Pearls of Pavlina thread

[Lupe]

This is gonna be my part-time, no-profit job.

Scuba diving into the Sea of Steve, and overwhelmed with the rich source of gems, I'll try to pick out the pearls over the gold, silver, and the occasional copper. I'll polish the pearls so that they are nice and round.

So I'll do some Pavlina-Pearl Engineering as a hobby. And perhaps if I do that enough, I'll be able to produce my own pearls someday.

Start with this one.

If Everyone Awakens Will We All Starve?

How can I justify cleaning my house, when I might spend that same time writing an article that will be just what someone needed to make a major, positive life-changing decision? In terms of overall impact, there's no comparison. By any stretch of the imagination, I'm far better off writing than cleaning.

To a highly conscious person, trading one's purpose for a salary is a silly compromise because money brings no joy without purpose, so that high salary is just the modern form of a slave's shackles.


[I would like to see Steve run for president, become the next Abraham Lincoln, abolish modern slavery]

So if everyone woke up to a noble purpose tomorrow, we'd still be able to feed ourselves. A purpose-centered person will still do what needs to be done. But menial tasks that weren't really necessary would be cut. For example, people wouldn't work in wage slave jobs making non-essentials that no one really cares about. People wouldn't waste time and energy making dumb movies, TV shows, toys, and games that don't enhance our lives. A number of corporations would see no one show up for work because it would be obvious that the corporation only existed to make a profit, not a positive social contribution. Tobacco company.

The more we automate our menial tasks, the more time we have to make a larger contribution. Automation also gives us time for introspection, meditation, journaling, deep conversation, and lots of other awareness-raising pursuits.

[That's true but you can also train yourself to keep your mind profitably engaged while doing those menial works.]

If you can invent something that saves people a lot of time or trouble on a large scale, you've made a pretty massive contribution.

[Or even better yet, if you come up with a skill of thinking productively while working manual labor, you have made a tremendous contribution.]

If you're working in a job you hate just to pay the bills, you're robbing this wonderful planet of the real contribution you could be making.

[Lupe]

Cultivating Burning Desire by Steve Pavlina

1. Burn the ships.

For instance, if you want to launch your own business, you can begin by making the commitment to quitting your job. Write a letter of resignation, put it in a stamped envelope addressed to your boss, and give it to a trusted friend with firm instructions to mail the letter if you haven't quit your job by a certain date.

One Las Vegas casino manager made the decision to quit smoking. He didn't feel he had the personal willpower to do it alone, so he took out a billboard on the Las Vegas Strip with his photo on it along with the words, "If you catch me smoking, I'll pay you $100,000!" Was he able to quit smoking? You bet! (Ok, bad pun.) This is called willpower leveraging. You use a small bit of willpower to establish a consequence that will virtually compel you to keep your commitment.

In the classic book The Art of War, Sun Tzu notes that soldiers fight the most ferociously when they believe they're fighting to the death. A good general knows that when attacking an opposing force, it's important to create the illusion of a potential escape route for the enemy, so they won't fight as hard. What escape routes are you keeping open that are causing you not to fight as hard?

If you don't burn those ships, you are sending the message to your subconscious mind that it's ok to quit. And when the going gets tough, as it inevitably does for any worthwhile goal, you will quit. If you really want to achieve your goals, then you've got to burn those ships to the ground, and scatter the ashes. If you're thinking that the average person won't do this, you're right -- that's why they're average.


4. Feed your mind with empowering information on a daily basis.
Inspirational books and audio programs are one of the best fuel sources for cultivating desire. If you want to quit smoking, read a dozen books written by ex-smokers on how to quit the habit. If you want to start a business, then start devouring business books. Go to seminars on occasion. I advise that you feed your mind with some form of motivational material (books, articles, audio programs) for at least fifteen minutes a day. This will continually recharge your batteries and keep your desire impenetrably strong.

First, avoid watching TV news -- it's overwhelmingly negative. Do you really need to hear about the woman who was mauled to death by her neighbor's dog? Fill that time with positive inputs instead, like motivational and educational audio programs. If you like to watch movies, then watch movies that are full of positive energy, such as light-hearted comedies and stories of triumph over adversity. Avoid dark, tragic movies that leave you feeling empty afterwards.

7. Use mental programming.This is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique that will help you associate strong positive emotions to whatever goal you're working to achieve. Find some music that really energizes and inspires you. Put on your headphones and listen to it for fifteen to twenty minutes, and as you do this, form a clear mental picture of yourself having already achieved the results you want. Make your imagery big, bright, vivid, colorful, three-dimensional, panoramic, and animated. Picture the scene as if looking through your own eyes (this is very important). This will help you form a neuro-association between the positive emotions elicited by the music and the goal you want to achieve, thus strengthening your desire. This is a great way to begin each day, and you can even do it while lying in bed when you first awaken if you set things up the night before. You should cycle the music periodically, since the emotional charge you get will tend to diminish if you listen to the same songs each time.

Keep in mind that this form of mental programming is already being used on you by advertisers. Watch a fast-food TV commercial, and you'll note that the food is big, bright, and animated -- spinning burgers, lettuce flying through a splash of water, ripe tomatoes being sliced -- and don't forget the catchy tune. So instead of letting others program your desires for you, take charge and mentally reprogram yourself.


3. Surround yourself with positive people.
Make friends with people who will encourage you on the path to your goals, and find ways to spend more time with them. Share your goals only with people who will support you, not those who will respond with cynicism or indifference.

I once read that you can see your future just by looking at the six people with whom you spend the most time. If you don't like what you see, then change those people. There's no honor in remaining loyal to people who expect you to fail. One of the reasons people fail to start their own businesses, for instance, is that they spend most of their time associating with other employees. The way out of this trap is to start spending a lot more time associating with business owners, such as by joining a trade association. Mindsets are contagious. So spend your time with people whose mindsets are worth catching.
8. Take immediate action.

Once you set a goal for yourself, act immediately. As you begin working on a fresh new goal, don't worry so much about making detailed long-term plans. Too often people get stuck in the state of analysis paralysis and never reach the action stage. You can develop your plan later, but get moving first. Just identify the very first physical action you need to take, and then do it. For instance, if you've decided to lose weight, go straight to your refrigerator, and throw out all the junk food. Don't think about it. Don't ponder the consequences. Just do it immediately.

One of the secrets to success is recognizing that motivation follows action. The momentum of continuous action fuels motivation, while procrastination kills motivation.

If you apply these eight strategies, you'll add so much fuel to your desire that the fire will never burn out. You'll move towards your goals like a guided missile to its target, and you'll enjoy the process because you'll be so focused on the positive rewards instead of the difficulty of the tasks. If you get enough positive energy flowing into you, you'll soon have positive results flowing out of you. And you'll quickly become the kind of person that others refer to as "driven."

[Lupe]

Overcoming Procrastination by Steve Pavlina

Replace "Have To" With "Want To"

First, thinking that you absolutely have to do something is a major reason for procrastination. When you tell yourself that you have to do something, you're implying that you're being forced to do it, so you'll automatically feel a sense of resentment and rebellion.

When you focus on the idea of finishing a task where you can't even clearly envision all the steps that will lead to completion, you create a feeling of overwhelm. You then associate this painful feeling to the task and delay as long as possible.

Replace, "How am I going to finish this?" with "What small step can I start on right now?"

Ask yourself how you can get started on just one small part of the project.

Just focus on what you can do right now. If you do this enough times, you'll eventually be starting on the final piece of the task, and that will lead to finishing.

Believing that you must do something perfectly is a recipe for stress, and you'll associate that stress with the task and thus condition yourself to avoid it.


Realize that an imperfect job completed today is always superior to the perfect job delayed indefinitely.


By treating your working time as a scarce resource, you'll be far more focused and effective in using your working time. It's been shown that the optimal work week for most people is 40-45 hours. Working longer hours than this actually has such an adverse effect on productivity and motivation that less real work is done in the long run.


Use Timeboxing

For tasks you've been putting off for a while, I recommend using the timeboxing method to get started. Select a small piece of the task you can work on for just 30 minutes.

You will probably find that you continue working much longer than 30 minutes. You will often get so involved in a task, even a difficult one, that you actually want to keep working on it.

When you do decide to stop working, claim your reward, and enjoy it. Then schedule another 30-minute period to work on the task with another reward.

This will help you associate more and more pleasure to the task, knowing that you will always be immediately rewarded for your efforts.

Working towards distant and uncertain long-term rewards is not nearly as motivating as immediate short-term rewards.

By rewarding yourself for simply putting in the time, instead of for any specific achievements, you'll be eager to return to work on your task again and again, and you'll ultimately finish it. You may also want to read my blog entry on timeboxing.

Realize that procrastination is caused by associating some form of pain or unpleasantness to the task you are contemplating. The way to overcome procrastination is simply to reduce the pain and increase the pleasure you associate with beginning a task, thus allowing you to overcome inertia and build positive forward momentum.

[Lupe]

How to Make Lots of Money During a Recession

if you only deliver value but don't create it, then you're delivering someone else's value. This isn't a terrible approach in the short run, but it's a short-sighted long-term strategy if this is all you do. There's nothing particularly special about delivering other people's value. Anyone can do it. Anyone can sign up for affiliate programs or join an MLM program or become a reseller. If this is your primary means of generating income, your long-term outlook is weak. The better this works for you, the more it will draw competitors into your field. Eventually everyone will be working harder and harder for scraps. This happens all the time. This strategy can be especially weak during a recession, as more people turn to less expensive sources for the same value you deliver, squeezing your profit margins thinner and thinner.

Bloggers fall into this trap when they rehash other people's content and don't really have anything unique or compelling to say. A year later their niche is flooded with competitors doing the same thing. And hardly anyone is earning decent income from it.

I was totally broke, yet I found a way to focus my energy on creating and delivering value instead of on trying to scrape together more money. Within about six months, I was back on my feet financially, and year after year my financial situation just kept getting better. I started on this path about 9 years ago, and I've maintained a nice positive cash flow every year since then.

I know that when you're in a financial crunch situation, six months may seem like a long time. But it doesn't matter if it takes you several months or several years to get in the habit of creating and delivering value. The time is going to pass anyway, and this habit will serve you well for life. Be patient and get started. It doesn't matter what happens to the economy — if you keep creating and delivering value, you'll do just fine.

Avoiding DistractionOnce you develop the habit of creating and delivering value, it's pretty hard to fail. However, it's very easy to get distracted along the way. Distraction is perhaps your biggest obstacle.

You can't get sucked into every money-making scheme that crosses your plate. Getting sucked into a job, where you have to trade hours for dollars, is just as bad. These are dead ends you should avoid by any means.

You have to stay focused on creating and delivering value. Everything that detracts from this focus should be viewed as an expense, obstacle, or just plain evil.

This is so important, but most people just don't get how important it is.

Getting a job is such a bad idea if you want to enjoy long-term financial abundance. The odds of success on that path are so low, it's not even worth considering.

Seriously, you are better off being broke and homeless, so you can focus on creating and delivering value from that place. You're much worse off if you have to waste day after day showing up to work for someone else. That won't move you closer to financial abundance. It will only distract you further.

If I had to choose between being homeless and getting a full-time job, I'd go the homeless route. Having a job would be 10x worse. As a homeless person, I could stay hungry and focused on creating and delivering value. I might not have the means to produce much value at first, but at least I could get out there in front of people and deliver something. It would be a good start on the right path.

A job is just a monstrous distraction. In many ways it's a modernized form of slavery.

Homelessness is a huge upgrade from traditional employment. Have you ever talked to a homeless person? Some of them find the idea of having a job insulting — it represents a loss of freedom. Sure you smell better and can get a nicer place to live, but you lose your humanity in the process. Perhaps such people realize something you don't.

Employment is the ultimate form of destitution.

Fortunately, employment is an easy problem to fix. If you have a job, just stop showing up. The rest will take care of itself. Pretty soon you'll feel some motivation and drive to start creating and delivering value, especially if you happen to like eating.

Genuine opportunities are based on creating and/or delivering value. If you see something that looks like a new opportunity, and it doesn't require you to create value, and it doesn't require you to deliver value, then it isn't an opportunity. It's a total waste of your time.

[Brutha]

To a highly conscious person, trading one's purpose for a salary is a silly compromise because money brings no joy without purpose, so that high salary is just the modern form of a slave's shackles.

[I would like to see Steve run for president, become the next Abraham Lincoln, abolish modern slavery]

You can't really force everyone by law to live his purpose.

The idea of trying to raise people consciousness through articles on the other hand has the potential to get people to live their purpose.

[Warping]

Lupe, I think you're wasting your time.
Isn't it better for people to read whole articles & take what they want from it.
One man's Pavlina gem is another's rock.
I'd rather see original content from you bro.

Hell, a blog would be fine.

[Lupe]

Originally Posted by Warping

Lupe, I think you're wasting your time.
Isn't it better for people to read whole articles & take what they want from it.
One man's Pavlina gem is another's rock.
I'd rather see original content from you bro.

Hell, a blog would be fine.

I need some intake before producing pearls of my own.

[Lupe]

Unfortunately most people — Americans especially — consume a truly hideous diet these days, filled with hormone-laden animal products, artificial ingredients, sugar, caffeine, salt, white flour, and heavily processed junk. An unhealthy diet will tax your endocrine system (which is responsible for hormone production), and that is going to prevent you from enjoying restful sleep.

What works well for me is a whole foods vegan diet, heavy on the raw fruits and veggies. When I went vegetarian in 1993, I was able to feel well rested with less sleep, and I woke up feeling more alert. Then when I went fully vegan in 1997, there was another improvement. As I explained in Why Vegan, the energy difference is the primary reason I converted to such a diet.

[Lupe]

In terms of the ready-fire-aim approach, in my opinion localizing this site falls squarely in the aim category. Once hundreds of articles have been translated into a variety of languages, it will be difficult to alter course mid-stream, and early mistakes can produce major headaches down the road. This is a situation where I believe careful planning trumps hasty action.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

[Lupe]

"I’m using movies as an escape. I always notice the flaws and how much better those movies could have been. I’m feeling a stronger urge to create something myself. I’d rather be making movies than downloading them. Wouldn’t it be cool if I wrote a screenplay?"

This is what I feel as I read blogs of others. I shall start one soon!

[Lupe]

Now this may make logical sense, but it's far easier said than done. You may logically know you're in no real danger if you get up on a stage and speak in front of 1000 people, but your fear kicks in anyway, and the imaginary threat prevents you from volunteering for anything like this. Or you may know you're in a dead end job, but you can't seem to bring yourself to say the words, "I quit."

Courage, however, doesn't require that you take drastic action in these situations. Courage is a learned mental skill that you must condition, just as weight training strengthens your muscles. You wouldn't go into a gym for the first time and try to lift 300 pounds, so don't think that to be courageous you must tackle your most paralyzing fear right away.

There are two methods I will suggest for building courage. The first approach is analogous to progressive weight training. Start with weights you can lift but which are challenging for you, and then progressively train up to heavier and heavier weights as you grow stronger. So tackle your smallest fears first, and progressively train up to bigger and bigger fears. Training yourself to lift 300 pounds isn't so hard if you've already lifted 290. Similarly, speaking in front of an audience of 1000 people isn't so tough once you've already spoken to 900.

[Lupe]

What is the difference between you and one of those legendary historical figures who did have such an impact? You both had many of the same fears. You both were born with talents in some areas and weaknesses in others. The only thing stopping you is fear, and the only thing that will get you past it is courage. What you do with your life isn't up to your parents, your boss, or your spouse. It's up to you and you alone.

[Lupe]

Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?

Does this mean that if you browse the Internet 7 hours in the office and work 1 hour you wouldn't get fired?

[Lupe]

Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it. How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.

[Lupe]

You actually need more discipline when you’re fully awake and conscious: the discipline to know that you can’t trust yourself to make intelligent, conscious decisions the moment you first wake up. You need the discipline to accept that you’re not going to make the right call at 5am. Your 5am coach is no good, so you need to fire him.

What’s the real solution then? The solution is to delegate the problem. Turn the whole thing over to your subconscious mind. Cut your conscious mind out of the loop.

Now how do you do this? The same way you learned any other repeatable skill. You practice until it becomes rote. Eventually your subconscious will take over and run the script on autopilot.

This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That’s right — practice. But don’t do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you’re wide awake.

Go to your bedroom, and set the room conditions to match your desired wake-up time as best you can. Darken the room, or practice in the evening just after sunset so it’s already dark. If you sleep in pajamas, put on your pajamas. If you brush your teeth before bed, then brush your teeth. If you take off your glasses or contacts when you sleep, then take those off too.

Set your alarm for a few minutes ahead. Lie down in bed just like you would if you were sleeping, and close your eyes. Get into your favorite sleep position. Imagine it’s early in the morning… a few minutes before your desired wake-up time. Pretend you’re actually asleep. Visualize a dream location, or just zone out as best you can.

...return to bed, reset your alarm, and repeat. Do this over and over and over until it becomes so automatic that you run through the whole ritual without thinking about it. If you have to subvocalize any of the steps (i.e. if you hear a mental voice coaching you on what to do), you’re not there yet.

Feel free to devote several sessions over a period of days to this practice. Think of it like doing sets and reps at the gym. Do one or two sets per day at different times… and perhaps 3-10 reps each time.

Yes, it will take some time to do this, but that time is nothing compared to how much time you’ll save in the long run. A few hours of practice today can save you hundreds of hours each year.

When your alarm goes off, you’ll get up automatically without even thinking about it. The more you run the pattern, the stronger it will become. Eventually it will be uncomfortable not to get up when your alarm goes off.

I’m confident that once you establish this habit, you’ll absolutely love it. I consider this to be one my most productive habits. It saves me hundreds of hours a year...

Think about it — if you oversleep just 30 minutes a day, that’s 180+ hours a year. And if you’re at 60 minutes a day, that’s 365 hours a year, the equivalent of nine 40-hour weeks. That’s a lot of time! Now I don’t know about you, but I can think of more creative things to do with that time than lying in bed longer than I need to.

I encourage you to give this method a try. I know it seems silly to practice getting out of bed, but hey, what if it works? What if you knew with total certainty that if you set your alarm for a certain time, you would absolutely get up at that time no matter what? There’s no reason you can’t create that for yourself over the next few days. Practice makes permanent.

[Lupe]

Why is acceptance a pillar of self-discipline? The most basic mistake people make with respect to self-discipline is a failure to accurately perceive and accept their present situation. Remember the analogy between self-discipline and weight training from yesterday’s post? If you’re going to succeed at weight training, the first step is to figure out what weights you can already lift. How strong are you right now? Until you figure out where you stand right now, you cannot adopt a sensible training program.

If you haven’t consciously acknowledged where you stand right now in terms of your level of self-discipline, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to improve at all in this area. Imagine a would-be bodybuilder who has no idea how much weight s/he can lift and arbitrarily adopts a training routine. It’s virtually certain that the chosen weights will be either too heavy or too light. If the weights are too heavy, the trainee won’t be able to lift them at all and thus will experience no muscle growth. And if the weights are too light, the trainee will lift them easily but won’t build any muscle in doing so.

Self-Discipline: Acceptance

[Lupe]

Early bird. Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task. You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day.

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

Why is this?

[Lupe]

Strange as it may seem, finishing the book was a moral issue to me as well. I reached the point where I realized I could be helping a lot more people through writing and speaking directly on personal growth topics, including the really challenging ones like this one. If I stayed my previous course, I would have had to delay a lot of good for the sake of helping a small number of software developers get better sales and perform better marketing. At my new level of awareness, I could no longer justify the old decision. The world isn’t going to spin off its axis because I didn’t complete that book.
...
If I make a commitment at one level of awareness and then reach a new level of awareness where that commitment is clearly wrong, then I will break that commitment. If this gets you bent out of shape, then you probably don’t want me in your life. It’s best not to read this blog then. It’s not a question of what’s merely right for me; I think hard about what’s best for the highest good of all. In this case it’s very clear to me that completing my software book would not be for the highest good of all. If that means I damage my credibility with a few people in the process, then I’ll pay that price.


Knowing When to Break a Commitment

[Lupe]

4. Too many mouths to feed.

Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits. Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it. You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.

Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income. After all, who has more control over the tax system? Business owners and investors or employees?

You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate. Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

[Lupe]

5. Way too risky.

Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.

Morons.

Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.

Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (”You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?

The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job