For years I have been an advocate of articulating values as a logical first step when improving your life. I’ve written about it over and over and have used it as a starting point with most of my coaching clients. While it has always seemed to work decently well I’ve discovered I’m a little uneasy about using this method. The logic is that if you can articulate and describe what you truly care about, what I’ve been calling values, you can start doing things to make those more salient in your life. It’s a simple enough idea that also seems logically sound. The problem, however, is that actually drilling down to your true values is not easy to do. There are multiple factors working against this kind of approach, including the fact that the whole idea of values is kind of fuzzy to begin with. I can say I value Family and you can say you value Family and the mental picture we’re each drawing may be completely different. We both know what we mean and are happy with the description, but it’s not the same thing.

The Case Against Values

Another major stumbling block when it comes to articulating values is the fact that there are powerful societal forces that say you should value certain things. I believe it was in Tim Brownson’s book, How to Be Rich and Happy, that he described a situation where a husband and wife did a values articulation exercise at the same time. When Family didn’t appear in the husband’s top 3 values and it did in the Mrs’ there was obviously a major point of contention. That may be a little bit of an unusual situation, but think for a moment about the things that society says you’re supposed to value. Family is definitely one of those values that’s supposed to be on everyone’s short list. Other people feel significant pressure to include Faith/Religion, Freedom, Friends — the list could go on. The point I’m trying to make is not that it’s bad to value these things, but to merely ask how likely it is we are truly describing our values when we feel societal pressure to value certain things.

I think there is an underlying metaphor that we can examine between values and passion. I’m not sure I can go a day without hearing or reading the advice about “finding a passion.” I used to be a purveyor of this piece of advice as well. Until I figured out it’s basically pointless. The belief that everybody has a particular passion waiting for them somewhere in the world and it just needs to be uncovered like a treasure under a rock is not helpful. Therefore, the dominant activity when trying to uncover or find this passion seems to be flitting from activity to activity, from rock to rock, looking for that elusive passion that will fix all your ills. There’s a driving force that if you don’t like your situation then you just haven’t found your passion yet. I’ve since decided that this line of thinking is mostly fallacious and that “finding” is the wrong verb to use when describing passion. Instead, we should talk about “developing” passion. The focus is on action and practice. I feel the same way about values. The traditional way of thinking about value places little emphasis on actual action, just like the quest for finding a specific passion. Values shouldn’t be discovered but developed over time, like passion. Both of these constructs need a radical overhaul.

Values –> Action, or, Values <–Action?

The underlying assumption that I think most people make (and I have, too, for a long time) is that our actions follow our values. That we act the way we do because of the things we value. This seems logically straightforward. However, what if the relationship between values and action is more bidirectional than believed? In fact, let’s think about the directly opposite view. Instead of our values driving our actions, what if the way we act drives what we value? That we think we value Family not because we’ve decided that Family is very important to us but because doing nice things for your family makes you feel good (both in the short and long-term) and therefore you associate doing nice things for your family as the “value” Family. The driving force in this relationship is the action, not the value.

I think personal development should be a very tangible activity and the ephemeral nature of values has bothered me for some time. There has to be a better way to think about living a life that makes you happy. Today, I’d like to propose a new line of attack in personal development: Instead of trying to articulate your values, articulate the activities that make you feel both “good” and “bad” in the short and long-term; systematically cultivate and seek the activities that make you feel good while cutting out the activities that make you feel bad. With this new approach we can now focus on action, on practice, and on progress instead of sitting idly and searching our memories, feelings and “values” that describe the way we feel. In the end, you can have the most perfectly articulated values but what actually matters is what you do. Action is the greatest manifestation of value, so let’s shift our attention to how we can create more of it in our lives.

Identifying the Good

As human beings we are hard wired to seek pleasurable experiences and sensations. Delicious food, clothes fresh from the dryer, sex — all of these produce pleasurable sensations. Are these the types of things you should be seeking out under my new value-less paradigm? Not quite. While there’s nothing wrong with pleasurable sensations themselves (provided they aren’t harming you or anyone else in the long-term), we are searching for a more nuanced definition of “good.” A helpful starting point when trying to articulate the types of activities and behavior that we’re after is to think about a day where everything seemed to go “right” and you went to bed feeling satisfied and happy. For me, it probably means I worked hard and made progress on work that mattered to me, had some kind of physical activity, interacted with the people to whom I’m closest, meditated and challenged myself in some way. That is the type of day that makes me smile as my head hits my pillow, exhausted, at the end. While I was working hard on a difficult project or working out I probably didn’t feel euphoric like I might be when eating a thick slab of chocolate cake. The immediate gratification wasn’t there, but the long-term benefits I knew I was cultivating by not procrastinating and by keeping myself healthy far outweighed the momentary discomfort.

You may have an idea of similar activities that make you feel fulfilled and aligned when you do them. Some sort of physical activity and eating healthy are common activities that seem to find their way on to people’s “good” lists frequently. What other activities make you feel this way? If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, there’s something you can do to make this process easier. For the next few days you need to become more mindful of how different aspects of your daily activity make you feel. There are numerous times throughout most days where I find myself saying, “Man, why don’t I do this more often?” That’s a good sign that I’ve just found an activity that I should try to systematically build into my life in a more robust way. On the flip side, there’s usually numerous points throughout most days where I find myself saying, “This sucks. I never want to do this again.” Again, this is the sign of an activity that I should actively try to remove from my future experience. It’s not easy to remember to be mindful but the more you practice it, the better you’ll get at it. If it’s easier for you, you could spend a few minutes at the end of the day identifying the times and activities where you felt really good and bad in the past 24 hours. Write those down and after a week or two you should have a good list to work from.

Another route you can take for identifying the activities and actions that you’d like to build into your life is to look at people you admire and identify what seems to be making them feel good. The problem with the approach I described in the previous paragraph is that you’re limited to the scope of activities in which you already partake. That’s no good. Obviously there are a myriad of possibilities that exist beyond your current realm of experience. Looking to people you admire can give you ideas of activities for inclusion on your own list. Obviously, you can’t just adopt other people’s approaches without testing them for yourself. It’s possible that something your friend finds fulfilling and “good” is quite the opposite for you. It’s up for you to give it a try and make that decision for yourself, though.

Beyond Hedonism

The obvious trap that must be avoided is lapsing into a hedonistic focus when it comes to identifying the activities that make you feel good. Hedonism is a school of thought that argues pleasure is the only intrinsic good. A hedonist does everything they can to maximize pleasure while minimizing pain. There are lots of possibilities of things you can do that will make you feel good in the moment such as eating four chocolate chip cookies or not working on a difficult project. In the short run, both of these choices may maximize pleasure while minimizing pain. How does my new approach to personal development sans values differ from pure hedonism?

