The Perks of Clean Lines

As I get ready to start graduate school I’ve been thinking a lot about how I manage my time and attention. I’ve been soliciting advice from other people who have gone through graduate school and the most common piece of advice I’ve received is to set limits. There is always more writing to do, another article to read, and more work to do when you’re a grad student. If I don’t set limits then I’m sure to be consumed.

KEEPING CLEAN LINES

The best way to set limits is to have what I call “hard lines” between the different modes of my life. By clearly defining work and relaxation as separate modes of being I can make sure I’m using my attention appropriately for each. You can even take the idea of hard lines further to the different kinds of work that I do throughout the day. Instead of having my attention bleed like a Sharpie on tissue paper, I want to keep my attention as fully and properly engaged as possible.

Luckily, my experience as a self-employed writer and coach the past several months has taught me some things about creating clear boundaries. On days that I clearly define the boundaries between my work and the rest of my life, I seem to get more done and feel better about it. On the days where my work and the rest of my life bleed together like mashed potatoes and gravy tend to result in much less getting done. Boundaries help us get in the correct mental framework to get work done and approach the various aspects of our life in the most intelligent way possible.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BOUNDARIES GONE?

The problem, however, is that boundaries are becoming more and more scarce. Some people have a natural boundary when they leave their house in the morning and commute to an office. However, more and more people lack even this most basic distinction. Even people who work and live in different locations often carry a smart phone that keeps them constantly in some sort of work mode even when at home.

In my own experience, I discovered that because I use my laptop for both work and much of my leisure activities I sometimes have trouble defining a barrier between relaxation time and time to work. It gets even worse when I try to be productive in the same place I go to relax. In college, I quickly discovered that I could never do anything productive in my dorm room. I always seemed to be in “fun” mode in my dorm room even though that’s where my desk was and where, logically, it would have been easiest to do much of my homework.

As the boundaries between our different modes crumble around us, what can we do to rebuild them?

There are three different avenues we can take when seeking to create the hard lines that let us be productive as well as allow us to switch off.

CLAIM YOUR SPACE

1. Physical space: If possible, try to have the space that you play and work be different from each other. That doesn’t mean you need to pack up and hit the cafe every time you want to do some work. I had a home office where I used the main desk for playing on my computer and a small desk on the other side of the room for focused work. I knew that when I took those several steps across the room and sat down at the “work desk” it was time to get down to business. Experiment with different spaces where you find it easier to be productive and try to keep that place “sacred.”

2. Digital space: The internet is awesome. It holds most of the information and resources I need to write engaging and interesting articles. Unfortunately, it is also a treasure trove of kitten pictures. It can be tough to work when I know I could be giggling at funny pictures with two simple clicks of my mouse. To get around that, I use a software to remove the temptation, such as SelfControl. Another strategy I’ve used is to create a new account on my computer that I only used for doing productive work. Switching over to that account was like flipping a switch in my brain.

3. Mental space: Lastly, differentiating your mental space is kind of a combination of physical and digital space. One way I can set up my mental space to differentiate work from play or writing time from research time is what I call “start up” and “shut down” routines. I try to start and end my work day the same way every day. I may still be using my computer after my shut down routine but executing that routine lets me know that I have switched over to a different mode. Try developing a start up ritual that lets you know you’ve started work and a different ritual that signifies the end of your work day. Let those be the hard lines between work and play.

By differentiating the aspects between and within each of these spaces we can create the hard lines that let us do better work more efficiently.

Do you create hard lines between your different modes? If so, how do you do it? Share your strategies in the comments.

How I Used Minimalism to Jolt Myself Out of Complacency

In the fall of 2005 I started my undergraduate degree at Bowling Green State University. Like a typical college freshman that goes away to school, I spent a lot of time and money buying things for my new dorm room. I was going to be out on my own for the first time in my life and everyone wanted to make sure I had everything I could possibly need, and more. I had a hot water pot, a coffee maker, microwave, cases of convenient food and drinks, lamps, bean bag chairs, a futon and an array of other random things that you’re “supposed” to find in a college dorm room. It was definitely way more stuff than could comfortably fit in a 12 x 12 room with a roommate. Essentially, I was identical to your typical college student in every way.

DECEMBER 2005, NEWBIE MINIMALIST

Fast forward several months and I was beginning to wonder if there was a better way. I was tired of living in a tiny room that was packed to the gills with “stuff” that I barely used. Granted, everyone else’s dorm room looked basically the same - so what was I complaining about? In my angst ridden annoyance over being dominated by my stuff I found the blog Zen Habits. And thus, my foray into minimalism began.

This isn’t a minimalism blog. I’ve already spent plenty of time and effort writing about that. However, minimalism was my ticket out of complacency. I realized that I didn’t have to live like everyone else. I didn’t have to get through college, find a great job, and start acquiring the symbols of success like people expected. It took me years of thinking about the topic and experimenting with what felt right in my life but eventually I came to realize that I was more than my stuff. The whole process of thinking about my relationship to material goods spurred me on to more aspects of living consciously — but minimalism got the ball rolling. It made me start thinking about what I was doing and why I was doing it.

BREAKING FREE OF COMPLACENCY

I see a lot of value of trying out various lifestyle experiments like minimalism or vegetarianism. Doing something that removes you from what everyone else is doing forces you to think. I don’t particularly care if you decide to be a minimalist or a vegetarian, but I do care if you think about why you’re living the way you are.

Living a minimalist lifestyle forced me to think about my relationship to stuff, which made me think about my habits, and eventually led me to reevaluate my future. It helped me clarify my values and lead me down the path I’m currently traveling. If I’m not interested in accumulating stuff what’s my motivation to work? The work itself became the motivation and explains why I’ve stepped away from my original chosen profession of teaching and am embarking on a degree in positive psychology and a career as a coach.

Minimalism was the jolt that got me out of complacently accepting everything society told me I should be working toward. What is your jolt going to be? Can you try minimalism? Can you try changing your diet? Can you commit to some sort of 30 day challenge that will test the boundaries of what you think is possible? Whatever avenue you decide to take, waking up from complacency and blind acceptance is worth the effort and sometimes it takes something drastic like living with less than 100 things or eating only a plant-based diet to snap us out of it.

