That said, there can be tremendous value in planning. Thinking through a business in advance is hard work and requires deep concentration (if you want to do it well), but the payoff is a significant increase in clarity and a better shot at creating or expanding a successful enterprise.

I spent most of last week creating a new long-term plan for my business, which I just completed on Friday. I hadn’t done anything this thorough since 2005. It was incredibly tough mental work, and I put in many 12-16 hour days in a row, sometimes working so hard that I literally fell asleep at my desk. Then I’d wake up and work on it some more.

Since I’ve just been through this process, let me share some thoughts on creating a written plan for your own business.

Planning for Yourself vs. Planning for Investors

There’s a big difference between creating a business plan for your personal clarity vs. creating a plan to attract funding. Most of the business planning information I’ve seen in books or online is heavy on the latter side. If you don’t need outside funding, you can probably ignore 30-50% of the typical suggestions for what to include in a business plan.

There can be value in doing some of the work that it would take to impress an investor. Thinking through the financials is a good idea, but in practice a lot of what goes into an investor-based plan is actually persuasion as opposed to serious planning. Financial projections can be incredibly subjective, and you can’t predict with much accuracy what’s going to happen under real-world market conditions anyway. Overplanning is also a waste of time — you need to guard against filling your plan with irrelevant details that simply won’t matter one way or another.

I set financial goals for my business, but I don’t bother making predictions which are merely guesswork. Instead I spend more time planning how my business can adapt to whatever conditions may occur.

My business plan is created solely for me, and to a lesser extent, for those who work closely with me. I’ll never show it to an investor or banker because I’m confident I can continue to grow the business with a strategy that requires no outside financing.

Thinking Strategically

Business planning helps you think strategically about the road ahead. You only have so much time each day, month, and year to make decisions and take action. For many business owners those actions are chaotic and unfocused. They start projects they never finish. They miss opportunities by failing to act promptly. It’s very easy to hit a plateau and get stuck there for years.

A clear, committed strategy helps to cut through all of that. It sharpens your day to day choices. It provides an intelligent framework for action.

The problem, however, is that there are many valid strategies for growing a business. You will undoubtedly have more opportunities than you have time to pursue them. You can’t do everything well. If in the back of your mind, you’re oscillating between several different primary strategies, you’ll have a hard time growing your business if these strategies don’t mesh incredibly well.

I could grow my business in a variety of different ways. I could blog more often. I could write more books. I could expand into videos. I could expand my workshop offerings and begin doing them in different cities. I could invest in more marketing and PR. I could do guest blogging and accept more interview requests. I could get back into podcasting. I could start a membership site or paid subscription service. I could hire a few personal coaches and open a coaching program. I could turn my blog posts into products to sell. I could expand my social media presence. I could launch my own affiliate program (for workshops and future products). I could do more joint venture deals.

We could do any or all of these things, and many of them would be effective. But we can’t do all of them well. We might be able to do one or two of them well at any given time.

Thinking strategically requires deciding which fronts not to open. To create a practical and realistic business plan, I had to make some tough choices about which directions not to pursue. At first glance, almost everything looks golden. But with some deeper probing and a lot of analysis, I could discern which opportunities are truly the best relative to the others.

The Planning Process

Planning is an iterative process. In many areas you won’t know the best decision to make. At best you’ll be able to identify some options, but you won’t have much clarity about which possibilities make the most sense.

The way I resolve this is by taking a stab at each part. You can’t leave things in a wishy washy state, or you’ll end up with no workable plan at all. You have to keep pushing towards resolution and convergence. A good way to do this is to force a decision in a particular part of your plan. Then see how it fits. If it doesn’t feel right, yank it out, and try another possible solution. Repeat till you get it right.

Planning is an exploration of the potential solution space. To find the right combination of products, pricing, marketing strategies, staffing, and more, take some guesses and see what the big picture looks like. Then notice how those different elements mesh together.

It’s much like creating a song. Choose some notes and sequence them together. Then listen to the result. Does it sound harmonious? At first it probably won’t. But what’s creating the disharmony? Can you identify one misalignment? And can you fix that?

Then you keep tweaking and listening, tweaking and listening. Write out each new idea in great detail. Then read it back.

Sometimes you’ll get inspired ideas. Sometimes you’ll have to use a lot of perspiration, testing multiple ideas to find the right one.

My business plan is only 23 pages, but I probably wrote at least triple that to create it. For some parts of my business, intelligent solutions were fairly obvious. But in other areas, the right approach wasn’t obvious at all. My first stab produced a lot of text, but when I stepped back and read it within the context of the rest of the plan, it wasn’t harmonious. Perhaps my website would be delivering one message, but my products and pricing were likely to be incongruent with that message; the predicted consequence of that disharmony is that my business would end up attracting people who’d resist being customers — not a very sustainable approach.

This is a really important point to emphasize. To achieve convergence you can’t just sit and ponder until the right idea pops into your head. You have to take some guesses and run with them. Take a stab and fully document how it’s going to work, as if you’ve already made your final choice. Then look at it within the context of the rest of your plan. Does it seem harmonious? Does it support the other areas beautifully and elegantly?

My major rule here is that if it doesn’t feel elegant (or sound harmonious, or look beautiful — take your pick of modality analogies), it’s wrong. I know I have the right solution when a wave of awe washes over me, when I have to get up out of my chair and pace around so I can just be with that feeling for a while. Then I know I’ve figured out a key piece.

Deep Honesty

Deep honesty means being able to look at what you’ve planned and answer these questions:

• Is this an intelligent approach?
• Is this an honest approach?
• Is this a loving approach?
• Is this a strong plan, or am I caving to weakness and low standards?
• Is this a harmonious plan? Is it elegant and beautiful?
• Will this be a path of continued growth for me?
• Is this a courageous path, or am I playing it safe?

This is akin to asking a musician after many days of hard work, What do you think of your finished song? Will you get a fair and honest assessment, or will the answer be overly biased by the musician’s personal investment in the song?

There’s a temptation, especially when you’re tired after working so hard, to capitulate to a flawed plan. At some point you’ll want to say, This is good enough. You’ll want to label weak as okay, okay as good, and good as great. You’ll want to turn in B-quality work hoping to get an A.

But if the plan isn’t harmonious and elegant… if it doesn’t knock you back in your chair… if it doesn’t quicken your pulse like a beautiful song… you’re not done. You mustn’t say “it’s good enough.”

Hold out for the truly elegant solution — not by waiting, but by continuing to diligently explore until you find it.

How do you know when you’ve found a beautiful solution? If you have to ask, you haven’t found it yet. When you find it, you’ll know. If you don’t know that you’ve found it, you haven’t.

Listen to your very favorite song, one that you’d consider a masterpiece. When you listen to it, ask how you know it’s beautiful. You probably can’t articulate exactly why. You know that it’s good by how it makes you feel. If you have to seriously ask yourself whether the song is beautiful, you already know that it isn’t. Beauty is recognized, not analyzed.

When Martin Gore wrote the song “It’s No Good,” he knew he’d created something good (ironic given the title). He called Depeche Mode bandmate Andy Fletcher and told him, “I think I’ve written a number one.” And in many countries, it did hit #1. (source: DM biography Stripped).

This is how it is with a good business plan. When it’s finally done, you’re compelled to take a deep breath and say something akin to, “I think I’ve written a number one.”

When you’ve created a song you know is amazing, you can’t wait to share it with people. Similarly, when you have a business plan that you truly love, you can’t wait to implement it. But if your song (or your plan) is weak, then moving forward is more difficult. You’re more likely to procrastinate because you know you haven’t done your best work.

If you don’t love it, you’re not done. A plan you don’t love isn’t finished. How do you know you love it? Again, if you have to ask the question, you’re not there yet. A great plan will excite you.

What to Include

There are many guides to creating a business plan, but so many of them are filled with fluff, or they may be inappropriate for your particular business. Most of the ones I’ve seen are ridiculously archaic. In doing some research, I came across a business planning tutorial from Entrepreneur Magazine. Their template appears to be based on a manufacturing business. Seriously… what percentage of entrepreneurs are starting new manufacturing businesses these days? Perhaps they should note what century this is.

If you need to create a plan for investors, then you may want to follow conventions that they expect. But if, like me, you’re just creating a plan for yourself and your team members, then make sure the plan fits your business. Feel free to take advantage of online templates, but adapt them to your needs. If a section seems irrelevant, it probably is.

My plan has the following sections:

Overview – What’s the basic concept of the business? What is its purpose?

Business Description – What does the business actually do? Who are its customers? What are its products and services? What value does it provide? How does it earn income? What’s special or unique about it?

Market Strategies – What’s the target market for the business? How will you position it? How will you get the word out and reach potential customers? Why should anyone care about what you can provide? What’s your distribution strategy? What kind of PR will you do? Who’s your competition in the marketplace? What’s your strategy for dealing with competition? What’s your search engine strategy?

Pricing – What’s your pricing strategy? Do the numbers make sense? How will this affect your market positioning? This can be one of the most challenging sections to get right.

Social Media Strategy - How will you leverage social media? How does social media mesh with the rest of your business? Can you use it intelligently without seeing it become a distracting diversion? I haven’t seen any business plan templates that include a separate section for social media, but I include it because it’s a part of my business (blog, forums, Google+, etc), and it’s a growing segment that will likely be around for at least the rest of the decade. StevePavlina.com’s own discussion forums will soon pass 1 million messages posted.

Development Plan – How will you take the business from where it is now to where you want it to go? This is where you linearly plan out the steps to go from A to B. Document the key processes your business will need to execute. Identify the major risks, and decide how you’ll manage them. I prefer to spin off separate documents for this section, so it doesn’t become too bloated. For instance, I have other planning docs for my staffing plans, my process for creating and delivering workshops, my process for creating new products, etc. Those plans are 2-7 pages each, so if I included them in the main doc, it would probably be around 50 pages in length. Expect to spend a lot of time on this part of the plan.

Business Finances - In this part of the plan you can include things like balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. You can analyze your costs as well. For a new business these will be projections (which are often just guesses). For an existing business you can use historical data and also include projections if you so desire. I don’t bother to include this section in my plans because my business has been profitable for years (October 1st, 2011 was its 7-year anniversary). I’m not trying to impress any investors, and I can use my accounting software to review my financials whenever I desire. I don’t bother to make future projections since I think it’s largely a waste of time. Another reason this section is largely irrelevant to me is because my business has a very low cost structure. My growth plans don’t require spending much cash, and the existing cash flow will cover it. I also have plenty of ways to quickly adapt to a cash crunch, so I simply don’t need to pay as much attention to this area. This would be an important area to fill out if you’re investing a lot of capital into the business, and you need to convince yourself and/or others that you have a sound plan for recouping that investment. But if your projections ultimately amount to guessing, why bother?

Closing – I like to include a half-page closing of just a few paragraphs to summarize the key strategic decisions. Since I already have a business, my main focus here is about what I need to start doing differently in order to implement the plan. What do I need to start doing? What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to change about the ways I’m doing things?

Thinking Holistically

Each part of a business plan is like a puzzle piece, and the entire plan is the puzzle. Your puzzle may have 100 pieces to it. But you may be able to identify 500 puzzle pieces. Many of those pieces will look like they fit the puzzle, but when you include them, it will feel like the puzzle isn’t quite coming together.

A holistic plan is one where all of the pieces support each other to create a singular picture. When you have this picture, your business will seem much simpler. Without this picture all you have is a jumble of pieces, each one demanding your attention. You don’t have the capacity to give all 500 or even all 100 puzzle pieces your full attention. But you can give your attention to the big picture, and if those 100 pieces all fit together beautifully, you’ll be giving them the right level of attention when you focus on the big picture.

As I created my business plan, I realized that the process requires a lot of deleting and letting go. There were some puzzle pieces I was very attached to, pieces I’d assumed should be important components of my business, but when I included them, I had to conclude they didn’t fit the big picture.

Letting go of the unneeded bits requires a lot of self-awareness. I had to pause many times and admit to myself that I didn’t feel good about a particular aspect of my plan. Occasionally I worked through the math behind an idea, or I tried to project the idea forward in time to think about the long-term consequences. In some cases I could see that 5-10 years down the road, I’d be left with a very undesirable situation, even though the first year looked great. Other times my intuition would be the dissenting voice. If any part of me disagreed with the idea, I knew I had to rework it or let it go. My commitment was to create a plan that made logical sense, that felt good, and that satisfied my intuition.

One thing that helped me tremendously was to do a 7-day all raw no-fat cleanse before I began this planning process. I started with a 24-hour water fast, and then for the next 6 days I ate nothing but fresh fruits and vegetables. No salt. No spices. No oils. No sweeteners. No overt fat sources like avocados, nuts, seeds, or coconuts. Just raw, water-rich fruits and veggies, water, and some occasional herbal tea (no caffeine). I lost 4.5 lbs during that week, but that was nothing compared to the mental clarity I experienced. After about 3 days, my mind became super sharp, as if I had more working memory available for conscious thought. I wasn’t even going to make a business plan at this time, but when I started working on other planning documents, I couldn’t help but notice how sharp my thinking was. I blazed through a day’s worth of work in a couple hours. When I tackled really hard problems that had challenged me for months or years, simple solutions were suddenly obvious. I felt a bit stupid for not seeing them earlier.

I realized I had to take full advantage of this heightened clarity for as long as it lasted, so I dove into this business planning project and worked each day till I was ready to drop. I’m so glad I did because I think I was able to do a better job in a week than I probably would have been able to do in a month if I didn’t have this extra clarity. If you’ve seen the movie Limitless, the experience was almost like taking one of those pills — not quite that good, but enough to notice a difference.

I’m still feeling this heightened clarity now, but I can tell it’s not quite as high as it was near the end of the cleanse week (which ended last Sunday). I’m probably still enjoying 60-70% of that boost though. I’ve never done a cleanse like this before (I’ve done low fat but never no fat), so this was a new experience for me. I’ll very likely do more cleanses like this when I want to regain that mental boost. The productivity I’ve been enjoying these past couple weeks has been amazing. I’d love to learn how to create this level of mental performance permanently, but I’ve had problems with eating very low-fat in the past for more than 2-3 weeks (like having my skin become so dry that my knuckles were cracked and bleeding).

I’m not saying you have to do a similar cleanse to create a decent business plan, but I am suggeting that it makes sense to be at your mental and physiological best when you do it. The sharper your mind is, the better your plan will be. This is incredibly challenging work that will stretch your brain to its limits. Give yourself every advantage you can.