The key term that I fail to use in my definition of good while hedonists latch onto with authority is “pleasure.” A hedonist’s primary focus is purely on pleasure. Pleasure is characterized by good emotions and sensations without too much concern about long term ramifications. In my approach to personal development, you’re searching for activities that go beyond pure pleasure and tap into more long lasting sensations of “good.” That’s not to say that some of the activities you identify as positive components of your life aren’t also hedonistically oriented. However, it’s unlikely that the full roster of your good activities will all be hedonistically relevant. For example, lifting weights or running is something I’ve identified as an activity that makes me feel good. In the short term, when I’m actually sweating and breathing hard, I rarely feel like that final rep or final half mile is adding a lot of pleasure to my life. If I were a hedonist, it’s unlikely that I’d partake in activities like that, even though I know they are good for me in the long run. While it may be difficult in the moment, I know the importance of staying physically fit and I know how good I feel after a strong workout. When seeking out the activities that you want to cultivate more mindfully in your own life, try to identify whether you’re looking for immediate gratification or long term happiness. The more you can build your life around doing things that will benefit you in the long term and not just the short, the better off you’ll be.

Arranging Your Life

The whole point of this entire shift in ideology is to place the focus squarely on concrete actions that have improved your life in the past or you have a strong suspicion may improve your life in the future. At the same time, you’re systematically removing actual events and actions that have been detrimental in the past. The net result of this addition and subtraction should be a noticeably happier life that coincides more directly with what you actually care about. One caveat before moving forward is that this approach requires a decent amount of mindfulness to pull off successfully. Essentially, you need to be able to step back from your immediate experience often enough to notice what your emotions are when you partake in different activities. This serves as the backbone of this system and without it your lists are going to be flimsy and meaningless.

To begin, take a week where all you do is go on living your normal life while carrying a small notebook and a pen with you throughout the day. Your only job is to pay attention to what is making you feel good or bad as you go about your business and to write it in your notebook. This is going to feel weird at first, I know. There’s no reason you need to stop doing whatever your’e doing to whip out your notebook and make a note, but try to just pay attention to how you’re feeling when you do different things and make a note of it as often as possible. At this stage of the game, you’re just trying to get a rough idea of the activities you want to cultivate and those you want to rip out by the roots.

After you’ve done this for awhile you should have two lists; one full of activities and events that make you feel good about yourself and one full of activities and events that make you feel bad about yourself. Now, take a few moments to look at your lists and add any other activities that you may not have experienced in the past week but you know they are something that’s super positive or very negative for you. Helpful questions at this point include, “What makes me feel good whenever I do it?”, “What should I do more of?”, “If I had the time/money/energy, what would I do more of?”, and “Lots of people seem to enjoy running/working out/eating a paleo diet/eating a vegetarian diet/volunteering/whatever — should I try that?” As you can imagine, do the same thing with the negative components as well. You want to flesh out these lists as much as possible so they are salient and exciting.

The obvious next step is to begin making space in your life to incorporate some of the activities from your good list as much as possible. Depending on the content of your list, that will obviously look differently for different people and activities. The key is to make yourself commit to a handful of these activities as explicitly as possible. Put them on a to-do list, break them into smaller tasks, leave yourself notes around the house reminding yourself to do them — whatever it takes to build more of these events into your life. In order to make this a sustainable change, however, you should try focusing on only a small subset of these activities at first. You’re only going to set yourself up for failure and disappointment if you try to cram the entirety of your list into every day, or even every week. Some of the activities on your list are probably habits that wouldn’t hurt to instill into your daily life, but some of the other ones are probably done no more frequently than weekly or monthly. I like to actually set some time aside at the beginning of the week to actually look at my lists and decide which positive activities I’m going to try to do over the next several days and which activities I’m going to actively try to remove.

Looking at and working with your good list is obviously a little bit more fun than thinking about all the things you do that you hate. However, I’ve found that removing bad habits and activities from my life is almost more rewarding than filling my days with activities that make me feel good. Take a look at your schedule or routine and identify where you can remove items that are on your negative list. For many people, possibilities include waking up too late to feel calm and collected in the morning, eating tons of fast food, spending money on stuff you don’t need (or really want) and other hobbies or activities that bring little or negative value to your life. Again, just like with the positive list, you can’t do everything at once, especially if you’re dealing with habits. Pick one that you’d like to eradicate and focus on it exclusively until you’ve changed or removed it to your satisfaction. This isn’t a race — take your time and do it right.

Conclusion

I’ve covered a lot of ground in this article to essentially make a simple point; the more you do things that make you feel good and the less you do that makes you feel bad the better you’ll feel about yourself. For a long time I advocated that the best way to figure out how to live a more meaningful and positive life was to take a long and hard look at your values. I’ve always had trouble with that approach because it’s hard to wrap your mind around values separate from the influence of society at large. Instead, rooting your decisions in what you’ll do to improve your life should be based on experience. Nobody except you knows what makes you feel good. Nobody except you knows what makes you feel bad. If you can mindfully identify which activities produce which emotions within you, you can systematically build your life around those activities (or around removing those activities).

What do your lists of positive and negative activities look like? I’ve posted the details of my lists on my Tumblr, process>product. Head over there to get some ideas for your own lists or click over to the Google+ discussion about this topic. You can always drop me a quick note on Twitter, as well, if you have any questions or comments. Thanks for reading and remember that subscribing to the RSS feed of SamSpurlin.com means you’ll never miss an article.

Last semester I took a class called, “Foundations of Evaluation.” It was the first in a sequence of classes that are supposed to prepare me to be a professional evaluator. However, I quickly came to think of the class as “Critical Thinking 101.” Our professor was incredibly accomplished (his CV contains over 400 publications), incredibly blunt, and utterly mentally intimidating. We spent most of the class trying to pick out the fallacious thinking that leads to bad decisions and even worse outcomes. A huge part of that process was identifying and evaluating the assumptions used to reach a decision. It can be an eye-opening process to clearly see an assumption that has always been lurking just below your consciousness and yet directed your thoughts. It’s important that we identify the important assumptions in our lives and ask ourselves if they are truly justified.

Assumptions are often created subtly and without our active knowledge. The slow accumulation of life experience through observations of the world around us, conversations with our parents and peers, and the way we’re taught new information coagulates into the basic assumptions we use to help bring order to our world. For that very reason, assumptions are a valuable tool. They save us time and mental power when thinking about a situation and/or deciding what to do. We are able to use the assumptions we hold to bring sense to completely different situations that still have an underlying similarity. Having to make sense of every single situation or stimulus from scratch, without the help of assumptions, every single time we are presented with them would be a massive drain on our psyche.

However, the benefit of assumptions only hold true when our assumptions are truly valid. Otherwise, we are saving ourselves mental effort but coming to seriously suboptimal conclusions. In my case everything I do, from the writing on this blog to the focus of my schooling, is focused on one very important assumption. If it’s not valid, there’s a good chance I’m wasting my time. Is it true that we all have the ability to improve our lives in measurable and significant ways if we want to?

What I do

This assumption is the driving force behind the majority of things I do as a student and a writer. To start, everything I write on SamSpurlin.com only holds true if you also agree with this assumption. Personal development in general is predicated on the idea that focused energy in a specific direction will allow you to make positive changes to your life. If that’s not true, then I’m certainly wasting my time and effort writing about personal development. The same goes for my coaching. The people that I work with obviously all believe that there is action they can take to improve their lives. It’s my job to show them that action and give them advice for how to best use their energy when it comes to personal development. Lastly, the underlying basis of the entire branch of psychology that I’m currently studying is also predicated on the assumption that people can do things to improve their lives. Positive psychology looks at the human being and the human experience from an angle of growth. Developing happiness, mindfulness, creating positive relationships, and establishing new habits are all possible only if we actually have some control over our experiences as human beings.

