Now here’s a surprise — my book Personal Development for Smart People has launched early. The original release date was October 15th, but the book has already shipped and is available now. You can get it at Amazon.com and in many major bookstores, including Borders, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Hastings. The major [...]

Changing a habit is like playing a game of chess. In chess there’s an early game, a middle game, and an endgame. The same is true for habit change. Many people try to change their habits by skipping straight to the endgame. They dive in and commit themselves to making the change happen right away. [...]

If you’re attracted to many different pursuits and can’t commit to any single one of them for your career, college major, or income source, then good for you! Leonardo da Vinci was in the same boat. He’s considered by many to be the greatest genius of all time. The notion that you have to commit [...]

In case you haven’t noticed the links I splattered all over StevePavlina.com during the weekend, my new book Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com (with a discount off the cover price). The official release date is October 15, 2008, so we [...]

Many people are really bad at estimating how much time a task will take. Perhaps you estimate you’ll need about an hour, and it really takes you 3-4 hours to finish. Or maybe you allocate 30 minutes for a task, and you’re done in 5 minutes. What can you do to get better at making [...]

Every week I receive emails from people who tell me their ideas for new websites, businesses, or organizations they’d like to build. Usually they ask me for feedback on their ideas, implying that their ideas have some intrinsic value. Occasionally they want me to invest in their ideas, either financially or by putting in some of my time [...]

Life coaching (or personal coaching) is fairly popular these days. Many people have asked me what I think of life coaching, so I’ll share my thoughts on this subject. A life coach is someone you hire to help assist you with your personal development, especially in the area of setting and achieving specific goals. Typically this [...]

I was up late last night playing chess on Yahoo Games with an old friend. The last time he and I connected was back when I was still a game developer, so as we were playing we were catching up about a lot of things. I looked him up after getting an intuitive hit to contact [...]

Starting a blog is very easy these days. You can start your own blog in a matter of minutes if you want. Many web hosts will even install a blog for you or provide an easy installation process. And of course you can always use a hosted service like WordPress.com or Blogger to get started. [...]

In order to develop a career that really suits you, it’s important to have a basic knowledge of your key strengths.  Unlike skills or knowledge you can acquire through education, your strengths are more basic talents.  For the most part you were born with them.  You can certainly continue to develop new talents, but in the area of [...]