IN my 2+ years since leaving a regular 9-to-5 I’ve been able to create a pretty slick list of tools I use daily that help me get things done. These are tools (either physical or online) that I believe will help aspiring online entrepreneurs (and possibly established online entrepreneurs) to be more productive and more effective at growing their businesses and expanding their opportunities.

1. MacBook

Photo Credit: Steve Keys

If you need to be on the computer, chances are your goal isn’t to use a computer. Your goal is to write a post, email a client, outline a novel, hire a designer, update a sales page. This is the problem I’ve always had with Microsoft Windows. Windows is an operating system for people who want to use a computer (that is, wrestle with errors and fight off viruses). Mac OS X is an operating system for people who want to do things. Apple has created a highly polished, nearly transparent environment for just getting shit done and I know that it’s a huge reason I’ve done as well as I have. While Windows is utilitarian enough to do what you need to do, the experience of actually doing it ranges anywhere from absolutely miserable to okay. For whatever reason, developers of most Mac apps are very detail oriented and create beautiful and efficient interfaces that do what you want them to do 99% of the time. Using a MacBook just means one less thing to worry about. (And yes, you can right-click.)

2. Notebooks

Photo Credit: MoleskineUS

I love Moleskine notebooks. I have three. One is a sketchbook which I use for brainstorming, one is a regular ruled notebook which I use to collect ideas for business projects, and the third (my favorite) is a panoramic weekly planner that helps me keep track of todos as well as weekly goals and contacts. Now, while I enjoy the design of the Moleskines, for what I use the sketchbook and regular notebooks for any notebook would suffice, but the panoramic planner is the only I’ve seen of its kind.  I generally have a problem keeping track of details and big-picture stuff at the same time and I’m also the sort of person who needs to see some kind of physical evidence of their goals and accomplishments. If you’ve tried lots of GTD stuff or lots of different apps like Things or Hit List and you still feel overwhelmed, I’d definitely recommend that you pick up a planner. It’s a lot faster and much more convenient than tracking things on a computer.

3. Google Reader

Google Reader

If you’re going to blog you need to be reading at least a few other blogs just to stay on top of things. Even if you don’t blog, you’ll probably need to follow some blogs within your industry. Google Reader is the single best way to do this primarily because not only can you view your feeds on the Google Reader homepage, but it also allows you to sync all your feeds across multiple devices. For me that’s its single best feature. Until recently I had always hated feed readers because I would end up reading the same things from my MacBook, to the desktop, to my iPhone. And even worse, each of these devices had a different app for reading feeds so I was actually maintaining three different lists. Needless to say, it didn’t last long. I’d religiously read blogs for almost a week at a time, then I’d get overwhelmed and not read any of them for months. Google Reader fixed this by consolidating all of my feeds into one place and syncing read and unread posts across all devices. The only thing I don’t like about Google Reader is its interface. I find it clunky, but that’s easily fixed. If you have the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox, you can find different styles at userscripts.org. The screenshot I’ve used is what my Google Reader looks like.

4. Reeder

Reeder for iPhone

Google Reader wasn’t enough to keep me reading feeds though. To be honest I’ve only very recently been reading blogs on a daily basis. This is mostly due to Reeder for iPhone. Reeder is a feed reader that syncs with Google Reader to display your subscriptions and it does this really well. It also lets you tweet posts, add them to Instapaper or Delicious, share them, make notes about them, and on and on. My favorite thing about it is that, besides working really well, it looks damn good. If you’ve ever seen feed readers on the iPhone you’ll know that most of them look like really ugly lists. Not so with Reeder as you can see from the screenshot. The reason Reeder keeps me reading every day is because it’s pocket-sized. It’s a lot more convenient to read blogs on a screen the size of a small book than it is to read it on a laptop screen. Reeder makes the entire experience a lot smoother.

5. Outright

Outright

I hate bookkeeping. It’s tedious. It’d definitely not the reason I got into this whole business owner thing, but it’s absolutely essential to success. The good news is, there’s an online tool that makes bookkeeping less of a hassle. It’s called Outright and it’s free! It does so much. It lets you track your income (including invoices from FreshBooks and PayPal) and your expenses (including reminding you to send 1099 forms to contractors and freelancers). It will send you reminders about quarterly tax deadlines and show quarterly profits. For a financial idiot like myself, this is the best tool I could have found. It does everything I need it to do without bothering me much.

6. PayPal

PayPal

Before I was seriously into internet business, I just assumed that PayPal was a service that only really offered any benefit if you used eBay, and since I didn’t use eBay I didn’t bother with it. But if you plan on accepting money from clients or customers, PayPal is the single best option when you’re starting out. There are other services you can use to send and receive money online, but PayPal is probably the most popular, the easiest to use, and best of all it’s free to sign up. After you sign up, PayPal only charges you a small percentage per transaction. I have used (and will continue to use) PayPal for any project I do that requires someone paying me, whether it’s design work for a client or selling ebooks. PayPal also integrates easily into most popular shopping cart and invoicing software.

7. FreshBooks

FreshBooks Invoicing App

PayPal brings us to FreshBooks. FreshBooks is a web application that handles time tracking and invoicing for projects. It’s great for if you are just starting out as a freelancer or even a service-based business owner. The great thing about FreshBooks is that it’s one of those sites that pays for itself. You can sign up for a free account that allows you to manage up to 3 clients and then, of course, after you reach the three client maximum, paying $19/month won’t be a problem! FreshBooks comes with time tracking tools if you are billing by the hour. These come in the form of Gadgets for Windows, Widgets for Mac and mobile apps if you’re away from the computer. You can also keep track of who has paid and who still owes you. Besides PayPal, the site can accept pretty much any payment service you would want to use. You even have the ability to send your invoices by snail mail. It’s just a really great service and I highly recommend it.

8. WordPress

WordPress Open Source Publishing Platform

WordPress is hands-down the single greatest app for running websites. Of course it is great for blogging, but you can use it to create, edit and manage every page of a website. You don’t even need to run a blog on your site to use it. It is the most popular blogging software in the world and is probably used by many of your favorite bloggers. As a freelancer or a business who needs to cultivate an online presence and interact with clients and customers, using a WordPress blog is one of the greatest things you can do. WordPress comes in two varieties. There’s WordPress.com which provides you with a blog hosted by Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) and there’s WordPress.org which provides you with the software to set up WordPress on your own server. WordPress is open source so you are free to add or edit anything you want or even fork it and create your own open source product. There are literally no limitations. WordPress is also really easy to use. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, there’s really not a lot of difference except that things are in different (but logical) places. WordPress also has thousands of awesome free (and paid if you want) themes that can make your site look absolutely beautiful. Simple to use, free to use, beautiful, sign up at WordPress.com today or set it up on your own server.

9. Headway WordPress Theme

Headway Premium Theme

I’m very much a fan of open source projects. I never cared much for closed source premium WordPress themes that limit the rights of the user (think Thesis) because the people who put out such themes seem to be parasites to the WordPress community. And while I still feel this way in general and still wish that all these closed source themes would go open source, I was so blown away by the Headway theme that I actually bought it about a week ago and now use it to run this site. If you are setting up a site to promote your freelancing or to promote your business and you don’t want to screw around with themes that aren’t exactly what you want them to be, I highly recommend Headway. Although I’ve been designing and developing WordPress themes for two years, I was never completely comfortable with programming. I have more of a designer’s mind and designing was always my favorite part. With Headway’s visual editor, editing your theme is a lot like dragging and dropping things in Photoshop. You can add a custom header, add content boxes and widgetized sidebars, even custom design every single page. It is a really fantastic product and definitely worth what it costs.