My Forthcoming Digital Sabbatical

In twenty four hours I leave for vacation with my family in rural western Kentucky. Every year we visit my grandparents and extended family. It’s a week filled of delicious Southern food, fishing, reading, and laying by the pool.

In the past it has also been a week where technology took a backseat in my life. When I didn’t have a cell phone the only technology I regularly interfaced with was the occasional movie or television show. Once I got a cell phone I still wasn’t able to use it very much because the reception used to be terrible out there. However, in the past couple years our trip to Kentucky hasn’t been much different from being at home. My grandparents have cable television, my cousins who live next door have wireless internet and a computer, the campground my grandparents have a permanent camper at has wireless internet and proper cell reception now, too. If I want to, I can bring my computer and not really experience anything very different from life at home. In the past, I’ve done exactly that.

This year, however, I'm leaving my computer at home. I just deleted all the social apps on my iPhone and disconnected my email account from it. I’m taking a long overdue proper digital sabbatical.

I’ve covered both extremes of connectivity in the last year. For approximately eight months I did not have home internet service or an iPhone. If I wanted to use the internet I had to go to Starbucks, the library, or somewhere with public wi-fi. It was probably one of the most productive times of my life. However, I eventually got to the point where I constantly had my iPod Touch with me so I could check my email or check Twitter if I happened to come across some wi-fi in my daily travels. I didn’t like the feeling of being constantly on the lookout for my next “internet fix.”

In January I happened to land a long term substitute teaching job so I decided I’d get internet service in my apartment. I didn’t want to be relegated to planning my lessons only at school or the library (in hindsight, I probably should have). After months of not having any internet service I was like a starving person at a buffet. I gorged myself on information.

Then I got an iPhone. It was essentially a free upgrade from my previous cell phone so I decided to jump on the bandwagon approximately three years late. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone. I also hate it. It’s a complex relationship.

Lately, I’ve realized that I spend way too much time and attention checking email, Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc. It’s a cyclical struggle that I’m currently in the midst of losing. The problem is that my email account brings me good information (e-book sales!), bad information (mean people), opportunities (contribute to my project!) and entertainment (lol that kitten tripped). Much the same could be said for Facebook or any of the other social networks I engage with.

That’s not going to fly much longer though. I’m deadest on developing my ability to focus effectively. I’m not going to let my lack of focus effect how well I do in grad school. I’m not going to become like the vast majority of the people in my generation and lose the ability to focus intently on one project or task for a long period of time. I don’t need the crutch of an iPhone and constant connectivity to bring interest to my life. I can be the source of entertainment, intrigue, and engagement. I don’t need external forces to push me along through life.

So, spending a week without any of that is good for me. I’m concentrating on reconnecting with myself and not the internet. I love you guys and the work you do, but when I try to take all of it in it starts to feel the same. I need to step back and reconsider my relationship with information.

For the next week I’m going to have my Kindle, a couple regular books, my journal, and my pen. I’m going to read silly fantasy books, write about whatever catches my attention and be ok with the fact that my inbox is filling up with good news, bad news, and indifferent news. I’m going to be ok with the fact that you guys are tweeting without me, sharing awesome things, and generally carrying on just fine.

If you've thought about taking a digital sabbatical before maybe it's time you bit the bullet and make it happen. It seems scary. When I get back I'll write a complete reflection on how my digital sabbatical went.

If previous experience is any measure I think I'm going to be wondering what took me so long to finally do this again.

Why I Do Weird Things and You Should To

I like to do weird things because being a little bit weird means you aren’t afraid to step out of the current of conformity. Weirdness sets you a little bit to the outside. The nice thing about being on the outside is that it gives you a new perspective. Most of us take for granted that what’s “normal” makes sense when actually a lot of what we unquestioningly accept isn’t necessarily the best course of action for a good life. Most people I know spend several hours a day watching T.V. If I followed that normal course of action I definitely wouldn't have ever started this blog or coaching business. Normal does not equal good.

THE POWER OF THE THIRTY DAY CHALLENGE

The Thirty Day Challenge is pretty simple - you commit to doing something for thirty days. For instance, I recently concluded a Thirty Day Challenge where I only wore one outfit (hat tip to Kristy Powell at One Dress Protest) for an entire month (a white t-shirt and khaki shorts). That’s pretty weird, right? I wanted to see what it was like to not worry about what I was going to wear every day. I wondered what it was like to diminish the messages my clothes were sending through branding. It wasn’t a permanent change (although, coincidentally, I am wearing khaki shorts and a white t-shirt right now). It was just a challenge to see if something that seems really hard and weird is actually difficult.

DEVELOPING HABITS VS. CHALLENGING YOURSELF TO GROW

Thirty Day Challenges are also used to develop habits. Many people think that it takes about thirty days to develop a new habit so forcing yourself to do something every day for about a month is a potentially good way to develop a new behavior. I’ve done that before, but that’s not necessarily what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about thirty-day challenges where you test the limits of what you think you’re capable of. You aren’t necessarily changing any habits because you’re free to go back to the way things were before the challenge. I like to think of it as stretching a rubber band. For thirty days I’m stretching myself and once I stop stretching, chances are I’ll be a little bit larger and different than I was before.

EMBRACE THE EXIT PLAN

Thirty Day Challenges work because of their experimental nature. You aren’t committing to a lifetime change. It’s just thirty days. Piece of cake. However, you might find that some of your thirty-day challenges make you feel so good that you continue them indefinitely. That’s what happened with my vegetarianism challenge in April 2011. What started as a month-long experiment into vegetarianism just to see what it was like turned into a permanent lifestyle change. If I had gone into it knowing that I “couldn’t” change my mind after thirty days I probably never would have made the change to begin with. The option to quit without guilt after thirty days was there. I just didn't need to use it. You might be surprised by the changes you make that become a permanent part of your lifestyle.

Let your exit plan allow you try some crazy things for your thirty-day challenge. Do something you think is a little weird or difficult. Stretch your capabilities and even if you decide not to stick with it, chances are you will have grown as a person as a result.

If you need some ideas to get started, here’s a list of things I have done or am planning on doing in a thirty-day challenge soon:

1. Vegetarianism/veganism

2. Only water to drink (no juice, soda, etc.)

3. No caffeine

4. No artificial sweeteners

5. Only whole foods (eat nothing in a wrapper)

6. Write 1,000 words every day

7. Run at least 1 mile every day

SHARE YOUR CHALLENGES

I’m sure you can come up with your own challenges and I’d love to hear about what you think you’d like to do in the comments. Have you already done a thirty-day challenge? Share your experiences in the comments as well.

