Cultivating a Position of Strength Instead of subscribing to the slush pile frame, consider how you might cultivate a position of strength. This won’t happen overnight of course, but perhaps it’s something you could build over time. In order to achieve a position of strength, you’ll need to find a backdoor that allows you to [...]
Avoiding the Slush Pile The way many people gain credibility in the self-help field is by getting a book published and seeing it become a bestseller. This strategy fails more often than it succeeds though. It’s nearly impossible to get a book deal with a major publisher as a first-time author. You almost always have [...]
How can you succeed in a competitive, creative field like art, music, writing, or acting? Is success just a matter of working hard and waiting for your lucky break? Or is there a way to get ahead without relying so much on luck and chance? This was a problem I faced when I began working [...]
Quick Self-Assessment Exercise for New Year’s The first chapter of my book Personal Development for Smart People includes a self-assessment exercise that will help you decide how you’d like to improve your life in 2009. If you own a copy of the book, you’ll find this exercise on page 20. If you don’t have the [...]
No Excuses It’s so easy to make excuses for not working on a big goal. I don’t have the clarity I’d like. I’m not as motivated as I should be. I’ll just get these little things off my plate first. If you succumb to such excuses, your goal will take 10x longer to achieve — [...]
Chunk it Down If you get clear on your #1 goal, and you let the distractions slide for a bit, then what stops you from putting in the time? Most likely it’s a lack of clarity about what to do next. When you stare at a big goal, it’s easy to feel stressed and overwhelmed. [...]
Put in the Time Many goals can be achieved if you simply put in the time. If your goal isn’t physically impossible, chances are good that you’ll eventually achieve it. You may have a lot to learn, but there’s nothing stopping you from learning what you need to learn. Just put in the time, persist, [...]
Focus Focus Focus If you set strong, worthy goals, they’ll probably require tremendous focus. If you allow all sorts of minor projects and tasks to creep onto your plate, you’ll find yourself feeling pretty lousy around December. When you focus on a goal, this means you must prevent yourself from focusing on anything that isn’t [...]
Setting Priorities You don’t need to set a ton of different goals. Fewer is better. It’s better to achieve one big goal than to set 20 goals and fail to achieve any of them. Setting too many simultaneous goals will just dilute your focus. A goal is a decision. If you set lots of goals [...]
Have you ever started off the New Year by making grand new promises to yourself? You list out your new goals (and re-list some old ones). You get excited about what you’ll accomplish. You think about how great your life will be when you get all those things done. And then sometime in December, you [...]