10. Basecamp

Basecamp Project Management

This one is especially helpful if you are a freelancer who usually works with other freelancers or a business owner trying to keep your employees or contractors organized. Basecamp helps you manage the projects you are working on by creating milestones and todo lists for the project, assigning those todo lists to certain people, keeping track of when things are due and when they are late, uploading files related to the project, allowing clients or managers to comment on the files, and on and on. Unlike most project management solutions that focus on charts and numbers, Basecamp focuses on people. It is a tool that facilitates the communication and collaboration between everyone involved in the project.

What do you think?

• What are your essential tools for aspiring online entrepreneurs?
• What would you remove from the list?
• What would you add to the list?

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Bad habits end themselves without outside support. Every alcoholic has a small network of little people keeping them running. It’s usually the romantic partner who ensures that the ne’er-do-well gets out of bed every morning for work. They keep them fed while they’re unemployed.

This extends beyond intimate relationships. Dysfunctional people often require a large hierarchy under them to function. When the drunk walks into the office hung over, there’s someone who’s willing to expend heroic efforts to cover for the lost productivity due to self-destructive habits.

Most of us have an array of vices that prevent us from achieving our full potential. The role of the enabler in a social network is to bear the toxic pain that would otherwise be felt by the irresponsible members of the tribe.

This is intensive emotional labor, and necessary to maintain malfunctioning corporations, families, and other groups.

A typical enabler casts themselves as “supportive,” playing the role of the amateur therapist or pseudo-parent. Enablers are stereotypically females, but the behavior is practiced by both genders.

Steve Jobs, for example, is well-known for his verbally abusive managerial style. In order to function, Jobs, no doubt, must vent his rage on his subordinates on a regular basis in order to maintain his psychic equilibrium.

Apple is a successful corporation, and I don’t begrudge it. Much of the success of the company has been attributed to Jobs’ leadership, and with good reason. I’ve never been impressed by Apple products, but I can respect the quality of the workmanship and the marketing mystique the company created.

The trouble in these sorts of dysfunctional systems only becomes apparent over time. It’s challenging to remember this, but the success of Apple is a recent phenomenon. Apple’s shift to a design-conscious consumer electronics firm only began with the release of the iMac in 1998. The continued success of the enterprise isn’t guaranteed, and is rather unlikely.

Look at the iPad. The immediate reaction of thousands of outside observers was to ridicule the brand name.

When you make a habit of dumping your toxic rage on your subordinates, over time, they begin to resent it. Usually, those feelings remain unconscious. Subtle rebellion creeps in. The public humiliation of Jobs following the iPad announcement seems to be the fruit of passive-aggressive rebellion from all the co-workers that Jobs has insulted over the years.

To a certain extent, we all have bad habits. Some of these are more virulent than others. Striving to eliminate all of our self-harming tendencies can be a life-long task that most of us have no time for.

Yes, you should quit heroin if you’re an addict, but the energy that you’d need to expend to become a tee-totaler that never eats cookies or watches TV and only eats a diet of protein powder, vitamins and flavored air might be more intensive than it would be worth.

However, there are some habits that you must excise from your personality if you’ve ambition. While accruing a network of sycophants can be a profitable survival strategy, it’s fraught with long-term risk, and typically results in profound misery.

Like Lindsay Lohan. Or Josef Stalin. He died in 1953, surrounded by his lackies, after living decades in stupendous luxury, successfully getting away with the murders of millions of people, lauded by a terrified population. He was perhaps the most successful Machivellian ever.

He was also unhappy, unloved, and perpetually wracked with violent moods of fear and loathing.

Lifestyle design is about the hunt for happiness.

This isn’t a cute-and-cuddly process in which everyone comes out ahead.

Dysfunctional people require slavish poison-sucking behavior from their enablers. Severe alcoholics abandoned by their families end up homeless, institutionalized, dead, or (in some rare cases) clean up their acts.

While life as a whole is not a zero-sum game, in many cases, some people must be abandoned to their own self-destructive ends.

Mutual exploitation is an unstable relationship style. It can provide short-term benefits to both parties, but in the long run, it corrodes the integrity of everyone involved.

Bear in mind that most people around you will be incapable of forming mutually nurturing relationships – in business or in personal life. Look for the little hints that people (and clients) give off about the gaping voids in their personality. These are market demand signals for other people to rush in and fulfill their unmet needs.

There’s nothing strictly wrong with helping other people in this manner. It’s what keeps the economy moving. I have no idea how to fix broken plumbing, so I’ll hire a plumber to do it for me. It only becomes a problem if the enabling person becomes trapped in a relationship without adequate compensation.

Beware of people who will ask you to accomplish something that you can’t. It’s beyond your capabilities to repair a broken business model for a client. You might be able to polish up the surface for them, collect a fee, and then depart, but avoid getting sucked into a never-ending process of remaking an entire company unless you’re getting paid McKinsey-like money.

This is a process of negotiating professional and personal limits and boundaries.

Clients that give off red flags will fit solidly within the 80% of people that aren’t worth your time.

For example, if a client fails to explain their business model when asked, it’s probably not worth working with them. You might be able to learn from working for failures up to a certain extent, but in the long run, it’s healthier to work with rational clients, regardless of the short-term benefits of skimming from the bottom.

This includes working for startups funded by profligate investors that have no actual customers. I doubt that there are many of these out there still breathing, but it still stands as a good rule to follow – even if you’re desperate.

Bad management teaches you poor work habits. The marketplace itself is the ultimate teacher. Companies without an established market are more like hobbies than enterprises.

The Wage System

The wage system functions because so many people are willing to be exploited, so they can lubricate the cogs of the grandiose machines of the powerful for pitiful rewards. They gain a lukewarm sort of satisfaction out of their place in life from doing so, metered by an all-encompassing misery.

I also think that such people are better off working than they would be otherwise, but I can understand that their training into subordinacy (which they’re not responsible for) makes them more willing to work for less.

Simultaneously, I understand that this socio-economic system is unsustainable. There are too many perfectly capable people out there working far below their potential. Anything that we can do to unlock that dormant human capital will create a happier, more productive world.

When a customer comes to you with a nebulous array of problems, your job is not to save them from themselves. Like a combat medic, you perform triage. Take care of the life-threatening problems first, within the budget. Leave the rest alone.

Break down those problems into next-action lists. The mind can’t make sense of incoherent concepts.

Never accept abuse or harassment from a client, superior, or co-worker. It’s not worth the stress and fall-out, even if you might lose out on some cash in the short run. If you’re worried about them, rest assured that they’ll find another punching bag on the labor market.

Photo Credit: agitprop

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It is absolutely true that the internet makes becoming a business owner and a millionaire easier than ever. You don’t have to be rich or go into debt to get started and you have really cheap access to a global audience. In many cases, you don’t even have to worry about keeping inventory or accepting credit card payments. The internet kills middlemen and cuts startup costs drastically so that anyone who knows how to click a mouse can start earning some extra money.

But vast fortunes are made on the internet the same way they are made off of the internet — with good ideas, thorough planning and hard work. All three of these things can be accounted for in a solid business model.

What is a Business Model?

According to Dictionary.com’s 21st Century Lexicon, a business model is a “design of the operations of a business which focuses on how revenue will be generated.” In short, a business model describes the way you plan to make money from start to finish. It can be a very simple statement or fairly complex and can include anything from development to implementation to distribution, marketing and selling.