Future Me Is Awesome

There is somebody in my life who I think very highly of. I think he has more money, is better looking, has a better job, more self-discipline, and more interesting hobbies than myself. He's always the life of the party and the driving force of any intellectual conversation. Most importantly, I think he is able to finish incredible amounts of work with the greatest of ease. He's kind of like Superman minus the crippling geologic allergy.

MEET FUTURE SAM

Future Sam is awesome. In fact, I think he is so awesome that I often leave important decisions for him to decide. Future Sam will know what to do so I just ignore the troubling situation. Writing this article is hard and time consuming -- I know, Future Sam will do it! Going for a run is tiring and inconvenient. It's ok though, because Future Sam is in excellent shape. As you can see, Future Sam is a pretty incredible dude.

The problem, however, is that I've never actually met Future Sam. I thought we had an appointment set a couple times but each time he flaked out. It always seems like I'll be meeting Future Sam soon, but never today. He must be a pretty busy guy, considering how much stuff I keep delegating to him. I can understand why he wouldn't be able to meet me for lunch next week. I'm starting to get a little bit worried, though.

THE FALLIBILITY OF "FUTURE ME"?

People keep telling me that Future Sam is getting pretty run down. He's overworked, under respected, and utterly exhausted. They have to be wrong, right? If Future Sam isn't going to do it, who is going to do all this work that I keep putting off? If Future Sam ceases to exist, does that mean I need to start making decisions now?

They've got to be wrong. Future Sam is out there and as healthy as ever. But, just in case, maybe I should lighten his load a little bit. Maybe I should stop putting complete and utter faith into his ability to be everything that I'm currently not. I'm sure Future Sam would appreciate that.

I think Right Now Sam is feeling a little unloved recently. He doesn't like being lazy and unproductive either and is eager to increase his responsibilities. He's not nearly as awesome as Future Sam, but I think I should probably give him a shot. What do you think?

Have you met Future You, yet? Is he or she nearly as awesome as you assume? Any chance you could do something to make Right Now You a little bit more like the fictional Future You?

We've Been Doing Passion Wrong

The least useful and yet most overused piece of advice I've both proffered and received is, "Follow your passion!" Hearing that as a high school student is about as helpful as a tissue paper rain jacket. Everybody loves to tell you to follow your passion but nobody seems to have any equally simple advice for how to a.) figure out what the hell your passion might be, b.) how to make money doing what you're passionate about, or most rarely, c.) what the word "passion" even means.

I've been guilty of using this frozen-dinner-like piece of advice myself. It's ever so easy to pull it out of the freezer, peel off the plastic cover, and sprinkle it with whatever your unique spice happens to be. In the end, it's still a frozen dinner and nothing like what you really want. "Follow your passion," is the limp chicken and mystery lump of vegetables of the helpful advice world.

I'm here to do my best to try to fix that mistake.

PASSIONATE WORK IS THE IDEAL

I still think building your life's work around a topic or a profession that you're passionate is a pretty damn good idea. If you're lucky enough to lose yourself into the flow state doing something that someone will be happy to pay you for, you've got yourself a pretty sweet situation. If you figure out that your passion is helping people while also cutting them open, please, please, please follow that passion into a medical career (or forensics). However, most high school students (and even college students) cannot clearly articulate what their passion might be. And that's perfectly fine as well.

PASSIONATE WORKING IS EVEN BETTER

Here's why that advice still works. Everyone assumes that when they are told to "Follow your passion!!" that "passion" equals some sort of job or vocation. Law, teaching, medicine, archaeology, hula-hooping -- these are passions. However, let's start thinking about passion in a completely different way. Instead of using "passion" to mean some sort of job, let's reframe it to mean "passion of process."

Being passionate about doing things well. Passionately developing an autotelic personality. That's what "Follow your passion!!!1!!" should mean. When you focus on developing your ability to do everything well, everything becomes your passion. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done extensive research into what he calls flow and he's concluded that learning how to enter that state can be learned. And, luckily, nearly anything can become an activity that induces flow.

Let's not worry too much about what we're doing. All you high school seniors can stop getting that queasy feeling in your stomach every time a well meaning adult asks you what you're going to do in college and then blasts you with a steaming pile of, "Well, follow your passion!!1!111!!" when you predictably answer that you aren't sure. Find something that seems semi-interesting and then work on developing your passion for the process of doing it well. Learn how to enjoy everything whether that's writing an English paper, conducting field research, working in the cafeteria, or doing surgery on rockets.

WHAT YOU AREN'T BEING TOLD ENOUGH

Because, here's the secret that not many people are telling you: the economy isn't going to go back to "normal." This is the new normal. And that means you need skills that can transfer across careers and across disciplines. Less and less of us are going to school to do one specific job. Instead, we're learning how to do things well. We're learning the more general skills of critical thinking, writing persuasively, communicating effectively, and thinking broadly. These are skills of process, not product.

Passion-of-process over passion-of-vocation has been the center of my writing and own life experiments for the last several years. It's an idea that I'm going to come back to over and over again. I firmly believe that a focus on developing an autotelic personality (basically, doing things because you receive intrinsic motivation in doing them) is the key to living a fulfilling life. This skill can be taught and developed -- and I hope to show you how.

If you enjoyed this article, you'll probably like what Cal has to say over at Study Hacks. He is another writer that thinks "follow your passion" is sub-par advice and has a lot of good things to say about learning to work effectively.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Welcome to the first book review written and published on SamSpurlin.com. From time to time I'm going to write out some of my thoughts and observations on the books I've been reading. I'll add these reviews to the normal twice a week posting schedule that I stick to.

Positive psychology is a field that is putting out an astonishing number of new books every year. The discipline sits at an interesting cross section of science and personal development which seems to make it a very popular draw when it comes to book sales. As a blogger and coach, I’m interested in books that are truly helpful and relevant. As a graduate student, I’m interested in books supported with sound science. I will try to balance these two forces with the book reviews I write at SamSpurlin.com, just like the balance positive psychologists face when writing their books.

The book that carries the distinguished honor of being the first to fall under my gaze on this website isMindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck.

