General

  Distractions are everywhere.  Your computer.  Your smartphone.  Your mind racing through your to-do list. It doesn’t stop with you.  Distractions are all around you, beckoning for attention.  Advertisements.  Music.  Noise. The more you have going on around you, the more you mind tunes everything out.  If you’re walking through a big city, you might […]

  Do you want to make money? Who doesn’t?  The key to making money is making yourself useful to other people. Think of the people you gave money to over the past day.  They were useful to you.  You were hungry, so you gave someone a few dollars to cook a meal for you. Or […]

  The great marketing advice today is that “you must build your list.” By “your list,” they mean your email list.  Email is touted as the best way to market.  But is it really the best way? Here’s the case for email.  Let’s say it’s the year 2006 and you have a massive fan base […]

Here is another thought about the 10,000 Hour Rule. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 Hour Rule in his book, Outliers.  It is based on the work of Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson.  The rule states that the key to reaching world-class expertise at something is to practice it for about 10,000 hours. While 10,000 hours might […]

  The Internet is bigger than anyone thinks. Not just in literal size, but in impact on the human race. More than 10,000 years ago, people began settling down and farming land.  The Agricultural Revolution meant that people could stay in the same spot for extended periods of time.  They started building permanent houses.  With […]

  There is something most successful people have in common:  they rise early. “Early” is a relative term (and a funny-sounding one at that).  By “early,” I mean before most people wake and start to create distractions.  For me, the day’s distractions begin at 6:45 AM when I have to get the kids ready for […]

  I have a belief that everyone suffers and experiences joy in the same ratio.  The Universe balances everything. Those who suffer intensely also experience the greatest joys in life.  It’s all relative.  You might think a person with nothing living in the desert is less happy than a rich city-dweller who inherited a fortune. […]

The 10,000-hour rule is arbitrary. It’s like saying it takes two weeks to read a novel cover to cover.  Yes, maybe on average it takes two weeks for most people to read a book, but several factors affect how long it takes.  Reading speed.  Length of the novel.  Time spent reading.  And many others.  Some […]

There is a place for chaos and flexibility. But to perform your best over a lifetime, the most important thing to learn is the value of consistent habits. We need to be like a tree branch. It is hard and keeps its shape, but can bend to the wind during all but the harshest of […]

  Even having a good work ethic is not enough to be successful. A problem many creative people have is that they have too many ideas. You can’t work on every idea that pops into your head. If you try, you will either get nothing done or do a terrible job at everything. The human […]