Real world business models are usually very straightforward. A coffee shop’s business model is to make money by brewing and serving up cups of coffee to caffeine addicts. A bookstore’s business model is to make money selling books and magazines to both casual and voracious readers. While each example can certainly be more elaborate — the coffee shop might also sell muffins, the bookstore might also sell DVDs — it is still fairly simple.

In the online world, business models aren’t necessarily so obvious. There are companies like Facebook which provide a service entirely free and make their money by selling ads and virtual goods. There are companies like Amazon which make their money by selling products much like brick-and-mortar shops. There are companies like 37signals (who created the web app Basecamp) which make money by offering subscriptions to their sites.

And these aren’t the only examples. There are lots of possibilities for successful online business models, some that I’m sure haven’t even been discovered or implemented yet.

But if you are just getting started online, there are three business models that you’ll want to give special consideration to because they are the three models on which most successful online businesses are built: the Efficiency Model, the Product Model and the Niche Model.

The Efficiency Business Model

If you’ve ever had a problem with something and thought, “I wish such-and-such a thing existed so that this would be easier” then you’ve already unwittingly ventured a bit into the Efficiency Model. The Efficiency Model is based entirely on helping people do what they already do, but with more efficiency and ease. This is the model most early internet entrepreneurs built their fortunes on.

In the early to mid-1990s, the internet was a very different place. It was mostly seen as a giant worldwide encyclopedia. There were forums and chat rooms, sure, but in general the social aspect of web browsing that we’ve come to know was just barely in place. There was no Facebook or Twitter or Stumbleupon and instant messaging hadn’t yet reached any significant level of popularity. For the most part, surfing the web was an isolated experience that required a guidebook. No kidding! A literal, printed guidebook that presented a listing of sites divided by category. Check your local library for these ghosts of internet past.

The problem with these books was that their listings were quickly outdated and included lots of dead links while lacking lots of valuable newer sites. Not to mention that these books cost money. Having to update them on a regular basis was an expensive hassle. Surely there must be a better way.

There was! In early 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo recognized this problem and created a site called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” Like the books, this site provided a directory of websites divided by category. Unlike the books, this website was free and had the added benefit of always being up-to-date. It was exactly what the web surfers of 1994 needed.

By the end of the year, the site had received over one million visitors and had been renamed Yahoo!.

The Efficiency Model begins with a problem that you don’t only recognize, but that you likely experience yourself. Think about all the times you get frustrated with a website or with an online experience. Most people have an easy enough time knowing something is wrong and complaining about it, but go a step further. Ask yourself what the ideal experience would be like or what the essential features of a site would be. Your answer could be the beginning of a multimillion dollar venture!

The Product Business Model

Ever sold something on eBay? If you have, you already understand the basic idea of the Product Model. The Product Model is all about selling something. It can be a single product or a collection of products, products you’ve made or products that other people have made.

The most obvious successful site using the Product Model is Amazon.com. Amazon collects products from many different manufacturers, scans them into their system and puts it online for the world to buy. For a monthly fee, they also allow entrepreneurs to list and sell their own inventory through the site.

Of course, if you’re just starting out (unless you have a really brilliant idea) there’s not much of a chance you’ll successfully take on Amazon. Amazon is big and efficient. Ask someone where they shop online and there’s a good chance Amazon is the first site they think of. Not to mention that Amazon is big enough to get great deals on its products, making their pricing some of the lowest around.

So, if Amazon is so established and they sell pretty much anything you could want at cheaper prices than you could afford to sell them, why should you even bother with the Product Model? Well, this question is based on the assumption that every store has to sell the same variety of products at lower prices to compete with other stores. That’s not true.

Let me use Walmart as an example. The Walmart here offers pretty much anything you need at a much lower price than any other store can offer. They have toys, dog food, cameras, dresses, DVDs, groceries and on and on. Whatever most people need, they have.

They also have skateboards.

In my city in recent years a huge group of young skaters started to develop. I see them anytime I’m in town now, all over the place. On any given street you’re likely to see at least one or two rolling along. They even have a designated area complete with ramps and rails and it’s always packed with people. With new kids wanting to take up the sport every week, the $20 skateboards must be flying off the local Walmart’s shelves, right?

Wrong. Most of the young people are carrying around $50 and $60 boards from a specialty skate shop. This skate shop sells boards at much higher prices than Walmart does and, yet, they are outselling Walmart’s boards 3-to-1. How can they do that?

They can do it because the owners of this skate shop aren’t only looking to make a sell. They live, breathe and love skating. They know the culture. They are the culture. They know what’s quality and what isn’t and they are much more credible than their Walmart counterparts. In fact, this shop also invested in the ramps and rails that the kids are using to learn the sport. They have cultivated a community based on a common passion and made their business the hub of that community.

This is how you set yourself apart using the Product Model. You specialize in something you’re passionate about. Your passion will show through and people will take notice. People are willing to pay higher prices for quality, culture and superior atmospheres especially if you come to be regarded as an expert in your field. Sell things that you are actually invested in, that you actually know about. Sell things that excite you and you can’t go wrong.

The Niche Business Model

The Niche Model is a more recent wave in online business. Niche businesses are founded for a very specific group of people, monetized and then, sometimes, expanded. Once a niche business finds its audience, it can sell ads, products, subscriptions or whatever. The Niche Model can overlap with the Efficiency and Product models or any other model you come up with, but what’s important is finding the audience.

Most online niche businesses start with a keyword search. When I recently developed my Simple Weight Loss for Men ebook, I started with the knowledge that about 22,000 people search for “weight loss for men” each month. Twenty-two thousand people is a very significant audience, but also not too crowded with competition (compared to the 16 million for “weight loss” in general).

If instead of an ebook I wanted to create a niche business, I might have bought a domain name (like SimpleWeightLossforMen.com), set up a blog at that domain, posted some valuable weight loss content targeted at men and optimized that content for search engines so that I could try to rank at the top of the results. Over time (especially if I start ranking at the top of Google searches), I’d start getting a good amount of steady traffic each month. I could then use this traffic to sell my ebook or to put up some ads.

For a more interesting example, we can look to Markus Frind. In 1999, Frind graduated from British Columbia Institute of Technology. With his diploma in Computer Systems Technology he jumped from tech job to boring tech job, always unsatisfied with his work. In 2003, wanting something more stable, Frind started developing a dating site in his spare time despite major players like Match.com and Lavalife cornering the market.

By the end of 2003, Frind’s site (which he called Plenty of Fish) grew from 40 members to 10,000. He had found a market that was clearly underserved — broke singles! While other dating sites charged ridiculous sums of money to access their listings, Frind allowed his site to be completely free. As the site grew, so did Frind’s wallet. In the first year his earning climbed to almost $3500 per month from selling ads which was such a significant amount that he quit his job. The site pulled in $10 million in 2008 from ads alone.

All because he was able to tap a niche of broke singles!

Choosing a business model and getting started with online business can be a very complicated process. There’s a lot to learn, but the information is easy to find! If you want an expanded explanation of these business models as well as a detailed guide for getting into online business, I very highly recommend Internet Riches by Scott Fox. The title is kind of gimmicky, but it contains some of the highest quality information you’ll ever find on the subject. It’s definitely the place to start if you’re new to online entrepreneurship.