Mindset looks at the research Dweck has done over the past 20 years about how people see the world. She’s discovered that the way we view the world is not a minor personality quirk. It doesn’t change on a whim or only affect small areas of our life. Indeed, our mindset creates our whole mental environment and affects how we react to setbacks, challenges, opportunities, and learning.

For example, some people actively seek out difficult things in order to improve themselves. Other people will do anything and everything they can to avoid challenges. Our mindset also affects how we approach learning, the way we manage people, and how we raise our children. Considering how vastly our mindsets affect our lives, it makes sense to try to have the best one possible. But what does it mean to have a "good" or "positive" mindset?

GROWTH MINDSET VS. FIXED MINDSET

Dweck has identified two different mindsets that characterize people; fixed and growth mindsets. People who operate under the fixed mindset believe that their talents and abilities are unchanging. They were born with a specific level of talent and nothing they do can change that. That doesn’t mean these people are under performing or deficient in intelligence. In fact many, many high performing people people operate under this mindset. However, the problem lies in the fact that people who have a fixed mindset believe they have to constantly prove their ability. Everything is a potential threat to their identity because failure is not an option. Failure means they aren’t good enough or don’t have the skills. Obviously, many people who operate with a fixed mindset begin to experience serious problems when life doesn’t go their way 100% of the time.

The other mindset described by Dweck is what she calls the growth mindset. People with the growth mindset believe that their talents and abilities are developed over time. These people are constantly looking for ways to improve themselves and develop their abilities. They view challenges and failure as an opportunity for growth and learning. Dweck has determined that happy and successful people are overwhelmingly more likely to have the growth mindset. Most great CEOs, teachers, and athletes use a growth mindset.

CAN YOUR MINDSET BE CHANGED?

All of this information is truly interesting, but it would be fairly useless if our mindset was unable to change (and indeed, that would be a truly fixed mindset way to look at it!). As you would imagine, Dweck argues that it’s possible to change your mindset from fixed to growth. Much of her work has been in developing workshops and interventions that help people develop the growth mindset.

It’s not necessarily an easy process but by gradually changing the way we think about ourselves and the world we can learn how to operate under a more growth based mindset. I won’t go into the details here, as I don’t think I could do the topic justice in the small scope of a review. However, I will tell you that Dweck says just learning about the growth mindset and the benefits it has is a great first step to developing it.

This book is an excellent combination of theoretical and practical advice that makes it worth your time. Operating under a growth mindset is very similar to the idea of living consciously that I’ve been writing about for a long time (see Regaining Consciousness and Exploring Consciousness). This book is especially worth your time if you suspect that you might be more toward the fixed end of the continuum.

The growth mindset is a vital component to living a conscious life and this book will show you how to make it happen.

Living Consciously to Improve the World

I've been writing about this idea of "conscious living" for awhile now. Sometimes I worry that I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. Then I remember that the only thing that really matters is how we live. It's only when we are each living in accordance with our values and actively taking steps every day to live those values out that the world can be improved.

Conscious living is an old idea that has been hashed and rehashed. It has gone by different names over time: Deliberate living, a life well lived, the examined life. All of these refer to the core idea of living a life that you're proud of and of living as vibrantly and authentically as possible. In my own lexicon, I refer to the idea as living a life beyond external decision makers.

For many people, life is nothing more than the mindless meanderings caused by factors outside their control. The T.V. tells them to dress like this, so they do. Society tells them to think like so, so they do. People say to act like this, so they do. When we constantly look around, instead of inside, ourselves for guidance on how to live we have given up on living consciously.

All of this talk seems intrinsically selfish at first. I seem to always be encouraging people to improve themselves, to find themselves, to focus on themselves, and to better themselves. An astute observer could probably criticize me as being overly concerned with individual action when we actually live in a very social world. I would agree with that critique, except for one point.

Everything that happens in this world, for both ill and good, happens because of individuals. Sure, organizations like governments and companies may be the seeming actors, but reduction from there always ends at individual people. Individual people that may or may not be living consciously. People that may or may not be trying to live closely aligned and authentically with their values. Everything can be brought back to the individual. In my opinion, this is a very fortunate realization because the only thing we have control over, is ourselves. The individual.

Lack of consciousness at the individual level results in an overall feeling of malaise. Of feeling like we aren't living up to our potential or taking the greatest advantage of our situation. When that feeling is multiplied across many individuals the result is organizations and groups that lack consciousness. Extrapolated even further, I believe nearly every social ill we currently struggle with as a country and even as a planet, can be traced back to an individual lack of consciousness that is multiplied into social lack of consciousness.

Poverty, obesity, political apathy, violence, underperforming schools, and nearly any other social problem you can read in the newspaper every morning or hear on the tips of every person's tongue is a result of a social lack of consciousness. Social consciousness is simply the summation of individual consciousness.

My dream is that by improving ourselves we will improve the world. Truly, improving ourselves is the only thing we can do. By improving ourselves we will improve the organizations, the companies, and the social groups that we all belong to.These are the agents for massive change and massive improvement.

So please, be selfish. Focus on yourself. Improve yourself. Live more consciously. Myself, your neighbors, and the world will all thank you.

The Root of Laziness

Laziness is not a personal defect or a personality flaw. It's not because you suck or because you are lame. Even lazy people aren't lazy about some things. Nobody, except the severely clinically depressed, feel absolutely no joy or motivation for anything in their lives. Instead, "laziness" becomes an easy out for explaining our underperforming ways. It's not encouraged or celebrated to be "lazy," but at least people can understand it. Really, it's a matter of moving the impetus for action from ourselves and onto this fantasy adjective that we think happens to just "be the way we are."

I call bullshit.

Nobody is lazy when it comes time to eat. Sure, we may be lazy about cooking something nutritious but when it comes to actually shoveling food down our gullet, nobody needs to break out of their laziness to satiate their hunger. I know plenty of "lazy" people who are anything but when it comes to playing video games. The sheer diligence required to master a video game is proof against your laziness. All it proves is that you haven't found anything you care about enough more than video games.

Instead, laziness is a matter of short sightedness, not knowing what to do next, and not cultivating our own curiosity.