The counter argument

I don’t want to spend the rest of this article beating on a straw man that doesn’t actually exist. Does anybody actually believe the opposite of my underlying assumption? Does anybody believe that we don’t have any control over our direct experience? There are actually plenty of arguments that espouse this position and they all boil down to one of two sub-assumptions; that we can’t control our genes and therefore can’t control the way we are and that we can’t control our living circumstances/environment. Let’s unpack each of these believes a little bit.

Genetics

Our genes ostensibly control the vast array of our physical and psychological characteristics. Therefore, how can we make the assumption that we have any control over our lives? We obviously have no control over who our parents are so therefore there’s not much we can do on the genetic side of things. If I’m genetically predisposed to be fat (or stupid, or smart, or shy, or anything) than what’s the point of expending energy to change that? All this talk about personal development is just an exercise in self-denial about how little we can actually control anything. Besides, if somebody does seem to improve their life with focused effort, then they obviously had the genes that allowed them to do it!

Environment

Personal development is a rich person’s endeavor. To be reading this article you obviously have access to some kind of computing device and an internet connection. That alone precludes the vast majority of the world from ever even reading this. Worrying about your happiness and trying to understand motivation are only salient concerns when you aren’t desperately poor and don’t know where your next meal is going to come from. Just as we can’t control our genes, we can’t control the environment into which we are born. If I happen to be born to a single mother of three in the inner city my opportunities are going to be much more limited than the only child of millionaire parents. It’s the sad truth but our position in life is essentially random and assigned to us at birth.

Others

Between genetics and environment, it’s obvious that we have no control over our personal development. Just think about somebody who grew up in an environment of abuse and extreme deprivation. They are unlikely to be thinking about personal development because they have much more pressing issues at hand — like surviving! Or, for example, take somebody who is extremely depressed. Or, somebody who is an extreme introvert. These are all things that aren’t under our control as human beings and prevent us from being more than we are. Personal development is the discipline of people who don’t have anything better or useful to do.

The case for assuming we can change our lives

I must admit, writing the previous couple of paragraphs from the perspective of somebody who believes we don’t have any control over our ability to grow and improve was surprisingly difficult. Every time I started typing a sentence my brain would scream, “No! That’s not true!” This just goes to show how powerfully this assumption is interwoven into the way I view the world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a logical or accurate assumption to have.

The keystone of my argument requires an explanation of the way I view personal development and how it may differ from how many people look at it. Personal development has always been about the process of growth, not the product of it. This may seem somewhat counterintuitive as I think most people get involved with personal development because they want to change something about themselves. It’s only logical, then, to be focused on some end state that is somehow better than you currently are. I don’t deny that personal development relies on some kind of change, but I do argue that an unwavering focus on some ideal state is not a good use of our time or energy. Instead, merely the process of growing, of improving, with no focus on some ultimate end, is the true benefit of personal development. Without this approach personal development becomes a Sisyphean quest of never-ending self loathing.

If we change our perspective on personal development from a quixotic quest for perfection to a uniquely personal journey of self-awareness and self-improvement we can eliminate a key threat to the assumption that people have control over their immediate experience. Whether you’re a multimillionaire living in the most ideal and perfect of environments or a victim of abuse in the most squalid of home situations, personal development is possible and equally necessary. Neither of these two fictional characters are shooting for the same level of personal development in any aspect of their lives. Starting points aren’t important or relevant in any way when making personal development an important part of your life. There is no ultimate end point that we’re all searching for.

Looked at another way, holding the assumption that you can improve your life in important ways allows you to be in a position of power when living your life. Each moment is a situation that can either add to or detract from your personal development. Even if you don’t have direct control over the circumstances of an event, you can always control your reaction. Taking this stance puts you in a position to have control instead of being buffeted about by the random winds of fate. In a world where my two options are believing myself to be a victim of my circumstances and thereby completely powerless to change them or having control (however tenuous that grasp may be) on my immediate experience I will always take the latter.

I will happily concede that some people are born into more advantageous situation than others, that some people are born with a higher genetic set point for happiness or intelligence, that growing up in an environment of abuse is something out of your control and likely incredibly detrimental to your personal development. Perhaps it is merely a function of my definition of personal development, but I cannot think of a single life situation where personal development is not possible or important. Personal development is not a product of our environment or life situation but a product of our minds and how we view the world. We can be imprisoned by circumstances, physical limitations, or injustice but if we retain the control over our ability to think then we retain control over our ability to personally develop.

It’s important to note that this assumption says nothing about whether or not you want to make changes. I don’t make the assumption that everyone in the world finds personal development important. That would be an incredibly fallacious belief that has no actual bearing in reality. My assumption merely says that anyone who decides to take action will find it possible to improve their lives in measurable ways. Part of my job as a teacher and coach is to show people the path that exists. I can describe the path’s location, clear it of obstacles, and give somebody a map but I can never throw them across my shoulders and take them down the path of personal development myself. The initiative and motivation has to be internally generated (how to go about generating that is a story for another time).

The Buddhism Caveat

Being interested in Buddhism made me start thinking about whether personal development is reconcilable with a Buddhist approach toward life. Is it possible to reconcile a commitment to perpetual personal development with the ideals and values of Buddhism? Isn’t it anti-Buddhist to never be content with where you are and always on the lookout for something better? I don’t know enough about Buddhism to fully answer this question, but I immediately am drawn to the practice of meditation as a metaphor for personal development. Meditating is something that is incredibly frustrating and difficult at first but gradually becomes easier over time. I think many Buddhists would say that they’re always trying to improve the quality of their ability to meditate. Indeed, unless an individual has experienced enlightenment, I’m under the impression that a lot of effort is placed into making meditation a better experience. This movement toward better meditation while simultaneously dropping expectations is analogous with any journey of personal development. The value is in the practice itself, the process, and not in the end-state it produces.

You can either believe you have control over your life or you don’t. For me, believing I can change the circumstances of my situation gives me power. It puts me in a position of strength and impels me to be engaged with the world, to not let it float by. The flip side of this approach is to give up all control or attachment and just “go with the flow.” I think it’s possible to be interested in personal development and not overly attached to it at the same time. That’s why I always focus on the process — on habits– and not the final outcomes of personal development. I try to let personal development, like eating, sleeping, or breathing, be a constant in my life that doesn’t require constant attention or rethinking. It’s just the way I’ve decided to look at myself and the world.

What assumptions do you hold about the way the world works? What assumptions do you hold about other people? Have you taken the time to think through these logically and possibly even change them? Our assumptions orient the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works. I think it’s vitally important that we get them right.

Share your thoughts by joining the conversation on Google+ or dropping me a note on Twitter (@samspurlin). I’d love to hear about your own experience with making and holding important assumptions. If you enjoyed this article, you might want to consider subscribing to the blog via RSS. Lastly, I’ve started a sub-blog called process>product that is serving as a depository for my semi-formed thoughts and musings about personal development and life in general.

