It’s been estimated that the average American will spend about 8 months of his/her life opening junk mail. Would anyone consciously choose to do that? Probably not. But how many will end up doing it anyway? And this is just the average. Some poor folks actually spend years of their lives processing junk mail. This [...]

What part of your life always seems to be on the back burner? Is it a certain relationship? A hobby you’ve always wanted to enjoy? A spiritual pursuit? Do you tell yourself that someday this part of your life will move to the front burner and become a priority? How will that actually happen? Back [...]

The harder I work, the luckier I get. – Samuel Goldwyn Arbeit Macht Frei is a slogan on a sign above the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland (among other concentration camps used by the Nazis). It roughly translates as, “Work sets you free.” What the Nazis expressed with cruel irony, I say seriously. [...]

One of the big traps in life is believing that you’re making progress when there’s no actual evidence of it. It’s easy to keep learning and studying new ideas, methods, and techniques that don’t improve your results… while convincing yourself that you must be making progress simply because you’ve invested a lot of time and [...]

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw In reading the biographies of very successful men and women, one theme frequently surfaces: such people have a strong bias for action. Those [...]

I recently discovered a nifty utility called MySpeed (for Windows and Mac) that lets you speed up the playback of online videos. I started using it last week, and now I can watch most online videos in half the time it used to take me. Obviously that’s a great time-saver. It doesn’t work for all [...]

Recently I decided to test biphasic sleep, which means sleeping in two distinct cycles every 24-hour period. This topic has been discussed on our forums at length, so if you want to learn more about it, read the massive biphasic sleep thread. If you just read the first post in that thread, it will give you [...]

It’s been about 30 days since I quit Facebook, so I wanted to share an update on what that’s been like. Many others also quit the service last month, and many more are on the fence as to whether they should do the same. Here are some realizations I’ve had as a result of leaving [...]

Today I decided to stop using Facebook. I’ve already turned off both my personal page and my fan page. I’ve been pretty active on Facebook in the past, and I have many friends who use the service. My personal page was maxed out at 5K friends for more than a year, and my fan page [...]

For years I’ve been recommending the 30-day trial as a way to install a new habit or replace a bad habit. Many people, myself included, have used this practice to successfully make behavioral changes — and have them stick. Now it’s time for the advanced version: The 30-Day Supertrial. [cue trumpets] A Quick Review When conducting [...]