SHORTSIGHTEDNESS LEADS TO LAZINESS

Short sightedness merely refers to the fact that when we're being lazy we're undervaluing the return we'd get on our efforts in the future. When you have a short sighted view of the future, of course sitting on your ass all day seems like a good idea. If my operational time view was only for the next couple hours I'd probably go buy another ice cream cone, chill out, and ignore the blog post I should be writing. But when you successfully shift your point of view beyond the next couple of hours the range of beneficial activities you could partake in increases exponentially. The helpful question to ask yourself to figure out what your frame of reference might be right now is, "What am I going to be really pissed I didn't do in about a week?" Or, even better, "What am I pretty pissed off about that I didn't do last week."

LAZINESS IS CAUSED BY CONFUSION

Secondly, lots of laziness comes very simply from not knowing what to do next. Actually doing the things you want to do requires enough effort. Figuring out what those things are can be more than the average (or even above average, like yourself) to handle.

That's why I try to separate the two processes.

I'll spend some time (usually Sundays) figuring out what I actually need to do to move my projects forward. That way, when it comes down to actually doing work, I don't have to waste precious brainpower figuring out what the hell I need to do. I can just look at my list of predetermined tasks and get crackin'.

When you're feeling like a lazy spell might be sneaking up on you, the thought of simultaneously figuring out what you need to do and actually doing it can be the straw that breaks the camel's back (pardon the metaphor -- you're the least camel-looking person I've ever met).

LAZINESS HAPPENS WHEN YOU STOP ASKING QUESTIONS

Lastly, feelings of laziness arise when we don't cultivate our own natural curiosity about the world. In the 1800's I suppose you'd have a valid excuse for not investigating what you were inherently curious about. Unless your inherent interest laid within the domain of your immediate environment, you were a bit out of luck. What's the excuse now?

If you're reading this you obviously have access to the internet and therefore could become incredibly knowledgeable on almost any topic you want. Open your mind to the possibilities of what you could be learning right now. If you honestly have no idea about what you might be curious about, hop onto Wikipedia and click on the link that will take you to a random article. Read it, and then click on another link. Continue until you've found something that piques your interest. There is literally no reason to ever be bored ever again.

RELAXING ISN'T LAZY

Lastly, let's not confuse "lazy" with legitimate relaxation and renewal. We can't always give 100% effort all the time. We need to step back and just chill sometimes. Let yourself do that from time to time. The main difference between actual relaxation and laziness, though, is that you consciously decide to engage in it.

I worry that I've made this article about 600 words too long to truly impact my target audience. If you've made it this far I get the sense that you aren't feeling too lazy right now. We all have our moments though, so I hope you bookmark this article or keep it in mind the next time you begin to feel like a third hour of  The Deadliest Catch is the best course of action.

Developing Your "Personal Development Gospel of Wealth"

Andrew Carnegie, the late 19th and early 20th century American businessman, followed a philosophy he called The Gospel of Wealth. He became fabulously wealthy through the the steel industry and decided to do something that had never been done by anyone of similar financial stature. Instead of hoarding his earnings and setting up a family trust fund, like most millionaires of his time, Carnegie decided to try to give away all of his money before he died. In fact, once he retired from business giving away his money became his full-time job (and actually employed several other people as well). He donated the money necessary for thousands of libraries, theaters, church organs, and a myriad of other buildings and services. He knew that this was going to be his goal while he was making his millions so his guiding philosophy, his “Gospel of Wealth,” was to make as much money as possible in order to give away as much money as possible. The irony of suppressing employees, reducing wages, and breaking strikes (often violently) in order to make more money which he eventually gave away anyway in services for his employees and other poor people is not lost on me. However, the guiding principle, being as successful as possible in order to return that success back into society, is what fascinates me.

I've been trying to live by my own version of the Gospel of Wealth. I don't think I'll ever be in the position of funding thousands of libraries and having so much money that my full-time employment is giving it away. However, I am spending my life dedicated to the acquisition of something. Instead of money, I'm interested in accumulating a life of distinction and value. My dedication is to helping people live as consciously as possible. To achieve that end, I have to be dedicated to the idea of personal development. In fact, you could say that I have my own Personal Development Gospel of Wealth. My aim is to grow and learn as much as possible in order to return that growth and knowledge back to society. If we all lived with the idea of the Personal Development Gospel of Wealth close to our hearts, we'd all be working toward making the world a better place in our own unique way.

MY PERSONAL GENIUS, YOUR PERSONAL GENIUS

For example, I’m currently learning as much as possible about being a great life coach. By learning the principles of effective coaching through books, experience, observation, and other learning opportunities I'm both growing as an individual and becoming a more effective conduit for positive change in my environment.

The wide variety of interests and skills that we all have allow this Gospel of Wealth to provide for nearly every aspect of life in our society. People have passions for art, writing, building, customer service, making money, answering difficult questions, and finding cures for diseases. I'm continually amazed at what some people are passionate about. But just because I can't imagine being excited about ants doesn't mean somebody else isn't. And that's awesome. That's what makes the Personal Development Gospel of Wealth so powerful.

DO WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT AND THEN DO IT SOME MORE

This entire concept is connected to the idea of locating your strengths and then focusing your effort into improving them even more. I’m a huge proponent of improving weaknesses to the point where they aren’t detrimental but reserving true and focused effort for making your strengths truly world class.

I encourage you to be like Andrew Carnegie and his Gospel of Wealth. Do everything you can to grow and learn as much as possible in order to return that growth and knowledge back into society through gifts of your own personal genius. You have something that nobody else does. It’s up to you to figure out what it is, how to grow it, and then share it with somebody else. However, just because it's up to you, doesn't mean you have to do it on your own. There are people who want to help you unlock your abilities. Truly, it may seem like an altruistic act to help somebody improve themselves. But, a world full of people doing what they love, and doing it well, is quite selfishly a better world for me.

Personally, that’s what renews my faith in humanity and makes it a little bit easier to get up every morning. I’m excited to share with you and I’m even more excited to see what you have to share with me.

Why I'm Re-opening My Facebook Account

I’m going to write something that may get me branded as a hypocrite. Being afraid of hypocrisy as a writer or leader is just a recipe for never growing or evolving. I am constantly trying to improve myself and the way I look at the world. Believe it or not, Younger Sam did not have all the answers. And thus, sometimes Now Sam has to look like a bit of a hypocrite because of it.

One of the most popular articles I’ve written on this blog was published on January 1st of this year. It was about my decision to delete my Facebook account. Since that time I’ve been living Facebook-less in the land of Mr. Zuckerberg. I’ve gotten more comments from people regarding my lack of Facebook than I have about any of the other “weird” things I’ve done like become a vegetarian, do digital fasts, live as a minimalist, etc.

