Creating a Better Life

Free Ebook - The Rise of the Author by Mark Joyner

Boy, when it rains, it pours.

After yesterday’s post about getting a free copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, I got an email that Mark Joyner has released a new free ebook, “The Rise of the Author.”

This one looks more permanent (if anything on the Internet can be called permanent), so I’ve added it to my listing of free ebooks.

It’s over a hundred pages long, but thankfully Mark has included an executive summary and action plan at the end of it for those of us who are already having trouble managing their information overload.

Enjoy!

5 Easy Ways to Capture Your Ideas

If you’re anything like me, you’re having million dollar ideas all the time. The problem is that when you get home to work on them, all that you can remember is that Heroes isn’t on because of the writer’s strike, or that you have to get the bills paid before they shut off the cable (which really wouldn’t matter… I mean, there is a writer’s strike going on.)

Most personal productivity systems and experts suggest that you use something other than your own brain to record your ideas. With two of my favorites, GTD and Simpleology, it’s absolutely essential that you do so. GTD talks about using “trusted systems” - use anything that you know will be there later, and be easily accessible, so that your brain can forget about it. Simpleology has a “Dream Catcher” built into it’s online software, and suggests that you use it to prevent “Runaway Brainware.”

I actually remember learning about this for the first time way back when I was still in grammar school. I was going to be a famous novelist back then (there weren’t blogs yet), and was a big fan of Roald Dahl. He’s most famous for being the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I remember reading a book of his short stories and essays, and one of them was about the process of writing. (I wish I could remember the name of the book or the essay itself…)

It was from this essay that I first learned about the importance of capturing ideas. In one of the examples that he gave, he was driving when an idea came to him. He pulled over to the side of the road to write it down, but couldn’t find a pen… so he made a note in the dirt on the bumper of his car! Now that’s dedication!

Hopefully the following methods are a little easier:

1. Notebook

Low-tech solutions can often be best. No worries about crashes, accidental erasures, or battery life. And it’s also cost friendly - nearly anyone can afford to pick up a pocket sized notebook. The biggest problem that I personally have with this one is finding a pen or pencil when I need one. I swear to god, I don’t care if I am a man, one of these days I’m going to start carrying a purse!

2. Cell Phone with a Notes or To Do List Function

Most modern cell phones have these. This one solves the problem of having to find a pen, and you are probably less likely to misplace or forget it. The problem is that it can often be difficult to enter notes into one unless you’ve got a text friendly keypad.

3. Voice Recorder

These are great for when you’re driving and can’t use your hands to write or type. Some cell phones have a record function built in, but you can also pick up stand-alone versions at most of the big retail stores.

4. PC Software

If you live in a small apartment (like I do), and have your computer on all of the time (like I do), it can be easy to just jump over to the PC and type something into a notebook application. My two favorites for this are both from Google - the scratch pad gadget for Google Desktop, or the Google Notebook browser add-on. I’ve actally begun using Google Notebook quite extensively… with it’s ability to use multiple notebooks, sections, and tagging, it’s usually pretty easy to find what I’ve filed there.

5. Post-Its

These were the inspiration for this article.

Last night, I was at the computer and one of those million dollar ideas (OK, maybe this was only a thousand dollar one) popped into my head. Being the good collector I am, I fired up Google Notebook to record it…

… and the screen froze. Nothing moving. I’d aked my baby to do one too many things.

It was a godsend that I had a stack of Post-Its in front of me. So I wrote down the initial idea, and then thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be helpful if I shared some of my ideas on capturing ideas?”

So out comes another little yellow sheet of paper, and a day later, this very article is born.

(By the way… I’ve written about my love of Post-its before…)

So those are my 5 favorites… which of these do you use? Have I missed any that you like to use?

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Discuss this post at Personal Development Partners

Three Steps of Personal Development

My friend Gleb over at the Personal Development blog has started a writing project. He’s asked people in the Personal Development Community to define what they are writing about, by asking us to answer the following question: What Is Personal Development?

For me, personal development can be broken down into three steps:

Looking at your life, deciding what you want to change, and taking the action necessary to change it.

That makes it sound pretty easy - in my experience, it isn’t. It takes a constant commitment to relearning new habits and beliefs, discarding old ones, and trying again, and again, and again when you fail don’t get the results you were looking for.

Look At Your Life

It’s very important that you start off with an accurate picture of yourself and your current situation in life. You need to know your strengths and your weaknesses. You want to be able to capitalize on what you are good at, while at the same time developing those things that you want to develop.

Decide What You Want To Change

One of the keys here is to develop what YOU want to develop. While you may want to consider them because of the value that they add to your life, what your spouse, your parents, your children, your boss, your spiritual leader, or your friends think that you “should” work on may not necessarily be in your best interest. Change what you think it’s important to change in order to live the life that you want.

Take the Necessary Action

“Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.” — Jim Rohn

If you want to change something, develop a new skill, let go of an old habit, you’ve got to take action.

Because of the renewed interest in the Law of Attraction, the whole idea of “action vs. vibration” has really been up for debate. I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb here and try to succinctly state how I see it.

I don’t think that, as a human being, we can separate our vibration from our action.

You aren’t a tree. You can move. You can do things. So to sit around and wait for things to change while you “work on your vibration” just doesn’t cut it.

One of the best ways to raise your vibration is to take some kind of action.

