Let’s consider a couple different scenarios you’ll encounter on your lifelong path of personal growth: linear growth and growth forks. This article will mainly focus on how to overcome the indecision you may face at a tricky growth fork. Linear Growth Linear growth is when you can see the next steps ahead of you fairly [...]

In personal development terms, calibration is the process of progressively refining your thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors until you shift your equilibrium to the point where you can consistently achieve the results you desire. Just as you might calibrate a scientific instrument to provide consistently accurate measurements, you can calibrate your skills to generate consistently good [...]

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 [...]