I won’t rehash all of my reasons for deleting my Facebook account because you can very easily read the articlehere. I’ve enjoyed my time without Facebook, I really have. I’ve connected with people, I’ve eliminated a distraction (albeit, it was always a minor one for me) and shown the world that it is possible to function without a Facebook account.

But something has been bothering me.

I had a hockey coach that used to love telling us, “It’s not the tools, it’s the carpenter,” (And evidently I've written about this particular saying before). Every time we skated off the ice and blamed our stick or any piece of equipment for an errant pass or a mistake, he was always quick to whip out this phrase. Young hockey players love to talk about the newest stick that will make us all all-stars or the brand new skates that will let us skate like the wind. Whenever Coach overheard us he’d always say, “It’s not the tools, it’s the carpenter.” Yeah, okay Coach, now watch me snipe with my new stick.

“It’s not the tools, it’s the carpenter.”

I can’t help but feel that deleting my Facebook account is focusing on the tools at the expense of the carpenter. A good carpenter can use all of his tools efficiently and precisely for their purpose. A good carpenter doesn’t care about the tools that he uses because he knows his skill is what sets him apart. I’ve been a shitty carpenter recently. It’s like I’ve refused to take the screwdriver out of my toolbox because I’m “not very good at it.”

Facebook is a tool that has no inherent value until somebody gives it value. A shovel just laying on the ground doesn’t do a damn thing until somebody picks it up and starts using it for what it’s made to do. If they’re good at using a shovel, if they have the proper technique, then they’ll have an awesome hole in no time (and who doesn’t love digging holes?) If they suck at using the shovel, the logical thing to do is to learn how to use it better. You don’t see many people foregoing all future use of shovels because they aren’t very good at shovels right now.

I used to suck at Facebook. I might still suck at Facebook. But deleting my Facebook account is like refusing to use a shovel because I don’t understand how to use it.

I’d much rather focus on improving my own skills, my own carpentry, then winnowing down my toolbox.

So I guess that means I’m reopening my Facebook account. I’ve got some plans about how to use it better. I’m sure it will be a learning process. But I’m finally taking my coach’s advice to heart, I may not be the greatest at using Facebook well but I’m not going to let that keep me from being a better carpenter.

What Does Productivity Even Mean to You?

In my first session working with life coach Tim Brownson we got to talking about my standards of productivity. I was telling him that I've been beating myself up lately for not meeting certain standards of productivity that I feel like I should have for myself. After a very small amount of digging I discovered that I don't even have any clearly articulated productivity standards. That wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't constantly beating myself up over not meeting these fictional standards. Anybody else see the problem here?

What follows is what I wrote down immediately upon getting off the call with Tim. Please feel free to share your insight and comments at the end. You'll see that I've far from resolved this issue.

How can I be mad at myself for not meeting a standard I haven't set?

I can’t continue to try using a standard of productivity that was developed during the Industrial Revolution. Back then, as long as you showed up for your shift and worked hard you were doing your “job.” It may have been 12, 10, or 8 hours but it was pretty clear when you were “at work.” Even now, lots of jobs still have that dynamic. Show up for 8 hours, work reasonably hard (or appear to, at least), meet the requirements of your job description and you can go to bed knowing you’ve been pretty productive.

As a student, blogger, writer and coach does it make sense for me to use this metric for my own productivity? If I show up at my office/desk/computer and put in my 8 hours is that good enough? That’s the metric I’ve been trying to use for the past couple months. It could work except for the fact that I’m completely unreasonable with what counts toward that productive 8 hour block of time. If I wasn’t actively writing, arguably my most productive and useful act, I felt like I was being unproductive. Maybe 8 hours of uninterrupted writing, everyday, is possible for some people but it seems patently absurd to me. Why should I be using this “old” style of measuring how well I’m doing? Especially when it’s causing me to constantly feel like I’m being unproductive and wasting my time.

A lot of my first session with Tim was spent talking about the standards I have set (but not really) for myself. Hitting my standards should make me feel like I’ve been productive. Because I haven't clearly defined what my standards are, I'm never sure if I'm hitting them. I always sort of assumed I wasn’t. Tim also made the interesting point that a standard should be nearly synonymous with “minimum.” If should be able to hit a standard without a superhuman effort. Consistently hitting my standards for productivity means I can then raise my standards. But if I can’t hit them then maybe it’s time I figure out why.

Right now my standards are set so high (and really, not even defined) that I rarely feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. That’s not good for my own state of mind or self-esteem. The problem is that setting my standards lower sounds like a cop out. Like I can’t handle a little hard work. I have all the time in the world, I’m fairly disciplined, I should be able to write for hours on end, right?

"Feeling" my way to productivity?

That may be true. But before I can decide if my standards are too high or too low, they have to be clear. I can’t just ambiguously “feel” whether or not I’ve met my standards. I should be able to objectively look at my output as compared to my previously defined standards and know if I've been productive today. And I might as well start low and work my way up. I can always raise them later.

Now, should standards be based on concrete output like words, articles, etc. or how I’m utilizing time? For example, should my standard be two articles drafted per day or two hours of focused writing per day? I think I’d like to get away from defining myself and my work by something as arbitrary as time but is any other metric any less arbitrary? It shouldn’t matter how long something takes, right? On the other hand, isn’t there something to be said for “putting in the time” regardless of how much actual output it creates? That’s what the pros do, right? They show up every day and do the work. Besides, shouldn't I be most worried about how I'm spending my time? Time is our most finite and valuable resource so it makes sense to measure my productivity in terms of how I spend it, right?

In the end, am I just cutting the same cake in two different ways? Either way, at the end of the week I should clearly know whether or not I was productive. Is it just a matter, then, of either looking at time logs or finished product? Is that what I’m ultimately deciding here? And does it even matter?

Please help me, wise readers

What are your standards for productivity? How do you know when you’ve had a productive day or week? Can you clearly decide when you’ve been productive or do you just operate on gut feeling?

While I’m working this out for myself I’d love to get your feedback in the comments. All of these questions I asked are legitimate — I don’t have any answers. I’d love to read yours, though.