Photo courtesy of Max Spurlin

Like a bear slowly awakening from hibernation (despite the fact it’s early January) I’m finally emerging from the productivity slumber I’ve been locked in since the end of my first semester of graduate school. I had huge plans of getting up early every day to work on my own projects, write articles for SamSpurlin.com, and plan the TEDx I’m in charge of. While I was able to get some of these things done, my writing output has been close to nil for the better part of three weeks. At first, I was frustrated with my apparent lack of productivity. How could I possibly stand to waste all of this free-time that is so incredibly hard to come by during the semester? I needed to be working hard to get everything done that I don’t have time to do while engaged with the duties of a grad student. Luckily, I decided to give The Power of Full Engagement a re-read early in December. I already knew this on a subconscious level, but this book helped me reaffirm the idea that renewal is just as important as productivity. In fact, without powerful renewal I’d never be able to ratchet up my productivity over time. With that helpful reframing, I’ve been enjoying my time at home and slowly warming up the productivity engine once again.

As a first foray into writing in about a month, I think it makes sense to take a little bit of time killing two birds with one stone. I think it’s vitally important to spend time reflecting on the past in order to improve the present and it’s also vitally important that I just get my fingers moving again.

Graduate school is an intense period of time in a student’s life. I worry that I mention it too often on this blog, so I’d like to take a little bit of time using it as a source of more general insight. My experiences are unique, but I suspect what I’ve learned over the past 4 months is not. Over the course of the next couple of hundred words I’d like to share with you my greatest takeaways from my first semester of studying for my master’s degree in positive developmental psychology.

Don’t waste mental power

Mental power is a predictably important resource when you’re a student. Graduate school demands that you have a huge amount of mental power on hand at almost all times. It may seem silly, but I was very, very grateful that I instilled some habits in my life over the past couple of years that freed up mental power for more important activities. For example, I have an extremely minimal wardrobe that requires zero thought to address each morning. I know that I can grab either pair of my shorts or pants and any of my shirts and look like a respectable human being. Other habits such as my implementation of Getting Things Done, how I manage reference information (Evernote, simple filing system), and the way I use my computer have all allowed me to use my mental power on more important questions. All of this seems terribly inconsequential, I know. However, Every little taxing decision or thought that isn’t directly related to something important represents a tiny drain on my psyche. Deciding what to wear every morning or deciding how to manage a new piece of information in my life are tiny decisions that happen many times every week. By having a system in place to take care of these items automatically has been a huge boon over the past couple of months.

Do you have a set system in place for when you receive a new piece of information (say, in an email) that requires your action? For me, I hit two buttons, type a sentence or two, hit enter, and know that a task has been safely captured in my task management software. It requires almost no thought and I don’t have to wonder where my to-do list is or if I’ve forgotten something important. Are you happy with the tools that you use on a daily basis or does something about them make you angry? I got tired of using crappy pens so I did a little bit of experimenting and discovered a pen that I love to use. I visited Amazon and purchased a box of them that are now currently residing in my desk drawer. I know that I always have an excellent pen at hand that won’t make me rue the idea of writing. Think about anything you have to do over and over in your life and ask yourself if you have a system in place. Don’t waste mental power on stuff that doesn’t matter.

Don’t get sucked into the self-harm equals commitment approach

Graduate students can be kind of weird. Myself and the rest of my cohort are all high achievers when it comes to school. We come from backgrounds where good grades and academic achievement are valued. However, sometimes it seems like the appearance of hard work is valued more than the actual results of that work. In a nutshell, just because you spend 10 hours a day at the library does not mean you’re more committed. There were times over the last semester where I found myself getting sucked into this mentality. It’s easy to find someone who appears to be working harder than you and the initial impulse is to try to match their apparent commitment by spending more time buried in a book or tucked away in the library.

I’ve worked hard over the past five years or so developing the work habits and the productivity systems to allow myself to complete a large amount of high quality work in a shorter amount of time. I don’t have to spend as much time in the library as some of my classmates and that’s okay. It’s okay to spend a lot of time in the library, as long as that time is truly needed. The problem I have with the graudate student mentality is the idea that the more harm you cause yourself by foregoing sleep and working long hours the more dedicated you are as a student. That’s stupid. Not sleeping is stupid. Graduate school requires your brain to be working at top capacity and that is never possible if you’re operating at a severe sleep deficit.

Are you taking time to take care of yourself? Those periods of renewal that I talked about at the beginning of this post are vital if you want to be at the top of your game. It can be easy to use something very visible (like sitting in the library) as a representation of how hard you’re working. That’s an overly simplistic metric of productivity. Instead, resist the urge to keep up with the proverbial Joneses and let output be your measure of productivity. That’s what truly matters, anyway. If you can create the output that you need to in a fraction of the time it takes someone else, be happy, humble, and willing to use that leftover time to take care of yourself. Self-care is the secret to keeping that high level of productivity functioning.

Do things that scare you

Even going to graduate school in the first place was an example of doing something that scared me. I was moving across the country and away from everything I knew as a native Michigander — a community that loves hockey, a career, my friends, and family — to roll the dice on something completely new. So far, that has been one of the best decisions of my life. Once in California, I didn’t shut down my life coaching business. In fact, I expanded it. Trying to run a business while being a full-time student is scary but worth it. When the opportunity to organize a TEDx conference presented itself, I applied and was selected to fill the position. It has been an incredibly stressful, monumental, and scary project. But it has been worth it. I’ve been filling my time for the past four months identifying projects and activities that scare me and doing my best to do them. It’s redundant advice, I know, but searching my horizon for fear and barreling toward it has been one of the best things I’ve done.

Is there something you’ve thought about doing that scares you? What is it about this thing that you find so scary? Is there any way you can lean in to this project and get a taste of how scary it really is? Before I took on the TEDx organizer position I volunteered for the conference that we put on in September. It gave me a taste of what it takes to organize something like this and gave me a taste of the fear before jumping in feet first.

Use your energy/time wisely

This is similar to my first point, but I think it deserves its own section. I like doing things from beginning to completion, no matter what. I quickly realized this is stupid. Studying for tests is a specific activity aimed at learning what I don’t already know. Reviewing information I already understand is an utter waste of time. My old way of doing things was to always start from the beginning of the content and work my way methodically through it. I finally learned to attack my studying in a more intelligent way by focusing on the information I didn’t know and ignoring what I already understood. This cut my studying time down significantly. Maybe I’m late to the party by doing this but it seems like lots of my classmates took the study-it-all-regardless-of-what-I-know approach.

The other side of this equation is making really tough decisions about how I’m willing to spend my time. If the difference between getting an A or a B is an additional 5 hours of studying, I’m probably not willing to make that investment. It’s not because I don’t value good grades or am afraid of hard work, I just know that there are better ways I can spend those 5 hours. I can write an article for this website, I could spend some time working with a life coaching client, or, believe it or not, I could get some more sleep. It’s a sign of maturity to logically assess where you’re spending your time and refusing to let your circumstances dictate your action, instead of the other way around.

How is your time arranged? Do you control how you use your time? Obviously, there are plenty of demands and responsibilities that require us to invest our time into activities that are beyond our scope of control. That’s fine, but what about activities that are under your control? Are you happy with how you spend your discretionary time? Can you remove some activities that aren’t providing any value in your life in exchange for something that does? I don’t have a TV in my apartment at school because I know it would be another drain on my already precious discretionary time. There are things I value more than television that I would rather spend my time on. There are things I value more than a 4.0 — like growing my business, exploring my own research interests, and taking care of myself physically and mentally.