Wrap Up

So that, in a nutshell, is what personal development is all about for me. Each of these three steps deserves much more of a treatment than I’ve given them here, so I’m going to go ahead and turn this into a series so that I can expand on each of them. Be on the lookout for the next article in the coming days.

Thanks to Gleb for starting this project. Be sure to check out the latest entries here.

And if you want to participate, the project is running through the end of October, so there’s still plenty of time to let us know what you think personal development is.

Five Original Articles by… Me!

Karen from Live the Power hit me up to take part in a group writing project, passed to her by Rick Cockrum of Shards of Consciousness, and to him by Liz Strauss of Successful Blog.

The Challenge: Share Five Posts from Your Past Writing

The Question: Would you change what you’ve said?

To answer the question first: no - I wouldn’t change the basic ideas behind what I’ve written. I may have written them better (like Rick said), or been more consistent, but I don’t think there’s anything that I would say “My view on that has completely changed.” I can only think of one post that I kinda sorta regret making, but I really don’t like deleting them once they are published, so it’s stayed, with updates.

When it comes to the posts that I’d like to share, a comment that was left by Jean of Transforming Stress to Personal Power got me thinking. Jean asked:

Would you be willing to tell me what changes you are making in your life and what tools you are using?

So a little review is probably in order… her question dovetails nicely with this particular meme.

Here are my five posts:

The Secret (May 1, 2006)

This was my first post after watching the original version of The Secret - the version with Esther Hicks. I still haven’t seen the extended edition. This is where I really started to get interested in something I’d known about for a long time, but wasn’t using to my advantage - the Law of Attraction.

Jesus and Earl (May 24, 2006)

In this post, I really started to get the whole “Do Unto Others” thing. It’s not tit-for-tat: when we do for others, we already are doing for ourselves. I should probably also fix the dead links in that article, since it references an old blog of mine that’s no longer around.

Antidepressants (December 15, 2006)

This one was a post where wrote about my decision to go back on an antidepressant medication. I remember being pretty torn up about this, but I now know that it was probably one of the best decisions I could have made. I know there’s a lot of controversy around this kind of medication, but I’m not really interested in that. I use what works for me.

The Spiritual Atheist (February 27, 2007)

A write up of my thoughts on god, religion, and spirituality.

It’s Between You and God (June 21, 2007)

More of Mother Teresa’s words than my own, but here I did a little exploring about just who I have to answer to in my own life.

Join In

For the time being, I’ve stopped tagging specific bloggers with memes and group writing projects - if you’d like to participate, just have at it, and share five past posts from your own blog.

[full disclosure: a couple of amazon affiliate links]

What Would You Do With An Extra 36 Hours?

About a week ago, Edward Mills of Evolving Times asked his readers and fellow bloggers what they would do with an extra 36 hours a week?

Edward came up with the question based on the blogtastic book The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I haven’t read the book yet, but I call it blogtastic because of the way that it took the blogosphere by storm and fundamentally changed the way that many of us go about their daily tasks. I credit Andy Wibbels’ interview with Tim when the book first came out with my attitude of “Just because it comes in electronically doesn’t mean I have to respond right now”, which has provided both a major boost to my own productivity, as well as an ability to really focus on the people that I respond to with the thoughtfulness that they deserve.

To tell the truth I really don’t want to add yet another book to my ever growing reading list at the moment. But from what I’ve gleaned from all of the information about it, both on Ferriss’ web site and from all of the blogs that have written about it, the book is about achieving one basic thing: time freedom.

For the sake of this article, I’m going to take the idea at face value. If I only had to spend four hours a week at my day job, how would I spend the other 36?

I’d Write More

This one was a no brainer… but maybe “more” doesn’t really cover it. I’d also write different stuff, on other topics that I enjoy and in other forms. Most of my writing takes the form of personal development blogging nowadays, and I’d like to branch out.

I’d Spend More Quality Time With My Wife

Another no brainer. But the important word here is quality. Not just being under the same roof while I write and blog and build and she does her thing, but doing things together, both in the house (woo-hoo!) and outside.

I’d Improve My Web Development Skills

While I’m no slouch at the basics of application development, I’d really like to take the time to refine my PHP, MySQL, and Javascript skills to the point where every time I wanted to do something a little different, I didn’t have to search Google for someone else’s code to learn from. It’s great to learn by example, but if I could really take the time to learn a language’s syntax and concepts, I know that it would cut much of the time I spend developing in half.

I’d Visit My Family More

My mom, brother, soon to be sister-in-law, and step-dad are all on the east coast, and I’m on the west. It’s been way too long since I’ve been out there. Way way way too long…

I’d Get Involved in Local Groups That Promote Self Improvement and Personal Growth

One of the thing that I love about the web is the time shifting - I can participate in a discussion on a forum or blog without it having to be done at any set time. But I’d like to get involved in local groups again (like a Religious Science church, or maybe Toastmasters) where I can meet with like minded people. My current job, because of it’s shifting schedule, doesn’t allow me to do that with any consistency.

Hmmm… after writing out that list, maybe I do want to pick up a copy of the book!

Thanks for including me in this, Edward!

And now, what would you do if you had that extra 36 hours? Feel free to leave your ideas in the comments below. If you’ve got a blog, write up a post and link it back to the original post on Evolving Times, so that Ed can include your article when he compiles his list of participants.