Photo Credit: myklroventine

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“The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Lately I’ve taken to hanging inspirational fliers all over the wall around my workspace to remind myself what I’m working for and why I must choose to do the things I do. When you are juggling multiple projects and have aspirations as high as mine, it can be difficult to keep track of everything. And it’s way too easy to get overwhelmed.

The flier that most inspires me these days hangs at eye level just above my monitor and contains the simplest truth for moving forward on projects that seem unrealistically big.

It says, “Just one more step.”

The Climbing of El Castillo

A tourist-chasing street vendor conned me out of a whole twenty pesos for a poorly made, mass-produced straw hat. I’m still ashamed of that one. The loose weaving let the mid-day sun creep through the brim and onto my already burnt cheeks and the black-and-rainbow ribbon that wrapped around its base wasn’t doing much for my style, but it was all I had. It was definitely better than nothing. I’m way too pale for a Mexican summer.

After ten hours on a bus, I would have been happy to be anywhere, but I wasn’t just anywhere. I was surrounded by the ruins of Chichen Itza. There was the Great Ball Court where the Mayans played a game that resembled a mix of soccer, volleyball and basketball. There was the observatory from which they could measure and observe at least 20 astronomical events. There was a palace dubbed “The Nunnery” because of it’s architectural resemblance to a convent.

But, most importantly, there was El Castillo.

El Castillo (which means “The Castle” in Spanish) is a step-pyramid and the centerpiece of the archaeological site at Chichen Itza. It was also one of the biggest reasons I’d ventured into Mexico. After years of reading about such a place in National Geographic or watching documentaries about it on the History channel, I wanted to actually experience it. I wanted to see it with my own eyes, to touch it, to smell the air around it and to climb it. Now I’d finally gotten my chance.

I stood at the bottom looking up. The sun soaked sky was nearly burning my retinas, but if I squinted enough I could just make out the shape of the temple chamber at the top. It was quite an intimidating thing for me to imagine climbing especially considering my fear of heights. The ninety-two steps on the north side were a lot steeper and narrower than any photograph can show and, if I remember correctly, they were formed out of a very slick limestone.

The tour guide went on and on about the site. How on the spring and autumn equinoxes the sun would be able to creep down the staircase and illuminate a snake’s head at the bottom, making it look as if the serpent was crawling out of the temple chamber. And how, if you clapped loudly enough, the pyramid would echo back a high-pitched chirping sound that resembled the call of a quetzal, a bird that represented the Mayan god Kukulkan for whom the pyramid was built.

By the time he’d released the group to go climb the pyramid, I had already talked myself out of it. I’d probably fall. I was afraid of heights. It was good enough to just be there. After a few minutes watching others scale the pyramid, I walked up to its base and thought, “I don’t need to go to the top, I just need to know I was on it so I can tell people at home.” So, I stepped up on the lowest step. It was too easy.

“I’ve come 1400 miles. I should at least get a decent view.” So I decided that all I needed to do was get to the middle of the staircase so I could look back and see a wider view of the site. Since I was so afraid of falling, I climbed step-by-step using my hands as well as my feet (which felt pretty natural, considering its steepness). One step after another after another. A second, then a third, then a fourth and on and on. I just stared straight down and counted each step I was on. I didn’t care exactly where I was on the staircase, I only cared that the step I was on now was one number higher than the step I was on before.

By the time I looked up to the top of the pyramid and looked back down, I realized I was at least three quarters up it. Why stop now? So I kept climbing, counting each and every step. All ninety-two. And then I stood at the top staring into the temple chamber. I turned around and it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen! You could see for miles. You could see every single building at Chichen Itza from the top of El Castillo. And more than that, it was absolutely surreal. I was standing atop a thousand-year-old Mesoamerican pyramid.

(I ended up being especially glad I did it because a year or so after I was there an 80-year-old woman fell to her death. Tourists are no longer allowed to climb El Castillo.)

Focus On Where You’re At

With any goal you want to accomplish, you should have just a vague view of the bigger picture. That is to say, you should know you are working toward something bigger, but all of your focus should be on where you’re at now. Don’t worry about the end if you’re at the beginning. Worry about the beginning. Worry about making the beginning as good as it can possibly be then move on to the next step and focus on it for a while, making it as good as it can be.

It can be very overwhelming to stare up at your “pyramid” and think, “Wow, I have to climb that entire thing.” Don’t do that. You don’t climb pyramids in a single massive leap. All you have to do is take tiny steps and make sure you keep taking tiny steps.

Try to change the way you perceive your biggest, long-term projects. Stop seeing them as a mountainous temple to be scaled and start seeing them in three dimensions. You aren’t being assigned the duty of shooting straight to the top. You’ll move through space and time, slowly and surely. You’ll move slightly up, then slightly forward, then slightly up, then slightly forward taking care to make sure your footing is good on each step before you move on to the next.

Before you know it, you’ll have reached the top!

“Good” Gets You To The Top, “Perfect” Gets You There Slowly

I was fortunate enough to be in a group with some arrogant Mormon surfers from Utah. (I understand that Utah is completely landlocked, but they wore Billabong t-shirts and kept calling each other “Brah”. How could I argue with that?) These guys were macho types and typical teenagers, but they were able to teach me an important lesson.

Having confidence in your “good” gets you much farther than trying to reach your “perfect”.

Whether you climb the steps slowly, measuring the precise motions and planting your feet at an exact angle on the step or whether you run up the steps, your whole body wobbling, sometimes slipping on the slick limestone like the Mormon surfers did, you’ll still get to the top. You’ll get to the top no matter what.

What stops most people from accomplishing their goals is a fear of failure and a need for perfection. Lots of people have this idea that they simply aren’t good enough. They want to make sure that they do everything possible to keep their work from being criticized and to make their work (and themselves, by extension) universally liked.

But it doesn’t work that way. Nothing you do will ever be universally liked. If Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr. aren’t universally liked, exactly what chance do you have? None.

It’s better to push forward stumbling and fall a couple times on your way to the top. It’s faster and you’ll have learned important lessons that you can use to improve your next ascent. Where the perfectionist will always take slow and accurate steps project after project, year after year, those who strive only to do their best and to do good will win both speed and accuracy over time.

You are human. Nothing you do will ever be perfect. For the really big goals, realize that your “good” is good enough. If you aim for perfect then you won’t get that three dimensional progress you’re looking for and your project will seem to have task after task piled on top of it until it’s out of control.

So, in short, this is what you have to stop doing to dominate big, long-term projects:

1. Don’t focus on the bigger picture. Be aware of the bigger picture but focus on doing an excellent job on the step you’re on now so that you can move on to the next step as soon as possible.
2. Stop viewing your goal as a mountain to climb in a single, high leap. No one climbs mountains in a leap. Focus on a steady “forward-and-up” motion for your project.
3. Don’t get caught up on making everything perfect. It will never be perfect. It might never feel “right”. What you need to focus on is cultivating an attitude that credits your “good” as being brilliant. Your “good” is the most anyone can expect out of you. Also realize that you can change things later. Whatever you do isn’t set in stone. If you come back to a step and find that you’d have liked to do it a different way, do it a different way. You have control of it at any time. Don’t think you have to make it perfect on the first draft.

With these steps, you should be able to tackle literally anything and overcome the procrastination that usually accompanies large projects.

Related posts:

• Fifty Things You And I Are Going To Do
• Online Businesses You Can Start Today, Part One – Web Design
• How To Handle Criticism Like A Millionaire

A blog, for me, is the central hub of every other entrepreneurial effort. All the money I make online sprouts in one way or another from Wage Slave Rebel. It’s just become an absolutely essential tool for growing my business.

