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Clay

Contrary to the smack-talking I’ve done about numbered list posts, I recently wrote one for Zen Habits.  It’s called Living the Prolific Life: A How-to Guide.  Haters should note that the article follows several of the rules delineated here.

That’s announcement #1.  Here are 4 more:

1. Kelly Rigby over at She-Power.com recently interviewed me.  The questions were thought-provoking, and a couple were difficult (I dodged at least one of them).  Anyway, Kelly’s one of my favorite blogger’s and I’d definitely recommend checking her out.
2. After reading The Alternative Productivity Manifesto, a good friend recommended that I submit it to ChangeThis.com.  A little investigation left me feeling very impressed with CT, and I ended up taking her advice.  If you enjoyed the Alt. Productivity Manifesto I’d be grateful for your vote (no login required).
3. This post has resulted in far more phone calls than I expected and I’m really sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you yet.  I’ll be returning all calls by the end of next week.
4. I’ve been compiling responses to two questions: (1) "what is productivity to you?" and (2) "what isn’t productivity."  Please email me at TheGrowingLife [at] Gmail [dot] Com (or post your thoughts in the comments) if you’d like to chime in on the discussion. Note: If you’re a blogger, please be sure to send me your blog’s URL so I can link back to you after responses have been complied.

Hope to see you back here tomorrow (I’ll be posting this site’s first video Anti-Hack).

For more enthralling housekeeping posts, consider subscribing to The Growing Life.

I’m on vacation during the first part of this week (posts will resume on Thursday) and have used my free time to talk to some of you.  Read the rest of this entry »

First off, you must start with a quotation. Preferably by an Asian spiritual leader (quoting Lao Tzu, Confucius, or the Buddha works, but don’t quote Jesus). The quotation really doesn’t have to relate to the article or the picture at all. It just has to make you feel good. And quotes by people with obscure names are a good thing.
-Sun Zhongmou Liu Yuanzhi Xu Shu

The perfect productivity article should start with a picture of a person jumping. Pictures of beaches, sunsets, or children also do the job, but a picture of someone jumping really is best. It really doesn’t matter whether the picture relates to the topic, so long as it’s a really cool picture of someone jumping. Then you can proceed with the introduction.

The introduction shouldn’t be very long. Its real purpose is to make you look like a writer instead of a glorified list maker. Because if you don’t have an introduction, then you’d just have a list of tips and that wouldn’t look very good.  Or literary.

Bear in mind that a lot of people aren’t going to read past the second paragraph of your introduction. They’re just going to skip to the list, which is the most important part of the article. So without further ado, here are 70 simple power tao secret hacks to writing the perfect productivity article, plus a guide & system for doing it:

1. Call Your Article a Guide or System

No matter what the content or article length, make sure that you call your article a guide. Or a system. Your piece might only be 500 words, but that’s OK. Remember, people want to read guides and systems.

2. Make a Numbered List

Making a list is the most essential element of a productivity or self-help article because there are few things as compelling, sexy, motivating, and exciting as a list. So make sure you have one. The reason you want to have a list is because it allows you to number things. Also, it’s easier to make 70 points poorly that to make one point very well. Read the rest of this entry »

(Photo by  Steve Sawyer)
The battle for our minds usually isn’t a struggle against brainwashing (although most of us are mildly brainwashed). The battle for our minds isn’t usually about politics, consumer culture, and mass media. Nope. The battle for our minds is fought out every day in the workplace, and due largely to. . .

The Paradox of Intelligence

More intelligent people tend to have jobs that require very high levels of mental engagement (not to mention, longer work weeks). If you’re a doctor, lawyer, accountant, consultant, teacher, etc., then chances are your thoughts are consumed by work-related activities (and that you have less-than-average amounts of free time).

Highly intelligent people are more likely to exchange their brainpower for money, and less likely to retain much of said brainpower for themselves. They’re more likely to enroll in mentally demanding graduate programs and accept mentally demanding jobs. (In the western world we’re taught that if we have the capacity to be a doctor then it’s somehow a “waste” to work retail, make smoothies for a living, or become a farmer — even though a retailer worker, smoothie maker, or farmer get to own more of their thoughts).

Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Jonathon Howard of Di Mortui Sunt]

I just finished reading Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: the Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions. It is yet another book cashing in on the market’s love of laymen economics, in the vein of The Tipping Point and Freakonomics.  Like its literary predecessors, PI claims to explain all the quirks of humanity through the lens of Econonics, which as a science has about the same amount of credibility as say your local weatherman.  You know, the one with an associates degree in journalism.

To Dan’s credit though, his field of economics is called “behavioral,” and the field conducts experiments involving actual humans as opposed to trolling through vast fields of numerical data, making random odd pairs in the hopes of stumbling upon one that is correlated significantly enough and then screaming it from the rooftops, as an insightful, new view of human transactions. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes too much productivity can turn you into a real tool.  We’ve scooped these 5 winners from the productivity loony bin to provide our own self-development lesson about d-baggery and what-not-to-do. . .

Nutjob Type #1: Mr. Space Man

People always ask the same questions about these types: “is all that technology really making them more productive?”  The answer, of course, is obvious:

Of course they’re more productive than you. They’re freaking cyborgs!!

Anyway, we know Mr. Space Man all too well.  He’s got $10,000 worth of gadgets in his fanny pack (not to mention, space ice cream), and can’t stop futzing around with his stylus.  He speaks flawless Klingon and has most definitely been assimilated.

If you approach him with a productivity problem, the solution will likely come from a recent issue of Pen Computing Magazine and it will probably require you to install another program on your PDA.

How to Identify Him

You’ll know this guy because his cordless headset NEVER comes off. Read the rest of this entry »

photo by Djloche

I’ve spent a past life or two kicking against the pricks of growth.  Things have since improved about 1,000% because I’ve come to terms with my habit of . . .

Eating New Contexts for Breakfast

My soul is rooted in a homeland, but I eat new contexts for breakfast. There’s a city where I’ll lay deep roots, but I still chew up/spit out new learning environments; I down them like rolls of Smarties(TM).

It’s not that I’m a badass, I just like kicking it Henry Thoreau style:

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau

Put me in a new job, in a new learning environment, or a new situation and I’ll start drenching myself in that context.  If I’m in a new city, I’ll go skinny-dipping in its rivers and lakes, visit its grimy underbelly, walk the streets of its neighborhoods, drink its tap water, and go to every possible block party. If it’s a new job, I’ll often try to meet everyone in the company, go to all the trainings, take on new projects, move up the ladder.  I’m not alone in this, and chances are that at one time or another, you’ve “been there, done that.”

We all know the drill: You drench yourself in a situation, you wallow in the mud of humanity, wipe the grime all over yourself. You breathe it in, you live it, you grow from it. And then one day, like that, you wake up and discover its time to move on.

It’s not that you’ve grown out of a given situation, or grown above it or beyond it.  It’s often that grown away from it.  And this growing away is often painful because . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a legitimate introduction coming your way. Before I get to that, I hope you’ll to watch the vomit-inducing video below, produced by The Secret’s author.

Highlights from the Video: “I am a money magnet” “Everything I touch turns to gold” “I have more riches than King Solomon’s mines” “Money falls like an avalanche over me” “There is more money being printed for me right now” “I have the best of everything” “I know that when I ask for what I want, no matter what it is that I want, the answer must be, “your wish is my command.”

OK, done? Cool. We’ll be getting back to this video later. In the meantime, let’s talk about how . . .

Goals Can be Our Worst Enemies

You know how it goes. Back in the day you were excited about your goal.

Read the rest of this entry »