Competitive Advantage

One of the most important parts of a good business plan is identifying your business’ competitive advantages. Many planning templates have you start by doing market research and looking for market gaps. Then you deliberately target those gaps to position your business competitively relative to existing businesses. You look at what the other players are doing, and you target where they’re weak.

I prefer to approach this from a different angle, especially for small Internet businesses. Start by looking at your personal strengths. How are you different from others? What can you do better than most people? Or what could you eventually learn to do better than most if you worked at it?

If you start with a strengths-based approach, then you need to massage your strengths into a competitive advantage that people will care about. A strength is probably something that matters only to you. It may take some work to transform it into a benefit for your customers.

One of my strengths is that I can develop quality content on many topics much faster than most of my competitors can. I can create in an hour what takes many of them half a day to a day to do.

Being a prolific content creator isn’t necessarily a competitive advantage, but it can be turned into one. For instance, by using this strength to write lots of quality free content, I was able to build very high web traffic in just a couple years. This was largely under my direct control too. I didn’t need Oprah to host me on her show. I didn’t need outside investors to give me money. Now I’m able to leverage this traffic to do things that most of my competitors can’t, such as delivering workshops without spending any money on marketing or promotion. I can also develop workshops faster, which allows me to launch several new workshops simultaneously instead of doing the same one or two over and over.

While you may not like the idea of thinking competitively, it’s wise to view your business through this lens and give it some careful thought. People have an incredible array of choices today. Why on earth should they buy from you instead of from someone else? If you can’t come up with a good reason, don’t expect your customers to figure it out for you. They will indeed buy from someone else.

If you can’t think of any major strengths, then what makes you different? What sets you apart from other people? If you embrace your differences, you may see that you can turn them into strengths. For instance, I live in Las Vegas, which is different than where most people live but not necessarily better. However, I’m able to turn this into a strength by doing workshops on the Las Vegas Strip, which is a fun and lively place. I take full advantage of the location by inviting people to do special exercises in the casinos and on the Strip and by encouraging people to hang out socially after hours, see shows, etc. This provides them with fun, memorable experiences that they won’t have at other people’s workshops. Living in Las Vegas is merely different, but with a little creativity it can be made into a strength.

What’s different about you or your business but not necessarily better? Can you massage one or more of those differences into a strength for your customers? Is anyone else already using similar differences to create a competitive advantage?

Thinking Long-term

Business planning will challenge you to think long-term, years and decades ahead.

I use a time frame of 10-20 years for most aspects of my plan. If I think only 6-12 months ahead, I fail to see how particular paths can magnify into problems down the road, and I overlook major opportunities. If I try to think more than 10-20 years ahead, my plan becomes too speculative, although I can think further out for some aspects that are likely to remain stable.

A lot can change in 20 years. If you had a PC 20 years ago, you probably had a 386 or 486 running MS-DOS 5.0 and possibly Windows 3.0. Windows 3.1 didn’t ship till 1992, and Intel didn’t ship the Pentium processor till 1993. No smart phones. No iPods or iTunes. No web browsers. No Google or Yahoo. No YouTube. No social media unless you liked BBSing. You may have had email, but you probably checked it using a slow dial-up modem. If you did use the Internet, you may have accessed it via CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL. If you owned a video game system, it was probably a NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx, or Neo-Geo… or Game Boy or Game Gear for a handheld. If you went to the movies, you’d have be wowed by the 3D special effects in Terminator 2.

So if so much is going to change, how can you possibly create a long-term plan that makes sense? Isn’t planning pointless in light of such uncertainty?

The purpose of planning isn’t to predict the future. The purpose of planning is to sharpen your present day decisions and to give your business an intelligent basis for growth.

It’s true that you can’t know what’s going to happen even a few years from now. Surprises will occur. Some of those surprises will help your business. Others will throw you for a loop. No matter what, you’re going to have to adapt as you go along.

But some aspects of the future may be fairly predictable. I feel good in predicting that personal growth will still be important in 20 years. It’s been around for thousands of years. It will probably survive a few more decades. Actually I predict it will be even more important in 20 years than it is today. For at least the last few decades, this field has been trending towards expansion, growing by many billions of dollars in annual revenue within the past five years alone. People are spending more on personal growth than ever before. And as far as I can tell, this increase is expected to continue for many more years.

One of the reasons personal growth will become increasingly important is that change is accelerating, especially technological change. The job market will continue to shift. To be competitive workers, people will need to adapt more quickly than ever to changing circumstances. They won’t be able to trust that they can just get a job and keep it for decades.

I predict that traditional educational systems like universities will become increasingly less relevant, failing to adapt quickly enough to marketplace changes. By the time a student graduates from a 4-year degree program, so much of what they learned will already be obsolete. This is already a major issue today, but it will continue to get worse. College grads will enter the workforce wholly under-prepared for the competitive realities of the workforce. This creates tremendous opportunities for the personal growth field (which overlaps traditional education) to fill in the gaps. There will be increasing demand for faster, more intelligent, more practical sources of education — forms that can adapt their curriculums more quickly to changing circumstances. Archaic elements like tenure only make it harder for old systems to adapt, so if those structures aren’t replaced with more flexible systems, those institutions will be out-competed by smart entrepreneurs who are willing to embrace change. To some degree this is already happening, and I expect this sort of change to continue.

The business opportunities in education alone are staggering. I’ve lost track of how many millionaires I’ve met who built successful businesses teaching people important skills that aren’t normally taught at traditional universities. By leveraging the Internet, they can do it at much less cost for their students, they can do it faster, and they can keep their programs modern and practical under today’s conditions.

All this growth and expansion will create more confusion and stress. Self-discipline and focus will become increasingly important qualities for people to develop since distractions will surely keep expanding. The demand for better management of one’s life will increase significantly.

You don’t need to be a technologist to make some reasonable predictions about the future. Just look at some of the general trends that have been building for years, and project them forward. Smart phones will get smarter and will become even more common. Tablet computers will become more powerful and more common. Data transfer rates will increase. The Internet will become much bigger. New major players will emerge. There will be more interests competing for your attention than ever before.

Some major breakthroughs will occur, and human beings may begin integrating tech-based enhancements onto or into their bodies, but the concept of growth won’t go out of style. Very likely it will become even more important. The fastest growing, fastest adapting people will have a major competitive advantage over those who are slow to adapt. This remains true whether the world of the future becomes more abundant or more scarce.

By making some reasonable predictions about the needs of future humans (or cyborgs, or whatever we become down the road), you can make decisions today that set yourself and your business on a path to long-term success. You can avoid getting bogged down in short-term thinking that leads you astray. You can build a business to grow in alignment with the direction that the world is heading, not where it’s been.

I can see pretty clearly that people are going to need a lot more help with focus, self-discipline, and self-control over the next several years. I can see that many traditional educational institutions are going to get worse in terms of their ability to teach students skills they’ll need in today’s workplaces, especially as they have their budgets slashed. I can predict that more people are likely to access my work on devices that aren’t a desktop computer or a laptop. This helps me make intelligent choices about how my business can serve those needs while remaining flexible and adaptable.

It’s important to get clear on the difference between your medium and your message. Your message can remain fixed, even under changing circumstances, but your medium must remain flexible if you want to have a competitive business across decades in time. My message is conscious growth, and that message can adapt to many different media. I don’t need to worry that blogging may someday go out of style. Ten years from now, most of our interactions may occur through a medium other than blogging. Growth is my business, not blogging, and growth can be communicated in many forms. With a plan based on your message, you don’t need to fear change; rather, you can be excited by all the new opportunities change can bring. (For more on this notion, read The Medium vs. the Message.)

Clarifying the Core

When you finally complete your business plan and clarify the big picture, you may feel a newfound sense of excitement about it. Ultimately the core of your business will probably be something very simple, perhaps something so simple that you were inclined to overlook it.

In my case when I saw the big picture, I realized that it ultimately came down to one simple principle. In order to have a business that really works, I have to focus first and foremost on pursuing my own path of growth. Making money doesn’t work as the main focus. Creating products or doing workshops can’t be the main focus either. In order to succeed, I have to make sure the business is tough on me. I can’t allow it to become so easy that I no longer feel challenged.

When I feel challenged, I’m much more motivated, so I work harder, and my business thrives. When it gets too easy or repetitive, I lose interest. If I don’t feel I’m growing by running the business, that’s a problem. So I have to run it in a way that keeps me in that sweet spot of challenge. That sweet spot, however, is a moving target. It’s not a static spot. And so I came to realize that the only way I can make my business viable and successful in the long term is that I have to relate to it as a vehicle for my own growth and development.

If I stop growing, my business loses its value to me. I begin to check out from it. I’ll turn my attention elsewhere to keep growing. And the business will ultimately suffer for that.

Intuitively I’ve known this all along, but it was difficult to see it till I worked through all the details and finally understood it logically too. It may seem like an emotional or even an irrational choice to define the primary purpose of my business as serving as a vehicle for my own growth. But when I worked through the consequences of that focus, I understood that if I make this my primary focus, then many other intelligent choices flow smoothly from there. I have to help other people grow in order to grow faster for myself — I can’t grow much in a vacuum. I have to innovate. I have to make the business financially sustainable since going broke isn’t going to help me as much as creating more abundance will. I already did the going broke thing more than a decade ago and don’t see much point in repeating it.

This simple understanding helped me remove many puzzle pieces I might otherwise have kept. I now see with much greater clarity that it’s unwise to try to expand my business in directions that won’t help me grow.

I don’t think this is particularly unique though. I think the appeal of entrepreneurship for many people is the long-term personal growth that’s gained from this path. That’s what keeps a business fresh and exciting for the founder. That’s what got me out of bed at 5am this morning. When that growth is no longer present, it’s a good time to sell or leave, so you can move on to new growth experiences.

What’s really interesting about this is that even though I mainly used the objective perspective to develop this business plan, the end result is nicely congruent with the subjective perspective as well. What does a business matter in a dream world? The subjective value is how the business affects you, the business owner. It doesn’t matter how much dream money you accumulate or how many dream characters you can count as customers. What matters is the story you’re creating and how it affects your character’s development. This is of course perfectly in line with what we should expect from the Equivalency Principle, which I’ll be covering in more detail at the Subjective Reality Workshop in less than two weeks.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Freeing Mental RAM

Up until that point, holding that perspective was a major cognitive burden. My mind often felt fried at the end of the day. The experiment required a serious conscious effort, a lot of dedication, and perhaps a twist of fanaticism.

Holding the subjective perspective required a significant amount of mental RAM. Multiple times per hour, I had to keep refreshing that perspective. Otherwise I’d fall back into an objective mindset by default.

This was difficult to be sure. I don’t think I could have succeeded in making this shift if I hadn’t dedicated myself to 30 days of total immersion.

While it can be a fun experience to try holding this perspective for an hour or perhaps an afternoon, doing it as continuously as possible for a whole month is a whole different animal. It’s like the difference between having an idea for a new business and actually starting one. The first is easy and fun; the second can be fun too, but it requires a lot more work. One is dabbling; the other is doing. Most of the gains are only accessible on the doing side; dabbling only gives you a glimpse that something cool is there.

After the point of subconscious integration, everything became easier. Conscious effort was no longer required.

In a way this has been an eerie transition. It almost feels like I’ve shifted dimensions. It’s one thing to condition a new belief about financial abundance or eating healthier, but changing my beliefs about the very nature of reality has really turned my life inside out. This was not an easy transition.

In this article I want to document some of the ongoing effects of this experiment, now that I believe I have a clearer understanding of where this is leading long-term.

Beliefs Are Buried

First, this experiment really drove home how easy it is to take beliefs for granted and not even be aware of how they filter our experiences. Because I made such a big shift in my beliefs in a few weeks’ time, I was able to see the marked contrast between the old beliefs and the new ones. It felt like I went through a major reprogramming of my subconscious.

Most beliefs are subconscious. They run on autopilot. We don’t even notice them.

Installing a new belief is like putting on a Band Aid. At first you can’t help but notice that you have some foreign object sticking to your skin. But after a while, the sensory input patterns stop making impressions upon your conscious mind. You stop noticing the Band Aid. Essentially it becomes a part of you. Then later you see it again, or maybe someone else notices it, and you say to yourself, “Oh yeah… I’m wearing a Band Aid.”

The subconscious mind is very pliable and programmable. That makes it very powerful. But it has a downside as well. Once some programming is installed, it takes more effort to uninstall and reprogram it. A half-assed effort won’t get you very far; you’ll just solidify the old programming by piling more code on top of it.

One of the best ways to change your beliefs is through a process of immersion, which is what I used for making this shift. I consciously set the old beliefs aside and pushed myself to adopt the new beliefs 24/7. And I did it publicly, so other people would hold me accountable and help to push me. It isn’t easy but it works.

Hacking the Mind

As a result of this experiment, my mind seems to be running a different operating system. Instead of running an objective operating system, it’s now running a subjective one.

As with any good operating system, it takes some getting used to, but after a while your comfort level increases, and you don’t notice it so much. You run programs on top of it, but you take the underlying OS for granted much of the time. However, the OS is always running, and it dictates which programs you can and can’t run. You may not notice it, but it’s still doing a lot of work in the background.

What I didn’t realize before this experiment was that a mental OS has constraints that are similar to a computer’s OS.

Every OS has its strengths and weaknesses depending on its architecture. Even if the underlying hardware is the same, switching to a different OS can unlock new capabilities. Some things may be easier with a new OS, if only because you can gain access to new high-level software that’s written for that OS.

On my Macbook Pro, I’m running Mac OS X, but I also have Windows 7 installed. There’s some Windows software I really like, such as The Journal, that isn’t available for Mac OS. So I run Windows programs on my Mac using Parallels, which creates a virtual Windows machine that runs along with OS X.

Objective Subjectivity

When my mind was previously running an objective operating system, it’s strength was running programs that were built upon that architecture. But it wasn’t as good at running subjective programs.

In order to run subjective programs on my objective OS, I first had to run a subjective virtual machine. That allowed me to see reality through a subjective lens. Then I could run subjective programs on top of that.

This was very mentally burdensome though. It took a lot of mental RAM to load a subjective virtual machine into my conscious mind. And that didn’t leave much room for running subjective programs.

For example, suppose I want to try having a conversation with someone as if they’re a dream character, but my underlying subconscious belief is that reality is objective in nature. How can I make this interaction happen?