I’m no expert…

I don’t want this article to appear as if I’ve mastered graduate school after my first semester. I certainly haven’t. There are still many aspects of being a grad student that I haven’t mastered. For example, I haven’t taken care of myself nearly as well as I should be. My workout routine has been sporadic at best and after my meditation retreat in September I’ve only meditated a handful of times. It’s hard to balance everything I value with everything else that is demanded from classmates, teachers, and others just as I’m sure you face a huge array of forces that pull you in multiple different directions.

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to consider signing up for the RSS subscription by clicking here. That way, you’ll never miss a new article ever again. Also, on January 16th over $1,000 of personal development materials are being sold for $97. My two e-books are included in the package. You can get more information and sign up for the waiting list by clicking here.

The process of improving your life requires two stages. The first stage is often the longest and most time consuming when it should really be the shortest. Ironically, I make my living by helping people with this stage. If I could help out with the second stage I’d certainly be a millionaire. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to do that (and neither has anyone else, despite what they may say).

Stage 1 & Stage 2

Let me be a little bit clearer, the first stage of any quest of self-improvement is acquiring the information you need to be successful. The second stage is taking constant and continuous action with that new knowledge. The first stage should be quick and easy so that you can focus on the second stage. It’s only by focusing on the second stage that you’ll see any positive change in your life. Indeed, most people spend an inordinate amount of time surfing the web or the bookstore trying to find that piece of information that will make stage 2 easier and quicker. It’s a futile search.

This may seem like a strange position to take as somebody who is obsessed with creating stage 1 products for people to enjoy. Nothing you buy from me or any other author under the guise of self-help will do anything to directly improve your life. It’s only when that knowledge is applied to action that any changes are created. Does that mean you shouldn’t spend any time collecting new information to use on your self-improvement quest? It completely depends on your current position.

Are you not sure where to start? It might make sense to do a little bit of reading to figure out where other people heave started. Do you not know what to do next? Maybe a blog post will help you get moving in the right direction again. Are you lacking motivation to keep going? Maybe you’ll find an e-book online that speaks directly to you and what you’re experiencing.

However, if you know what you need to do to get started, you know what the next step is, and/or you have already read several books on the topic you’re considering — it’s time to leave stage 1 in the dust. In fact, it’s time to stop reading this article, close the browser, and actually do something to improve your situation.

Tackling Stage 1 With Intelligence

If you’re still reading I’m going to assume that you still stand to gain something from stage 1, acquiring information. If you have to spend some time in stage 1, I recommend doing anything you can to minimize the amount of time you spend searching for and acquiring this information. Making stage 1 efficient and quick is the most intelligent way to approach any situation of self-improvement. Many people treat stage 1 as an entertainment or time-wasting activity because it can feel good to read inspirational writing or learn interesting things about personal development. However, if you’re truly serious about self-improvement then you need to treat stage 1 like an annoying, but necessary, pit stop on the path of where you’re trying to go.

At this point, let me introduce something that I think will help make stage 1 a smaller speed bump than it often is, The Empowerment Pack. Barrie Davenport has painstakingly curated a package of personal development products from some of the leading bloggers currently writing. I was honored to be asked to take part in the project and have contributed both Regaining Consciousness and my brand new e-book, The Pyramid of Well-Being, to the product. I’m joined by the likes of Katie Tallo (The 7-Week Life Cleanse), Ev’Yan Nasman (Sex, Love, and Liberation), Steve Kamb (Rebel Fitness), Joshua Becker (Simplify and Inside-Out Simplicity) and many, many others. Purchased individually, these products would cost over $1,000. My two products alone sell for over $35 under normal circumstances. The Empowerment Pack, going on sale on January 16th, is being sold for $97.

I hope you’ve noticed that this doesn’t read like a typical “sales” page. I honestly and truly don’t want you to buy this product if you have the information you need to improve your life. I’m not interested in your purchasing it, even though I receive money for it, if it’s just going to act as a stalling mechanism to avoid the real progress you could be making in stage 2. However, if you’re honestly in stage 1 then it might make sense for you to get a huge batch of top-notch materials in one fell swoop. You should spend as little time in stage 1 as absolutely possible and purchasing The Empowerment Pack will certainly make your information gathering quest more efficient.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, head over to The Empowerment Package website and sign up for the waiting list. You’ll receive an email when the product goes on sale and I’ll receive credit for your purchase. I make my living off of selling stage 1 products only because I can’t do stage 2 for you. If I could, I would. The next best thing is to provide you with the best information about how to improve your life, the best writing to motivate you toward positive change, and the inspiration to help you believe that you have what it takes to achieve exactly what you hope for.

The final steps of my weekly review

Two weeks ago I wrote the first article of a two-part series about how I conduct my weekly review. If you haven’t read part 1 yet,  check it out before moving on to today’s article.

As a quick reminder, a weekly review is something I learned from Getting Things Done by David Allen. It is hands-down the most important thing I do to keep myself sane in the face of multiple projects, responsibilities and competing demands. Without the weekly review I’d be a blithering, stress-ridden, and scatter-brained idiot. I need my weekly review like the desert needs the rain. Or a fat kid needs cupcakes.

Moving on to the final three steps of the weekly review, I’ll focus on wrapping everything up and getting crystal clear about what I’m facing in the upcoming week.

4. Create and Clarify Projects

A lot of the “stuff” that I generated in step 2 are actually projects that will require more than one action on my part to bring to completion. A key component of my productivity is making everything on my to-do list be as “doable” as possible. That means reducing everything down to the simplest next step possible. Therefore, I need to turn a lot of the amorphous items into projects where I can break it down into smaller steps. At this point I’ll often look at my Areas of Responsibility (just the various roles and responsibilities I have such as Student, TEDxOrganizer, Friend, etc.). Looking at each Area of Responsibility and asking myself if there’s anything I need to do to do a good/better job fulfilling that responsibility helps me ensure that I get all my projects out of my head and into my list.

5. Double Check For Stupidly Easy Next Actions

I kind of already mentioned this, but it’s important enough to give it its own step. My next actions have a couple of characteristics that are very important. First, they must start with a very clear verb. “Homework” is not a next action. “Download homework set #3″ is a next action. See the difference? It may seem silly to get this nuanced, but this is actually one of the most important habits to get into if you want your to-do list to actually get done. Figuring out ahead of time (what I call front-end decision making) what it actually means to do all of the items on your list, and clearly articulating it, means you can use all of your energy on actually completing the items. When you’re in the trenches trying to get things done the last thing you want to do is figure out what it actually means to complete the items on your list (what does “Homework” ACTUALLY mean?) and doing the work to finish them.

6. Write Out “Hard Landscape”

Once I’ve gotten to this point I know that all of the various commitments, worries, and tasks that I’ve been carrying around in my head or in my notes all week are safely within my system. All of my projects are listed and each of them has at least one next action step that is super clear and ready to go. I’m feeling pretty good at this point. The final step is to make sure I know exactly what my upcoming week looks like (David Allen calls appointments and other calendar items your “hard landscape”). I keep all my appointments and important due dates in iCal (synced to Google Calendar) but I like the upcoming week to be visible all the time. Therefore, I take a piece of paper and write down every single appointment and due date in the upcoming week. I also make a short list of due dates that are coming up within the next two weeks and another short list of the current projects that are active and need to have my attention the most. At any time I can take a look at this sheet (which I tape to my desk) and know where I’m supposed to be at any time during the week, what is due soon, and what I should be working on if I have some free time.

