Total Self-Improvement: How to Become a Complete Human

January 20, 2011 By 20 Comments

I’ve always tried to be great at everything I’ve put my mind to. School, athletics, even writing this blog – I’ve always tried to reach my best, in every facet of my life.

Why? I believe in becoming a complete human being. One that has strengths in every area, and weaknesses in as few as possible.

Becoming a complete human is the end of all self-improvement. It is the goal that we are always striving for – to become a balanced, good person across every aspect of our lives. A true jack-of-all-trades or the archetypal Renaissance man is what I’ve tried to become – and I think everyone in the self-improvement game will trend towards becoming one themselves. It’s part of the natural process.

Becoming a complete human being requires being very good in every ‘sphere’ of life – it requires having integrity and being an honest person; having diverse knowledge of a wide range of subjects; being in excellent shape; having solid relationships with yourself, family, and friends; having a career that you enjoy; having hobbies and skills that you practice regularly and are competent at; and being able to maintain a life of balance.

I don’t think that there can be anything more rewarding than becoming a complete human being. Being the total package allows you to have the broadest experience of life possible – something I think is very valuable. Being complete also makes you a very strong, competent individual – being so good in every part of your life will prevent a total breakdown should something go wrong in one part of your life. In essence, your mental well-being is not predicated upon just one ‘sphere’ of your life – rather, it is broken up into every part of your life, leading to flexibility and mental fortitude.

Let’s break all the different spheres of living down, one by one.

Total Self-Improvement: How to Become a Complete Human
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Filed Under: Health, Identity, Income, Life, PluginID, Productivity, Social Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How (And Why) To Transform Inaction Into Action

January 11, 2011 By 22 Comments

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that I hold tremendous power, writing for this blog, which thousands of people read per day.

It’s easy to think that I’m some guru (I’m not) with the ability to change people for the better.

It’s easy to think that I hold all the responsibility for changing you, that my content is what will cause you to change yourself over time so you can live a better and easier life.

It’s easy to think all of this because it deflects responsibility from yourself. Since the job of changing yourself is in my hands, you don’t need to put any effort in; you figure that whenever you get the ideas in your head that you need in order to live better, you’ll automatically change, with no extra effort. You think it’ll be as simple and as effortless as flicking a switch.

Wrong. I can only show you what is possible, what ideas work, and what practices we can use to improve ourselves.

It is up to you to act.

How (And Why) To Transform Inaction Into Action

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Filed Under: Identity, Life, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Simplest Way To Build a Habit

December 9, 2010 By 21 Comments

Building a habit, no matter what anyone tells you, is much, much easier than you think. People tend to overthink it, making it into something more complex than it is. It’s not that difficult. And I’m someone who used to have some serious trouble in developing and keeping good habits.

Ready?

You just have to do it once.

And then do it once more.

And then again. And again. And again. Eventually, it’ll become automatic.

That’s how you build a habit – all you have to do is do something once, then repeat it. But the key here is that you realize that you only really have to do that thing once. Once you do it once, all you have to do after that is do it again. And again.

Basically – if you call a behavior a “habit” when you do it automatically, you can hack the habit-building paradigm by making yourself do it automatically, no matter what. As you do that thing over and over again, you’ll eventually fall into a pattern where you’ll do it without thinking.

The best way to hack habit-building? Give yourself a trigger for your habit.

The Simplest Way To Build A Habit

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: ,

Ask the Readers: Goal-Setting

November 17, 2010 By 35 Comments

Over time, as I’ve delved into the awesome texts of productivity and achievement, I’ve seen conflicting views on goal-setting.

The dilemma is: should you even set them?

On one hand, setting goals lets you hone in on what you want to get done, and creates a reward mechanism that lets you feel great after you accomplish your goals. It allows you to focus on what truly needs to get done, and provides a structure by which you can make your dreams come true. I’ll call this the Chris Guillebeau school of goal-setting, since he has a fairly structured model for goal-setting via his annual review.

On the other hand, setting goals comes with a cost – the damaged feeling of self-esteem whenever you do not complete them. Also, if you become obsessed with goal-setting and achieving your goals, you’ll do nothing except chase your goals. You’ll become one-dimensional and lose that valuable time where you can ‘do nothing’, time that frequently results in us generating our best ideas and basking in our gratitude for life. In this way, our goals end up owning us. This is what I call the Jonathan Mead school of goal-setting, since he is a big proponent of the idea that our goals end up owning us.

My question for you, readers, is this – which school of thought do you believe in? I’ll break down the pros and cons of each approach in the rest of the post.

Ask the Readers: Goal-Setting

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Why You Should Stop Being “Productive”

September 14, 2010 By 22 Comments

Disclaimer: I don’t like “productivity”.

I think that people misunderstand what it means to be “productive” so much that chasing the holy grail of “productivity” ends up being destructive rather than beneficial. That’s because we, in our over-reliance on measurement and logic as human beings, have decided to deliberately change the meaning of what it means to be “productive”.

What we know as “productivity” is actually faux-productivity. It’s fake productivity. It’s no good. It’s just about useless as a concept. And, yet, when we try and determine how “productive” we are, we almost always resort to using faux-productivity as a way to gauge how efficiently we get our work done.

Why You Should Stop Being Productive
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