First, I have to load up my subjective virtual machine. In other words, I have to imagine that reality is a dream while suspending my belief that reality is objective. It takes some conscious mental effort to do that.

Then I have to imagine that other people are dream characters, and I have to retain that perspective while conversing with them. And finally, I have to pay attention to what I’m experiencing.

That’s a lot of mental work! It’s no wonder my brain felt fried at the end of the day.

Moreover, with an objective OS and a subjective virtual machine running on top of it, there wasn’t as much mental RAM available for subjective programs and their data. This turned out to be a serious limitation that prevented me from having the fullest experience of subjective reality. Ultimately it required too much mental effort. I needed to get the subjective OS running natively instead of as a virtual machine on top of an objective OS.

Installing a Subjective OS

My subjective reality experiment was basically a process of installing a subjective OS to replace my objective one. At first I had to run it as a virtual machine. But eventually I was able to get it running natively (i.e. subconsciously).

After this point the cognitive burden was greatly diminished. More mental RAM was freed up, as well as more CPU cycles. This meant that I could run more complex subjective programs. In practical terms, I could do more than have subjective conversations with friends or write subjective articles. Now I could see how to run my whole business subjectively and make plans for the long term, based on reality being a persistent yet flexible dream.

I had to rewrite a lot of code to add useful software to my subjective OS. I had to figure out how to eat, how to exercise, how to have relationships, and so on. I had good programs for these functions on my objective OS, but they couldn’t work the same way on the subjective side. The porting process required a lot of thought.

I’m still going through this process now, but at least I have the basics figured out. I’m able to function just fine, but so much has changed that I’m not living the same way I did before this experiment. It was very much like switching to a new OS on my computer and having to learn all different software. At first, productivity drops because so much is unfamiliar. Now I’m at the point where I have some good basic programs, and I’m able to be moderately productive again. This past week has been very productive for me.

I like the OS analogy since it helps me understand and explain what’s happening, but let’s not overplay it and get into dual booting and such. Dual booting may be a nice option for a computer, but I don’t yet see an equivalently easy way to do that with my brain. Then again, maybe that’s what happens when we go to sleep and have a dream.

Synchronistically, my relationship with my iPad (which I bought during my subjective trial) has been tracking the same relative progression. At first I couldn’t do much with it, and I was doubting whether it was an intelligent purchase. It took me a while to figure out how to use it productively.

Fast forward a month, and now I’m loving my iPad. I educated myself on how to use it effectively, tested lots of apps to find some good ones, and tweaked the settings to suit me better. Now I’m able to be very productive. Some days I’m using it more than my Macbook.

In a dream world, this all makes sense because my outer experience is a projection of my inner experience.

Subjective Objectivity

During my 30-day experiment, my sense of reality was all over the place. I often felt ungrounded and emotional. Some days were just so strange. But near the end of that trial, I began to reach a new place of stability and consistency, which has continued to this day. I’m really glad for that.

I realized that even though this reality may be a dream, this dream world contains its own form of objectivity. There’s a certain degree of persistence that’s predictable and reliable. It’s not completely random and chaotic.

From the dream world perspective, the world seems to be fairly stable because my beliefs are stable. If I don’t shift my beliefs around so much (like I did during my trial), then reality settles into semi-predictable patterns.

This stability means that I can still effectively apply objective-world skills. I can think and plan ahead. I can predict the likely consequences of my actions (or inactions) with reasonable accuracy. I can set and achieve goals. I can learn and grow. It’s very refreshing to know this.

For me this is an exciting place to be. It means I don’t have to completely abandon the objective OS software that was working well for me. With some tweaks here and there, I can port those apps over to the subjective side.

It’s not quite the same on the subjective side though. Every app runs a little differently. But I can still run them.

A New Sense of Possibility

A major benefit of perceiving life subjectively is that I’ve gained an incredible new sense of possibility. I’ve released many self-imposed limitations. I realized that the objective mindset was causing me to hold myself back too much, especially when it came to my career path.

From an objective frame, it’s too easy to fall into a pattern of playing it safe. Most of the time you don’t even realize you’re playing it safe because it’s a subconscious pattern. It’s the Band Aid you don’t even realize you’re wearing. Other people can see it more clearly than you can though.

I was aware of this pattern and would often push myself (and others) to be more courageous. But now I don’t feel that as much courage is required because the risks are less real. I’m willing to accept any outcome without feeling attached to it. It’s hard to get too attached to elements of a dream world. Change is inevitable.

From a subjective frame, I’m asking questions like, “If this really is a dream, what now becomes possible for me that I previously considered impossible?”

Story

Initially when I asked questions like this, I thought about how cool it would be to do seemingly magical things like I might do in a lucid dream at night. Wouldn’t it be amazing to fly, perform telekinesis, etc?

But then I began to seriously ponder the implications of that. If I could actually create those things, would I really want to? At first I noticed some fear coming up about what that would do to my sense of reality. But once I had the subjective OS installed, I didn’t feel much fear about it. Instead I began thinking in terms of story.

A 15-minute lucid dream is a cool experience. Without much time to develop an interesting story, you go for spectacle instead. Fly. Do magic. Have sex. Fight. The experience is fleeting, like riding a roller coaster. If you only have 15 minutes to live, it’s perfectly fine to invest it in an intense emotional experience. Do whatever makes you scream in delight. Enjoy yourself!

But our waking dream world is a different beast altogether. It lasts much longer than 15 minutes. It’s more enduring and persistent. It doesn’t come undone so quickly.

We can still choose to center our lives around spectacle. We can overload ourselves with entertainment, thrill seeking, and drama. But after a while, those kinds of experiences become boring. They’re not very fulfilling in the long run.

Yawn!

Fortunately we aren’t limited to spectacle. We can move beyond spectacle into the realm of story. Story is much cooler than spectacle.

With my objective OS running, I didn’t think much about the story of my life. I thought about goals, projects, and tasks. I thought about life purpose. I even thought about vision. But I didn’t really think of my life in terms of an unfolding story with a plot, characters, settings, and so on.

A persistent subjective world is an ideal place for rich and vivid stories to be told. Such stories don’t have to be told in disjointed episodes like you might see on most fictional TV shows. We can create much grander and more expansive tales.

Isn’t it interesting that TV itself has been gradually evolving to give rise to more intricate stories that play out over a period of years, such as the show Lost? Perhaps the popularity of these shows is tracking our own shift in awareness.

Your life is a story. My life is a story. Humanity’s existence is a story.

What’s the story of your life? Is it a string of random episodes? Does it rely too much on spectacle as opposed to good storytelling technique? Is it boring? Is it compelling? Is it shallow? Is it deep?

What will be the next act in your story? The next scene? What would you like to create? What would advance the plot, the character development, the message?

Instead of thinking about my life purpose, lately I’ve been thinking about my life story and how it’s unfolding.

What story am I creating? What role is my avatar playing?

This shifted me away from thinking about creating a magical dream world because I realized that would rely too much on spectacle. With too much power concentrated at the avatar level, we wouldn’t have the right level of balance between the avatar and the environment. My character wouldn’t face worthy challenges. Life would become too easy, and the resulting story would be dull. It’s like playing a video game in God mode. It can be fun for 15 minutes, but in the absence of a worthy challenge, boredom ensues.

My life story has always been more compelling when I face big challenges. For example, my story became a lot more interesting (at least to me) when I went through a period of shoplifting addiction, and I risked being caught and arrested multiple times per week. My character had to grow from that experience in order for the story to progress. A story where I sat in prison for a few years wouldn’t have been interesting for me.

Another fun challenge was when I pushed myself to go through college in three semesters. At the time I took on that goal, I didn’t know how I’d pull it off. I did it because I wanted to push myself. Creating a story where I graduated college in four years would have bored me to tears, especially if I had to live it. A 3-semester graduation was a cool plot twist.

Getting a regular job would have seemed a very boring story to me. Becoming an entrepreneur has been much more exciting to experience, to watch, and to remember.

Good constraints give rise to worthy challenges, and worthy challenges give rise to good story.

This realization gives me a sense of deep gratitude for all the apparent constraints in this seemingly physical universe. I had to accept that I really want those constraints, not because I’m afraid to face the alternative, but because the alternative would inevitably bore me to tears if I were to experience it for a sufficient length of time.

In order to create a cool story, one that’s exciting and fulfilling and meaningful, I have to be subjected to constraints. So even though this may be a dream world, I want to continue to believe that it has structure and limitation.

In other words, to a certain extent, life has to be hard, or it isn’t worth living. The things that seem most nasty to us contain the seeds of our greatest joys. Every problem is a storytelling vehicle. Without problems there can be no story elements like triumph or heroism. This is, I believe, what Kahlil Gibran meant when he wrote, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”

Subjective Living

Lately I’ve been asking myself, “Where do I want to take my life story from here? What kind of impact do I wish to have on the stories of others… or on the story of humanity itself?”

These have been supremely motivating questions to ask. I’ve been coming up with all kinds of cool answers.

During the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a major life review, spending many hours journaling, thinking, and planning. First I tossed out all my old goals and started from scratch with a blank slate. Then I thought each part of my life from this new place of a subjective world that includes purposeful constraints. It took me days just to figure out how to interpret my career, finances, relationships, health, and so on from this new perspective of subjective objectivity. And the further I went with it, the more excited I became. All the pieces were coming together holistically, and some elegant next steps to take were revealed.

I’m looking at my life from the perspective that it’s an unfolding story in a dream world. The dream world has various constraints, and I need those constraints to exist because working within them (and sometimes overcoming them) serves as a vehicle for interesting and meaningful storytelling and character development. The alternative is long-term boredom.

I can be passive and let the story unfold haphazardly and chaotically. But it’s more fun and fulfilling to actively participate as the primary writer. It’s like being a game designer and a gamer at the same time. What game would I like to write that I’d most enjoy playing? What story would I most like to experience?

Dropping Boring Story Elements

As a side effect of these realizations, I’ve also been dropping elements from my life that don’t contribute much to the unfolding story element.

For example, this week I canceled my cable TV and DVR service. Aside from watching Star Trek reruns, I didn’t use it much anyway. The cable TV/DVR was part of a bundle I got with my cable modem service, auto-billed to my checking account.

I realized that having my character watch TV was a boring story element, and paying for a service I barely used was lame too. I checked my bill and saw that with all the taxes and fees, I was paying $93 per month ($1115 per year) for basic cable for one TV and with no premium channels like HBO. Easy decision to cancel. There are more interesting uses for dream world time and money.

Even though I love many of the stories within Star Trek, I realized that (1) I already know those stories by memory, (2) they’re too short and simplistic to be interesting to me anymore, and (3) continually exposing myself to those fictional stories causes me to pay less attention to the story of my own life and the world at large.

What I find most fascinating is that by thinking of my life as a story, it’s pushing me to do a better job of aligning myself with all the best principles and practices I’ve written about previously. Now I see all of that as character development. Having a kick-ass character doesn’t necessarily make for an interesting story. It’s the character’s growth over time that helps create a cool story arc.

Writing a Kick-Ass Story

I acknowledge that my life has become too easy. I know that many people are still struggling with challenges like figuring out what kind of work they’d enjoy, moving from scarcity to abundance, and cultivating loving relationships. But for me this stuff has become dirt simple. I don’t have to think about it because I’ve already integrated the required mindsets and behaviors into my subconscious.

I’ve invested years of effort writing millions of words to help people make similar gains. Information-wise, I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say about most of the topics I’ve written about. I’m sure I could keep coming up with new ideas for years to come. I still love writing, and I expect it will always be a part of my life, but if I make it my primary career outlet for another six years, the story of my life will become dull and boring, and it won’t fulfill me anymore.

I need to face more ambitious challenges to craft a better story from this point on, particularly in the area of my career. It’s time to begin a new act.

I’ve already worked out a plan for what I want to do next. I have a lot to wrap up this year, so I probably won’t be too far along with it till 2011, but it’s so inspiring to me that I’ve already been working hard on it. It’s the most kick-ass vision I’ve ever come up with.

So it’s safe to say that I’m at the beginning of another major career transition right now. This is like nothing I’ve ever done before, and like nothing I’ve planned before either. It’s not a traditional career that can be named or labeled in conventional terms. It’s something that’s uniquely me. I’m still not sure how I’ll pull it off. I just know that I must do it. No matter what happens, it will make for an interesting story.

I’m not going to share the details in advance for a few reasons. First, it would be premature. I still have many details to work out, so the core concept is still evolving. I need to spend more time working through this on my own.

Second, I don’t want to get a bunch of feedback about the new direction. If I were to publicly post what my plan is, I know from experience that my inboxes will fill up, and most of the feedback won’t be useful or actionable because it will come from people who’ve never met me and who are projecting their issues onto me. I’ve been through enough rounds of that already, so I hope you can understand why I’m not going to go there this time.

I don’t expect that people will dislike the idea — quite the contrary. They’re more likely to find it too ambitious. I’d expect that the public reactions would be similar to what happened when I told people I was going to graduate college in three semesters. Nothing I’d done up to that point suggested that it was an attainable goal for me. I just knew I had to do it. People didn’t believe I could do it, so they tried to talk me out of it, which I found annoying because I was committed. Even years after I did it, people I’d never met would publicly call me a liar for writing about it. One person even called my old university and got some administrator to verify that I did it. I was surprised the school did that since I figured student academic records were confidential, but at least the caller was able to validate my story. I told that story because I wanted to share how I did it, and I thought it would inspire people, and it certainly did that in many cases. But to talk about such things in advance, at least for me, seems to do more harm than good.

And thirdly, it makes for a better story if I don’t serve up any spoilers. It will be more fun to simply do it and watch people try to make sense of it afterwards. Over the next year, many people will probably figure it out because there will be a shift in my actions that will invariably drop some clues, but for the immediate future, it will probably seem like little has changed for the rest of 2010 at least. I’m not going to suddenly stop blogging this month or anything like that.

I can at least say that unlike my 2004 transition from game development to personal development, this new transition is about building upon what I’ve already done. It’s definitely more of a forward step than a sidestep, and it has to do with expanding my contribution. I’ve never blogged about this before, so if you look to the blog for clues, I’m afraid you’ll come up empty handed.

In a way it feels like I’ve come full circle. You could say that my current mindset is more grounded, practical, and objective than ever. But it’s running on a subjective OS, and that unlocks new possibilities. I see that reality is a simulation, I see that it has a variety of constraints, and I see that those constraints are purposeful. I don’t feel limited by the constraints. I feel inspired by them. The constraints make it possible to create a kick-ass story.