Bam. Done.

Thinking you don’t have time for all of this hullabaloo?

I have a feeling a lot of you are thinking, “How in the world does he have enough time to do all of this every week? I’m way too busy to do something like this.” To put it bluntly, you don’t have enough time to NOT do this. Spending an hour or two doing this every week saves me countless hours throughout the week by clarifying my focus and not having to worry about what I should specifically be working on. By doing a weekly review I know that I can go full bore on my work during the week and not have to worry about getting off course. If I know I’ll be stepping back and getting a bigger perspective on my work and life every week I don’t have to worry about trying to do both the work and figuring out what my work should be. The weekly review is for figuring out what my work looks like. My week is for actually doing it.

As I’ve mentioned a couple times before, this is a grossly simplified version of David Allen’s weekly review from Getting Things Done. However, I’ve been doing this long enough I know what I need to do each week to clear my head and prepare for what’s coming up. Your weekly review doesn’t have to look my weekly review. The value isn’t in the style — just the substance.

If you’re a weekly review veteran, I’d love to hear about your process. What do you add to your review? What don’t you do? Leave a comment below, ore even better,  join the Google+ conversation I’m hosting about weekly reviews.

If you haven’t instituted a weekly review yet, but would like to, consider reading Getting Things Done. I’ve also done extensive work with many people in setting up a weekly review that works specifically for them. If you’re interested in that one-on-one attention, head over to the Coaching page for more information.

I’m happy to announce the release of my third e-book today. It’s called The Pyramid of Well-Being: A Framework for Happiness and Success and I’m selling it for $14.95. I’m not interested in writing a long page trying to convince youvhow great it is and how it’s going to solve all your problems. That’s the thing about “self-help” books — they’re never the answer. However, sometimes it’s the questions that need some attention. This e-book will help you ask some better questions about how you align your actions with what you care about. Better questions about how you spend your time and approach your work. The answers are yours and yours alone. There’s no book that will provide answers that are truly accurate for you.

If you want more information about this e-book, you can click here for more specific details (like how if you buy it I’ll give you 25% off life coaching for the rest of your life). If you don’t want to buy the e-book, you can rest assured that this is the only post you’ll ever see trying to convince you to buy one of my books (at least until the next one comes out — which at my current rate will be about a year from now).

Thanks for your time and support over the past few years. Enjoy the book.

Love,

Sam

Last week I moved over the vast majority of the posts from The Simpler Life. If you head over to the Archives, you’ll see that I have articles available all the way back to October 2009. Unfortunately, in the transfer process some formatting errors happened. I’ll be going through the older posts little by little over the next couple weeks to rectify those errors. Please bear with me.

What is a weekly review?

There’s one thing I do every week that sets the stage for everything I’m able to accomplish. It is incredibly simple and yet it seems to be one of the most overlooked components of personal organization and development. I look forward to doing it every week and everyone I’ve taught how to do it agrees that it has truly changed how they approach their work. Those of you familiar with Getting Things Done will be familiar with it — The Weekly Review.

A weekly review is simply an appointment I set with myself to review the previous week and look ahead to what’s upcoming. It allows me to step back from the brouhaha of daily action and get a better perspective about where my work and my life are headed. While David Allen lays a great foundation for what a weekly review should look like in his book, I think it’s vitally important that you figure out what the weekly review needs to be for you to actually keep doing it. Over time my method has evolved, expanded, and then streamlined into the version I use today. By allowing it to change and modify I created something that is intimately tied to the way I work. Now, if I don’t get my weekly review every Sunday I feel like I spend the next week perpetually stuck in a meeting I wasn’t prepared for.

Before we get into the details of what you should include in your weekly review, I’d like to expound on its virtues a little bit more. One of the key benefits of doing a weekly review is that it primes my brain to do what its best at in the coming week — solve problems. It’s amazing how much we try to hold in our heads. If you’ve ever forgotten a great idea, or an important ingredient for dinner, or forgotten an appointment, you know just how bad your brain can be at remembering things. Getting this type of information out of my head and into a trusted system every week gives me the mental capacity to turn energy toward solving problems, not remembering what the problems are.

Lastly, spending time in a weekly review looking at my to-do list (or “next actions” if you’re a GTD aficionado) is like making sure my fishing tackle is ready to go before I get in the boat. Every week I make sure that all my projects have actionable next steps that I can easily take without too much effort. I’ve learned that having the energy to work on a project is not the same thing as having the energy to figure out what to do on a project. It’s a subtle, but important, difference. If I haven’t figured out what it means to “work on my psychology paper” or what “home” means on my to-do list I’m very unlikely to spend the energy to both figure it out and work on it. By figuring out what everything on my list means beforehand (“work on psychology paper” means “find 5 research papers to read” and “home” means “research plane tickets home for Christmas”) I’ve given myself a better shot at actually moving the project forward when I sit down to work on it during the week.

How do you do a weekly review?

There are as many ways to do a weekly review as there are people that will read this article (yes, more than 9 you smart aleck). As a good starting point, I always recommend that people try reading Getting Things Done by David Allen first. He gives a great explanation of what a good weekly review entails and he orients it in the larger scope of a complete personal productivity system. However, in order to save you the ten bucks and several hours you’d need to invest to read the book, I’ll give you the Sam Spurlin Version. It consists of several steps:

1. Clean Out My Project and Next Action Lists

During the heat of the moment throughout the week sometimes I let my lists get a little outdated. I’ll finish a task or a project and forget to remove it from the list or sometimes a project is no longer relevant. I like to start this whole process by going through my lists and clearing it of all the flotsam. I like my system to be clean and lean before I start throwing a ton of stuff at it.

2. Collect My Crap Into One Place (Including My Head)

This can be a pretty huge step depending on how much new information I took in during the week. This is when I take all the information that is strewn across my various inboxes and throw it all together in one place. My “inboxes” include: email inbox, text messages, saved bookmarks, favorited Tweets, iPhone notes, loose papers in my bags, loose papers on my desk, downloads folder, Evernote inbox, and undoubtedly something I’m forgetting. I go through each of these areas and add any of the relevant information to my task management software’s (Things in my case) inbox. If a piece of information is useful but doesn’t generate a task or a project, it is therefore reference material and I put it into the appropriate notebook in Evernote. At the end of this step I should have completely empty inboxes except for one incredibly full Things inbox.

3. Go Through Inbox and Place Each Item on a List (or File Away as Reference)

The next step is to go through the one location that currently has about 12592 pieces of information in it and put them on the logical lists. Lots of the items I generated will be standalone tasks that don’t require being put on a project list. However, some of the items I put in my inbox aren’t actually next actions — they’re projects. Anything I can’t resolve with one action I consider a project. I’ll talk more about this at the end, but it can be helpful to have various Areas of Responsibility to help figure out a.) where I should put this information, and b.) whether I’ve truly captured everything that’s residing in my head.

The Thrilling Conclusion…Next Time!

I’m going to continue with the final 3 steps of my weekly review process in next week’s post. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the exciting conclusion to this series, click here to sign up via RSS. If you like this kind of stuff, you might consider signing up for the Monthly Newsletter (something new and exciting is being offered to my newsletter readers in the next week or so).