And now, I want to help you do the same. If you have ever wanted to start a blog, gain a following, help lots of strangers accomplish their goals, provide useful information, gain authority in your field and make some money while inciting a revolution — or if you already have a blog and you just aren’t sure how to take it to the next level — then I’m here to help you make that happen!

The Plan

Initially, I had planned to write an ebook titled “How to Blog a Revolution” which would reveal, in detail, how anyone can create a successful blog while helping others succeed and supporting other good causes. The problem with this is that an ebook is just too static. It’s not alive. It depends entirely on the interpretation of someone who is inexperienced in the field and it offers no motivation whatsoever.

Blogging is social. Learning how to create and manage a successful blog should also be social. You should be able to interact with bloggers in a similar position and also to find mentors who are ahead of you in the development and growth of their blogs.

In the last couple of days I’ve been rearranging the ebook outline to better fit the model of an online course. The course will be three months long and each month will be one module. In the first module, you’ll be planning your blog. You’ll learn how to find a niche, choose a platform, decide on a name, buy a domain, set up a site and more. In the second module, you’ll be focusing on content creation. You’ll learn how to use WordPress, how to write compelling posts, how to create and maintain a library of future post topics, how to decide on a posting schedule and much more. In the third module, you’ll be focusing on promoting and launching your blog. You’ll learn how to promote your blog using social media, guest posts, forums and comment sections and how to track and analyze data to measure how successful your blog is.

Each of these modules will be broken into weekly submodules that consist of one lesson and one assignment per day. Each lesson will be accompanied by peripheral content, such as interviews, audio transcripts, videos, graphics and more. You’ll also have access to a members only forum where you can get help from other course members and more experienced bloggers.

At the end of 90 days, you should be well on your way to growing a successful blog!

If You Want To Start A Blog, I’d Like To Help

Right now, this blogging course is in its planning stages. I’ve created a draft outline and I’m in the process of finalizing it. Within one week, I’ll start to produce the actual lessons and assignments. This is where I need your help.

I need a group of 10 or 15 people to help me create this course. These people will help me create content which adequately answers the common questions aspiring bloggers have and they will be essential in helping me to perfect the content.

Participants should:

• Want to start a blog.
• Be able to accomplish each and every assignment on time.
• Have the determination to succeed.
• Have the desire to provide feedback and help perfect the course.
  
• Have a topic for which they are absolutely passionate.
• Be able to write properly. (You don’t have to be Shakespeare, you just have to know how to spell.)
• Want to blog professionally or semi-professionally. (No personal bloggers.)
• Speak English fluently.

How Much Will It Cost?

The finalized course should be ready by July and will cost somewhere between $75 to $100 per month for three months. Participants in the test group will be able to take part in the course for only $25 per month for three months or $70 for the entire course.

I’ve decided to charge for the test group for two reasons. First, during the creation phase I’ll have to turn down lots of my regular work and focus entirely on perfecting the course. I need to have a bit of an income during this period. Second, I want to know that participants in the creation of the course are devoted to it. The test group would obviously be more determined to push forward and to succeed if the course is something they themselves have invested in.

Want to Be in the Test Group?

If you fit the criteria above and you would like to be in the test group, fill out the form below with your name, email and the reasons you have for wanting to start a blog. If you know anyone who fits this criteria, please direct them to this page to fill out the form. Only 10 or 15 people will be selected for the test group.

Thanks so much!

JD

Related posts:

• How Nickelback Can Help You Start A Successful Blog
• Lifestyle Design for Normal People: Four Baby Steps Toward Absolute Freedom
• How to Blog Effectively

“The only way to avoid criticism is to say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard

The surest way to know whether or not your life is going down a worthy path is to gauge the amount of feedback you get, especially the criticism. Successful people are without a doubt the most criticized people on earth and that’s because, for everything they’ve ever attempted, they were capable of handling the criticism they received, whether it was constructive or not. This resulted in their continued success which meant even bigger projects with even more critics.

For every worthwhile project you shoulder you’ll be dealing with those who think you should do this thing or that thing or that you’re just flat out wrong. Unless you want to say nothing, do nothing and be nothing (as Elbert Hubbard said), fielding more than your fair share of criticism is unavoidable.

And since it’s unavoidable, you should take the time to learn how to handle criticism like the millionaires do so that you can go on to create project after successful project.

Justified Criticism vs. Unjustified Criticism

As much as we would like to believe everyone has the best intentions, it’s simply not true. Some criticism holds much more weight than other criticism.

Justified Criticism is any criticism which offers constructive feedback. It doesn’t just call you out on something that’s wrong (or at least perceived to be wrong), it actually gives you some idea of what to do going forward that will correct it. Justified Criticism is usually spoken strongly, but fairly and with a reasonable tone.

A Justified Criticism will typically be given:

• with the utmost respect.
• by someone who is considered to be an expert in the subject.
• by several different people, usually without their knowing one another.
• with good intentions.
• by someone who has reasonable standards.
• with an accompaniment of possible solutions.

Unjustified Criticism is any criticism which only serves to attack the character of a person or the quality of their work. It’s usually given with a hateful tone and is petty and unhelpful.

An Unjustified Criticism will typically be given:

• with little to no respect or courtesy.
• with an arrogant or condescending attitude.
• without any significant problem stated.
• without any helpful insights if a significant problem is stated.
• by someone who has accomplished little or nothing in the way of what you consider to be success.
• by someone with unreasonably high standards that they don’t even apply to themselves.

Both types of criticism are fairly common. In my experience, you are more likely to get well-intentioned criticism. Whether a person has correctly identified and assessed a problem or not, most people will bring it up purely to be helpful. Hateful criticism is more likely in anonymous forums or comment sections.

How to Deal with Unjustified Criticism

All criticism can be tough to deal with, but Unjustified Criticism can be even more so because the goal of someone who criticizes unjustifiably isn’t to improve your behaviors, your plans or your actions, but to call attention to your faults and to attack you personally.

Before dealing with Unjustified Criticism, make sure it is really unjustified. It’s easy to regard a critique of personal behaviors, attitudes or actions as a personal attack in the heat of the moment. Try to look at things from the critic’s standpoint. Be humble and ask yourself honestly if what the critic is saying could possibly be true and realize that even well-intentioned people can find themselves incapable of eloquently and respectfully communicating an honest-to-goodness truth.

If you’re unsure of whether the critic is well-intentioned or not, it might be helpful to initiate a friendly dialogue to find out more. Email them a friendly note asking for more information about the criticism and why they feel the way that they do. If you’re nice and the person actually was well-intentioned, you’ll have responded appropriately. If you’re nice and the person is ill-intentioned, there’s a good chance you’ll defuse their hate. It’s hard to insult those who are kind to you.

However, if it’s clear from the beginning that the critic is attacking you personally, you’ll probably be forced into a fight or flight mode. Personally, I believe either option can work so long as it’s respectful, but I prefer flight. If you choose to fight, refute their assertions and move on. Don’t bother bickering with them through a series of emails. It’s just a waste of your time. Choosing “flight” is the much better option since you can save the time of writing even one email to someone whose mind you won’t change. Just ignore the person. They’ll likely go away.