I’m frakkin’ starving now, so I’m gonna go feed this avatar!

What’s your kick-ass story?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

So what do you do when you sit down to write a vision for your life, and you’re coming up with a lot of blanks that you just aren’t sure about?

Guess.

It really is that simple. Just take a stab at it. Don’t even worry about making your best guess. Just make any guess that seems remotely reasonable.

Now take that guess and run with it. Write 1-2 paragraphs to describe the vision that pops into your mind when you think about that possible direction.

Make sure your vision is written with positive, present tense statements. Add some emotion to your vision. Include how you expect to feel (“I’m thrilled to be…”, “I’m feeling deeply grateful as I…”).

Don’t worry about whether your guess is right or wrong at this point. Truthfully this isn’t a matter of right or wrong. It’s a matter of suitability for you. You’re free to make whatever choices you desire. You just want to identify choices that make sense for you. You want to make choices where you can expect a very positive outcome.

Now re-read that vision statement once or twice per day. As you read it, imagine it as already real. See yourself there. This should only take a minute or two to do the visualization part for a single goal… maybe 30 seconds once you’re accustomed to it.

As you imagine your vision as real, notice how you feel about it. Do you feel really, really good about it? Does it appeal to you on an emotional level? Or do you feel neutral or negative about it? Do you feel some hesitation or resistance?

Quite often, something will feel a little bit off when you visualize your vision. That’s perfectly fine. If it’s a very vague feeling of unease, just keep renewing this same vision on a daily basis for several more days. Allow your mind to expand and play with the vision a little more each time.

Eventually you’ll get a sense of whether the vision is a keeper or if it needs some tweaking.

Your vision may be just right to begin with. Maybe it feels great every time you imagine it. You know you want it. You’re practically lusting after it. That’s great. You’ve found a keeper. Hold on to that vision, and keep renewing it each day. This will help to imprint the vision onto your subconscious. Usually within a month or less (sometimes much less), you’ll see evidence that this vision is already becoming real for you.

Another possibility is that as you imagine your vision, your mind will begin to tweak it in different ways. It will twist it in a slightly different direction or add more details to improve it. Keep renewing that vision until it becomes a keeper, or it becomes clear that the vision just isn’t working.

And finally, you may encounter a situation where your vision just doesn’t quite come together in a way that feels good to you. Maybe it’s internally incongruent. Maybe it doesn’t mesh well with some other part of your life. In that case, ask yourself, What is it about this vision that fails to delight me?

Take note of the details of the vision that just aren’t working for you. It can be helpful to write them down. This is a time where it’s okay to be negative. Identify the parts of the vision that don’t feel right.

Now ask yourself how you can re-engineer those broken parts of the vision to create something better. Maybe the problems are minor and you can swap in different details to improve the vision. Or maybe the problems are so deep that you feel it’s best to throw out the whole vision and start over from scratch with a totally different direction. Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle.

However it turns out, that’s perfectly okay. You’re using your imagination to beta-test your vision, running the vision through your feelings as a filter. If it doesn’t feel right to you, you know that something is off and needs tweaking.

If you continue to hold a vision that feels off, your negative feelings will block you from allowing it to become real. So it’s important to get your feelings on board. Holding a vision that doesn’t feel right is a waste of time. Holding a vision that makes you feel nothing special is also a waste of time.

Once you update your vision to correct the problems, repeat the process. Write out your new vision. Then visualize it as real on a daily basis for several more days. Notice how you feel about it. Use your feelings to identify problems. Then revise the vision to take a stab at correcting the problems.

This is an iterative process. You probably won’t get your vision just right on the first attempt. You probably won’t get it right on the second or third attempts either. But with each pass, you’ll get closer to your true desires.

When you eventually have a vision that passes your emotional filters, it tends to manifest very quickly. I’ve seen some amazingly fast transformations occur in my life when I reached that point. Sometimes a new vision shows up the very next day, like it was just waiting for me to become a match for it. Other times I’ll see breadcrumbs leading me right to it.

I review my written visions each morning. I have a few paragraphs of vision statements for each area of my life: career; finances; health; relationships, family, & social life; workflow & order; personal & spiritual; and lifestyle, travel, & adventure. You don’t have to use the same categories. I just find it helpful to make sure I’m creating a vision for each important part of my life.

If you don’t create a vision for each part of your life, someone else will do it for you. The intentions of others will fill in the blanks. You see… you’re always working to fulfill some vision. Either you’re creating and fulfilling your own vision, or you’re working on someone else’s vision for you. There is no neutral. If you aren’t creating your own vision, then you’re obediently fulfilling a blended vision created by others, such as the vision that you should be a good citizen and taxpayer, that you should relate to people a certain way and live a certain kind of lifestyle, and that you should manage your affairs a certain way until you die. If you’re in love with the vision that society is expecting you to live out, then there’s no point in creating your own vision. But if you’d like to hold the reins of your own destiny and direct your life path more consciously, then you must absolutely create a vision for yourself.

By default, you are visualizing the status quo. Without a grander vision to occupy your thoughts, you will naturally succumb to the habit of thinking about what you’re already getting, and you’ll often feel some emotions when you do so. This is exactly how you hold the intention to manifest more of the same. So by default, you are automatically holding intentions to keep getting what you’re getting.

This is why it’s rather silly to complain about your problems. Sometimes people come to our discussion forums and write really long posts to explain what they’re experiencing in life and why they don’t like it. What they don’t realize is that what they’re doing is the exact process necessary to ensure that they’ll experience more of the same. They’re imagining their past and present as they write about it, and they’re feeling strong feelings as they do so. They are using the power of vision to create a future that resembles their past and present.

If you want to create something different than what you’re already getting, do NOT do what I described in the previous paragraph. It’s stupid. This is the exact opposite of an intelligent solution. Only do this if you want to be stupid. And if you catch someone doing this, please refer them to this article, so they can hopefully understand why it cannot possibly work… and so that they’ll get some motivation to start creating a new vision, even if they have to guess at first.

(Incidentally, if you want to see a prime example of what NOT to do, here’s a good one from a few days ago. I’m not trying to single out and embarrass the original poster or anything like that, but I do want to emphasize that it’s totally fruitless to do such things. I’ve been guilty of this myself at various times, so I’m certainly no angel here. Hopefully in the next few days, other forum members will share some good examples of posting about their dreams and desires. Lots of positive ripples are created when people do that.)

Instead of reviewing and rehashing what you don’t want, create the vision of what you do want. If you feel a need to post something online, post about your dreams and desires. Write a really long, emotional post about what you most want to experience next in life. This way you won’t make the terrible mistake of reinforcing what you’re already getting. I like to do this publicly at least once a year by writing about my primary focus for the upcoming year in advance. What’s really cool about that is that when I share my vision in public, some people will find that my vision appeals to them too, and they offer to help me make it a reality. That help wouldn’t come to me if I didn’t feel so good about what I wanted to create that I was willing to share it publicly. Your willingness to share your desires publicly is a good test of how ready you are to experience them in reality. For more on that idea, see the article Broadcast Your Desires.

If you don’t like what you’re already getting, the best thing you can do is to ignore it. Turn your back on it. Stop dwelling on it. Only pay the minimal amount of attention to it that is truly essential. Turn the bulk of your attention (and emotion) to the new vision you’ve created. Spend more time living in the new reality you’re creating as opposed to the old one you wish to leave behind. This will quickly draw that new reality into your life in physical form. Don’t worry about trying to be perfect at this. Just do the best you can. The more you can turn your attention away from the past and towards your new vision, the better. The more you practice this, the easier it gets.

“Going with the flow” only makes sense if you’re going with the flow of your own vision. If you don’t have a clear vision and try to live in such a way that you go with the flow, all you’re doing is going with the flow of social conditioning. It just means you’re going with the flow of the default social vision for you. There will be a flow that you’ll experience in that case, but it can be chaotic at times, and it’s generally very slow moving. But if you love what you’re experiencing and you love the current pacing of your life, then technically there’s nothing wrong with going with the social flow. It’s an option that’s available to you.

Personally I’m not a big fan of going with the social flow. I find it tediously slow. With my own clear vision, I can create something in less than a month that would otherwise take years to create if I went at the pacing of the social flow. An individual can greatly outpace a pack that moves at the speed of its slowest member.

Keep tweaking your vision as you feel the need to do so. Keep renewing it once or twice per day. Feel the feelings of being there. Eventually you’ll create a vision that feels so good that you’ll find it immensely pleasurable to just sit back and imagine it as real. You may reach the point where you’d rather live in your new imagined reality than in your current physical reality. That’s what creates the shifts that make your vision a reality.

Happy manifesting!

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

The book just came out this week, and last I checked it was in the top 30 books on Amazon.com (#1 in the Time Management category). I predict that this book is going to be a huge hit and a long-term classic in its field.

I met Michael at a leadership retreat in January, and we spoke on the phone for about an hour last week to discuss some of his ideas. He shared what I considered some truly elegant workflow management strategies, so I was eager to read his book and learn the whole system he developed. I’m seldom impressed by time management books these days since I’ve read so many of them, but I must say that Michael’s Workday Now system impressed the heck out of me.

I’ve been gradually implementing changes to my own processes based on Michael’s ideas, which are so intuitively and logically sensible that I can easily see they’re going to make my workflow management significantly more effective. Many of his ideas made perfect sense because he was often one or two steps ahead of me in terms of refining workflow processes I’ve been using for years now.

It’s hard not to compare Workday Now (WN) to David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), which has been an extremely popular time management book, especially in the blogosphere. GTD deserves its position as a classic in the field, but in my opinion WN presents a superior overall system. I loved GTD when it first came out, but I had to make numerous tweaks to the system to make it more practical for me, and there were certain elements of the system that bugged me, like the tediousness of the weekly review, the potential for truly massive Next Action and Someday/Maybe lists, and the questionable Waiting For list.

The WN system is in many ways similar to GTD. Both of them start with a bottom-up approach to time management, encouraging you to first take control over the out-of-control elements of your work in order to reduce stress and restore a sense of order to your life. Both involve creating and organizing task lists and identifying next actions. Both stress the importance of processing your email inbox to empty and not using it as a surrogate to-do list. Both systems are complete in the sense that you can trust them not to leave loose ends if you work them as the authors propose.

What’s different about WN, however, is that it focuses your attention on a specific time horizon, looking approximately 10 days into the future. This is called the Workday Now Horizon. Michael suggests that somewhere in the 1-2 week range is the natural time horizon people use when thinking about their upcoming to-do items. Beyond the 2-week range, most of us think of our to-dos as being somewhere “over the horizon” and not of immediate concern. We don’t need to deal with them until they become more urgent.

This Workday Now time period is further subdivided into the Critical Now (tasks which are truly urgent and MUST be completed today) and the Opportunity Now zone (tasks which are pending within the next 1-2 weeks but which don’t absolutely have to be done today. All other tasks and projects are placed on an Over the Horizon list.

The Opportunity Now zone is limited to 20 tasks maximum. It’s an evolving list that you’ll update each day. Once you complete your Critical Now tasks for the day, you set to work on your Opportunity Now tasks as time permits. The nice thing about your Opportunity Now list is that since it’s fairly short, it keeps your attention focused on what needs to be done soon. You aren’t distracted by tasks and projects that are weeks into the future; this was a problem with GTD’s Projects and Next Actions lists, which could grow massive in size for busy people.

If you end up with more than 20 items on your Opportunity Now list, you have to push some of them onto your Over the Horizon list. This disciplines you to consider only on what can be accomplished within the next week or two when planning your current workday. Then at the end of each week, you can review your Over the Horizon list and pull some items onto the Opportunity Now list.

I really like this method of managing tasks because it offers an elegant way of balancing urgency and importance. Urgent tasks are a business reality. They must be dealt with in a timely manner. In the WN system, the truly urgent tasks are given top priority, and less urgent but still important tasks are given the next priority. By managing urgent tasks effectively and not allowing them to overwhelm you, the WN system helps you get control of your workflow, thereby freeing up time for important but less urgent tasks. This is a very practical approach because it doesn’t compel you to over-organize long-term tasks and projects that you may never get to. In fact, WN assumes that you probably have more to-dos on your plate than you can reasonably complete. WN helps you take control of the urgent with a simple yet effective approach, so you soon become less urgency-driven.

WN fills in a lot of holes and solves many of the weaknesses of GTD. I would say that overall, WN can be more complex than GTD if you implement every element of each system, but I think WN will be much less burdensome to manage. WN’s complexity is presented in layers of different options. The core WN system can be managed with nothing but a pen, two pieces of paper, and only minutes per day. I’d say that you can begin putting WN into action and getting results with it in less than an hour after you learn it. The basic GTD system takes a lot more work to implement because you must do so much pre-processing up front, typically on the order of 2-3 days’ worth. As you get comfortable with the basics of WN, you can then begin adding more layers of refinement to suit your particular situation.

If you’re already familiar with a system like GTD or if you use some other planning or workflow management system, then you’re way ahead of the game; you’ll likely find the extra subtleties in WN to be particularly useful; their practicality should be readily apparent.

What I described above is really just the first third of the book. The second third explains how to integrate higher-level goals into your life, including how to activate them with emotion. The final third explores how to connect your workflow to a greater sense of life purpose or mission. These sections are well-written too, but since these topics overlap my own work so much, I didn’t personally get as much out of them. However, I agree wholeheartedly with the strategies Michael presents in these sections. I especially like his idea of setting goals that balance vision (the passionate image of an outcome) and targets (the specific deliverables to be achieved).

My only real criticism of the book is that I felt that the second and third sections could be better integrated with the low-level workflow management system in the first section. The lack of top-to-bottom integration was a major weakness in GTD, and while WN goes much further in achieving such integration, I still felt it stopped short of the completely integrated top-to-bottom package I was hoping for. Nevertheless, it gets pretty darned close to that ideal, closer than any other book I’ve read to date.

I give Master Your Workday Now! a huge thumbs up, and I highly recommend it if you’re at all interested in improving your personal effectiveness, getting your e-mail under control, and aligning your actions with your life’s purpose. This is not a book to be read in a single sitting and tossed aside. This is a book you’ll want to keep as a reference, so you can refer to it again and again. I expect you’ll gain powerful and practical insights you can apply from nearly every chapter.