Photo by me.

Graduate school is hard. You have to read insane amounts of very confusing articles, write lengthy papers about incredibly specific phenomenon, and contribute intelligently in class discussions that last for hours at a time. That’s not what I mean about it being hard, though. The hard part is not letting everything you have to do destroy what I’ve come to call your “inherent interestingness.”

I’ve observed an interesting phenomenon among my classmates (both older ones and my own cohort). Everybody who entered this program is really, really interesting or unique in some way. People have varied interests and experiences that really color who they are as individuals. However, over the last couple of months I think a lot of my classmates are having their inherent interestingness hammered out of them. They’re being grad-schoolized.

Everybody is turning into a study-robot that is constantly thinking about the next assignment, the next reading, or the next test. We all gather in the library to slave over our notes and have conversations about the same topics every single day. Obviously, an important part of a graduate program is inundating you in the discipline that you’ve chosen. Especially if you’re on track for a PhD — you need to become an absolute expert in what you’re doing. I’m totally behind that goal of a graduate school program.

However, I’m not behind that goal if it means losing what it is that makes us interesting people.

Last night I finished reading a book about Japanese technology in World War II. It has absolutely nothing to do with positive psychology. I read it because I’m still a history nerd at heart and it sounded interesting to me. It took me a lot longer than it would have under non-grad school conditions, but it got done. Right now I’m writing this blog post and not reading about ANOVA for my statistics class. Tomorrow, I’m going to be going to a meeting about organizing next year’s TEDx event on campus. None of this stuff will directly help me get my degree but I submit that it’s all just as important as classwork.

I don’t mean to denigrate my classmates and put myself on a pedestal with this description. I’m certainly not perfect. I told myself that I would do almost no school work on weekends and yet I spent at least 3 hours on Sunday reading for a class. My classmates are a fairly amazing group of people that accomplish things in the classroom that make me shake my head in amazement. I just don’t want any of them, including myself, to lose the inherent interestingness that got us here in the first place.

Do You Know Where Your Interestingness Is?

What about your inherent interestingness? What do you like to do that doesn’t have any ramifications for your job, school, or other “grown up” responsibilities? Everybody has certain activities and quirks that are constantly being ground away under the pressure of stress and responsibility. It can be easy to let these things slip away as more important things enter your life. However, the inherent interestingness within us all is what provides for the opportunities that we’re all looking for. Stressful jobs and life situations are a leveling factor that turn everybody into automatons of themselves. Automatons can be replaced by any other similarly trained (manufactured?) automatons. The creativity that sets you apart from the robots making microchips is borne of those characteristics that are constantly under fire. You must protect and cherish your inherent interestingness in order to grow and flourish regardless of life situation.

How to Cultivate Your Interestingness

Theory and words are cheap. I hope you’ve been reading this article with a critical eye and thinking to yourself, “So what if inherent interestingness is important? I have responsibilities. I have a family. I can’t sit around and just read books that seem interesting all day. I can’t just follow my muse whenever it strikes.” You are correct but I think I have a couple ideas that can be directly applied to the defense of your inherent interestingness today.

1. Make time: There is a profound psychological difference between these two statements; “I need to find some time to do something,” and, “I need to make some time to do something.” When you make time you’re in control of the situation. When you try to find time, you’re at the whims of the universe. Very simply, you need some free time (some, not a lot) in order to protect your inherent interestingness. It’s up to you to figure out where it comes from. Can you approach your work in a more intelligent and efficient way so you have 15 minutes at the end of the day to devote to yourself? Can you get up 15 minutes earlier? Maybe you can cut a television program out of your routine? Almost nobody is operating at such peak efficiency and capacity that they can’t find 15 minutes anywhere in their day.
2. Set boundaries: If I wanted to I could do graduate school work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is always a paper to write. If I finish all the papers there’s always more to read. If I finish all the reading for class there’s always my own research to be conducting. It’d be never-ending if I were to let it. Very simply, I don’t allow that to happen. To the best of my ability I set boundaries about when I’ll do work and how much I’ll do. Where are your boundaries? Do you work on the weekends? Do you take work on vacation? Where is it okay for you to be separated from your work? If you’re currently boundary-less, try setting some very minor ones and then move forward from there. A simple boundary, like no mindless internet after 9 PM, is a great way to get started.
3. Cultivate your interests: Writer Julia Cameron advocates something she calls the Artist Date. Essentially it’s just time you take out of every week to take your inner artist out to do something interesting. I think you should do the equivalent to cultivate your own interestingness at least weekly. At least 3-4 times a week I spend 15 minutes reading something completely unrelated to school. It lets me get through books that I find enjoyable and interesting without cutting too much into my “productive” time. Maybe you can go check out a museum you think is awesome or watch a documentary that piques your interest sometime in the next week. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, expensive, or time consuming. 15 minutes can be enough to get your mind moving in a way that work, school, or stress usually prevent from happening.

If we stand by idly the stresses of our lives will grind us down into the lowest common denominator. We will all be the same, bemoaning what we’ve become, with nothing to differentiate ourselves from each other. We must plant our feet, look our circumstances in the face, and proclaim, “I will NOT let you turn me into a robot. I will NOT become boring. I AM an interesting person.” Your inherent interestingness is one of the only things that differentiates you from anyone else.

You must guard it. You must cultivate it.

Nobody else will do it for you.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider signing up to receive RSS feeds or joining the mailing list for the monthly newsletter. 

Also, my friend Sebastien is looking for people to interview for a school project. If you consider yourself a minimalist and are ok with being interviewed, send him an email (seb.lasota@gmail.com).

Photo by I like.

A Framework for Finding Meaning and Passion in Life

Over the years I’ve observed my own work tendencies, moods, and productivity closely. I’ve also carefully observed the work habits and characteristics of interesting and accomplished people I’ve crossed path with in addition to having read about in the pages of biographical books. There are a couple ideas that seem to cut across the vast majority of people that accomplish important things within their respective domains. One of the most important is the ability to select and work on a project of personal importance over a long period of time.

Just looking at my own experiences with productivity and mental well-being makes it very clear how important it is that I have a long term project to orient myself with. For example, some of the most productive and happy times of my life have been:

• Writing each of my e-books.
• Developing The Simpler Life.
• Launching and developing SamSpurlin.com.
• Launching and developing life coaching and personal development coaching.
• Writing a 25 page paper on an obscure historical topic.
• Training for my first half marathon.

Some of these projects are ongoing and some of them have been successfully completed. While I was working on each of these projects I could always seem to more easily align my actions with my values which resulted in a greater sense of well-being in my daily life.

On the flip side, when I’m feeling my worst, listless, unmotivated, and weak, it usually means I don’t have a project that I’m excited about. At this point, it’s important that I distinguish between the everyday use of the word “project” and the type of long term project I’m talking about here. Most of us have a huge array of projects of varying sizes that we have in some state of completion. Projects our boss expects us to finish for work, projects our spouses expect us to finish at home, projects for school — most of us have no shortage of projects in our life.

However, I’m talking about a project that speaks to you at a deeper level. A project that you’re undertaking just because you like the sound of it. A project that is just an opportunity for you to investigate something that interests you further. I’m talking about projects that get you excited to work on and aren’t necessarily related to what you do to make money (although, they can be).