What I've Learned From a Month of Being a Vegetarian

On April 1st I started a month-long experiment in being a vegetarian. It’s not a particularly unique 30 Day Challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. As I’ve learned more about myself and how to live more consciously, I’ve discovered that the best way to do anything is not to read about it or think about it — but to actually do it. So, after months of reading about other people who have made the switch to vegetarianism and experienced impressive improvements in their life, I decided to give it a shot myself.

I had two main reasons for doing this. Firstly, I simply wanted to see if I could do it. I like challenging myself and giving up meat is something that requires at least a little bit of willpower. I wanted to see if I was capable of changing my diet that drastically. Secondly, I was interested in any potential health benefits. I’m in pretty good shape already but I wanted to see if maybe changing my diet would change how I felt on a day-to-day basis. These were my two reasons for giving the experiment a shot, but you’ll see that they did not end up being my most compelling reason to stick with it.

But first, a couple things that I learned:

1. It was much easier than I thought it'd be: I’ve largely lost my taste for meat. Maybe this is only a temporary sensation but I don’t feel some guttural longing when I see a slab of steak on a plate. Vegetables just look more appealing, lighter, and more energy packed than any piece of flesh. Other than a few moments of momentary social pressure, I haven’t found the switch very difficult.

2. I have a wider array of food choices: I assumed I would feel like my food options were incredibly restricted once I made the switch to vegetarian. The opposite is true. When you remove meat from your options suddenly a bunch of items you never considered become available. I’ve tried more new recipes and types of food in the past month than I have in the past 24 years of my life.

3. A life-wide increase in mindfulness: Having a “rule” of no meat has made me more conscious about everything. Obviously, I’ve become more mindful about what I’m putting in my mouth but I’ve found that increased mindfulness has spilled over to other parts of my life. I’m not some kind of Zen master now, but I do find myself questioning some of the things I’ve always taken for granted.

4. I'm developing a new skill: To be a healthy vegetarian you have to be able to cook. It’s not like I never cooked before, but now I’m doing it a lot more. I knew that if I didn’t want to eat salad and pasta for every meal I was going to have to try some new recipes. It has been a ton of fun and I’m developing a skill I can use for the rest of my life (and impress the ladies, obviously).

5. Some people seem to take what I eat very personally: I was surprised how many people reacted to my vegetarianism with outright hostility. I spent exactly zero time proselytizing about all the benefits I was experiencing with this life change and yet on several occasions people very close to me decided that I was personally affronting them by not eating meat. It’s truly remarkable how dearly some people hold their habits and how unwilling they are to see other people doing something completely different. Strange and a little disheartening.

While all of these were good reasons to keep going throughout my monthlong challenge, something surprising happened. I developed and tapped into my moral reasons for doing this.

THE SURPRISING RATIONALITY OF BEING A VEGETARIAN

I’ve never considered myself an animal rights activist or anything close to a PETA member. I thought animals were delicious and that’s about as far as I ever followed that train of thought. However, over the past few months, and especially during my month of vegetarianism, I have clarified some moral thoughts that I’ve been having.

If I have two options that are very similar in difficulty, expense, energy, and convenience but one requires the suffering of an entity that very obviously feels pain, why should I select that option? Over the past month I’ve discovered that it’s not hard to not eat meat. It’s not more expensive to not eat meat. It doesn’t take much more energy or inconvenience me to not eat meat. So, why should I eat meat? Because it tastes good? Is that reason enough to justify killing an animal? I’m not convinced that it is.

Additionally, it is very apparent to anybody that has done one iota of research on the industry of factory farming that it is not a.) sustainable b.) humane for the animals and c.) particularly humane for the workers that run it.Why should I participate in a diet that supports this industry when I know I can easily, and at almost no inconvenience to myself, change my actions to support a more humane, logical, and sustainable way to feed people?

Before this experiment I think I just assumed that it would be very difficult to switch to a vegetarian diet. I’ve learned that I was very wrong in making that assumption. I don’t feel deprived or weak in any way. In fact, I feel like I’m in better health both mentally and physically than I was before I started this experiment.

MOVING FORWARD

As you can probably guess from the tone of this article, I’m planning on continuing my vegetarian eating habits for the foreseeable future. I’m going to continue to take it a month at a time but for now, I’m happy with the way I feel eating this way. I know I can still make many improvements to my diet and I’m excited to explore more of what vegetarianism has to offer.

I think the underlying lesson that I learned from this month is the truthfulness of the overused cliche, “Don’t knock it until you try it.” I used to think vegetarians were pretty weird, irrational, and uncannily disciplined. Then, I tried it for myself and found out that I don’t think I’m any weirder than I used to be, I feel MORE rational than I ever have now that I’ve thought about the implications of my diet, and that making this change has required less self-discipline than many other changes I’ve made or need to make in my life.

If you want to make a change in your life but aren’t sure that you want to commit to the long haul, just do it for a month. Give yourself complete permission to revert back to your old ways at the end of the 30 days if you don’t like it. You might just find out that you’ve been missing out on something pretty great.

Why Getting Punched In the Face Was Worth It

Believe it or not, I’m really glad I got punched in the face.

During my junior year at Bowling Green State University I was playing on the ACHA hockey team. I was in my third season with the team and was proudly wearing the captain's "C" on my jersey. We were playing Robert Morris University in a game at our home rink. We always had great games against RMU. In fact, they knocked us out of the playoffs my freshman year and we knocked them out my sophomore year.

They had a good, and big team. We had a couple big guys as well and it just so happens that one of their fighters fought our best fighter the year before and lost badly. Unbeknownst to me, basically the only reason their guy was playing this year was to get a chance at fighting our best fighter again.

I was a defenseman and one of the cardinal rules of playing that position is that you don’t let anyone from the opposing team touch your goalie. Ever. So, our goalie made a save and a guy from RMU that was looking for a fight (but i didn’t know it at the time) speared our goalie. As the defenseman standing closest to him, I took exception to that and slashed him across the back of the legs. Normally this results in a brief shoving match that is quickly broken up by the referees. However, the next thing I realize is that Mr. RMU has taken off his helmet and thrown his gloves to the side, the universal sign of “Let’s go, buddy.”

Hockey is a sport of honor and having slashed the bejeesus out of the back of his legs, I couldn’t just not answer the call to fight. So, like a bit of a fool, I took off my helmet (because we were wearing full face masks) and threw my gloves to the side. And then I got a good look at my opponent.

