Personal Development Face-Off: Round #3
Glen / 
27 Comments / 
April 6th, 2009 / 
Subscribe via RSS
I hope you’re all having a great Monday and are ready for Round 3 of the Personal Development Face-Off. The first round and the second round have proved to be a hit, with some great answers from all those taking part. In this round the questions have changed from the previous two which I hope you’ll like.
As an added bit of fun, it would be great if you could vote for your favourite answers in the poll below. In this third round we have Jonathan Mead and Mark Chernoff.
Jonathan Mead runs the very popular, no-nonsense blog that is Illuminated Mind. He’s also a regular blogger over at Zen Habits.
Marc Chernoff has an innate ability to write engaging post titles that deliver outstanding content on a regular basis which he shares at Marc and Angel.
Questions & Answers
| Jonathan Mead |
Marc Chernoff |
| What is your best tip for people who wish to become more motivated? | |
| Give yourself permission to do the things you really want to do. Give yourself permission to stop everything that doesn’t make you come alive. | Try different things. Mix it up. It’ll give you fresh experiences and new perspectives, both of which keep the mind stimulated and motivated. |
| To you, what is the meaning / purpose of life? |
|
| To enjoy it, of course. | My primary purpose is to attain various life experiences and share them with the people I love. After all, our life’s story is simply a string of experiences. The more experiences we have, the more interesting our story gets. |
| Do you think it’s a good idea to have role models in our lives (and why)? | |
| Absolutely. As long as they are chosen deliberately. Blindly idolizing celebrities and radical people, however, will only lead to more blindness. | Yes, but I also think we need to be careful how we idolize people. People are multidimensional. Just because someone is successful in one dimension of their life, doesn’t mean they are a universal success. The qualities we admire in our idols make up only a fraction of all the qualities they possess. So we need to be able to separate the qualities we idolize from the person as a whole. |
| How can people lead happier lives? | |
| Listen to your heart. Remove the noise. | Be a part of something you believe in. This could be anything. People may take an active role in their local city council, find refuge in religious faith, join a social club supporting causes they believe in, or find passion in their careers. In each case the physiological outcome is the same. They engage themselves in something they strongly believe in. This engagement brings happiness and meaning into their lives. |
| What do you think is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to productivity? | |
| Overengineering their systems. Geeking out and making it more of a hobby, then something with a purpose. Forgetting about the reason for being more productive, to create space. | One word: Procrastination. There are plenty of ways to sabotage your personal goals, dreams and desires. Procrastination, however, is the number one killer. Procrastinators self-destruct. They hinder their own potential by placing colossal road-blocks along the path to success. In other words, they subconsciously choose to fail. |
| What is the most important personal quality people should work on having? | |
| Living deliberately | People should continuously under-sell to over-deliver. The crooked salesman constantly over-sells the capabilities of his product. He sets the bar so high that the product ends up falling short of his client’s expectations. If you want to boost your personal value, do the exact opposite. Slightly under-sell your capabilities so that you’re always able to over-deliver. It will seem to others like you’re habitually going above and beyond the call of duty. |
| If you were lying on your death bed right now, what message would you leave behind? | |
| Life is a dream. Your thoughts and actions determine the course of your dreams. What kind of dream do you want to create? | Find what makes you happy and do it until you die. |
| Define the reason for your success in one word. |
|
| Response | Love |
Vote for Your Favourite
(Note: Voting has now closed.)
Wow, this one is tough. It’s almost a tie for me.
I have started looking forward to Mondays coz of Personal Development Face-offs.
Awesome Avani! I thought it would be a good idea to keep them on the same day of the week so people knew what to expect
Yep, this was tough. For the others, one person has clearly resonated with me, but this time difficult to call. Interesting that it’s reflected in the scoring which is even at the moment.
Hey Mike, yeah the scoring is very close. This is definitely the closest one yet!
I have to agree with you all, for me this was the toughest one to vote on as well. Thanks again to Jonathan and Marc for taking part!
This was such a tough call…I had no idea who to vote for since they both had excellent responses. It will be interesting to see what happens!
Hey Nadia, I can relate to you on that one
I agree, this one was a tie in my mind! I think these face-offs are starting to catch on nicely.
Hey Nathalie I think so too, I need to send out a new round of emails to keep it going. Already have next week sorted out though
This is really a tough one as everyone said. It was a tie for most of it, although in the end Marc edged it out just a tiny tiny little bit.
Tight race for me too on this one, but I went with Jonathan for brevity and simplicity. I figure you’ve got to really know your stuff to communicate it in as few words as possible.
Yeah, I really liked his answer “To enjoy it, of course” – that made me smile.
I’m not a fan of Mead’s straight up hedonism… I think Chernoff’s notion of experiences + love is a better way of existing.
Interesting Eric, thanks for your comment!
You put me up against Jonathan, eh? LOL… he’s awesome.
But… vote for me anyways!
Close because – in my view – their answers are close in meaning. Marc uses more words and explanation than Jon, most of the time. So in my view the evenness of the popularity (by now 23 vs. 25 votes; not a meaningful difference) displays the evenness of us, readers: some like it long, some like it short.
Great observation Ton, I wonder if the divide is really that simple
OOOhh this is a tough one. I enjoy Johnathans simple, blunt answers and insight, but agree with Marc’s more loving approach as well. Tough call. Excited to see results!
This is really fun, thanks for putting this together Glen.
It’s also cool to see two of us pitted together that have takes on issues that are at such opposite ends of the spectrum.
Great idea for engaging your readers.
Thank you Flora, the series seems to be doing well and something that people look forward too.
great concept. both of you have terrific advice!
Tight race! I picked Jonathan but it was really a tossup. Good responses from both parties.
I really enjoyed this.
I enjoyed it so much in fact, I want to be a part of it. So here goes it:
Define the reason for your success in one word
Answer: mindfulness.
I have come to believe that mindfulness or awareness, whatever term you like best, is absolutely essential. It’s essential in hand to hand combat and it’s essential in life too. We can be alive and sleeping or alive and fully awake.
We must strive for the latter.
Hey Bamboo, thanks for commenting and actually..taking part. Interesting answer, that’s probably something close to what I would say as well!
Great idea. I might have to borrow this concept in the future.
Great questions, Glen!
I especially liked Marc’s comment about idolizing people: “People are multidimensional. Just because someone is successful in one dimension of their life, doesn’t mean they are a universal success.”
That’s a wise comment. I see a lot of idolizing on the Net, especially of super successful bloggers. We are all human, with strengths and weaknesses.
Good cage fight, guys!
cheers
Mary