How to Deal with Justified Criticism

First, you need to understand that not all Justified Criticism is an accurate criticism. Some people might make judgements based on a worldview that you just don’t comprehend or can’t agree with. For example, if you wanted to start a business and your family criticized your decision with statistics on the failure rate of startups and a respectful lecture about how it will put your spouse or children at risk and make your future too uncertain, this would be a perfectly valid criticism. However, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, this criticism just doesn’t cut it. You’re not afraid of risk because you aren’t thinking “Well, what can I lose?” You’re thinking “What can I gain?”

If you find a criticism to be both justified and accurate, the best way to respond is with agreement and gratitude. You should never under any circumstances feel sorry for yourself or apologize for your criticized behavior or action. No one is perfect and you’re no exception. Even better, your critic has opened a door for improvement and probably done the hard work of figuring out how you should proceed with things. Even if their solution doesn’t work out or isn’t appropriate, it’s a step in the right direction and will hopefully motivate you to take a deeper look at the problem and see about how you can correct it.

The Benefits of Properly Handling Criticism

Knowing how to separate Justified Criticism from Unjustified Criticism and, then, how to separate accurate criticism from inaccurate criticism will only result in the growth and success of your project. Whether it’s product development or the creation of a company or anything else, having the right attitude about criticism and knowing when to run with it and when to discard it will result in a faster adaptation of the most effective methods and the best ideas.

Related posts:

• How Not To Handle The Hard Times
• Diary of a Wage Slave Rebel: Why I Killed Myself
• Well-Intentioned Liars

[Note from JD: Last week I published a post called "Lifestyle Design is Dead" in which I laid out my belief that "Lifestyle Design" was getting to be yet another vague buzzword that's becoming mostly useless to anyone serious about living the life they want to live. The post was met with a mix of agreement and disagreement, but the most vocal and lively commentary was provided by Sonicsuns (Visit his blog at supersonicfreedom.net). This is his official rebuttal.]

Recently, Mr. JD Bentley wrote a post entitled “How to Find Your Core in a Shell of Ambiguity“. In it, he declared that “[Lifestyle Design] doesn’t mean anything.” He later wrote another post which laid it out explicitly: “Lifestyle Design is Dead“.

And I thought: What?

Now, there are some good points in these posts. For instance:

1. You should understand yourself, who you really are, and what you really want in life.
2. You should find your own path. Don’t blindly follow templates, not even cool-sounding ones like “Lifestyle Designer”.
3. You should have a strong work ethic and the right attitude.

These are all good points. But for now, I’ll focus on the idea that Lifestyle Design is dead, and that the term “Lifestyle Design” is meaningless.

Really, JD?

JD’s argument goes something like this:

1. Lifestyle – noun – The way in which a person lives. Design - noun – The art or action of conceiving of and producing a plan to show the look and function of an object before it is built.
2. The definition of “Lifestyle Design” doesn’t require a good plan, just a plan.
3. The phrase “Lifestyle Design” in and of itself has no valuable meaning.
4. “Lifestyle Design” is the Barack Obama of phrases. A few highly positive but ambiguous ideas were attached to it (Freedom, Travel, Wealth) so that it could become a blank slate on which anyone could write all their positive aspirations, whatever they might be.
5. Conclusion: Lifestyle Design is Dead!

So what does JD propose as an alternative? Passion and Care. He writes: “Passion and Care [...] those words certainly have meaning.”

Look, JD, I agree that we should pursue our Passions, and we should definitely Care for others. But if you’re going to dismiss all terms that seem vague, you’ll end up dismissing your own terms.

Here, using your own logic:

1. Passion – noun – Any great, powerful emotion, especially love or hate. (also: fervor, determination)
2. The definition of passion doesn’t require a good emotion, just an emotion.
3. The word “Passion” in and of itself has no valuable meaning.
4. Passion is the Barack Obama of words. A few highly positive but ambiguous ideas were attached to it (Goals, Freedom, Art) so that it could become a blank slate on which anyone could write all their positive aspirations, whatever they might be.
5. Conclusion: Passion is Dead!

Here’s the crux of it: This entire argument is based on semantics.

Definition

By and large, definitions are determined by popular agreement. The only reason that “duck” means “duck” is because (English-speaking) people generally agree on what it means.

We don’t just define words; we also define phrases. Take this phrase for instance:

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

What does it mean? Well, if you’re into U.S. politics, you know that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” means “the policy whereby the United States government prohibits homosexual persons from openly serving in the military.”

The words themselves do not contain this information. But they have that definition, because the public said so. (For proof, check Google or Wikipedia)

We’ve collectively decided to use this short (and admittedly vague) phrase to signify the larger concept. Why? Because it would be really friggin’ annoying to call it “The policy whereby the United States government prohibits homosexual persons from openly serving in the military” all the time.

The True Meaning of Lifestyle Design

So what does “Lifestyle Design” really mean, anyway? Let’s examine some options:

Option #1 – The Literal Words Themselves

This is the approach JD took. He wrote: “Anyone currently alive actively designs their lifestyle, for good or for bad. If you’ve ever made a choice, you’re a lifestyle designer.”

Oh, come on, JD. Almost no one defines the term like that.

People design their own lives with varying degrees of consciousness. Many people simply drift, going with the flow, with very little thought about what they really want in life. Other people drive, doing what’s best for them regardless of popular opinion, with tremendous focus on what they really want.

In short, everyone “designs” their own lifestyle, but only a few are truly conscious of it.

If “Lifestyle Designer” includes even those people who don’t consciously design their own lifestyles, then “Interior Decorator” must include even those people who don’t consciously decorate interiors.

Because, hey, technically we’re all Interior Decorators. Every time you enter a room, every time you touch something, you are changing that environment and thus you are decorating that interior, whether you intend to or not.

This might be interesting for philosophy, but it does not help at all with regards to a functional definition.

Option #2 – A Broad Idea

“Lifestyle Design” simply means the active, conscious design of one’s lifestyle, as opposed to simply going along with popular assumptions.

Option #3 – The Tim Ferriss Approach

“Lifestyle Design” typically involves:

1. Passive Income (generating much money with little work, usually via an internet business)
2. Being Unconventional
3. Some minimalism with regards to personal possessions
4. Travel (living in an “exotic” location, and/or moving around frequently)
5. Saving money, but not for it’s own sake (there’ no point of having a million dollars in your bank account just for the bragging rights. Money should be used to follow your dreams)
6. Doing what you’re passionate about (now that you have all that free time from completing point 1)
7. Having a good life

Bringing it together

Option #1 is just silly, so “Lifestyle Design” is either Options 2 and 3, or it’s just Option 3. To clear up any confusion, allow me to propose a new phrase:

The Ferrissian Lifestyle

(Named after Tim Ferriss, of course).

“The Ferrissian Lifestyle” shall refer strictly to Option #3 up there, and not to the broader idea of Option #2.

One way or the other, Lifestyle Design involves actively living the best life possible.

And that idea will never die.

—

This post, which was written by Sonicsuns, is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

All other posts on the Wage Slave Rebel site are the property of JD Bentley, and are not affected by this statement.

Related posts:

• Lifestyle Design is Dead
• The Beginner’s Guide to Lifestyle Design
• Lifestyle Design for Normal People: Four Baby Steps Toward Absolute Freedom

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Success is a term that is so vague it’s useless. As such, it depends entirely on you to figure out what it means because, as the owner of your life, you are the only one who can decide when you have or when you haven’t been successful.