Visit the Master Your Workday Now! website to learn more about the book, or order your copy on Amazon.com. This is an amazing book that could help you take your personal effectiveness to a whole new level.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This method isn’t very well publicized, but it’s commonly practiced by some of the most successful business people in the world. I first learned of it several years ago when Jay Abraham mentioned it on one of his audio programs. He said that it was a method Napoleon Hill had learned from many successful people while doing the research for Think and Grow Rich but that Hill didn’t comprehend why it was so effective and therefore didn’t integrate it into his book.

There are many variations on this method. Some people work for one week and then take two weeks off. Some do two weeks on, two weeks off. Some do one week on, three weeks off. The basic concept is that you work in fairly short intense bursts of no more than a week or two at a time (one week seems to be an upper limit for most people), followed by a period of no work for at least a week.

On Weeks

During your “on” weeks, your focus is on work, work, and little else but work. You can limit yourself to 40 hours, but it’s wise to experiment with longer hours. Try pushing yourself to do 60, 80, or even 100+ hours of work during this week. Fully engage in what you’re doing. Play full out.

Pick one project, and make a big dent in it during this time. Don’t get caught up in minor busywork. Bite off a meaningful piece of work, and get it done quickly and with solid focus.

Work hard. End your days with a feeling of being spent.

Put off distractions. You can always watch TV and surf the Internet later.

Tell yourself that it’s only a week… really just a few days… little more than a cup of coffee. The time will pass quickly if you immerse yourself in a project. Your goal is to fully engage in what you’re doing for this short period of time.

Allow yourself to become obsessed with your work during this time. Everything else can wait. Friends and social outings can wait. Family can wait. Personal tasks can wait. Recycle your dirty clothes if you must, but stick with solid work tasks during this time. Remember — it’s only a week.

Off Weeks

An “off” week is all about sharpening the saw. Let me clarify that this is NOT the same thing as having a lazy week. It’s not about taking time off and chilling out. That’s the equivalent of putting the saw down. The blade won’t get any sharper if you just put it down.

Off weeks are a time for personal renewal and fun. This is the time to really live. Go out and have a life.

Think of your off weeks as vacation weeks. Treat them as seriously as you do your work weeks. However, instead of focusing on your work life, focus all your attention on one or more aspects of your personal life.

Go travel to another city during this time. Have some fun new experiences. Go skydiving or scuba diving. Read a few new books. Go out and spend many hours with friends. Attend a workshop or seminar. Learn to dance. Do something that will enrich your life instead of just spinning your wheels.

If you have a family, consider taking a week to be with your family, giving them your full attention during this time. But don’t just sit around doing nothing. Go out and do fun activities with them each day. Travel to a new city with them. Go to the beach. Go camping. Go outside!

You can also “work” on personal projects during this time. Clean out your garage. Purge and donate unwanted items. Replant your garden.

Benefits of This Method

Why would you want to manage your life this way? Here are some of the benefits.

Motivation

Because of the time constraints, you’ll likely see a major boost in your motivation. Knowing that you’re going on vacation in a few days can help you flow through a lot of work. And knowing that your vacation week will soon end can help you pack in a lot more renewal time.

You will typically hit the start of your workweek with a strong desire to work. (If that doesn’t happen, you should definitely consider a career change.) And you’ll hit your off weeks with a strong desire to focus on your personal life for a while. Before you have a chance to start feeling demotivated and bored, it’s time to switch cycles. This keeps life fresh, interesting, and fun.

Focus

Instead of trying to work on all parts of your life in a single day or two, you focus on one important slice at a time. It’s okay to be largely unavailable for your significant other during your on weeks if you know you’ll be 100% present for him/her during an off week. This is far superior to not being fully present week after week.

Would you like it better if you had a significant other who was 100% there for you, enjoying your company for days at a time, but you also had breaks of several days where you each focused on other parts of your lives? If this sounds interesting to you, then try it. You can always switch back if you don’t like it.

Productivity

The productivity boost can be significant due to your increased motivation and focus during the work weeks. But it’s also interesting to note that your personal weeks can be just as productive. Instead of wasting your personal days on idleness, you’ll be putting those days to good use.

Also, the weekly flip-flopping helps you think more realistically in terms of planning and scheduling. You’ll be inclined to start thinking ahead and allocating certain weeks to projects, travel, etc. This is a good discipline to develop. It helps you avoid biting off more than you can chew.

In one solid week of focused work on high value tasks, you can easily exceed the normal output of two regular weeks. So even though it seems like you’re taking a lot more time off, this overall method is geared to produce a net productivity gain compared to sustained back-to-back 40-hour weeks.

Don’t overlook the positive impact this method can have on your personal life. When you work week after week and only take weekends off, it takes a huge toll on your personal life that you don’t even see. Weekends and evenings just aren’t enough to have a life outside of work. You need to devote significant chunks of time to the personal side as well. Otherwise your work will seem endless, and your motivation and passion will eventually tank, even if you normally enjoy your work.

Money

Higher productivity can easily generate an income boost. Money isn’t a result of time spent at the office. Hourly rates are largely a joke. Money flows from completing important tasks that deliver value. During your on weeks, you’ll be focused on completing meaningful projects and tasks. What can you finish before the week is up?

Also, your off weeks will give you more motivation to boost your income because that’s a great time to enjoy your money. You can expect to spend a lot more money during your off weeks, especially if you love to travel, eat out, and enjoy fun experiences that cost money. When you get a taste of what your money can do for you if you spend it wisely (to enrich your life instead of creating clutter), you’ll be more motivated to earn even more, so you can continue the pattern. Imagine how fun it would be to take one or two weeklong vacations each month — and still get more work done than you do now.

A lot of very wealthy people use this method or something similar. For example, in the personal development field, many friends of mine will put on a seminar for a week, during which they’ll work very hard, sometimes 12-16 hours per day. After that week they’re totally spent and hardly capable of productive work, even though their work is very fulfilling. So they’ll take off for a week or two or three and go travel, play golf, or spend time with their families. They try to do very little work during their off weeks. Once they’re restored they return to the office and begin working intensely on another project for a week or two, and their families don’t see them much during this time. Because they focus on high-value tasks while working, they can generate more than enough income during one solid workweek to offset a month of expenses, even while traveling and vacationing.

Balance

This method may look unbalanced at first, but it can actually create more balance in the long run because it helps ensure that you attend to your professional and your personal life without allowing one side to overpower the other.

You’ll work hard with this approach, but you’ll also play hard and have a lot of fun. Your life will become both productive and enjoyable. It feels great to be in such a state of flow.

Think of all the cool personal projects, experiences, and vacations you’d love to indulge in — if you only had the time. Well, just imagine what it would be like if you devoted 26 weeks — minimum! — to that side of your life this year.

No one is stopping you from making this a reality but you. You really hate it when I remind you that you’re 100% responsible for your results in life, don’t you?

Perspective

Alternating between your work life and personal life helps you regain perspective periodically. For example, during your work weeks, your subconscious mind will be processing some of the experiences from your last off week. How could you have enjoyed that week even more? Did you hold back? Did you overindulge?

During your off weeks, you’ll be processing many work-related ideas in the background. When you start on a fresh week, you’ll be kicking it off with a fresh perspective, inspired by new ideas. This helps you avoid getting stuck in long-term patterns that don’t serve you.

There are other benefits of course. These are just a few to get you thinking.

Personal Experiences and Some Tips

I’d like to share some extra tips based on my personal experiences that may help you avoid some pitfalls and gain some additional insights. I haven’t used this method religiously, but to the degree I’ve applied it at various times in my life (sometimes accidentally), it’s been effective. This year I’m aiming to apply it more deliberately than I have in the past. So far I’m off to a great start.

First, it’s important to keep a reasonably solid line of separation between your work weeks and personal weeks. Decide what goes in each week, and do your best to prevent cross-cycle leaks. During your on weeks, put your personal life on the back burner, and focus hard on your work. During your off weeks, do as little work as possible, and indulge deeply on the personal side.

I still check email and handle some communications during an off week, but I keep it to a minimum, ideally just 15-30 minutes per day, sometimes less. I delay any complex business communication until the next work cycle. People understand if I respond with a quick note to let them know I’m traveling and will follow up with them in a week or two.

If you’re sloppy about keeping a hard line of division between your on weeks and your off weeks, you’ll lose the benefits of immersion. It’s like getting non-restful sleep and then being a zombie the next day.

Second, don’t neglect your off weeks. This isn’t just time off to hang out and be lazy. This is an active time for growth, renewal, or completing personal projects. If you need a break or a lazy day (which is totally fine), use the weekends for that, or give yourself a down day or two between cycles. But don’t go through your off week in a semi-conscious haze of web surfing and TV watching. This is the time to really go out and have a life.

Travel is a terrific use of an off week, especially if it keeps you away from your work environment. Attending a workshop is another great use of off weeks. Even immersing yourself in computer games for the whole week is great if you love playing a certain game. Indulge fully in your personal desires — guilt-free.

Third, the perspective shifts that come from switching cycles are really powerful. They can accelerate your growth tremendously by giving you time to reflect with some distance.

During an off week, I keep getting ideas for new articles I want to write, so I’m bursting with ideas when I finally get back to work. I also gain a better perspective on which work tasks are worthwhile and which aren’t. When I have limited time for work before going on vacation again, low-value work tasks become annoying really fast because they steal time from high-value work. Low-value tasks don’t generate serious income, which means they don’t help me on the personal side either.

Emotional feedback plays an important role here. How I feel during one cycle has a lot to do with what happened during the previous cycle. If I blow my work week on trivial stuff, I don’t feel as good during an off week. I regret that I didn’t work as intelligently during the last work cycle, and it’s a little bit harder to fully enjoy the personal side. This helps me commit to a better work cycle the next time. However, since the off weeks are still guaranteed, I don’t have the option of deluding myself into thinking that I can steal time from my personal life to make up for low productivity at work.

While I’m in the midst of a workweek, I get ideas for how I can improve my next off week. For example, my girlfriend and I were a bit too indulgent food-wise during our last week together. (L.A. just has so many incredible vegan restaurants.) That can be fun every now and then, but it’s not a wise idea to do that every week we spend together. So next time we may want to tone down that aspect and incorporate more exercise (the vertical kind, that is). An overindulgent week now and then is okay, but in the long run it’s important to strive for balance. On the bright side, it became clear that we both love traveling together, and we have the flexible lifestyles to make that a reality, so we’ve been discussing other cities we might explore together this year.

Fourth, the intensity that comes from such immersion is really awesome. When you give yourself permission to blow off all personal concerns and fully immerse yourself in work for a week, it seems clear that you can get a lot done. But more important than the quantity of work is the quality of work you can produce during the times you can work for days on end without distractions.

This is especially powerful on the personal side, especially when it comes to relationships. Instead of going on dates for a few hours at a time with big gaps in between, imagine diving into a new relationship by spending days on end with each other 24/7. Consider what it would be like to go on a date — even a first date — for a whole week instead of for a single night, including sleeping together every night and sharing every meal together. That can get pretty intense, but if you can handle it, you can build a connection in a matter of days that might otherwise take months.

Applying this to dating might sound strange, but take a moment to ponder all the good practices you’d have to adopt in order to commit to a weeklong first date with someone. You’d probably get really good at pre-screening people for compatibility, so you wouldn’t have to deal with bad dates. And your communication skills will advance very quickly if you’re going to be with the same person for a full week. But since you also know the week will eventually end, it motivates you to enjoy the time spent with your partner as much as possible without taking him or her for granted.

You can use this approach with your family too. Instead of being a half-assed parent on nights and weekends because you’re burnt out from weeks of endless work, consider spending a week out of every month with your family. Give them your full attention during that time. Lately I’ve been thinking about how I might travel with my kids and explore different cities with them, especially when they’re in their teen years and capable of enjoying more of the grown-up stuff.

Fifth, the alternations are more important than the durations. It’s not that critical how many days you spend on each side. What matters most is that you keep shifting back and forth to keep your motivation for both sides sky-high.

At the start of this year, I spent a week working hard to prep for the January Conscious Growth Workshop. I also spoke at a friend’s workshop. Then I spent several days hanging out with my girlfriend Rachelle, during which time I didn’t do much work at all. Then I did the workshop, after which I felt totally spent, and less than 48 hours later I was in Puerto Rico for a weeklong leadership retreat. I gave a one-hour presentation there, but the main focus of the week was personal renewal, so it was definitely an off week for me. Next I returned to Vegas and spent more time with Rachelle, had a poker night with friends, and spent a day at Circus Circus with Erin and the kids. Then Rachelle went to Hollywood, and I worked solo in Vegas for a few days. Next I headed to Hollywood to spend a few days with her there for her birthday, “kidnapped” her back to Vegas with me for the weekend, and then returned to Hollywood to spend another week with her there. When we were in Vegas, she and I also enjoyed a night of wrestling, video games, and hide-and-go-seek with the kids, and we saw two movies and a show on the Strip.

While I was enjoying my off time, I did virtually no work. I didn’t do much blogging and spent only minimal time on communication. Most of that time Rachelle and I were busy having fun together 24/7. Last week we enjoyed a day at Disneyland, explored the L.A. Natural History Museum, strolled along Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, shared a walk along the beach under the stars, attended an L.A. social meet-up, and indulged in a lot more gourmet vegan and raw food than we should have (including a 6-course gourmet raw dinner for Valentine’s Day).

At the end of the week, Rachelle and I noted that we had committed 4 of the 7 deadly sins. During breakfast yesterday I tried to piss her off so we could check off wrath as well, but my best efforts only made her laugh at me and roll her eyes. Later that morning she definitively kicked my ass at Star Trek trivia for the second time in a row. “Khhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn!”

Today I’m back in Vegas, and after so much indulgence in my personal life, I’m filled with a renewed drive to get some serious work done, starting with this blog post. No girlfriend in town (which is good for Rachelle too because she needs to work on her next play — she’s a playwright and an actress). Then in a few more days it will be time to shift into personal mode since my family and Erin’s family are coming to town this weekend to celebrate my daughter’s 10th birthday. Wow… 10 already. They really do grow up fast.

These back-and-forth shifts don’t fall cleanly on weekly borders, and that’s okay. The benefits come from the shifting. The duration of each cycle isn’t as important as the fact that you do cycle — and cycle often.

A weekend — even a 3-day weekend — simply isn’t long enough to complete a serious renewal cycle. Six to seven days is a more realistic minimum. It normally takes a few days just to let go of work and become fully immersed in vacation mode (or personal project mode). Taking off every weekend doesn’t cut it. Think of taking a full week off as the minimum, not the maximum. You’d be surprised to learn how many people achieve awesome productivity results with cycles closer to one week on, two or three weeks off. After taking so much time off for personal renewal, they’re itching to get back to work, so their on weeks are highly productive.

