skill you want to develop, but you aren’t regularly performing in the field yet, you’re just procrastinating. Deep down you already knew that, didn’t you? I’m here to remind you of this, so you can hate me for it and help spread the word about how awful I am.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The original release date was October 15th, but the book has already shipped and is available now.

You can get it at Amazon.com and in many major bookstores, including Borders, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Hastings.

The major book distributors also have it too, including Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Partners, Bookazine, and New Leaf. So if your local bookstore doesn’t carry it yet, it should be easy for them to order it if you request it.

Why an Early Launch?

The early launch was actually a mistake. I learned of it last week when people started telling me that they’d just received their pre-ordered copies from Amazon. That was news to me!

I checked the Amazon sales page for the book and saw that it was no longer in pre-order status — it was already selling. Once that happened, the book’s Amazon sales rank quickly climbed into the top 1,000. And I hadn’t even announced the release yet.

I promptly contacted Hay House to find out what happened. Apparently the book was supposed to be shipped from the printer to their warehouse, and then it would be shipped to their distributors shortly before the launch. But instead, thousands of books were shipped from the printer directly to the distributors and retail chains, who promptly began selling them.

Obviously this throws off the timing of my launch plans, but all we can do is roll with it. I’m not even bothered by this because I’m so thrilled that the book has finally shipped.

Blogger Review Copies – Update

If you’re a blogger who took advantage of my review copy offer, there’s no need to wait until October to post your review. Please feel free to review the book as soon as you get a chance to read it. If you email me a link to your review via my contact form any time between now and October 31st, I’ll be happy to add a link to your review. I’m going to do this in batches. About 420 bloggers have already been approved for review copies, so that’s a lot of reviews.

The review copies began shipping last week, so please be patient if you haven’t received your copy yet. Most reviewers will receive a print copy in the mail. But there were a lot of requests from international bloggers, and it was a challenge to find a fair way to qualify them. Hay House wanted to disqualify almost all of these requests because many of the international blogs were in languages or countries where the book isn’t even available yet, and Hay House wants to focus on the U.S. launch. Many of these requests also came from countries where the mail system is unreliable, such as parts of Eastern Europe. And on top of that, many international bloggers said they preferred an electronic version of the book, so they could get it sooner.

I still wanted everyone to get a print copy, but Hay House has to pay for this, and shipping hundreds of books internationally isn’t cheap.

After some discussion we ultimately decided to send the international bloggers a PDF version of the book, but if their traffic was high enough (we had to set the bar fairly high), Hay House would still mail them a print copy. Maybe this wasn’t a perfect solution, but I think it was a fair way to handle it. The alternative would have been to disqualify most of the international review copy requests. But this way, nearly everyone who requested a review copy will receive something — either a print copy or a PDF. If you received the PDF but don’t like reading on your computer screen, you can always print it and read it on paper. I don’t know too many people that read long e-books on their screens.

If you didn’t participate in the free review copy offer but would still like to review the book on your website or blog, I’ll link to your review if you send me a link to it… as long as it has some decent substance to it and doesn’t just rehash the back cover text.

I’m not possessive about the ideas in the book — I really want them to spread. I’d love to see people writing about other ways to apply the book’s 7 principles to specific challenges and situations. Put your own creative spin on it.

Several bloggers have already posted reviews and have sent me the links. I’ll be sure to link to these reviews soon. I’m just waiting for a few more to come in so I can do this in batches.

Interview Requests

I still have about two dozen interview requests to process, so if you requested an interview, please be patient. I’ll endeavor to reply to all of the requests I’ve received so far by the end of the week. As you can imagine, this is a pretty busy time for me.

***

So I turn my back for one minute… and my book sneaks out the door without me. Must be an Aries.

I see that there are already a couple of Amazon reviews posted. I’m delighted to read some of the first pieces of feedback about the book. Wow!

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

In chess there’s an early game, a middle game, and an endgame. The same is true for habit change.

Many people try to change their habits by skipping straight to the endgame. They dive in and commit themselves to making the change happen right away. This is what people do when they make a New Year’s Resolution. It hardly ever works.

Scholar’s mate

Trying to change a habit overnight is like trying to execute scholar’s mate in chess. Scholar’s mate is a strategy of achieving checkmate in only four moves. It only works against total beginners. Against a chess player with an ounce of experience, scholar’s mate will fail. A botched scholar’s mate puts you in a disadvantaged position, so attempting it is usually a bad idea unless you’re playing against a complete novice.

Are you applying the scholar’s mate strategy when trying to change old habits or adopt new habits? Do you go straight for the kill, only to find your attempt shot down?

When you try to change a habit without devoting sufficient time to the early game and middle game, you’ll almost always fail to make the change stick. Only the very easy habits will succumb to this kind of brute force strategy.

The early game of habit change is education and setup. In the middle game, you execute some changes to support your habit change. Only in the endgame do you go directly for the kill.

Early game

In the early game of chess, your goal is to set up your pieces for success. Move your pieces out. Develop a solid pawn structure. Get control of the center of the board. Put some pressure on your opponent’s pieces. Defend your king. The goal of the early game is to get off to a strong start where you’ll hopefully be able to gain an advantage. The endgame is still a long way off.

In the early game of habit change, you’re also setting yourself up for future success. Read some books to educate yourself. Talk to people who’ve already made the change you seek. Write up a one-page plan for how you’re going to pull it off. These opening moves needn’t be complicated, but they shouldn’t be ignored.

Middle game

In the middle game of chess, you’ll normally become more aggressive, but you still aren’t going for checkmate yet. You’re mainly looking for opportunities to gain an advantage in material, position, or momentum. Use solid tactics to weaken your opponent until you have a shot at checkmate.

In the middle game of habit change, your goal is to attack the scaffolding around the habit, not to go after the habit directly. What tactics can you use to give you an advantage? For example, if you want to change your diet, purge all the problem foods from your house, pick 5 restaurants where you can order healthy meals, learn 10 new healthy recipes, and recruit a buddy to go through the same change. Tell other people about the change you’re attempting, and request their support. For any habit you want to change, you should be able to come up with at least a dozen tactical moves that will increase your advantage.

Endgame

In the endgame of chess, your goal is to checkmate your opponent’s king. If you do a good job in the early game and middle game, you’ll be in a strong position to achieve checkmate. If you race through the first two stages, your own king will probably be mated instead. The endgame is often fairly straightforward. Usually it’s clear that you’ve either won or lost by this point.

In the endgame of habit change, you finally initiate the change with the goal of making it stick. This is the point where you would begin a 30-day trial. Only in the endgame do you actually try to change your habit. Up until this point you’re simply jockeying for an advantage that will make the endgame successful.

Fortunately, unlike chess, in the game of habit change, you can spend as long as you want in the early game and middle game. You don’t have to worry about a timer counting down or an opponent trying to outthink you.

If you fail in the endgame (meaning that your new habit doesn’t stick), your mistake was most likely not in the endgame. You probably screwed up in the early game or middle game. You didn’t take enough time to educate and prepare yourself, and/or you didn’t do enough work to give yourself a decisive advantage before you started.

The role of self-discipline

If you feel you must call forth a seemingly inhuman level of self-discipline while trying to change one of your habits, it usually means you botched or neglected the early game and/or middle game. Sweating through a habit change isn’t self-discipline; sweating is the consequence of executing an ineffective strategy. More sweat won’t help much.

Picture a chess player sweating every move in the endgame. Is this a good player? Often this is a sign of a weak player. For a skilled, disciplined player, the endgame frequently plays itself, with the outcome being a foregone conclusion. Since there are fewer pieces on the board, there are fewer options to consider.

If you can’t even make it through the first week of a new habit without feeling an overwhelming urge to quit because you have to push yourself unreasonably hard to keep going, your mistakes were made long before you even began day one. You’re trying to pull off the equivalent of scholar’s mate, and your imaginary “opponent” isn’t stupid enough to fall for it.

Sometimes a little self-discipline will be required in the endgame, especially if you’re tackling a really tough habit, but if you built a solid foundation in the earlier stages, the endgame will often be smooth sailing.

