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 [...]

I’ve received several requests to write something about the apparent financial crisis in the USA, not to mention the upcoming election. Erin has received similar requests. At first I declined because so much is being written about this already, but people said they just wanted to hear my take on it, so here goes… First [...]

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 [...]

In this post I’ll share my thoughts on offering formal coaching or consulting services. Many people have asked me about this since I started blogging in 2004. If you have no interest in this topic, you can safely skip this post. I’ve always turned down formal consulting requests because I didn’t like the idea of [...]

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 [...]

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt It’s so easy for us to fall into [...]

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 [...]

Erin and I had a wonderful time at the Las Vegas I Can Do It! conference this past weekend. Although the conference was only 20 minutes from our home, we stayed at the Venetian Hotel, mainly so Erin would have a quiet place to do her readings. This is the 4th ICDI conference I’ve attended. [...]

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 [...]