* * *

If you’ve never tried this method before, I encourage you to experiment with it. If this is the first time you’ve heard about it, it may sound a bit alien. You may have a hard time grasping why it works. But don’t reject it out of hand just because you’ve been conditioned to work a certain way. For now simply let this idea sit there in the back of your mind, and remain open to trying it at some point when that becomes realistic for you. This idea will resurface and nag at you when the time is right.

Obviously you need a flexible work schedule to pull this off, so it’s up to you to create that. Whatever you do, don’t succumb to lame-ass excuses like “My boss won’t let me.” (If you were about to blurt out some wimpy, whiny, give-away-your-power crap like that, you need to read this article and then this one. And for good measure, this one too.) You chose your boss, your employer, work environment, and your work schedule after all. You can’t pretend you don’t have the freedom to make this work schedule happen if you really want it. If you want the flexibility to experiment with higher levels of productivity and a richer personal life, then you’re always free to make new choices. You’re responsible for your results in life. Are you getting the results you desire?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Around this time of year, I like to decide upon a primary focus for the upcoming year. I’ve held to this practice for several years now, and it’s never failed to stimulate major breakthroughs within the area of focus. I like to blog about my annual focus publicly because it helps solidify my commitment, and I’ve also learned that many of my readers enjoy having a preview of things to come.

In 2008 my focus was health, and I became a raw foodist that year, which has yielded many benefits. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve had so much as a cold now; eating raw certainly does wonders for the immune system. I still eat cooked food on occasion, mainly for social convenience, but I keep returning to raw foods as my default. Although it was a significant challenge to convert to this diet, it’s rather easy to maintain it now.

In 2009 my focus was intimate relationships. Since other people were involved, and it was important to protect their privacy, I didn’t blog about my explorations in much detail, but suffice it to say that I experienced some major shifts during that year. The most obvious result was my separation from Erin in October, which helped us move beyond a major impasse in our relationship. I realize that many people see that as a negative, but the end result has been extremely positive. That was a pretty intense year, and I’m very grateful for how it turned out.

After spending two years back to back with a primary focus that was largely personal, this year I desire to create more balance between my personal growth and my professional growth. So I’ve decided to choose one primary focus for my business and another focus for my personal life.

Going Direct

My major professional aim this year is to shift my business to a direct sales revenue model.

Currently my business generates most of its income from commissions on third-party sales, including joint venture and affiliate deals. Some people have a hard time understanding how I could be earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from StevePavlina.com, especially since I don’t sell any advertising. They may be surprised to learn that my site typically generates around $100,000 in sales per month, and I receive healthy commissions on those sales. This income is largely passive for me and is very easy to maintain.

This has been a very lucrative business model for me for the past few years and continues to run smoothly. However, I perceive it to be a dead end for me.

One problem is that I’m extremely selective about which products I’ll recommend. So I typically have to evaluate dozens of different products just to find one that meets my criteria for a personal recommendation. I also check out the product publisher to make sure they take excellent care of their customers. This work can be rather tedious. The worst part is when I spend many hours evaluating a promising product, and in the end I conclude that I can’t strongly recommend it because of one flaw or another.

Another problem is when I find a product I can recommend wholeheartedly, and for whatever reason, it just doesn’t sell as well as I hoped. Sometimes otherwise great products are just a mismatch for my particular audience. Fortunately the hits more than make up for the few bombs, and due to the risk-free way these deals are structured, I never have to risk losing money. However, I can lose a great deal of time on a mediocre deal, so I have to consider the opportunity cost of that.

Yet another factor is that this business model no longer excites me. It’s a bit too boring for my tastes. One of the reasons I became an entrepreneur in the first place is that I love risk and excitement. I don’t derive much excitement from doing risk-free deals where the results always seem to fall within a predictable range.

If I want to increase my income with this business model, I have to recommend more products. Every time I recommend a new product, my income goes up, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently, depending on the longevity of that particular offer. But because I’m so selective in what I’m willing to recommend, I’m unwilling to do what it takes to increase my income significantly, such as recommending marginal products I don’t feel good about. On many occasions publishers have given me some very juicy offers to do just that, but I always decline.

And finally, this business model doesn’t align well enough with my desire for creative self-expression. I feel there are better ways to use my time than reviewing other people’s products and services in an attempt to find the few gems that would appeal to my readers. I also know that there’s plenty of demand for new products and services that I can create myself. I suspect that once I get a certain flow going, I’ll be able to create a new product in less time than it takes me to find one to recommend.

So my primary goal for 2010 is to shift my business to a direct sales model. I may still recommend high quality products from trusted sources that come my way, but I don’t intend to evaluate tons of products just to find new ones to recommend.

I’ve known this transition was coming for a while, and I’ve blogged about it previously, so I’ve already been taking steps in that direction. For starters, I’m generating direct sales for the Conscious Growth Workshops. I plan to hold 3-4 of these workshops in 2010. The next one is January 15-17, and then most likely we’ll have one in the Spring (probably April or May), one in the Fall (September or October), and maybe one in the Summer too. Based on the current sign-up rate, I estimate that these workshops will generate an extra $150-200K in revenue in 2010. Of course there are expenses like the costs for the hotel ballrooms and some staff and materials, but since I can promote the workshops for free via my blog and newsletter, this is a good step towards a more direct business model. I also happen to love doing live workshops, and based on the results of the first one, it’s clear they’re highly beneficial for attendees as well.

If the workshops become a bit more popular, I can spin off more workshops to go deeper into certain topics. For example, I’d like to have a Conscious Career Development Workshop, a Conscious Wealth Workshop, and a Conscious Relationships Workshop.

In order to make this business model work effectively though, the most important shift I’ll have to make will be to build out my own product line. I already have my book, so that’s a good start. And the 8-DVD set for the Conscious Growth Workshop is still in production and will be released as soon as it’s ready (no specific ETA on that just yet). Beyond that I have an endless supply of new product ideas. At this time I favor a self-publishing model as opposed to working with outside publishers. That’s how I ran my computer games business for years, so I’m already familiar with that model. It works quite well. I may still work with some publishers, but that won’t be the core of my business model.

I suppose my main challenge this year is going to be taking all the micro-steps to make this actually happen. It may sound like it’s not that big of a shift on the surface, but for me personally it’s a major change. It requires refactoring my entire workflow for starters. It’s one thing to write a book or deliver a workshop one time. It’s quite another thing to set up structured processes and systems for creating and releasing new products and services repeatedly as part of the normal course of business. I suspect that making all the necessary shifts in my personal work habits is going to be the most difficult part of this transition for me.

So what effect will this have on my blogging? I doubt it will have a significant impact because most of this transitional work will take place behind the scenes. However, I’ll likely blog about topics related to this transition that could benefit others, such as setting up business processes, how to succeed with a direct sales business model (already did that with my games biz), habit change, streamlining workflow, boosting productivity, boosting income, etc.

My overall goal here is that by the 4th quarter of 2010, I am generating most of my business revenue from direct sales. In terms of the means to get there, my most important aim is to establish good habits and systems that have me consistently producing and releasing high-quality products that help people grow. This is more important to me than creating any specific number of products this year. If I end the year with good habits and systems in place for the long-term, I’ll be immensely delighted.

I expect that I’ll still be generating indirect revenue for many years to come, especially since it takes very little to maintain those revenue streams. I have no problem with that. But for me the path of growth for the future (and the path with a heart) is to build and release my own products on a variety of topics.

I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to make this transition to a direct sales model, and this is the year it’s happening. So this is my primary business focus for 2010. It will be a lot of work, but I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Alternative Relationship Styles

Next I’ll share my personal focus for the year, which is going to take us in a completely different direction, but I need to share some transitional background info first, so you can understand where I’m coming from.

After Erin and I separated, it took a while to adjust to life as a single guy once again. I hadn’t been single since 1994, so it’s been a long time. Being single today, however, isn’t remotely the same as what it was like at age 22. Back then I was fresh out of college. I’m just not the same person I was at that time, so I can’t simply recall what it was like the last time I was single and return to those habits. Otherwise I’d be eating way too much Taco Bell.

The rest of the world has changed dramatically as well. For starters the Internet was a lot smaller back then.

As I think about my social life and relationships going forward, I feel very grateful. We have such amazing social resources available to us today, and they’re constantly improving. The last time I was single, I didn’t have access to smart phones, texting, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Back then I thought 3-way calling was a pretty cool technology, especially when planning the next poker game with my friends. And instead of the Internet, I mostly used a local dial-up BBS. No high-speed access was available either — it was all dial-up with a modem. And I had only a desktop computer, no laptop. I had email, as did all my geek friends, but most other people didn’t. And of course there were no blogs to speak of. It’s truly amazing to have 24/7 web access in the palm of my hand these days. I feel socially and technologically spoiled compared to how things use to be. A lot has changed in the past 16 years.

I’m also in a very different situation socially than I was at age 22. Back then I mostly connected with a small number of local friends. Now I have more friends than I can keep track of, located all around the world, not to mention a hugely popular website. I have a constant flow of new people coming into my life, and that’s going to continue indefinitely. You could say that socially, I have a very unfair advantage compared to most people, and I’d be inclined to agree.

All of these factors taken together have me feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the options available to me socially. When I thought about where I wanted to go next in my relationship life, I honestly didn’t have a clue. You could ask me each week, and I’d give you a different answer. I know that a few of my friends found it amusing to watch me stumble my way forward during the past few months. I felt a bit foolish proclaiming I’d figured out what I wanted to do next, only to reverse course a few days later. I was flapping around like a Twitter bird with its head cut off.

Unfortunately it isn’t very healthy for me to remain stuck in the space of not knowing what I want in this part of my life. I’m at too great a risk of being outgoaled, meaning that someone else — or outside circumstances in general — will eventually decide for me. When I noticed that was starting to happen and that I was heading in a new social/relationship direction that didn’t feel quite right to me, I decided I’d better back off from further explorations until I could create more clarity. So for a short time, I actively held the intention “Back off, people! Please keep all women away from me!” to give myself some space to ponder what I wanted to explore next.

During that time, I solicited advice from a number of close friends, asking them, “What would you do now if you were me?”

People loved being asked that question, and it generated some interesting responses. Some suggested that I sign up for match.com and start dating a lot. Others said, “Go out and f— as many women as you can. Live it up!” And still others had totally different ideas about what I should do next.

While these answers didn’t surprise me, none of them felt right to me. In fact, each possibility seemed utterly boring and pointless. The thought of dating or having casual sex seemed only slightly more interesting than doing my dishes.

How could it be that with all this freedom and all these options available to me, none of them really excited me? Even the thought of going out and having sex with different women did nothing for me. My reaction was, “Eh… why bother?” It seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I certainly enjoy sex, but to pursue it as a goal unto itself was more of a turn-off than a turn-on. It was as if someone suggested I take up drinking as a hobby.

Some of my friends seemed really excited on my behalf at the thought of me going out and enjoying more sex partners, and they jokingly teased me about what a fun ride I’d be in for. But I didn’t share their excitement, and I had to ask myself why. Why were others able to get more excited about that idea than I was? I know I like sex, so why doesn’t this excite me?

I had to ask myself if maybe on some level, I was afraid to pursue that course. Is it possible I was pretending that I didn’t want it, so I wouldn’t have to push myself beyond my comfort zone? That’s a common problem in personal growth. If we fear a certain path, we pretend we don’t want it, even though we wish we had the courage to pursue it.

But no, I couldn’t see any evidence that fear was holding me back. In fact, the real problem turned out to be just the opposite.

Eventually I realized that the problem wasn’t that this pursuit took too much courage but rather that it took too little. It seemed too easy for me, and because it was too easy, it felt utterly pointless. It might have been a challenging goal to pursue in my early 20s, but today the idea has no bite. It’s too bland and too boring and too vanilla for me. I need a much bigger challenge. Only way I can be satisfied.

I realized that something that’s been missing from my relationship life for way too long was the intensity. I thrive on intense experiences. For example, I have to run a business because a regular job would leave me bored to tears. I couldn’t handle getting the same paycheck month after month. I need the risk and excitement of not knowing what’s going to happen next.

It was this same need for intensity that got me addicted to shoplifting when I was a teenager. It was also this same drive that enabled me to go through college in only three semesters. It’s a very powerful part of my psyche, one that’s been relegated to the back burner for far too long.

In 2009 I explored intimacy in great depth. But in 2010 I’m going to explore the intensity side. I’m going to explore different ways of relating to women that truly excite me, and that definitely isn’t the path of a traditional dating or relationship style. I want to try new things that are big enough to scare me and thrill me at the same time.

The thought of doing anything that would be considered “normal” in terms of relationships makes me nauseous. This includes regular dating, having sex, having a girlfriend, or getting married again. I don’t judge other people who thrive on those forms of connection though. If that’s your cup of tea and you’re happy with it, I’m truly delighted for you. At various times those patterns were my delight as well, but if I were to revisit them now, I’d feel like I was living a rerun. For whatever reason, I can’t derive any further joy from such pursuits, at least not at this time in my life. It would be like eating jicama for every meal, which is the most boring food I can imagine.

One of the key lessons I learned in 2009 was to stop trying to label my relationships. Once I let go of the labels, a whole new world of possibilities opened up to me. I realized that I had a lot more freedom in terms of relating to people than I previously assumed. I’m not stuck with such limited frames as date, girlfriend, wife, friend, lover, etc.

Now let’s get more specific…

What’s a relationship style that really does excite me?

If you’re a very religious or judgmental person (is that redundant?), this is the point where you should stop reading. Otherwise you might have to go to confession or something. Continuing to read this could lead to impure thoughts.

A general rule of thumb is that if you’re going to dabble in alternative relationship styles, then you want to make sure that your explorations are safe, sane, and consensual. As long as all parties involved are willing and able and are staying safe, then psychologically speaking, the exploration is just as valid and healthy as any other relationship style. The main risk is that the rest of society may judge you harshly, but if you can handle that, then the door is wide open.

I began exploring some of those other possibilities, initially by reading about what else was out there and by talking to friends who have very non-traditional relationship lives. And I came upon something that excited me greatly and that I was eager to explore. It falls loosely within the scope of BDSM.