The proper role of self-discipline is to make the best moves you can in the early game and middle game, such that by the time you reach the endgame, achieving checkmate is easy and straightforward. Self-discipline also plays a major role even before the early game. Did you give proper attention to study, practice, and training before you challenged your opponent to a match? Do you know your strengths and how to leverage them? Do you know your opponent’s weaknesses and how to take advantage of them? Are you prepared to win?

If you take a disciplined approach to habit change, you won’t be sweating the endgame. By the time you’re starting on day one of your new habit, you’ll have already knocked the legs out from under your old habit and build the necessary scaffolding to support your new habit. When you finally begin day one, you’ll already have the upper hand.

What can you do to put yourself in a more advantageous position with respect to changing one of your habits? How can you eliminate obstacles, cut off escape routes, derail threats, gain more leverage, take control of the center, etc? What early and middle game strategy and tactics will virtually guarantee success before you even begin day one?

Incidentally, applying chess concepts to personal development is an example of how cultivating many different interests enables us to transplant basic concepts from one field to another to solve problems creatively.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The notion that you have to commit to a single trade for life (or even for a decade or two) makes sense if you want to live like an industrial worker drone. But then you’re just filling the role of a cog in a giant machine, perfectly disposable and easily replaced by similar cogs.

Let me guess… the people telling you (maybe even yelling at you) to pick one thing and commit to it are also on the drone path themselves, right? Do you honestly want their results? Or would you like something better?

It’s perfectly okay to reject the drone path, you know. Lots of people do, and they’re much happier for it. But they aren’t the same people that will tell you, “Pick one thing and stick to it, or you’ll never amount to anything.” Instead they’ll probably say, “The more interests you pursue, the smarter you’ll become.”

There’s no rule that says you must commit to being a drone

I don’t want to commit to any one thing for life. I don’t even like committing to just one thing for a month. I have too many interests. If I picked just one thing and let all the rest go, I wouldn’t be happy. I’d just feel trapped. So I chose to reject that option. I can see that it isn’t right for me. Hmmm… for some reason the people that said I should specialize got a lot quieter when my eclectic interests started paying off financially.

Presently I enjoy writing, blogging, speaking, podcasting, online business, studying self-improvement, philosophy, humor, disc golf, psychic development, etc. Why should I pick just one? Am I a blogger, an author, a speaker, a personal development expert, an Internet entrepreneur? So I have a chaotic resume. Who cares?

In the past I trained in martial arts (tae kwon do and kempo), did lots of distance running including a marathon, learned to count cards at blackjack, performed with a comedy improv troupe, learned to juggle, designed and programmed computer games, and did lots of other things I enjoyed. Many of these activities were pursued on weekdays between the hours of 9am and 5pm. But guess what… nobody came to arrest me for it. The earth didn’t spin off its axis because I failed to pick just one thing.

If you have lots of interests, people will complain. Let them.

It might be hard to see it unless you hang out with me in person, but I switch back and forth between various interests all the time. Sometimes I’m really dedicated to writing/blogging for several days in a row. Other times I’ll put my blog on the back burner, and I’ll spend more time speaking or just working on personal growth.

Sometimes people complain when I slack off on blogging to pursue other interests, but I retain the freedom to make that choice when I know it’s right for me. Since there are hundreds of free articles in the archives and 21 free podcasts, and since the forums are available 24/7, I don’t feel like I have to post something every day to keep the blog going. If my blog starts to feel like a “monkey on my back,” I simply let it go for a while. Then I pick it up again when I’m inspired to return to it.

Whenever I pull back from one area to pursue another, I get the “What happened to you? Where have you been?” questions. If I take a few months off from going to Toastmasters meetings (such as I did while writing my book), my friends wonder what happened to me. Did I fall off the planet? Am I quitting the club? If I don’t blog for a week, somebody may start a new “Is Steve dead?” discussion in the forums. I just accept that this happens. It’s a natural consequence of having a variety of interests. I’m not dead. I’m just switching modes. This week I’m really inspired to do some blogging. Earlier this year I was more focused on writing my book. Later this year I’ll be doing a lot of work to promote my book.

Many interests = faster growth = becoming smarter

The benefit of having lots of different interests is that you train your brain to learn many new patterns. The patterns you learn in one field can then be applied to totally different fields to solve problems creatively.

Within a single field, the dominant experts tend to develop tunnel vision. They get attached to certain patterns. They frequently network with each other, so they all know each other’s favorite patterns. This definitely happens in the field of personal development.

But often the people who do the most innovative work are the outsiders who arrive with fresh patterns that the existing experts haven’t been exposed to. This is great because these outsiders can stimulate lots of growth. Albert Einstein is a good example. While he worked as a patent clerk, he had virtually no contact with the mainstream physics community.

One of the reasons I’ve been so successful as a personal development blogger is that I came into this field as an outsider. My college degrees are in computer science and mathematics, not psychology or philosophy. Because of my background, I often notice patterns that other people in this field overlook (or simply discount).

What makes me different from most other experts in this field is that I tend to think in binary and algorithmic terms. When you write a computer program, either it produces the desired output or it doesn’t. A math problem is either solved or it isn’t. You can’t use a half-assed or fuzzy approach in those fields and expect to succeed. Either you’re right or you’re wrong. Either you have a solution that works, or you don’t. There isn’t much of an in-between where you can squeak by. If you want to succeed in computer science or math, you have to be good at solving problems. Your solutions have to actually work. You can’t fake it or B.S. your way into a computer’s good graces and expect it to ignore your personal failings. If you’re wrong, you get zero results. A bad program usually doesn’t degrade gracefully — the program simply won’t run at all.

When I got interested in personal development, one thing that really annoyed me was just how wishy washy and imprecise everything was. There were entire bookshelves filled with what I considered to be utter B.S. The books promised practical solutions to real problems, but inside all you’d find would be vapid drivel and stories of exaggerated results. After reading lots of computer programming books and learning precise solutions that would work properly every time, this was a big change for me.

Since I like patterns that are very tight, precise, and effective, I dislike solutions that aren’t universal. I also dislike gray areas since I prefer to think in more black and white terms. So I’m inclined to say things like, “Either you’re doing what you love, or you aren’t. Which is it?” I know my approach won’t appeal to everyone, and more than once I’ve been accused of being too rigid in my thinking, but I also know there’s a place for this mindset in the self-help field.

Similarly, if you were a psychologist coming into the field of computer science, you might be inclined to introduce problem-solving methods that allow for more fluidity and imprecision… such as fuzzy logic.

When I wrote my book Personal Development for Smart People, I developed a pseudo-mathematical model for personal growth, including a complete structural framework I’ve never seen anywhere else in this field. I could have subtitled my book, “The hidden geometry of personal growth.” (If you follow that last link and scroll down a bit, you’ll see a triangle that represents the essence of that model.) Maybe we can’t get as precise as mathematics when dealing with conscious growth, but I think we can get a lot closer than we are now.

If you like thinking about personal growth in fairly linear terms — i.e. tell me how to figure out what I want and how to get there — you’ll probably love my book. But if you prefer a more Zen-like, go-with-the-flow, allow-life-to-happen-to-you style, you’ll probably find my book too rigid for your tastes. Nevertheless, I have no doubt this book will carve out a strong position in its field (just as my blog has done) because its creative solutions and patterns will help people solve problems in new ways.

Now imagine if I switched careers again. I could then apply patterns I learned from all the other fields I studied to produce creative, original work in that new field. Patterns from personal growth, math, computer science, blogging, martial arts, etc. would surely generate new solutions in seemingly unrelated fields.

Even when I play disc golf with my friends, I apply patterns I learned in other fields. For example, my disc golf buddies all have a preferred throwing style for their drives — they almost always throw their drives using the same technique. But I will employ different throwing styles to adapt to the terrain. Sometimes I’ll do forehand throws, sometimes I’ll use backhand, and sometimes I’ll throw rollers — all within the same game. This means I don’t get as much practice with any single style, but I can be more flexible in adapting to the terrain.

That was a very basic example, but “adapting solutions to the terrain” was actually a pattern I learned from computer programming. Programmers will often use different algorithms to solve essentially the same problem, adapting their solutions to the specific circumstances. There are lots of different sorting and searching algorithms, and the optimal solution depends on the particular problem you want to solve. When I play disc golf, I ask myself, “What is the correct throwing technique (algorithm) I need to use here to help me minimize (optimize) the number of throws it will take me to get to the basket (goal)?”