Why do you need one?

Having a personal project can help your quest for a well-lived life in a couple different ways. In addition to likely being intrinsically motivating (you do it just because you enjoy the act of working on it), there are a couple other benefits you could be reaping from developing a long term personal project.

First, projects of this nature generally take a long time to accomplish. I would consider the short end of the spectrum to be 6 months while the upper bound is almost limitless. Since this isn’t a project that you can just sit down and knock out in one evening of concerted effort you will develop your discipline as you steadily chip away at it over time. One of the beautiful things about discipline is that once you’ve developed it you can bring it to bear on nearly any other problem. Developing discipline as you work on your project will increase the amount of discipline you bring to other areas of your life.

Secondly, a long term personal project can help you develop and find meaning in your own life. The importance of meaning in living a healthy psychological life has been explored by many psychologists. Most notably, Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning wrote eloquently about how finding meaning through suffering separated many of those who perished in Nazi concentration camps with those who didn’t. Obviously, suffering isn’t the only way to develop a life of meaning. Finding a project that has long term implications to the world, your community, or anything else you care deeply about can help develop the sense of meaning that most psychologically healthy people share.

Thirdly, a large scope project can give you an opportunity to pull together a wide array of skills and abilities in novel ways. Most of us get very good at the specific elements of our job which means we can be incredibly efficient within the narrow confines of what we do everyday. However, without some sort of large, and often transdisciplinary, project we may never get an opportunity to use our various skills and abilities in novel ways. In fact, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, two prominent psychologists within positive psychology, have shown that using core character strengths in new and novel ways is an excellent way to increase well-being .

How do you pick a good project?

At the risk of sounding like I’m diminishing an important point, let me just say that it almost doesn’t matter what you pick as your project as long as it’s inherently interesting to you and is something that will take a long time to accomplish. The specifics about what you’re doing or how you’re going to do it isn’t as important as the process involved in adopting and working on a project of this nature. With that being said, there are a couple techniques you can use to develop some ideas for your project.

Get involved with an organization and develop a solution to a need they have. I have a friend who decided to make a long term project a fundraising effort for an organization that he was involved in. It allowed him to combine his many different interest in marketing, interpersonal communication, and philanthropy with a cause that he cared deeply about. Most volunteer organizations would love to have someone on board that would be willing to take a difficult problem they have and try to develop a viable solution.

Another possible avenue you could take is to make an old-fashioned bucket list of things that you’ve always wanted to do. It can be fun to just sit down and think about everything you’d do if you had the time, money, cajones, etc., to do. Make your list and then either select something that seems moderately possible (but still difficult) or if you’re a real die-hard, pick one at random.

The third strategy can be approached in one of two complementary ways. Most of us are pretty aware of what we are and aren’t good at. For your long term project you could identify a weaknesses and then dedicate a year or longer to making it one of your strengths. For example, maybe you feel like you haven’t read most of the books that somebody your age is “supposed” to have read. For the next year you could work your way through the Great Books. You could even start a blog where you write about your journey through the books and the thoughts you have about them.

On the other side of this approach is to take something that you’re already pretty good at and become truly world-class at it. Perhaps you already view yourself as a pretty good chef and you enjoy cooking. What if you started a project to make every recipe in a difficult recipe book? Or to develop a cookbook of your own? Or anything else you can think of to elevate your cooking game to an entirely new level.

Lastly, you can develop your project by looking at the various strengths, interests, and abilities that you have and combining them in a completely new way. As I wrote about earlier, using strengths in a novel way has been shown to increase well-being. What could you do that would combine your interests of writing, zombie movies, and interpretive dance? True creativity comes as a result of combining seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts in ways that nobody else has ever done. Get crazy and create something that ties together multiple different components of who you are as a person.

How do you accomplish it?

I promise to be much more brief in this final section. I wanted to make sure I spent plenty of time explaining how important and beneficial I think it is to find some kind of long term project. I wanted to make sure that I was super clear about possible ways you could go about finding a suitable project. This last step, however, is much easier than everything else I’ve written about.

The way you accomplish your project is to take constant, tiny, microscopic, incessant, baby steps in the right direction.

You won’t complete this in a day, a week, or even many months. The only way you’ll successfully reach the conclusion of any project worth doing is to be ok with making small progress every day. It’s not a matter of smarts, or strength, or any other personal characteristic other than determination. Projects, like objects, have inertia. If you let it sit still it’s going to be difficult to get it moving again. But if you keep your project moving forward, if even almost imperceptibly, then it will eventually get done.

I’m really, really excited about hearing other people’s projects. Care to share yours in the comments below?

Did you enjoy this article? Sign up for the RSS feed to have new articles delivered directly to you. You can also follow me onFacebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Photo by Max Spurlin

It’s that time of year again. The days are getting shorter, the leaves are changing colors, and pumpkin flavoring is invading all sorts of non-pumpkin foods — it’s time for New Year’s Resolutions!

You heard me correctly. Today, October 25th, I want you to start working on your 2012 New Year Resolutions. Why wait until the calendar flips over to start changing your life? What’s so special about January 1st vs. October 25th? Instead of jumping into your set of New Year Resolutions in a couple months, why not set the stage right now to make yourself successful? What does it even take to be successful? Why have you been successful with resolutions in the past? Why do most people fail on their New Year’s Resolutions? Am I get annoying with all the questions, yet?

There’s a lot of different components of the resolution making process that we could look at. I think there are four things we can all begin doing today to make what we resolve to do in 2012 last beyond the second week of February.

Kicking 2012 in the Face Today

1. Mindset: To make a New Year Resolution last you need a mindset of personal development that doesn’t require a new year to motivate. We place too much emphasis on the importance of a “fresh start” on January 1st when we can actually give ourselves a fresh start every day. Every day you can make a decision to continue on the path you’re on or to do something different. Your days, hours, and minutes are made up of all the individual decisions you make. Each decision is an opportunity to change your life for the better. A piece of fit or a cupcake for a snack? Work on a project or browse the internet mindlessly? Do a couple pushups or make an excuse? You don’t need to wait until January 1st to start changing your decisions for the better.

2. Clear the crap: Minimalism has played a huge part in my life. Clearing all the physical stuff out of my immediate environment that I didn’t truly care about had a hugely liberating effect on me. I’m not saying you need to go to the same extreme as me, but I do think that thinking seriously about what you let into your life (physically and mentally) is very important. If you want to fill 2012 with new habits and choices, how are you going to make space for them? Spend the next couple months clearing the space to let the improved you grow and prosper.

3. Clarifying values: Everything I do with my coaching, writing, and living comes back to values. Our values drive our daily actions and decisions. For something that’s so important to our functioning, very few people have a truly good grasp on their values. Spend the next couple of months asking yourself what you truly care about, what you want to change in your life, and why you believe these things. If you’re clear on your values then setting resolutions that align with them won’t be difficult. Tying your resolutions directly to your values means that you’re going to be incredibly unlikely to break them. It all hinges on figuring out and clarifying your values first.

Don’t wait until January 1st, 2012 to start thinking about changing your life for the better. You can begin laying the framework for successful resolutions today by adjusting your mindset, making physical and mental space to grow, and clarifying your values.

Photo via Max Spurlin