BDSM is a complex acronym. The BD stands for bondage and discipline. The DS stands for domination and submission. And the SM stands for sadism and masochism. These methods of relating to a partner can be sexual, but they don’t have to involve sex at all. They’re basically ways of stimulating intense feelings and sensations.

B/D doesn’t really do much for me. I dabbled with that a little in my early 20s. It was fun at times and certainly spiced up some sexual experiences, but overall I could take it or leave it. I still feel the same about it today. Some people are really turned on by this though, and I certainly don’t judge them for it.

S/M is largely a turn-off for me. I’m just not into giving or receiving pain. I can understand why some people are so into it, but it’s of no special interest to me. Again I don’t judge those who are into it though. I understand how certain people can be neurologically wired or conditioned to perceive otherwise painful stimuli as intensely pleasurable.

D/s, on the other hand, is immensely exciting to me. D/s is basically role-playing with a power exchange element. One person chooses to surrender to the will of another. This can be done with roles like Master/Mistress and slave or any other roles that involve an asymmetrical power distribution. I also dabbled in this in the distant past, and I remember how exciting it was at the time. Since then I always wanted to explore it in more depth. Note: The s is intentionally written in lower case to indicate that the sub is below the Dom in terms of authority.

I’m definitely on the D side, meaning that I like being the dominant one. That means in a D/s session, I would want to interact with a sub. A sub isn’t a submissive person per se. In real life the person may be very dominant, but in a D/s exchange, they consciously agree to submit to their partner’s will. Some people are switches, meaning that they can handle either role.

Some say that if you’re very dominant in real life, then you’d enjoy being submissive in the bedroom. For some people that seems to be true; however, overall there isn’t much of a pattern as to which people are Doms vs. subs vs. switches, at least not that I’m aware of. There are many different factors that can influence someone’s personal preference.

According to the Kinsey Institute, 5-10% of American adults regularly engage in sexual D/s. That stat is very dated though, so I don’t know if this figure has changed in recent years. I expect it’s probably a lot higher in countries that are less sexually repressed (Thanks, Puritans!). For the most part though, this aspect of people’s lives stays behind closed doors. You surely know a lot of people who are into it, but they probably aren’t talking about it with you either because they don’t think you could handle it, or they worry you’ll judge them for it. However, if you were to out yourself as being BSDM-friendly, they’ll likely come out of the woodwork and make their presence known to you, in sort of a “Hi, Welcome to the club! Let me show you the secret handshake.” fashion. This happened to me when I started posting about D/s on my Facebook page a few weeks ago, and most likely it will accelerate now that I’ve blogged about it. The same thing happened when I started blogging about polyamory. I had no idea so many people in my life were already poly, but they only told me so after they could tell that I wasn’t a muggle.

D/s can be isolated to the bedroom, or it can dictate the terms of a whole relationship (aka Lifestyle D/s or 24/7 D/s). My current interest is somewhere in the middle. To date I’ve only experienced the bedroom version, but that’s about to change later this month during what is likely to be an immensely fun and playful week with a willing play partner.

To get a sense of what the D side is like, ask yourself if any of the following appeals to you:

- Being able to command your partner to do anything you want, sexual or otherwise, and having them immediately and willingly obey you without resistance or hesitation
- Setting up rules that your partner must follow, like having to kiss you immediately whenever you say a certain keyword
- Being addressed as Master or Mistress by your partner
- Having your partner say, “If it pleases you, Master (or Mistress)” instead of “yes”
- Getting all the physical touch and affection you desire, in exactly the way you desire it
- Prohibiting your partner from touching you or doing anything to you except when you grant permission to do so
- Commanding your partner to dress a certain way, like wearing the lingerie you like best, or to wear nothing at all
- Commanding your partner to dance or strip for you
- Commanding your partner to do things that sexually arouse you, and pushing yourself to see how long you can resist the irresistible
- Commanding your partner to bathe you, shower with you, groom you, brush your hair, etc.
- Commanding your partner to undress one or both of you
- Commanding multiple subs to perform sex acts with you and/or each other
- Receiving as much stimulation as you desire (oral sex, massage, kissing, etc) in exactly the way you like, for as long as you like
- Commanding your partner to say or whisper anything you wish to hear at any time (“I love you, Master.” “I adore you, Mistress.”)
- Not having to ask permission, just giving orders and knowing they’ll be promptly and obediently carried out
- Stimulating your partner to the edge of orgasm and mercilessly holding them there until you’re ready to let them climax
- Creatively “punishing” or disciplining an ornery sub
- Seeing your partner unbelievably turned on through acts of submission to you

And for the s side, consider how you might feel about this:

- Surrendering yourself completely to the will of a partner you trust
- Not having to make any decisions at all; simply listening and obeying
- Addressing your partner as Master or Mistress while being addressed as slave yourself (or something similar)
- Being “forced” to do things that please and stimulate your partner
- Becoming the instrument for fulfilling your partner’s every desire, knowing that you’re the source of their ecstasy
- Being irresistibly desired, seeing your partner get so turned on that they can’t hold back any longer and must surrender to their passion for you
- Being intentionally ornery in order to trigger a “punishment” that is in fact your delight
- Being commanded to do things you might otherwise never consider, and being “off the hook” for the responsibility because your partner is assuming full responsibility for all decisions
- Being commanded to perform sex acts with and/or to another sub
- Being brought to the edge of orgasm but not being allowed to climax until your partner gives you permission
- Being lavishly rewarded for your obedience
- Being deeply appreciated for your submission

And for both, you get to let it all go and return to your normal life afterwards once you’re done playing together.

For some people aspects of one or both of these roles can be huge turn-ons. For other people they’re turn-offs. And still others may not care either way. Your reaction is your own to contemplate.

On the other hand, if you need to take a break from reading and go take care of yourself right now, I understand.

Keep in mind that all of this is done consensually. It’s a form of play that’s entered into consciously by all involved. As such it can be a tremendously pleasurable growth experience. I can’t cover all the growth aspects now — I’ll have to save that for future articles. But perhaps the simplest growth aspect is that if you have more fun in one part of your life, it can easily spread to other parts… and to other people.

Now if you decide to explore such things, how do you find a willing partner?

Some people use personal ads or join a local BDSM support group. My approach is to use the Law of Attraction plus courage. I started by imagining what it would feel like if this was already a part of my life, and then I focused on holding that vibe. At first the vibe felt too exciting to hold onto, but eventually it calmed down and began to feel more integrated and “normal.”

Additionally, I focused on extending the vibe of abundance into this part of my life. Abundance is a vibe that’s already familiar to me (ala financial abundance, social abundance, intimacy abundance, etc.), so all I needed to do was extend that vibe to create the sensation of D/s abundance. What would it feel like if my life were already overflowing with all the abundance I could possibly desire in this part of my life? I sat on my couch visualizing this “fantasy” as already real.

That’s enough to get the ball rolling. It’s enough for potential partners to start showing up. The next step is to work through any blocks, such as worrying about what other people might think. “Oh no… they’re gonna kick me off the planet for sure this time!” You have to summon the courage to receive what you’re now attracting, including all the potential consequences. That’s usually the most difficult step and often involves saying to yourself at some point, “Ah, screw it. Let’s do it!”

After receiving plenty of criticism in 2009 for exploring polyamory and later for separating from Erin, I can’t see the feedback on this decision being any worse, especially since BDSM seems to be a lot more popular than polyamory. For me this is a very rich, excting area of exploration, and the potential positives vastly outweigh the negatives. Either that, or I have too much courage for my own good.

I took the time to work through my feelings about this during the past few weeks, so I feel quite comfortable writing about it publicly, knowing full well that some people will have a tizzy cow about it. Maybe I am a masochist after all though.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to blog about this in terms of details. Partly it depends on a few things. My top priority is to protect the privacy of anyone I’m involved with, to whatever extent their privacy is important to them. I’m not a particularly private person myself, but I know how unfair and critical the public eye can be, and I understand that most people wouldn’t want to deal with that. I certainly can’t blame them. So unless a sub happens to come along who’s either very brave or very masochistic, I’m not going to share any specific details about who’s doing what to whom.

That said, I’ve already been discussing the possibility of publicly exploring a D/s-style relationship with someone in particular, but it’s too soon to say if we’ll go public. For now we’re keeping our exploration private by default. I’d find a public exploration to be lot of fun, but obviously it would have major consequences for her if we do that, and I feel rather protective of her. How can I feel otherwise towards someone who refers to me as her Master?

I would never pressure her to share anything publicly; it will only happen if she truly wants to do it, and she does seem turned on by that possibility. But first, I’d like to see how people react to this blog post on the subject, and I’m sure she’s curious about that as well. I do NOT want to see people doing personal attacks on her. Maybe I can’t prevent that from happening, but I just might have to go S/M on anyone who crosses that line, not to mention sending an army of subs after them. I’m not much of a sadist, but in that case I’ll make an exception and pull out the pincers and blowtorch.

I’m looking to see how much maturity my readers can summon in terms of watching me explore this path without going kittywompus, especially since other people are involved. In the past I’ve been largely disappointed, but perhaps the New Year will bring a new level of genuine acceptance and curiosity.

Another factor that I’ll have to determine based on feedback is whether or not enough of my readers actually care to learn more about this subject. If there isn’t much interest, I’ll just keep it to myself and won’t blog much about it. But if I see a lot of curiosity and questions, I can justify sharing more details.

I must admit that I am immensely excited about 2010. This is already shaping up to be an exquisitely delicious year. I suspect you’ll be seing some unusually happy posts from me in the coming months.

If you can get past your fear of rejection and summon a modicum of courage, it’s not that difficult to find a play partner. You don’t need a full-on relationship first. You don’t need to date people either. You can just let a potential partner know that you’re up for playing together, and see what they say. It’s even easier if you publicly out yourself first, since then people will come to you. Of course it helps if you’re known to be very open, honest, and trustworthy, so that people who get involved with you can expect that everything will be done in a safe, sane, and consensual manner, not in an unsafe, crazy, or creepy way. The whole point is to co-create a fun and exciting experience that leaves everyone happy.

I should mention that my interest in D/s is partly sexual and partly non-sexual. It’s the power exchange aspect that turns me on the most. If I had to choose between doing a D/s session without sex vs. having vanilla sex with no D/s aspects, most of the time I’d probably choose the D/s play. However, I’d much rather explore D/s with a sexual element than without. It’s a lot more fun that way.

I expect to devote a big chunk of my personal life to exploring D/s this year. Nothing else on my radar excites me quite as much as this. I can’t predict where it will lead, and I rather like that. I like that it challenges me in so many ways simultaneously. I get to work with the Law of Attraction, conscious communication, building trust, unconditional love and acceptance, self-discipline, emotional resiliency, and more.

Some people don’t like the D side because it’s too much work. They don’t like having to make all the decisions. It definitely can be a lot of work, but that’s a challenge I rather enjoy. Maybe it’s the former game designer in me. One of the most appealing aspects of D/s to me is being granted the power to interactively discover what most excites a woman, and then taking her through an intense emotional and sensory journey. It’s like being the GM (aka Game Master) in a classic pen and paper role-playing session — plus a whole lot more. When role-playing I always liked being the GM more than being a regular player. That’s the most difficult role to fill, but it’s also the one with the most flexibility and choices available. I thrive on being responsible for other people’s enjoyment and having the power to interactively create a fun and unique experience for them.

Perhaps on some level, the game designer part of me is still present, and he sees this as a good way to creatively express parts of himself that have been denied a proper outlet for too many years.

Maybe you regard this decision as yet another of Steve’s insanities, but for me it makes perfect sense. I’ve had regular sex thousands of times, and I doubt I’ll gain much from doing it a thousand more times. I’d rather head off in a new direction (which a friend jokingly reminded me sounds the same as “nude erection”) and try something a bit more spicy and exhilarating. The nice thing is that D/s can be combined with just about anything, such as tantra, so all sorts of delectable combos are possible.

Commence with the criticism now if you must, but just remember that ultimately it’s all about you anyway… and a harsh reaction could be a sign of a repressed desire to be dominated. Or perhaps you just need to be introduced to a particularly skilled sadist to soften you up a bit.

I completely understand that some people may not want to out themselves as being interested in this, so feel free to email me privately via my contact form or my Facebook page if you have feedback to share and don’t want to do so publicly. I can’t answer all the questions people send me, but I’ll use the feedback to gauge interest and to generate ideas for future articles. I wouldn’t be worried about posting about this in our forums though since we quickly weed out people who make personal attacks on other members.

I hope your 2010 is as fun and tasty as mine is likely to be.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

But what if you’re feeling uncertain and don’t have a lot of clarity about your future direction? What if you can’t decide what you’d like to do next? This is a common problem, especially for today’s 20-somethings who are growing up in a world of unprecedented change.

Fortunately there are many actions you can take and mental adjustments you can make that will help you shift from uncertainty to certainty.

Here are 11 tips for infusing your life with more clarity:

1. Assume 100% responsibility for your own level of clarity.

Many people assume that clarity is something that will arrive in good time if they simply wait patiently. Others feel stunted that they aren’t gifted with the same degree of clarity as others. The common pattern is that clarity is seen as something that is bestowed from the outside in, that it’s something God, the universe, or the world at large has the power to grant you — or that it’s an accident in some way. Some people get lucky; others don’t.

These attitudes are pointless and self-defeating.

Clarity isn’t something that arrives from outside of you. Clarity isn’t a matter of luck either. Clarity is what you create for yourself.

Clarity is a decision.

Whatever degree of clarity you’re experiencing right now is what you’ve decided to create. Not deciding still counts as a decision; in that case it’s the decision to remain uncertain.

The word decide comes from the Latin decidere, which means “to cut off from.” To make a decision, you must cut away other potential directions. If you remain open to lots of different directions at the same time, you get confusion and fuzziness. When you commit yourself to one specific direction, clarity is the natural result.

It’s wise to remain open and responsive to what comes your way. Don’t be so rigid as to ignore what’s coming to you. But neither be so “open” that you succumb to wishy-washy indecision. Be like a ship captain who sets sail with a specific destination in mind, while keeping a keen eye on the wind and waters during the journey.

Now it’s entirely possible that you may not be very good at creating clarity yet. You may in fact be very good at creating confusion and uncertainty for yourself — and have a long track record to prove it. That’s okay for now, but take it as a given that you’re the one who’s creating your current level of clarity. No one else is doing it to you — not God or the universe or your friends and family or your boss or your spirit guides or the Law of Attraction.