This post isn’t about how to define success, though. I’m assuming that with all the dreamlining and lifestyle design mumbo jumbo out there, you’ve probably taken a decent look at your life. You’ve likely started focusing on what you do want, not what you don’t want and you’ve probably broken down big goals into lots of more manageable small goals. You should have at least a foundational knowledge of the life you want defined in a very specific way. For example, Bill wants to open a bookstore on 2nd Street by October, he’ll create a business plan by the end of March, talk to the bank in April and request a $150,000 loan then meet with renters in May. You shouldn’t know all the details (how could you expect to know everything?), but you should know where you’re going and how soon.

But this isn’t a post for that. No, this is a post about what comes after, about what separates the people who get shit done and get what they want from those who live mediocre lives of constant complaint and victimization. This is about what it takes to be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do.

Short Term Vs. Long Term

In December I became resolute in my desire to figure out the kind of life I wanted and how I would get it. Never in all my years have I been so determined and moved forward with such purpose. There wasn’t a day I woke up not knowing exactly what I needed to get done and as I kept working and working and pushing through to get ebooks written or designs approved or blog posts posted, something started to change.

By the end of January I was no longer thinking day-to-day or week-to-week. Developing an ebook had forced me to start thinking month-to-month and year-to-year. My goals started getting more defined, but more long term. I knew that the chances of an ebook — especially my first ebook — being a runaway success right out of the gate were slim to none and that what I needed to be focused on was building a platform for selling that could grow and snowball month after month. If I saw four sales in the first month, I wanted a system that could produce eight sales in the second month and sixteen sales in the third month.

In the end, my yearly goal was to have a steady passive income. If the ebook never sold more than 16 copies each month, that would be fine. The only thing that matters year to year is that each month I can count on a steady stream of sixteen sales to help fill my bank account because I had known from the start that this one book wasn’t going to replace a full-time income. It was part of a collection of digital products that would combine to produce a full-time income.

The point is this. People who are unsuccessful tend to think about the short term. This is because people who are unsuccessful are so accustomed to having a scarcity mentality. Their outlook on money is that there isn’t enough to go around so they need to get just enough to survive and then, if possible, just enough to be comfortable. If you want to be successful you have to get out of the habit of thinking short term. Consider where you want to be five years from now, not what you’re willing to settle for in the next 30 days.

Learn to be patient because, as I’ve seen, patience is the key to any significant success. We can all hope to win the lottery or inherit a long lost relative’s millions, but that’s not likely and that’s no way to get wealthy. You have to be willing to plant seeds (ideas) and cultivate them over many months or even years to see the result you want to see. This takes consistent, long-term hustle.

Ideas vs. Things vs. People

I had never realized it until I read The 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class, but it is, in fact, possible to tell someone’s financial standings by what they talk about. Whatever inhabits the minds and infiltrates the speech of a person is a good indicator of that person’s values and, thus, their financial class.

The rich tend to talk about ideas. Business ideas, creativity, philosophy. They talk about an idea for a car or for a magazine or for a record label. They even tend to relate to and remember people by the ideas they’ve contributed. The rich have the ideas that make the money and they aren’t afraid to act on them, which is why they are the rich.

The middle class tends to talk about things. They talk about the cars the rich imagined, the sports teams the rich own, the books the rich published. The middle class lives for comfort, so they don’t tend to care about risking anything for ideas… and they don’t. They just talk about the ideas of others.

The lower class tends to talk about people. Their only goal is survival so they don’t necessarily get to interact with the things the middle class interacts with. They depend on secondhand accounts. “What did such-and-such do? What happened with this or that?” The lower class can’t afford all the frivolity of the middle class.

So, in order to succeed financially and professionally, you need to start focusing on ideas. Ideas are a mix of the things you’re most passionate about with a model for making money from them. Very rich people are usually not short of ideas for businesses. It’s more likely that they are completely overwhelmed by the decision of which idea to pursue next.

Positive vs. Negative

Think in positives. This is the most important lesson to be learned and the single most significant change I’ve made. For this I feel more in control of my life and more deserving of success. It’s really hard to be successful if you think you can’t be successful or that you don’t deserve to be successful.

Instead of saying “can’t” say “can”. Start realizing that things that seem “impossible” are really just “difficult”. Unsuccessful people will let themselves be crushed by their own mediocrity. They’ll want the negativity to consume them and to just have their circumstances cave-in on them. Truly successful people aren’t so masochistic.

Learn to really believe in yourself and to believe in your ideas. Will everything always workout? No. That’s no excuse to quit, though. At the least, do a post-mortem on your failed ideas and see what worked and what didn’t work and then set yourself up for another go at it. It’s that simple! In every failure there’s a very useful opportunity for success — find it!

If you want to guarantee success, there’s two pieces of advice I can give that sums up all of this. First, choose someone successful and do the things they do. You’ll be able to adjust the system over time to better suit you, but if you do the things a successful person does you’ll lay the foundation for becoming a successful person. If you have the initiative to even do something like that, you already have the ambition of a successful person.

Second, realize that there are some things successful people do that you will never fully grasp and that these things relate to their mindset. Do the best you can to copy the thought process of a successful person. Ask them how they feel about certain circumstances or consequences and take note. If you really want to know what successful people are thinking, I very highly recommend you get a copy of The 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and The Middle Class. It’s a short read, but that’s because it’s the most succinct and well-written definition of a successful mindset. You can read it in one sitting and then focus on the lessons of one chapter per day. Keep doing this over and over until you have the habits of a successful person.

Related posts:

• The “As-Soon-As-Possible” List
• Lifestyle Design is Dead
• Taking Control of Your Life Once and For All

I’ve been hard at work on my next ebook for the last several days. For the introduction, I found myself having to dig into my own story and discuss the reasons for me quitting my 9-to-5 at the hospital, going freelance and ultimately starting Wage Slave Rebel and all the events that led to me settling on those reasons. I’ve had more than enough time to reflect on everything and it’s been especially nice to realize that I’m looking back on my story with the eyes of a reasonably experienced entrepreneur, a position in which I never thought I’d find myself.

I often talk about the job I held at the hospital and how much I absolutely loathed it. It’s become the single most important detail in my story. When relating my decisions and my perspectives to people, the purpose for everything I’ve done inevitably comes down to me being assigned to tasks that were completely unfulfilling and, at times, demeaning.

But after taking a more thorough look back, something really stuck out to me. While I had thought my decision had been between working a job I hated at the hospital or quitting a job I hated at the hospital, there was actually a third option that might have prevented me from escaping anything.

In fact, had I taken it there may never have been anything I felt necessary to escape.

The Job I Never Talk About

About a month into the hospital job, I’d already figured out it wasn’t anything I wanted to do for longer than I had to. It was already weighing me down and my will to live was being sucked out of me with the passing of each day.

It was around this time that I heard a Starbucks had just opened about five minutes from my house. I checked it out that same day and immediately fell in love. Over a period of two or three weeks it became  the one little escape I got from my sorry existence. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the smells and it became a relaxing way to pretend I was actually the artist/writer/musician/poet/bohemian I dreamed of being than the needle-and-organ jockey I actually was.

Then I got this bright idea! What if I could get rid of the hospital job altogether and somehow find a way to work as a Barista. I mean, it was closer to my house, it was a much less stressful environment, the people were nice enough and I’d be encouraged to mix and try every possible Frappuccino flavor under the sun. Most importantly, it paid the same hourly wage with half the work.

So, while working at the hospital I put in an application at Starbucks. It wasn’t more than a couple days before I was asked to do an interview and it wasn’t more than a week after the interview that I became a full-fledged Starbucks employee.

The job, as it turned out, was actually as awesome as I had expected it to be. Customers were nice, I loved the artsy vibe, I loved being able to try every new concoction we were able to come up with. There was just one problem though.