You’ll be surprised at how many opportunities there are to use insights you learn in one field to solve problems in a seemingly unrelated field. The long-term benefit of cultivating many different interests is that you build a powerful toolkit of problem-solving patterns. This gives you more flexibility when facing certain challenges. People sometimes praise me for a brilliant insight that helped them solve a challenging problem when all I did was cross-pollinate a known solution pattern from one field to another.

Making money from your varied interests – creative solutions

It’s important to note that you don’t have to earn money from all of your interests. If you just dive in and pursue what you enjoy, you may be surprised to find out which interests help you generate income and which don’t.

Most of my interests don’t generate any income directly, and that’s perfectly fine. But a lot of them do, including hosting advertising on this website, writing a book, doing professional speaking, and reviewing and recommending products.

What earns me the most money right now? My income is fairly diversified, but the single most lucrative activity for me at present is reviewing and recommending products — not blogging or speaking. You might think I earn the most money from all the writing I do, but that isn’t how it works. Perhaps my writing is what creates the most value for others, but it doesn’t generate the most income… at least not directly.

Publishers frequently send me information products to review. At any given time, I usually have 50-100 books and several days worth of audio/video in my queue. I listen to audio programs at the gym or on my computer at 2-4x playback speed, and I PhotoRead lots of books. (Incidentally, Learning Strategies is currently repeating their PhotoReading discount for StevePavlina.com readers this month — something they’ve done only once per year. I’ll make a separate blog post about that shortly after this one.)

When I encounter something I really, really love and feel good about recommending, I work out a profit-sharing deal with the publisher in exchange for recommending and promoting their product on my site. This works great for information products because the profit margin is often 80% or higher, since the value is in the information, not the packaging. Usually I can also get them to offer my readers a better deal than if you bought from them directly. This arrangement is a win for the publishers because they gain many new customers with no marketing costs. A good product will do more than $100,000 in sales in the first 30 days if I recommend it. It’s a win for me because I get all the free products I could ever desire, and I earn six figures a year just from a handful of recommendations. Once I’ve posted my product review, I enjoy an ongoing passive income from ongoing sales, receiving commission checks every month. The benefit for my readers is that they get introduced to the best products I find — often with a discount or bonus and always with a money-back guarantee so there’s no risk. Additionally, all the free articles and podcasts are basically subsidized by this arrangement, so I can afford to invest many hours writing new articles like this one without having to charge for the information. All things considered, I think this is an incredibly fair deal for everyone.

However, the honest truth is that while I enjoy reviewing and recommending products from time to time, I don’t want to turn this single activity into my full-time career. I don’t want my blog to become nothing but a product review site. What you may not realize though is that by deciding to pursue other interests, I’m leaving a lot of potential income on the table. If I really wanted to, I’m sure I could earn 5-10x more money from this website… virtually overnight. How to do that is a no-brainer. Instead of recommending just a few products per year, I could recommend a new product every week or two. I certainly have no shortage of products to choose from. But in order to get there, I’d have to do one of two things.

The first option would be endorse more products, regardless of whether I thought they were any good. There are many products backed by slick marketing that sell well online, but the underlying information is worthless junk. I wouldn’t even need to look at the products, so that would save me tons of time. Some publishers actually offer me pre-written endorsement letters, and all I’d need to do would be to affix my name and send them off. You’ll encounter many Internet marketers who do this very thing, proudly recommending products they’ve never tried, just because they know it will make them money. I see the same endorsement letters I’ve been offered showing up in other people’s newsletters. Don’t worry though — you won’t see me going this route. Personally I can’t stomach the thought of doing anything like this. It isn’t aligned with truth and love, and it’s also the wrong polarity for me. I’m simply sharing that if my #1 goal was to earn more money by doing just one thing, I could certainly do it. But I think I’ll hang onto my soul for now.

Since I can summarily reject the first option, the other option would be to review a lot more products. Hopefully by reviewing more products in less time, I’d be able to find more gems. If I did nothing but review and recommend products full-time, I could probably find 20-30 really good ones I could honestly recommend each year. But this would mean I’d have to dump a lot of my other interests, and I’m simply not willing to do that, even if it means earning 10x more money. I’m happier earning less money while maintaining a good balance of activities I enjoy. So I have to reject this option because it isn’t aligned with love.

My point is that you don’t have to go after the option that makes you the most money. You can pursue many different interests and still find a creative mix that allows you to earn money AND maintain an abundant lifestyle AND be happy AND make a difference. It’s a huge mistake to pursue money at all costs, especially if you have to sacrifice so many of the things you love doing. Do what you enjoy, and leave the extra money on the table.

I’ve met a few Internet marketers who will pimp themselves to promote any potentially lucrative products they come across, milking their lists for as much money as they can, without even trying the products they endorse. They pride themselves on being able to manipulate emotions to get people to buy. They boast about how much money they make from promoting overpriced crap to people who are too naive to know any better. (I can attest to the veracity of the “crap” label because my office toilet is permanently stained from flushing many of the products they’ve sent me.) After conversing with such people for a while, I feel like I’ve been drenched in darkworker slime. What do I say to them? “Sorry, I can’t help promote your products on my site because you’re evil.” I’m not sure how that one would fly.

Fortunately I’ve found a good way of responding to such people. I simply say, “Unfortunately my intuition says no on this, so I’ll have to pass.” I really love that line because they have no defense against it, and best of all, it’s the truth. If I say anything else, they usually pop into “counter objections mode” and try to turn me. But they have no means of arguing against my intuition because they’re so out of touch with theirs. (If you’re one of the people who happened to be on the receiving end of this line from me, it doesn’t normally mean I think you’re evil. It’s just one of many stock replies I give for business offers I must decline.)

If I try to challenge such people to realign themselves with truth and love, that sometimes has the side effect of making them want to light saber me. Eventually I’ll find a way to turn one of them. Such people are pretty well aligned with power, but what they don’t yet realize is that if they could bring themselves into alignment with truth and love as well, they’d become even more powerful. They’d also be a lot happier and more fulfilled. This may sound strange, but I’m actually thinking of offering consultations to such people to help them restore balance to their lives. They’re in a position to positively affect a lot of other people if they can get it right, so helping even one of those people can create a lot of leverage. But of course I couldn’t do that… because that would mean pursuing yet another interest. <- Yes, this is sarcasm!

Now that was a fun tangent. Ugh… don’t try to mix math and humor.

* * *

If you aspire to be a one-hit wonder, by all means go for it. Otherwise, take note that historically speaking, people would develop a variety of skills to meet their needs. Overspecialization may be good for corporations, but it’s not so great for conscious human beings. Even a farmer from the 1850s probably has you beat in the skills diversity department. Can you look out at a vacant plot of land and build your own self-sustaining farm and a home for your family with some basic hand tools? (If you can say yes to that, then come to Las Vegas this summer and prove it!)

The next time someone tells you to settle down and pick just one thing for your career, your college major, or your source of income, I recommend you reply as follows: “I appreciate your concern, but since I don’t share your dream of becoming a prized poodle, I must reject your advice as being utterly stupid.”

Then challenge them to a round of disc golf.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The official release date is October 15, 2008, so we still have about three months to go before it’s publicly available. I was told the book will go to the printer on July 15. The initial print run is 30,000 copies.

I’ve been fairly quiet about the book up to this point, but I’m happy to share some details about it now.

Personal Development for Smart People will be published by Hay House. Hay House is the #1 self-help book publisher in the world. Other authors they’ve published include Dr. Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, and hundreds more. Founder Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life has sold over 35 million copies and continues to sell about a million copies a year. Wow!

The best part is that Hay House came to me, so I didn’t have to go through the slush pile submission process. They originally found me because I reviewed their 2006 I Can Do It! seminar in my blog. From there they checked out some of my articles and liked what they saw. Cool, eh?

The book will come out in hardcover with a retail price of $24.95, but you can get it for a good discount online. Amazon.com currently has the lowest price. If you pre-order the book from them, they guarantee you’ll get the lowest price they offer between now and the book’s release. Last I checked they were selling it for about $16.

About a year after the hardcover release, the paperback version will be released. Apparently that’s fairly common in book publishing. It’s possible there may be an audio version if the book sells well, but so far there’s been no commitment to that. If Hay House sees demand for an audio version, I’ll be happy to record one.

This week the book’s Amazon sales rank has been bobbling around in the 3,000 to 10,000 range. It’s been popping on and off the top 100 lists for the motivational and personal transformation categories. It’s no Harry Potter, but I imagine that’s pretty good for a book that’s still three months from release.

Book vs. Blog

Personal Development for Smart People definitely isn’t a rehashing of previous blog posts or articles. The ideas in the book are new and original. Only a small portion of the content is based on existing material from this website.

This is a very unique book. Even if you’ve read 1000 or more personal development books like I have, I dare say you’ve never read anything quite like this.

You’ll find this to be an incredibly well-structured book. I spent a disgusting amount of time on the book’s high-level organization to make it as clear and easy to follow as I could.

I put a lot of effort into achieving a good left-brain / right-brain balance for the content. Even though I’m left-handed (and supposedly right-brained), I tend to be very left-brained and analytical in my writing, so I made a special effort to include plenty of right-brained material such as personal stories and application exercises to illustrate the book’s key points. Even so, this is a very content-rich book. I shied away from including anything that seemed lightweight or fluffy. I wanted to ensure that every page would feature hard-hitting ideas.

Since I worked with a publisher, the book was professionally edited. I’ve never worked with an editor before this project, and I was very impressed with how much the editing process improved the text. The editing work went way beyond checking for typos and tweaking sentence structure. I received a ton of feedback that I used to improve the ideas, stories, and examples as well.

I received a copy of the proofs last week, and I love the design and layout Hay House created for the interior of the book. It has an almost mathematical look to it — you won’t find any flowers or butterfly patterns on the inside.

How This Book Came to Be

I originally started writing Personal Development for Smart People in the Spring of 2005, more than three years ago. My plan was to write a very grounded, practical book of personal development advice. I’d been blogging for less than a year at that point, but I had plenty of ideas to fill a book. I completed an outline, did a ton of research, and wrote three chapters (about 30,000 words). Then realized I had a problem.

I felt I just wasn’t going deep enough. The book had many unique ideas, and the writing was solid, but I was disappointed with how it was turning out. It didn’t strike me as truly inspired. I said to myself, “This isn’t me. This isn’t the book I’m supposed to write. I can do better than this.” But at the time, I didn’t know how to write a better book.

I began to sense there were deeper truths I needed to discover before I could write the book I felt I was meant to write. So I put the project on hold for a couple years. During that time I received unsolicited offers from three different book publishers, but I turned them all down. The timing just wasn’t right.

I’d written many articles about personal growth, but I still didn’t have a clear definition of what it means to grow as a conscious human being. What the heck does it mean to grow anyway? Basically it means you make your life better in some way. But how do we define better? I realized that if I was going to write a book about personal growth, I needed a clear answer to these questions. It was clear that my original outline for the book had to be scrapped.

We have all these experts giving us different rules for how to manage our health, our relationships, our finances, our spiritual development, etc. But why should we compartmentalize our lives like this? Why should growth be so complicated? I wanted to find a smarter, simpler approach — a set of universal principles that we can trust no matter what problems or circumstances we face in life. Like many others in the field, I’d been writing about the branches of personal development, but what was really needed was a book about the roots.

The Core Principles of Personal Growth

Well… it took about 2-1/2 years, but I eventually discovered the core universal principles I was seeking. The process wasn’t remotely easy, but the end result is a book I feel incredibly good about. I honestly expect this book will permanently change the way you think about personal growth. Instead of a monstrous sea of complexity, this book simplifies all growth efforts to a fairly simple set of core principles.

Those principles can be summarized by this diagram:

There are seven principles total: truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence. All of these are universal principles, so they can be applied to any area of your life — health, relationships, spiritual development, finances, daily habits, etc.

These principles are so universal that you can pick up any decent self-help book, and you’ll be able to recognize some combination of these principles in the writing. These principles are the roots.

Truth, love, and power are the primary principles. The other principles are secondary because they can be derived from the first three. The diagram shows how this works:

• Oneness = Truth + Love
• Authority = Truth + Power
• Courage = Love + Power
• Intelligence = Truth + Love + Power

What arises from this model is a new definition of human intelligence: Intelligence is one’s degree of alignment with truth, love, and power.

You can’t be intelligent if you turn your back on truth and succumb to falsehood and denial. Similarly, it isn’t intelligent to withdraw and isolate yourself from everyone and everything because that would rob you of all your best learning and growth experiences. And lastly, it isn’t intelligent to weaken and disempower yourself. You can’t live as a truly intelligent human being unless you’re willing to embrace truth, love, and power.

Intelligence is our highest expression of personal growth. The purest aim of all growth efforts is to live as intelligently as we can. We aren’t talking about IQ here. We’re talking about aligning ourselves with the true nature of reality instead of railing against it. This requires that we continually strive to become more truthful, more loving, and more powerful — both as individuals and collectively. Anything that turns us away from truth, love, and power also makes us less intelligent.

I realize these principles must sound very abstract, but in practice they’re extremely practical and grounded once you learn how they work.

Any solid personal development book will give you advice for bringing your life into better alignment with truth, love, and/or power. Unfortunately the vast majority of books do this in a very partial, fragmented way. For example, suppose you read a book about wealth strategies. Such books will usually try to teach you how to make more money by increasing your financial authority. You’ll be taught some financial rules (truth), and you’ll be encouraged to take specific actions (power). But it’s rare that you’ll encounter money-oriented books that successfully incorporate the principles of love and oneness. What you often get is a cold, largely heartless approach to making money centered on greed and pushing yourself to succeed. If you’re a fairly conscious person, such strategies will only make you nauseous, and you’ll fail to achieve the level of financial abundance such books promise. It’s time to set aside these partial solutions. It’s time for us to transition to a holistic approach to personal growth that satisfies our heads, hearts, and spirits. No more compromises.

Table of Contents

Here’s the Table of Contents for the book:

————————–

Introduction

Part I: Fundamental Principles

Chapter 1: Truth

Chapter 2: Love

Chapter 3: Power

Chapter 4: Oneness

Chapter 5: Authority

Chapter 6: Courage

Chapter 7: Intelligence

Part II: Practical Application

Chapter 8: Habits

Chapter 9: Career

Chapter 10: Money

Chapter 11: Health

Chapter 12: Relationships

Chapter 13: Spirituality

Afterword

About the Author

Resources

————————–

As you can see, the book is organized into two parts, which you can think of as theory and application.

Part I explains the seven core principles, one chapter per principle. This part of the book is intended to give you a new “big picture” model for understanding what it means to grow as a conscious human being. This is a holistic model, not a fragmented approach. Although the high-level concepts may seem a little abstract at first, there are plenty of stories, real-world examples, and exercises to teach you how these principles work on a practical level. I think you’ll find this material fairly easy to understand.

Part II is all about the practical application. After you learn how the principles work, you’ll receive an abundance of instruction on how to apply each of the seven principles to improve your results in six major areas of your life: habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. By the time you’ve finished the book, you should have such a clear understanding of the principles that you’ll be able to apply them to any problem or situation you face in life.

The Universal Principles of Conscious Growth

The seven principles function as a universal growth compass. You can use them to diagnose any problem or challenge you face, and they’ll always point you in the direction of positive growth and change. Because the principles are universal, it doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with a health problem, financial problem, relationship problem, spiritual problem, or just general laziness or confusion about what to do with your life. These principles will help you gain a level of clarity you’ve probably never experienced before.

The great thing about universal principles is that once you understand how they work, you can apply them to solve an endless variety of specific, real-world problems. Consider that after we figured out the fundamental laws of mathematics and physics, we became empowered to solve a wide variety of practical problems. If we didn’t discover those principles first, it would have been impossible for us to create rich structures such as the Internet.

While physical laws empower us within the physical universe, the laws of conscious growth empower us within the conscious universe. These laws are so universal that if your consciousness survives your physical death, you could continue to use these principles to further your conscious growth in the afterlife. The principles are independent of physicality, even though they can be applied with great effect in the physical universe. I like to think of them as the underlying geometry of consciousness itself.

If you’re dealing with a major problem in your life right now, I guarantee that your specific problem can be redefined as a problem of alignment with one or more of the three primary principles. Either you’re having a problem with truth, allowing too much falsehood and denial to creep into your life. Or you’re having a problem with love, failing to reach out and connect with the people, ideas, and activities that are most compatible with you. Or you’re having a problem with power, wallowing in weakness and/or cowardice instead of feeling strong and taking consistent action. In many cases you’ll have issues with all three areas.

Benefits of a Principle-Centered Approach

I know this book will have an impact on you because these ideas have had such a huge impact on me.

For the past several months, I’ve been doing my best to bring my life into greater alignment with truth, love, and power. The results have been amazing. I’ve experienced major breakthroughs in every area of my life. For example, my transition to a 100% raw vegan diet earlier this year was largely a result of discovering these principles. After multiple failed attempts at going raw, I finally gained the perspective I needed to make the leap. That diet has been working wonderfully for me, and today I’m enjoying an almost ridiculous abundance of physical, mental, and emotional energy. I had similar breakthroughs in overcoming some blocks in my relationship with Erin, gaining clarity about my future career path, increasing my spiritual centeredness, improving my speaking skills, and feeling more deeply committed to my life purpose. I even beat my course record at disc golf yesterday.

Whenever I’m facing a problem or challenge now, I immediately turn to these principles. They allow me to generalize the specific problem I’m having, reinterpreting it as a problem of alignment with truth, love, and/or power. Once I redefine the problem in these simple terms, I can apply the known solutions to solve the problem in a general way. Then I can use that general solution to devise a specific solution to the real-world problem. The process is similar to how you might define a physical world problem as a math problem. Once you solve the math problem on paper, you essentially have a solution to the real-world equivalent. Since we’re dealing with problems of consciousness instead of physical objects, the solutions aren’t as crisp and precise as mathematical formulas, but I think they’re as close as we can reasonably get. Perhaps the most important benefit is that we gain a clear sense of where the solution lies, so we don’t have to waste so much time and energy making futile growth attempts that can’t possibly work.

Principle-Centered Balance

Most likely you’ll find that your current alignment with these principles is unbalanced. My strongest areas are truth and power. I usually have to work harder to stay aligned with love. Erin’s strongest areas are truth and love. She finds it much more difficult to stay aligned with power. One of the great benefits of our 14-year relationship is that Erin and I do a great job of balancing each other. She helps me become a more loving, compassionate person, while I encourage her to pursue her dreams and goals with more energy and less fear.

If you’re in a relationship right now, I think you’ll really enjoy Chapter 12 of the book, which explains how truth, love, and power dynamics play out in our relationships. That chapter alone could save you years of frustration by helping you avoid incompatible relationships. You’ll discover what you should look for in a truly compatible partner who can help you grow.

As you continue to increase your alignment with truth, love, and power, you’ll find that your life keeps getting better and better. You’ll solve problems more easily, enjoy a flow of abundance, and have the strength and energy to tackle meaningful goals. But when you fall out of alignment with any of these principles, you’ll find your situation stagnating or declining; however, the bright side is that you can diagnose where you went wrong and clearly see how to get back on track.

Very interestingly, aligning ourselves with truth, love, and power also points us in the direction of service to others. The principle of oneness (truth + love) tells us that we’re all inherently connected. We can’t isolate ourselves from other people or from the problems of the world. When we step out of our cocoons and grasp the truth that we’re all one, we can achieve an incredible synergy between helping ourselves and serving others at the same time.

OK, I’ve blabbed enough about the book for now. Obviously I’m very passionate and excited about these ideas. It pains me to have to wait three more months to see people reading it, but the benefit of working with a strong publisher is that they’ll help spread these ideas well beyond the Internet, reaching people that otherwise may not have found this website.

If this book sounds like it would be helpful to you, please take a moment to pre-order Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth at Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com. The book will be shipped to you as soon as it’s available.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Here are several techniques you can use to make better time estimates:

Calculate Your Fudge Ratio

The best place to start is to measure your current estimation accuracy.

Make a to-do list of upcoming tasks to complete, and jot down an off-the-cuff estimate for how long you expect each task to take. As you complete each task, record the time you actually spend on each one. Then add up your total time spent, and divide it by your total time estimate for the collection of tasks. That’s your fudge ratio.

For example, if you estimate that a certain list of tasks will take 12 hours to complete, but they really take 15 hours, then your fudge ratio is 15/12 = 1.25. This means you it took you 25% longer than expected to complete the tasks.

If you measure your fudge ratio for a variety of tasks, you’ll probably find that for individual tasks, your fudge ratio varies tremendously, perhaps ranging as widely as 0.1 to 10.0. However, for groups of tasks that collectively require a few days to complete, you may notice that your fudge ratio settles into a fairly narrow range. When you average enough tasks, your fudge ratio converges on a consistent figure.

My average fudge ratio is about 1.5. This means that whenever I make an off-the-cuff estimate for how long a task will take, on average I’m too optimistic; the task ends up taking about 50% longer than my initial guess. For any particular individual task, my estimates may be much more inaccurate. However, if I estimate that a collection of tasks will require about 2 days to complete, it’s a safe bet they’ll really require about 3 days.

Once you know your fudge ratio, you can use it to generate more accurate estimates for groups of tasks. Just add up your off-the-cuff estimates, and multiple the total by your known fudge ratio. This will tend to be a fairly accurate estimate.

I tend to be consistently optimistic when estimating the time required for certain tasks. Knowing my fudge ratio has NOT made my initial estimates more accurate. My off-the-cuff estimates are just as inaccurate as they’ve always been. However, when I multiply my estimates by the fudge ratio, the estimates come pretty close to the time required. This helps me budget my time better.

Based on my fudge ratio, I know that if I want to complete about 8 hours of actual work in a day, I should only list about 5 hours and 20 minutes worth of tasks based on my off-the-cuff time estimates (5:20 = 8 hours / 1.5). While it might seem silly to make this kind of compensation every day, in practice it works quite well — far better than the alternative of listing 8 hours of tasks and then either pushing myself to work a 12-hour day or feeling bad that I only completely 2/3 of my tasks. Self-sabotage can make things even worse when I subconsciously know I’m trying to do the impossible.

It’s better to make a reasonable task list that I can actually complete by the end of the day instead of beating myself up for being bad at estimating. Even if my daily task list seems too short at first glance, it feels good to cross off the final task at the end of the day. Due to daily variations, this isn’t perfectly accurate, but overall it’s better than anything else I’ve tried, and it encourages a sustainable daily rhythm without overworking or under-working.

I recommend using at least 10-20 hours of tasks for your initial fudge ratio calculation. If you based your calculation on only a few hours of tasks, your fudge ratio may not be accurate enough.

Of course it’s a good idea to recalculate your fudge ratio every once in a while. Once a quarter should be fine. It’s also wise to update it whenever the nature of your work changes, such as when you begin a new project or switch companies or careers.

If you want to get a little more detailed, you can calculate different fudge ratios for different kinds of work. Personally I don’t do this, but if you think it’s likely that different tasks will yield significantly different fudge ratios, it may be a good idea. For example, if you’re a student who finds that math homework has a fudge ratio of 0.9, but term papers have a fudge ratio of 1.7, you’ll probably want to maintain separate fudge ratios to create better estimates.

If you manage a team of people, you can calculate a fudge ratio for each member of your team (with or without their knowledge). Ask for time estimates from each team member for a collection of tasks, measure the actual time required, and calculate the fudge ratio for each team member. Whenever you get new time estimates from those team members for upcoming tasks, you can multiply their estimates by their individual fudge ratios. This will help you create a more accurate schedule for team projects. I think you’ll find that people tend to err in their estimates in a fairly consistent manner.

Achieve Reasonable Granularity

In order to make accurate estimates, it’s important that you break your tasks down to the right level of granularity. If your chunks are too big, you’ll overlook too many details. If your chunks are too small, you’ll get buried in low-level details, and you could spend more time estimating a task than it would take to just complete it; this is too much overhead.

For example, “Overhaul my website” sounds like a complex, multi-task project. This isn’t granular enough to make a reliable estimate. You’ll need to list the individual tasks needed to complete this project.

On the other hand, “Write mailing address on envelope” is way too granular. You could have completed this task in as much time as it took to list it and estimate it. This much detail only wastes your time instead of making you more efficient.

You should experiment to find the right chunk size where you can make the most accurate estimates. I’ll offer a couple pointers based on what works well for me:

The One-Sitting Rule. My estimates tend to be best for tasks I can complete in a single sitting. In practice this means about 2-4 hours per chunk. When I go less granular than that (bigger chunks), I miss too many details and grossly underestimate the time required. When I go more granular (smaller chunks), I list out too many details, I overestimate how long things will take, and I waste too much time creating and managing my to-do list instead of getting things done.

Compensate for Experience. If I’ve completed similar tasks many time before, my estimates will tend to be fairly accurate, so I might drop my fudge factor down to 1.2 or even 1.0. For example, I’ve written 700+ articles, so I’m pretty good at estimating how long an average article will take to write (3 hours is typical). But if I have to do something I’ve never done before, a fudge ratio of 2.0 or higher may be more accurate. The less experience I have with a task, the higher my fudge ratio needs to be.

Define Clear Task Boundaries

Make sure your tasks are clearly defined. Vague or nebulous tasks are hard to estimate.

If one of my tasks is “Update accounting,” I can’t be certain of what that includes. Does that mean balancing my checking account? Doing payroll? Filling out tax forms? Recording receipts? If I want to make a reliable estimate, I need a clear picture of what I’ll be doing.

You may find it helpful to list a few keywords for the components of an otherwise unclear task. You don’t necessarily need to estimate the time for each segment. You just need to be able to visualize what you’ll be doing. The keywords can help trigger the right imagery, so you can make a better estimate.

You should be able to quickly verbalize the first and last steps of each task. For example, when I see a task labeled “Write new blog entry,” I know that the first step is to pick a topic. The last step is to click the “Publish” button. If you can’t name the first and last steps of a task on your list, then your task doesn’t have clear boundaries. In that case you’ll need to take a moment to define those steps, or you’ll need to define your task a little more clearly, possibly by breaking it into smaller chunks. Good estimates require clear start/finish boundaries.

Be especially careful to consider what will be required to bring a task to 100% completion. If your task is to “Pay your bills,” does that end when you write the checks, when you deposit the payments in the mail (or complete an online payment process), when you file the paid bills in your filing cabinet, or when you balance your checkbook? Don’t forget to consider how long it takes to clean up and put away your materials. Even if you’re just making dinner, there will be dishes to attend to afterwards.

Reuse Estimates for Recurring Tasks

Once you’ve completed a recurring task, make a record of the time required for completion, so you can reuse that estimate in the future. When that task reappears on your to-do list, you can simply look up your old estimate. These estimates will be fairly accurate because they’re based on previous results, not previous estimates.

I recommend that you create an estimation list for your common recurring tasks. Here are two methods for doing that:

Method 1 (simple version). For a very basic estimation list, you only need to record a single figure for each task. Just note how long the task took to complete the last time you did it.

Your simple estimation list might look something like this:

Grocery shopping – 55 minutes

Make and eat dinner – 42 minutes

Vacuum house – 83 minutes

Wash, fold, and put away laundry – 75 minutes

And so on…

Once you build a good list of time estimates for recurring tasks, you can create a very reasonable plan for your day by adding tasks to your schedule.

Method 2 (detailed version). For a more complex version, you can record four figures for each task: (1) the number of times you’ve completed the task since you started keeping records, (2) your best (minimum) time to complete the task, (3) your worst (maximum) time to complete the task, and (4) your average time to complete the task. You can use these figures for making reliable estimates in the future; the min-max range tells you how reliable your estimates are likely to be. Whenever you complete each task again, take a moment to update your figures. In practice this won’t take much time at all, but you’ll end up with a fairly accurate list of estimates.

To update your average task time using this method, multiply (1) by (4), add the time required to complete the most recent repetition, and then divide the result by (1)+1. For example, if you previously completed a task 10 times, averaging 30 minutes per repetition, and the 11th repetition takes 35 minutes, then your new average is (10×30+35)/(10+1)=30.45 minutes. This method allows you to keep updating your average without having to record all of your previous task completion times.

If you record your best (minimum time) to complete a task, you can also use that to challenge yourself. Beating your previous record can motivate you to maintain a faster tempo. At the very least, try to beat your average time. Putting the clock on yourself can push you to work a little faster, especially for repetitive tasks that might otherwise seem a bit dull.

For most people I recommend Method 1. Method 2 is probably overkill unless you’re really committed to optimizing your time usage.

***

Learning to make better time estimates is a useful skill to develop, one that will serve you well for life. The methods above are actually quite easy to implement.

Becoming a better estimator may improve your life at the tactical level of daily time management, but be careful not to lose sight of the strategic level. Have you taken the time to define your life purpose? Are you setting the right goals? Are you working in the right career? Mastering low-level tactics won’t provide much value when your overall life strategy is nonsensical or nonexistent.

Even so, accurate estimation can benefit you across a variety of fields, so it’s a good skill to develop early in life. It’s still okay to develop this skill before you’ve achieved clarity at the higher levels of life purpose and long-term goals. Just be sure that at some point, you remember to attend to those higher levels, so you don’t merely become a faster rat on a treadmill.

What are your personal tips for generating good estimates? I invite you to share them in the forums. And remember, this is for posterity, so please… be honest.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

I recall a similar experience while running my computer games business. People would send me their ideas for new games, asking me what I thought the ideas were worth. Some wanted me to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) just to hear the idea because they were worried I might steal it. I still get a few NDA requests today. I simply disregard such requests. If people are paranoid I might steal their ideas, it’s best they keep the secret to themselves.

I generally tell people that their ideas are worthless. Good ideas are a dime a dozen, and even that price is too high.

Generating Good Ideas

Coming up with good ideas is easy. This includes ideas for new websites or businesses. Anybody can generate good ideas.

One technique you can use is to simply brainstorm a list. If you write down 20, 50, or 200 ideas for anything, chances are you’ll come up with a few gems. You probably have a decent flow of good ideas popping up at random times too, such as while showering or exercising. You certainly don’t have to be a genius to come up with good ideas.

Do you honestly suffer from a shortage of good ideas in your life? It’s more likely you have the opposite problem. If you had to decide between gaining 5 great new ideas vs. successfully implementing 5 ideas you already have, which would you choose? I’d much rather have the implementation.

If you truly feel deprived of ideas, you can get as many as you want for free. Just ask other people. Post some requests in the forums, and you should get plenty. In January I asked for suggestions for future 30-day trials and got more than 100 suggestions, far more than I could possibly implement. If you want more ideas, just ask around. A small percentage of those ideas will be useful.

The Value of Implementation

The real value of any creation is in the implementation, not the idea.

Do you really bemoan the fact that you didn’t think of some great idea before someone else did? Would it have made any difference if you did? You’re probably sitting on lots of great ideas that someone else is already implementing.

In the gaming industry, I saw several companies do quite well with ideas that were totally unoriginal. They succeeded because they had great implementation of those ideas. There are a lot of Galaga and Tetris clones on the market. I remember that many developers were disturbed by the success of these cloners.

I had an original game idea that I thought was pretty good, but it didn’t generate any income by itself. It just sat there on paper. It took months to turn it into an actual game, and the final product sold quite well. Some people assumed it was the idea that caused the game to sell well. No, it was the implementation of that idea.

Ideas are easy. Implementing ideas is hard because that’s where things get complicated. The devil is in the details. Turning something mental into something physical is often quite a challenge.

Sure there are exceptions, but even when people value ideas, solid implementation is still required to extract the value.

Making Ideas Concrete

Part of implementing an idea is making it more concrete, such as by creating a design doc or business plan. A structured document is more than an idea — it’s part of the implementation process. This is where you begin working out the practical details. If you do it correctly, this kind of work can really make you pull your hair out. But it also creates a lot of value.