Furthermore, realize and accept that if your current degree of clarity is to improve, then you must actively make some changes. Endlessly pondering why you don’t have clarity will only perpetuate confusion, so that’s a bad habit you can drop immediately.

If you want more clarity, then it’s time to treat the generation of clarity as a serious undertaking that’s entirely 100% your responsibility. It’s not going to happen unless you make it happen.

2. Stop creating the opposite of clarity.

Some thoughts and actions lead to increased clarity. Other thoughts and actions have the opposite effect.

If you want to experience more clarity, you must disengage yourself from that which has an adverse effect on your clarity.

Clarity-reducing patterns include:

• Hanging out with fuzzy, unfocused people who are drifting aimlessly with no direction
• Living with people whose goals and values are in conflict with yours
• Distracting yourself with excessive TV, web surfing, video games, or other time-wasting habits
• Numbing your mind and emotions with junk food, alcohol, or other addictions
• Overstimulating yourself with caffeine (which for many people leads to racing thoughts)
• Whining about your lack of certainty or complaining that you don’t know what to do

Clarity-boosting patterns include doing the opposite of the above:

• Hanging out with clear, focused people who can tell you their purpose and direction
• Living with people whose goals and values align well with yours
• Feeding your mind with inspirational and motivational material like quality books and audio programs
• Eating healthy, unrefined foods (especially fruits and veggies, fresh juices, and smoothies) that keep your mind sharp and alert
• Avoiding stimulants that cause swings in your thoughts and emotions
• Thinking about your goals and the next actions you can take today

If you find yourself surrounded by people and circumstances that leave you feeling dizzy and confused, drop those elements from your life, and give yourself the space to create and enjoy the clarity you seek. Spinning in circles is unproductive.

3. Harvest and apply the clarity lessons from your past.

Notice that your level of clarity isn’t the same at all times. At some points in your life, you’ve been very clear. At other times you’ve been extremely uncertain.

Take a moment to review those times when you’ve been at one extreme vs. the other. See if you can identify some of the causal factors on both sides.

Notice which factors lead to reduced clarity, and do less of them. Also notice which factors lead to increased clarity, and do more of them. This sounds childishly simple, and it is, but chances are that you aren’t applying this idea as well as you could. Humor me, and give it a try. You’ll be amazed as the a-ha moments that can be gotten from a quick review of your past patterns of clarity vs. fuzziness.

For example, do you feel clearer and more certain after taking the time to write down your goals? Do you feel fuzzier after having a conversation with someone who’s always nagging you to change in ways you disagree with? If so, then do the former more often, and do the latter less often.

4. Use visualization to create the vibe of clarity.

Either you feel clear and focused right now, or you don’t.

You may assume that your external reality has to be a certain way in order for you to feel clear and focused. Having all your ducks in a row may make it easier to feel clear, but you can also use your imagination to create the feeling of clarity.

Clarity is more than just a feeling. There’s an emotional state associated with it, but it’s more than that. Clarity is a certain vibe. When you’re really clear, you can sense that vibe through every cell of your being. Your mind and emotions are centered. Every part of you is on the same page. There’s no doubt or uncertainty. This is a powerful state of being to experience.

Sit quietly for a few moments and imagine what it’s like to hold the vibe of total clarity. Imagine what your surroundings would look like if you were really clear about your direction in life right now. Imagine the people and circumstances that would be in your reality. Imagine how you’d dress, how you’d move, and how you’d communicate with others. Paint a vivid picture of a reality — any reality — in which you feel crystal clear about your direction in life.

What matters isn’t the specific visualization you create. What matters is the vibe you experience. You can imagine yourself as an ancient Roman conqueror as long as it helps you hold the vibe of clarity. Do this for at least 10-20 minutes per day until the clarity vibe feels normal and natural to you. The more you practice holding this vibe, the more clarity you’ll bring to the rest of your life and to all the decisions you make.

For more on this visualization process, read the article How to Visualize Your New Reality.

5. Ask for help.

Help is available when you need it, so take advantage of it. Ask someone who’s clear about their path to assist you.

The quality of help you receive will vary depending on the source. For example, an experienced counselor like Erin may be able to help you gain clarity quickly, while an enthusiastic but inexperienced friend may create more confusion than certainty. Also, consulting with an unbiased outsider is usually more beneficial than asking for help from someone who’s personally invested in your situation.

Bear in mind that you’re still 100% responsible for your level of clarity. Use counselors, coaches, and advice givers as a resource to help you see the big picture, but don’t give your power away to them. If you try to give your power away to such people, hoping they’ll tell you what to do, it will backfire. A good counselor can help draw out and validate a path that’s right for you, but s/he cannot create a path for you. Creating the path is your responsibility.

6. Put your goals in writing, and review them daily.

This is a well-known habit of success, yet its practice remains inconsistent for most people.

As soon as you write down your goals, you’ll experience a boost in clarity. And each time you review your goals, you’ll gain more clarity.

Writing down your goals pushes you to make them clearer and more precise. It’s easy for a goal to remain fuzzy when it’s only in your mind, but if it’s stuck in your head and you can’t even write it down, it’s more of a fantasy than a goal. Putting your goal in writing is the first key action step toward making it real.

How many times have you imagined a sexual fantasy for instance? And how many of those did you commit to writing as an actual goal or intention? Which ones are more likely to manifest? Whatever you’d like to keep as fantasy, leave it in your imagination. But whatever you’d like to experience in physical reality, put it down in writing.

Keep drilling your goals into your subconscious mind by reviewing them daily. Imagine your written goals as physically real — not fantasy — and soon your internal resources will be aligned with making those goals come to fruition. It takes a while to condition the subconscious through repetition, but if you persist with this habit, you’ll begin to notice subtle shifts that bring your goals ever closer.

Jack Canfield recommends the practice of writing your goals on index cards, one goal per card. Then flip through the cards and imagine each goal as real when you first wake up in the morning and again before you go to bed. This is an excellent habit to install.

7. Accept that any goal is better than no goal.

When asked to take a few minutes to write down some goals, certain people love to whine, “But I don’t know what to write down. I don’t know what my goals are.” In that case you can write down, “I want nothing!” If all you have is a blank page — or no page at all — then your goal is nothing. That’s what you’re asking for, so that’s what you’ll receive.

The people who whine that they don’t know what to ask for are really saying, “I want nothing. I can’t think of any single thing I want. So I’m asking for precisely nothing.”

Sounds pretty foolish, doesn’t it? It is foolish!

Surely you can come up with something to ask for that’s better than nothing. Ask for a nice dinner. Ask for an extra $100. Ask for a new friend. Ask for a nicer phone. Anything is better than nothing.

Imagine asking a child, “What do you want for Christmas?” and hearing the response, “I’m content with what I have. Please don’t trouble yourself on my behalf.” Now that would be a rare child indeed. Some might say that such a child is enlightened. I’d say that such a child was drugged. Even a dog is capable of expressing what s/he wants, including a neutered dog.

Don’t pressure yourself into trying to come up with the perfect list of goals. You’ll never get there. Just write down some items that appeal to you, such as new experiences you’d like to have. Start with the goals that are easy for you to desire. Is there someplace you’d like to visit? Some activity you’d like to try? Someone you’d like to meet?

As you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, better goals will come to you. Don’t worry so much about changing the world if you’re still new to goal setting. Focus on some appealing but smaller achievements first, and as you get good at achieving those goals, continue to expand your goals in new directions.

8. Crystalize your goals.

At first you may write down a goal like, “I have a job I enjoy.” That’s an okay place to start, but it’s not a very powerful goal because it’s so fuzzy. Your mind will have a hard time locking onto it and taking action.

As you review your goals, try to lock them down and make them more specific.

For example, instead of asking for a job you enjoy, you could say, “I make a living creating movies.” That’s a positive step towards greater specificity.

Then as you think about that goal, you may progress to, “I enthusiastically earn $100,000 per year writing, producing, directing, and distributing independent short films that uplift, motivate, and inspire people to find their passion.” That goal is much clearer still.

Clear written goals help you stay focused. Fuzzy goals leave you feeling uncertain.

There’s no need to add superfluous details that are irrelevant to you, but if you can be more specific about what you truly want, it will help you achieve your goals faster, partly because clearer goals are less prone to procrastination. It’s too easy to procrastinate on a goal when you can’t figure out what the next step may be.

9. Pay attention to the path, not just the end result.

Sometimes the way you achieve a particular goal is more important than the goal itself.

When I started college my second time, ostensibly my goal was to earn my degree in computer science. That was an important goal for me, but it wasn’t very motivating by itself. The first time I pursued that goal, I failed miserably and got expelled from school. The thought of spending 4 more years in school to get a degree was demotivating, so I triple-majored in poker, alcohol, and shoplifting instead.

A year later when I started over as a freshman, I altered my goal to be, “I graduate with a computer science degree in only 3 semesters.” Now that goal inspired me! Challenging myself in that way was even more inspiring than the degree itself. I could have majored in psychology instead of computer science, and the goal still would have excited me.

Would your goal be more inspiring to you if you found a way to achieve it faster? With a partner or a small team? While traveling? Without spending a dime?

When a goal is too straightforward, it can become demotivating because the action steps may get tedious and repetitive after a while. But if you can spice up the process used to achieve the goal, you may discover some newfound excitement.

Sometimes it’s fun to take the scenic route.

10. Stick with one primary goal at a time.

If you have a lot of goals, it’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping around between different goals and making little progress on any of them. If you want to actually achieve a goal, focus on one key goal single-mindedly until it’s achieved. Then move on to another goal. This is what top achievers do. Having too many competing goals will simply scatter your energies.

It’s great to have a big list of goals, but which of those goals is most important to you right now? Which one do you want to achieve first? Make that goal your primary aim, and focus on its achievement. When you can work on that goal, do so. Work on other goals while you’re waiting for responses from others or if you simply need a break from the first goal.

What if you have a really huge goal that will take many years to achieve? Same rule applies. If that goal is truly important to you, then center your life around it. Otherwise you’re unlikely to sustain the kind of momentum needed to make it a reality. If that’s too much for you though, you can scale back your goal to something more manageable. Set a subgoal to achieve, but realize that if you do other things between those subgoals, you’re delaying the end result of your primary goal. That’s perfectly fine if you’re still making good progress and enjoying the process. The final result isn’t the only thing that matters.

When you look back on the previous year, do you see a track record of massive progress toward your primary goal? If you aren’t satisfied with your current rate of progress, then you’ll need to make some changes to avoid repeating the same pattern next year. There’s no honor in having a big goal on your list if you aren’t making serious progress towards its achievement. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that setting a big goal is the same thing as achieving a big goal.

11. Explore and experiment.

Sometimes it’s tough to set a clear goal because you don’t know what you’re getting into. In that case you can experiment in order to gain clarity about the goal space you’re exploring.

When I worked in the computer gaming industry, one of the major chicken-egg problems was that you didn’t really know what game you were trying to build until you were already well on your way to building it. Very rarely could you write out a complete design on paper and then implement it. That simply never happened for larger projects. Too many important design decisions had to be made along the way; otherwise golden opportunities would be missed, and the final product would fall far short of its potential.

Much of the time, a small team would develop a prototype that would demonstrate some interesting gameplay dynamics, and then they’d play around with it to see how they might develop it into a commercial product. Funding would typically occur in stages, with one or more rounds of funding to create the experimental prototype and demonstrate key features, followed by additional funding to staff up with a larger team and create the final product. The final goal, i.e. defining exactly what kind of game was being created, often didn’t become clear until the project was well underway. This process made sense for the designers, but it often drove the publishers and marketers nuts, so typically the production team would document more certainty about the specs and the schedule than was realistic, so as to make their financial backers more comfortable. Nevertheless, this design-as-you-go process led to the creation of some very innovative games (which inevitably went over budget and were released a year or more behind schedule).

Doing what you’re already doing won’t give you more clarity. Thinking about what to do next and writing down some goals can certainly help, but that isn’t always enough. Sometimes you have to get moving first before clarity can be achieved. You’ll enjoy more clarity when you’re in motion than when you’re standing still. A pilot has better visibility from the air than from the ground.

At the end of 2008, I blogged that intimate relationships would be my primary personal development focus for 2009. I shared my uncertainties about my marriage and my future relationship possibilities. I didn’t have a clear goal at the time, so I picked a new direction to explore that I felt would help me gain clarity. That direction was a bit controversial for some people, especially the religious folks, so I took flak after blogging about it, but I stuck with the decision. In retrospect it was definitely the right course for me, and 2009 became a year of extreme growth and change in my personal life. I’m immensely grateful that I didn’t settle for maintaining the status quo.

This has been a challenging exploration, sometimes an emotional roller coaster. But I don’t see how I could have learned what I needed to learn any other way. One thing I discovered is that I really enjoy new connections that are fresh and exciting, yet at the same time, I also enjoy the stability of grounding connections like spending time with my kids (who are sleeping over at my house tonight). My next challenge is to find the right balance between these two aspects of my relationship life instead of swinging the pendulum too far one way or the other. New goals are now emerging, goals I could not have verbalized a year ago.

When you’re stuck in a state of ambivalence, do whatever it takes to break the impasse. Do something radically different than what you’ve been doing. For example, if you know your current job is unfulfilling, but you don’t know what kind of work you’d enjoy, then quit the unfulfilling job immediately, and do something completely different for a while. Don’t expect to get it perfect on the first try. Go out and rack up a string of failed experiments, and you’ll be much closer to figuring out what you truly love.

Some people will judge you harshly for undertaking such an exploration, but their reactions have little to do with you. They may be upset because you’re reminding them that they haven’t been learning and growing as much as they could be. Or they may be upset because you’re interfering with their sense of certainty; they thought they had you all figured out, and then you throw them for a loop. Or they may just be having a bad day. Regardless of the reason, don’t let fears about other people’s reactions hold you back from conducting your own growth experiments. If I can handle all the sardonic silliness that other bloggers feel inclined to publish about me, then surely you can handle your friends and family thinking you’ve gone off the deep end for a while. Just remember that every person who takes issue with what you’re doing is really saying, “I care about you enough to invest my time in you.”

Don’t wait for clarity to come to you. You’re responsible for creating your own clarity from within. If you lack clarity, then get busy creating it. If you can achieve clarity by doing written exercises from the comfort of your home, great. If not, then leave your comfort zone behind, go outside, and explore what’s out there!

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

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?

Uncopyrighted 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.

Uncopyrighted 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.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina