Conditioning Yourself to Succeed

Sometimes you may encounter situations where you know what you should be doing, but you’re having a tough time getting yourself to do it. Or perhaps you’re able to get started on a task, but you just can’t seem to maintain the momentum to see it through to the end. If such a problem continues…

The Courage to Live Consciously

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the…

Finding Fresh Brains

A follow up to the last post… Where do you find people to model? I think the best place to do this is through professional trade associations. Volunteering in such organizations is often a good way to develop inroads to meet some of the most successful members. Industry conferences are also excellent. I find smaller…

Brains Brains Brains

Yesterday I really enjoyed attending the Jackpot Speakers club meeting. This Toastmasters club runs itself very differently than my club, focusing heavily on critique and discussion and less on following the formalized structure of a typical Toastmasters meeting. Linda Bowns and Jeff Lowe, respectively the first and third place winners in the contest mentioned in…

Humorous Speech Contest

Last night I competed in my Toastmasters’ division humorous speech contest at the California Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. It was very competitive, and I took home second place. The first place winner was Linda Bown, who gave a great speech titled, “Oh, Clutter. My Clutter.” Her particular club, Jackpot Speakers, specializes in coaching its…

Optimal Thinking

Optimal Thinking by Rosalene Glickman is a book I read about a year ago. I don’t recommend that anyone here read it because it’s one of those books that reads like an article padded out to the length of the book. You need only read the first chapter to absorb 80% of the book’s value.…

Timeboxing

Timeboxing is a simple time management technique I use often. I first learned about it in software development terms. Let’s say you have a fixed deadline for a new product you need to release, such as an annual upgrade to software for calculating income taxes. You must have a new version ready by a certain…

High-Protein Nonsense

As a follow up to some feedback I received on the last entry (I figured it would flush some Atkinites out of the woodwork)…. I agree that high-protein diets like Atkins’ can induce weight loss, and I personally know people who swear by the diet, but many are reporting that the manner in which the…

Modeling

One of the most effective concepts in personal development is modeling. Modeling simply means that you find someone who’s already getting the results you want in some area, learn what they did to get those results, and then basically just do the same thing. It’s a lot like following a recipe to re-create a meal.…

More on Planning

I’ve received some questions (both publicly and privately) about the Oct 11 entry on planning, so I think a follow-up is in order to address them…. Planning is such hard work. And it’s hard to keep plans up to date. So why do it? The best advice I can give here is to try it…