For example, writing a 25-word, high-concept description for a new movie is pretty easy. Erin recently took a screenwriting class at UNLV, and she and I had fun cranking out several high-concept movie ideas in a matter of minutes. Even her instructor (an accomplished screenwriter) liked some of our ideas. But those ideas aren’t worth much by themselves. Turning an idea into a complete script is hard. Getting an agent is hard. Selling the script is hard. Revising the script is hard. Filming the movie is hard. Cashing the six-figure check is easy.

I usually have at least 100 good ideas on my “to blog” list. I add ideas to the list from time to time, and people send me more ideas every week, so the list never gets depleted. Keeping a good bank of ideas is trivially easy. Turning those ideas into helpful articles is the hard part. In the time it takes me to actually write one article, I could generate at least 200 new article ideas. It would take me about a year to implement the article ideas I could generate in a single hour. If these were books or computer games instead of articles, one hour of idea generation could occupy me with a lifetime of implementation.

Even when you’re dealing with flexible content like, software, music, or video, it still takes a lot of work to turn a high concept into something you can actually implement. A general idea for a new web service is largely worthless. But a few documents that include the technical requirements, market analysis, and high-level software and database design do have some value.

The more concrete your ideas become, the more valuable they are. The ultimate value, however, isn’t delivered until your idea is in some kind of physical form that can be shared. You might be able to find an intermediary who will carry your implementation the rest of the way, but you still need to take a few steps beyond the idea phase before such people will want to listen to you.

Focusing on Implementation

It’s easy to get stuck on the treadmill of idea generation (i.e. analysis paralysis), mistakenly assuming that ideas themselves have value. I often get caught in this trap myself. I keep trying to find more optimal solutions to problems when it would be faster and easier to just implement a mediocre solution and deal with the consequences. I have to remind myself that getting some value is better than none.

There are some situations where advance planning is critical, such as the $8 billion City Center project being built on the Las Vegas Strip (the most expensive private construction project in the world). If they screw up the construction, that’s a pretty costly mistake. For that kind of project, you have to make sure your plan is very concrete before you start pouring real concrete.

In many situations, however, mistakes can be easily corrected. If you make a mistake in building a website, you can reprogram it to fix the mistake. If you move to a neighborhood you don’t like, you can move again. If you get in a bad relationship, you can break up. If you quit a job and later regret your decision, you can find employment again. If you write a bad draft of your book, you can rewrite it. Sure there are consequences, but in many cases it’s not the end of the world if you jump to implement a half-baked idea. At least your implementation will still provide some value, and sometimes that’s good enough.

If perfectionism and obsessing over finding the right idea or the right approach keeps you paralyzed indefinitely, but you have a mediocre idea you could implement right now and start enjoying the results, that’s basically a no-brainer, isn’t it?

If you’re not sure if you’re stuck in the idea phase, give yourself a deadline to start implementing your idea, regardless of how good it is. Deadlines are a necessary evil in many creative fields like movies and game development. Creative people typically hate deadlines, but without deadlines they’d rarely finish anything. They’d remain stuck in an endless loop of pondering new alternatives. What you release may not be the perfect implementation, but at least you’ll get it out the door.

For example, my website has a fairly basic design. I put together something simple and functional in order to get the site launched without worrying about perfecting it. If I were starting from scratch today, I would have done a few things differently. That’s okay though. At least I got the site launched, and I was able to adjust course along the way. The value is being delivered. Lots of people will look at my site and say, “I’m sure I can create a better-looking site than Steve has.” I’m sure they could, but did they already do it, or are they stuck in the idea phase? Are they already enjoying good results?

If an idea doesn’t quickly lead to its own implementation, maybe it’s not such a great idea after all. Maybe you’re overcomplicating the idea to the point where it actually becomes demotivating. Can you define the idea in simpler terms, so simple that you can actually start working on it today?

If you implement a lot of so-so ideas that aren’t perfect, you’ll gain experience. You’ll probably learn a lot more than you would if you spent all your time perfecting ideas instead of taking action.

Action Time

If you find yourself lost in a sea of ideas while lagging behind on the implementation side, work to shift yourself to the action side and see what happens. One of my favorite techniques for doing this is to have Action Hours or Action Days. I set aside a block of time such as an hour or a day to do nothing but implementation.

To kick off this period of action, I create a quick Action List. An Action List is a specific type of to-do list. It doesn’t include any items that involve planning, high-level decision-making, communication, or discussion. Every item on the list must be geared towards moving some project forward to the point of value delivery. This means each item on the list must shift a task or project further along the spectrum from mental idea to physical action.

Once I begin working, I tackle tasks in order, and I don’t stop to second-guess myself. I trust that the decisions I made earlier are good enough. If things don’t work out so well, I can hopefully fix them later.

What good ideas are you sitting on right now? What can you do to shift one of those ideas from your imagination into physical reality? Do you realize that your very best ideas are worth less than a single mediocre idea you actually implemented?

In the forum discussion, consider sharing your best methods for moving from idea to action. How do you get yourself to implement your ideas? How do you know when you’re ready to move beyond the incubation period and start taking action?

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

A life coach is someone you hire to help assist you with your personal development, especially in the area of setting and achieving specific goals. Typically this involves paying a few hundred dollars per month to speak with a trained coach by phone for 30-60 minutes per week. Pricing and service offerings vary tremendously. Your life coach may share advice, offer guidance, help you make plans, and hold you accountable for taking action. You can hire a health coach to help you with health and fitness goals (like a virtual personal trainer). You can hire a business coach to help you build or grow a business. You can hire a productivity coach to help you get organized and increase your productivity. Every life coaching situation is unique, so there’s a great deal of flexibility here.

At two different times in my life, I hired a life coach, each time for about six months. The first time was in 1993 while I was in college. The second time was around 2001 when I was running my games business.

Life coaching experience #1

When I hired my first life coach, I thought it might be useful in helping to increase my productivity. This coaching program began with a very thorough personality assessment test, so ostensibly the coach could use this info to make the coaching more personal.

My results with this particular coach were mixed. I hired him during the time I was going through college in 3 semesters, and I liked that he helped hold me accountable to getting certain things done. Unfortunately he decided to use my test results to try to improve what he considered some of my personality flaws, so he would sometimes coach me to work on his goals for me instead of my goals for me. Today this practice is largely considered unethical by the coaching community. Most coaches now know they must work on their clients’ goals, not their own goals for their clients. Some coach training and referral organizations have written standards of ethics to clarify this.

This particular coach wasn’t a great fit for me. He wanted to mold me into a more well-rounded person, whereas my goal was to become sharper in a few key areas. For example, he determined that I needed to improve my social skills, so he gave me assignments like, “Smile at 10 people today.” As a computer science and math major, I thought that was a stupid assignment, so I didn’t do it. I think his heart was in the right place, and later in life I did put some serious effort into developing my social skills, but as a coach it really wasn’t his place to set goals for me. This caused me to lose respect for him, and it made our relationship less productive than it could have been.

This coach worked as part of a larger coaching operation, and they had a very generous money-back guarantee. I paid about $900 for six months of weekly 30-minute phone coaching sessions. The guarantee was such that if you weren’t satisfied for any reason, you could get a full refund on your entire six months of coaching. That guarantee was one of the reasons I signed up; I figured I had nothing to lose. In the end I did ask for the refund, and to their credit they promptly refunded the full fee. I was excited about the coaching at first, and even at the halfway point it seemed like it was going somewhere, but in the end I realized it didn’t meet my expectations. I felt bad asking for the refund, but I would have felt worse if I didn’t. I did get some value from the six months of coaching, but it wasn’t worth $900 to me, and the terms of the guarantee made it clear that I should have been delighted, not disappointed. On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this coaching experience a 4.

Life coaching experience #2

The second time I hired a coach was during a period when my games business, Dexterity Software, was growing nicely. I thought it would be good to have a coach to help me sort through all the projects on my plate and to solve some tricky problems.

This time I hired an independent coach instead of going with a larger organization. Most independent coaches offer a free session (try before you buy), so you can decide if they’re a good fit for you. I tried 3-4 different coaches and picked the one I liked best. I paid $70 per 60-minute weekly phone call. I also had the opportunity to do simple follow-up emails with this coach throughout the week.