I still worked at the hospital.

The Mistake

After getting the awesome gig at Starbucks, I should have put in my notice at the hospital and left it behind. It no longer had anything to offer me. The always-changing, flexible schedule of the hospital would make it difficult for my manager at Starbucks to schedule me and working a string of 12 hour days would be enough to drive anyone mad.

And did it ever!

I didn’t quit the hospital. I allowed the expectations of others and my own timid indecision to keep me in limbo. I jumped from one job to the next, I never had a single day off, I couldn’t keep my schedules straight and I was constantly tired. Never in my life have I experienced so much stress and misery as I did in those days.

After four weeks of tolerating my schedule and my terrible “12-hour day” moods, my manager finally said enough was enough. I showed up on a Monday — the day I was supposed to take the barista certification test, no less — and I was promptly fired.

And what was I left with?

Well… a few more months of a job I hated without any longer having the benefit of a relaxing coffee shop to remind me of who I wanted to be. I was too embarrassed to go back to that particular Starbucks. I still haven’t gone back.

Confidence and Courage

With the confidence and courage I feel I have today, the end of this story seems absolutely absurd. Why wouldn’t I quit the hospital and work at Starbucks? Why wouldn’t I dedicate myself to the one I enjoyed rather than the one I hated?

I wouldn’t because I depended on other people to know what I wanted and to fuel my own self-satisfaction. I decided to live my life by the rules of others, not because I was stupid, but because I had been so numb to life I hadn’t made any rules of my own.

There’s a time when it’s more worthwhile to quit. Times when you may actually benefit more from doing less. And when you wander into one of these times, it really takes confidence — the confidence in yourself that you know you’re doing the right thing and that you know where you’ll go from here — and courage — the courage to risk everything for happiness.

These days we have are too limited to spend even one doing something we absolutely hate just to make sure other people are pleased, other people who never have to live with the consequences or the misery of our actions.

Learn to do things for yourself.

And even more importantly, learn what not to do at all.

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In a recent post, Corbett Barr of Free Pursuits posed a very important question: Is Lifestyle Design dead already? This post was in part inspired by a post of mine called “How to Find Your Core in a Shell of Ambiguity” and the comments that ensued there, particularly one brilliant comment written by Cath Duncan of Mine Your Resources. Eighty comments and several spin-off blog posts later, Corbett has worked up quite the controversy and, I would imagine, garnered quite a bit of traffic, but the debate continues on and will likely do so for the foreseeable future.

However, this is the official stance I’m taking with Wage Slave Rebel: Lifestyle Design is dead.

What the Term ‘Lifestyle Design’ Actually Means

To begin to define Lifestyle Design, first we should look at what these two words actually mean together. The Oxford American dictionary offers the following definitions:

Lifestyle – noun – The way in which a person lives.

Design - noun – The art or action of conceiving of and producing a plan to show the look and function of an object before it is built.

The first thing that I think should be noted is that in the case of lifestyle, it is possible for a person to live in a manner which is either positive or negative, good or bad. For some people, their lifestyle is a very good and positive thing, but the definition most definitely does not preclude there being very bad and negative lifestyles. Likewise, the definition of design doesn’t require the conception or production of a good plan, just of a plan.

So, in short, you can have a healthy lifestyle or an unhealthy lifestyle, an optimistic lifestyle or a pessimistic lifestyle, a fulfilling lifestyle or a miserable lifestyle. You can design a healthy plan or an unhealthy plan, an optimistic plan or a pessimistic plan, a fulfilling plan or a miserable plan.

That is to say, the term Lifestyle Design in and of itself has no valuable meaning. Every choice you make in life is in some way or another a plan that helps produce your lifestyle. If you make poor decisions and end up having to deal with the adverse consequences of those poor decisions, you have still, in fact, designed your lifestyle. If you’re unhappy with the mess of a life you’ve got, deluding yourself into thinking that you didn’t shape that lifestyle for yourself (purposely or accidentally) is just a way of avoiding responsibility.

Judging by the requirements of the term itself without any concepts applied by the zealots who promote it, everyone who has ever lived is a lifestyle designer.

What People Think the Term ‘Lifestyle Design’ Actually Means

Lifestyle Design is the Barack Obama of phrases. A few highly positive but ambiguous ideas were attached to it (Freedom, Travel, Wealth) so that it could become a blank slate on which anyone could write all their positive aspirations, whatever they might be. So, while everyone is campaigning for this term, Lifestyle Design, no one is actually campaigning for the same thing.

The actual concepts people use to prop up Lifestyle Design are not what I believe to be dead. Your positive aspirations are most certainly not dead. If you want to write a novel or start a restaurant or run a location independent internet marketing firm or whatever else, that is what you should do. That doesn’t depend on an empty term.

What is dead is the idea that these two words somehow describe what we all want. Cath put it so eloquently when she commented on my original post.

“You know, to me [Lifestyle Design] just became another form of template-living, a new bunch of sheep to flock with.”

This echoes my opinion perfectly. Some people seem to be taking this completely ambiguous term and trying to impose a concrete meaning on the rest of us so that, at times, it can feel as if we aren’t doing as well as we should be or that we aren’t doing the sorts of things we should be. We start feeling more and more compelled to live lives that are actually farther from our aspirations than, say, a 9-to-5 job.

In his post, “Redefining ‘Lifestyle Design’ As You Know It“, Rob Blasko points out the direction the movement is going in.

“…In my experience, a typical “lifestyle designer” usually fits the following characteristics:

• Male, Age 21 – 40
• Location independent, with a penchant for travel to Thailand
• Practices some form of minimalism in regard to physical possessions
• Works as a freelance designer, developer or consultant, and/or sells eBooks online”

And this is most certainly a template that most young self-described lifestyle designers are subscribing to. Not that there’s anything wrong with this provided it’s actually what you want to be doing, but for most of us I’d say that’s not the case.

The Real Reason People Become ‘Lifestyle Designers’

As I mentioned, Lifestyle Design became a retainer term for everyone’s most desired positive goals. It’s my personal belief that a good number of people using Lifestyle Design are just being lazy about defining what their actual dreams are. They know they like what Lifestyle Design stands for (Freedom, Travel, Wealth) and they are willing to follow whatever cookie-cutter method they can to get there.

But this isn’t what life is about at all.

Refer to my post on finding your core because that’s where you need to start. Your core. You need to learn who it is you actually are. What kind of man or woman are you? Give yourself an honest assessment. Are you kind? Cruel? Hopeless? Hopeful? Happy? Depressed? What values do you stand for? What would your friends have to say about you? What would your enemies have to say about you? Search deep in your soul and see what you find.

Then, use that knowledge to figure out what it is you want to do with your life. Don’t say ‘I want money’ or ‘I want to travel’. Those aren’t at all specific and they aren’t even things to do with your life. They are byproducts of whatever the thing is you want to do. Don’t ever start with the byproduct and work your way back. Start with the thing you are passionate about and work your way forward.

Every person’s dream will be different, but they should all have two things in common. First, everyone should be doing something they are absolutely passionate about. And second, this thing should be genuinely helping people, whether it’s healing them or entertaining them or nourishing them or educating them. Other people should benefit from the great things you do.

And that’s the whole purpose of life.

What you need to be doing can be summed up in two words and they aren’t Lifestyle Design. They are Passion and Care. And those words certainly have meaning.

Related posts:

• Lifestyle Design is Still Alive
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