I liked this coach, and I was happy with the service he provided. He was an experienced programmer like me, but he was also a very right-brained person. He taught me some creative problem-solving and visualization techniques. He was also very intuitive, so he would often detect the unspoken problems behind my spoken words. This made our conversations very efficient because he was able to get to the core issues quickly. We worked mostly on business challenges but also on some personal goals. My sales increased during this coaching period, so that was certainly nice.

This coach especially helped me understand the importance of intuition in business. When I first came to him, I was extremely left-brained, and he helped me integrate more right-brained qualities into my decision making. In the long run, this was very beneficial to me.

After about six months, I decided to discontinue our coaching, not because it failed but because it succeeded. This coach helped me achieve a higher level of performance, but after a while I was so familiar with his style that I didn’t need the weekly phone calls anymore. Eventually the law of diminishing returns kicked in.

On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this coaching experience an 8.

I should also mention that this second personal coach was in the same time zone as me, but the first one wasn’t. Being in the same time zone made it easier to schedule appointments. Usually we’d speak at the same time every week, but that wasn’t always the case.

Life coaching lessons

Life coaching can work nicely. The skills and ideas you gain from your life coach may endure well beyond the paid coaching period, so you aren’t just paying for your time on the phone or for short-term benefits. Ideally you’re paying for a permanent shift to a higher level of performance. For example, if a life coach can help train you to become an early riser, that gain is yours for life. Even though good life coaching isn’t cheap, the results can easily make it worthwhile.

When it comes to selecting a life coach, it’s important to shop around to find someone compatible. You want a coach you like and respect. You want a coach that is knowledgeable and experienced. And you especially want a coach that will help you achieve the results you desire. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a coach who’s just like you, only better. It may mean hiring someone who’s very different from you.

When you identify some coaches that seem like a good fit for your needs and your budget, request a free trial session. I don’t recommend hiring a coach who doesn’t offer a free trial session — it’s too much of a gamble. Try several different coaches until you find one you feel confident will help you. If the free trial leaves you feeling doubtful or hesitant, definitely pass.

After the free trial session, ask yourself, What do I honestly expect will happen if I hire this coach for several months? Pay attention to your honest predictions. If you don’t think you’ll achieve your desired results, you probably won’t. If you’re excited that this coach can surely help you succeed, that’s a good sign.

Understand that a coach is your helper, not your boss. You must be the one to decide what you want out of each session. You’re always in command. My coaches began their sessions by asking, “What would you like to work on today, Steve?” It was up to me to share my goals, challenges, and problems and to request help where I felt I needed it.

If you aren’t clear about what you want to work on, a good coach can help you gain clarity and set new goals. Just be sure that the emerging goals are your goals, not your coach’s goals for you.

Life coaching relationships are usually short-term. Partly this happens due to saturation. Eventually you become so familiar with your coach’s style that your coach isn’t challenging you as much, or perhaps you’ve achieved the major goals you wanted to achieve, such as losing a certain amount of weight or starting a business. On the other hand, greater familiarity can also create a stronger bond that increases accountability. You’re less willing to disappoint your coach by dropping the ball. You’ll have to decide if your coaching is generating sufficient results to justify the ongoing costs.

If I were to work with a life coach again, 6-12 months would probably be my limit with any one person, and 12 months really seems like a stretch. The exception would be if that person was growing and improving very rapidly, always learning fresh ideas and techniques that could be applied to our coaching sessions. Otherwise it’s like taking classes with the same teacher year after year — you eventually reach the point where you’ll grow faster by learning from someone new.

Life coaching can be especially fruitful for self-employed people and independent professionals. When your income is performance-based, a good coach may be able to help you boost your performance at least enough to pay for the coaching. I’d say that was true for my second coaching experience. I paid about $300/month for the coaching, but I ended up boosting my income by many times more than that.

If you have your own business, and you hire a coach to help improve your business’ bottom line like I did, you can deduct your coaching fees as a business expense. I was able to do this with my second coach but not my first. If you generate income from blogging, you should be able to justify deducting personal coaching if you blog about the experience as a service for your visitors or if your coaching experience benefits your business.

My first life coaching experience involved 30-minute sessions, but with my second coach they were 50-60 minutes each. I preferred the longer sessions. A 30-minute session would probably be okay for most people, but I had a lot of complex business issues that took a while to work through. Longer sessions are generally more expensive though.

How to find a life coach

Finding a decent life coach is fairly easy. Lots of independent coaches who’ve gone through formal training programs can be found online. One good site is FindACoach.com. That’s where I found my second coach. I don’t have any financial interest in whether or not you decide to hire a coach from there.

You can also find a coach via personal referral, but you’ll still want to get a free trial session. You need to determine if the coach’s style is compatible with your goals.

Many coaches specialize, so if you have a specific area you want to work on, consider hiring a specialized coach just for that area. For example, if you want to build or grow a business, you can hire an experienced business coach. Often these are people who worked in business for decades and then retired, later starting a coaching practice to share their hard-earned wisdom with others.

Why life coaching works

The main reason life coaching works is that you’re hiring someone with greater experience than you in a certain area. Your coach can quickly identify patterns that may not be clear to you. Then your coach can help you devise and implement solutions. When this works well, it’s a very high-leverage relationship. It’s one of the fastest ways to solve challenging problems. Businesses often hire outside consultants to help solve important problems, and life coaching is basically the individual equivalent of business consulting.

While I’ve never done any formal paid coaching myself, I’ve done plenty of informal coaching sessions with friends and family members and also online with visitors to this site. In addition to my own growth experiences, I’ve read about 1,000 personal development books, I’ve communicated with thousands of people regarding their growth challenges, and I’ve talked with many others who work in this field. Consequently, I have a lot of experience recognizing patterns. There are many problems people are working on that I’ve (1) already solved, or (2) know how to solve in a variety of different ways.

Similarly, a good life coach will have superior knowledge and experience in the area(s) in which you want to improve. A coach can use all of this expertise to help you solve specific problems efficiently. This is essentially a variation on the principle of overwhelming force. A problem that may seem daunting to you might be a fairly simple matter for an experienced coach.

The real challenge of life coaching is for your coach to help you implement the solutions to your problems. Coming up with solutions is easy. Your coach will probably identify some good solutions during your free trial session. Implementing those solutions is the hard part. That’s where good life coaching really shines. Your coach can work as a guide to help you stay on track, leading you safely through the quagmire of mistakes, blind alleys, and delays.

When you work with a life coach, your coach’s mindset will gradually rub off on you. This is a great thing when you find a coach whose mindset already contains the solution to your problem. For example, this year I decided to become a raw foodist, and one thing that helped me achieve this goal was to communicate with other raw foodists, some of whom are professional raw food coaches. Through osmosis I gradually adopted enough of the raw food mindset to make the change.

When to hire a life coach

A good time to hire a life coach is when you have a fair idea of what you want to be doing, but you’re having an unusually hard time getting it done. Perhaps it seems like you’re getting bogged down in obstacles instead of making steady forward progress. Also, you can imagine that there exist other people who’ve already solved your problem or at least know how to solve it. Would it be worthwhile to pay someone a few hundred dollars to help you solve this problem once and for all? Consider the lifetime benefits before you decide.

Perhaps the most important factor in successful life coaching is the willingness to change. If you aren’t willing to change, a life coach can’t force you to grow. You need some motivation and drive to work with a coach, something you care about deeply enough. Think about how the coach of a professional sports team would respond to an unmotivated, underperforming player. The coach might try some pep talks and motivational techniques, but if those don’t work, the player will likely be cut from the team, replaced by someone else who’s more motivated and driven to succeed. You must provide the drive, and your coach can help you steer toward your goals.

I don’t think it’s necessary (or wise) to use the same life coach indefinitely, but something in the range of 3-6 months can certainly generate some positive results. With a good coach, I’d say you should be getting noticeable results within the first month. If you’ve gone a whole month and have nothing to show for it, cut your losses.

Since I know people are going to ask me, I’m not personally interested in offering life coaching services. I enjoy doing occasional sessions with people I know, but formal one-on-one coaching doesn’t appeal to me right now. I think I can have a more positive impact through other media. While blogging isn’t as deep and personal, I know the articles on this site are effective at helping people, and I can reach a lot more people via blogging than I could ever reach via coaching.

If you think life coaching could be helpful to you, give it a try and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, you can always quit and try someone else.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.