At least 6'3" (I'm 5'9"). At least 210 pounds (I'm 180).

Scroll up to see how it ended.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I’m glad I got punched in the face, and here’s why:

1. Showed I was willing to lead by example: I was by no means a “fighter” when it came to hockey. I can count on one hand the number of true fights that I’ve been in. My teammates knew this as well and yet, they saw me willing to drop the mitts with the biggest guy on the other team. I may not have won the bout, but I had teammate after teammate come up to me and say that they were impressed that I was willing to go with that goon. As a captain I always tried to lead by example. If I was willing to get outside my comfort zone it made my teammates more willing to get outside theirs.

2. Gave me an opportunity to bounce back: The adversity of getting punched in the face, breaking my nose, and getting 10 stitches in my lip gave me something to bounce back from. You never learn and grow if everything is roses and buttercups all the time. I learned not to lean in for the grab in a fight when your opponent is coming at you with a hard right. I learned that getting punched in the face really isn’t that big of a deal. It gave me an opportunity to get on the ice the following weekend during our next game and play well, even though it looked like my face had gone through a grinder. It also gave me the distinctly manly opportunity to cut out my own stitches during the intermission of our next game because they were falling out and annoying me.

3. The fear is gone: I’m not afraid to get punched in the face anymore. Been there, done that, wasn’t that big of a deal. I could play harder knowing that I could handle myself out on the ice if worse came to worst. Sure, it sucks to get punched in the face but after you do it once the fear is basically gone.

HOW TO RE-FRAME ADVERSITY FOR GROWTH

I don’t imagine much of my readership are competitive hockey players, so why am I telling a story about a hockey fight? Why does it mattered that I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter?

You probably aren’t getting in many fistfights but how many times have you failed spectacularly? It might kind of suck at the time, I’ll give you that much. It definitely sucked to leave a blood trail as I skated off the ice. But, looking back, it wasn't a big deal. In fact, I think I’m stronger now because of it. You are stronger because of your failures. You need to get punched in the face, metaphorically speaking of course, to know that you can bounce back from it.

Reframing the shitty times in your life as an opportunity to grow is a high level skill that dyed-in-the-wooloptimists use all the time. Getting fired doesn’t suck — it’s an opportunity to find a better job. That leaky pipe isn’t a pain in the ass — it’s an opportunity to learn how to do some basic plumbing. You get the idea. After I picked up my dignity off the bloody ice, I tried to view my colossal failure as a chance for growth. My teammates respected me more as a leader. I respected myself for being willing to step up and face the music. I learned how to better handle myself in a hockey fight. I could have just focused on how much it hurt and how stupid I looked when it happened, or I could use it as an opportunity to grow.

It’s up to you how you react to the events in your life. In fact, you control very little of what happens to you. However, you control every aspect of how you react to those events.

How are you going to react the next time life punches you in the face?

Living Like a Hockey Player: Playoff Edition

Growing up in southeast Michigan made me fall in love with a sport that the rest of my fellow Americans barely afford a second glance. It regularly registers TV ratings lower than professional poker and horse racing and yet, it features some of the most intense displays of human commitment and sacrifice that can be witnessed outside the battlefield. I’m talking, of course, about hockey. That crazy Canadian sport with the goofy looking players that have gaps in their teeth and hair only a lumberjack or a mother could love. I love hockey. And because I love hockey, I’m currently deeply engrossed in the best time of year - playoffs.

Hockey playoffs are a special, special event for the hockey fan (and player). Every sport obviously features some sort of competition to decide who gets the fancy hardware at the end of the season, but hockey takes it to a whole new level. The NHL playoffs generally last for nearly two months if your team happens to make it to the very end and it requires 16 wins (four best-of-seven series) to hoist the mighty Stanley Cup at the end of the season.

I’m not here to convince you to become a hockey fan (although, you should) but to show you what you can do to approach your own life a little bit more like a hockey player in the midst of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This is the culmination of a long, arduous season and these guys are not messing around. For a lot of players, they may only get one real crack at winning the Stanley Cup. We only get one shot at this life — so let’s not mess it up.

THE SEASON IS JUST PREPARATION FOR THE PLAYOFFS

You gotta do the prep work if you want to dominate. A hockey player plays an 82 game regular season before they even get a chance of lacing it up for the playoffs. Hell, before they even get a chance to do that they have to have committed their life fully and completely to perfecting their skills. They started skating when they were 3 or 4 and have been honing their skills for a lifetime. I remember going outside over the summer and taking 100 slap shots a day off of a piece of plastic to prepare myself for the upcoming season. I fired hundreds of pucks into the tarp hanging off our swing set. Multiply that dedication times a thousand and you have a sense of what it takes to play in the NHL.

What are you honing? What skills are you perfecting? How often do you go out back and fire pucks into a tarp?

PASSION WILL OVERCOME MOMENTARY PAIN

Hockey players are notorious for bouncing back from injury. It’s a badge of honor for a hockey player to get dinged up and not miss a shift. One of my favorite stories is Ian Laperriere. He blocked a slap shot (typically in the 85-95 mile per hour range) with his face last year. He missed a couple games but was able to bounce back and rejoin his team before the series was over. That’s dedication. That’s ignoring momentary pain. 

Did your e-book get a bad review? Are your wrists sore from typing all day? Did somebody leave a mean comment on your blog? Who the hell cares? Be a hockey player, spit those teeth out, and get back into the play.

YOU’RE ONLY AS GOOD AS HOW GOOD YOU ARE WHEN IT MATTERS

One of the worst reputations a hockey player can develop is that of a “choke artist.” This may be a highly skilled guy that for whatever reason sucks in the playoffs. Hockey teams expect their highest paid players, their superstars, to produce during the playoffs. Every once in awhile you’ll run into a player that absolutely tears it up in the regular season and then disappears in the playoffs.

Are you a regular season player? Do you talk a good game but never actually back it up? On the ice rink you’d have to answer for yourself with some fisticuffs, but in the online or work world it rarely gets to that point. But when was the last time you shipped something?

SUCCESS MUST BE SUSTAINED

It takes 16 victories versus four different teams to win the Stanley Cup. As we’ve already seen this year with the near collapse of Vancouver’s 3-0 series lead against Chicago, it’s not over until the buzzer on that fourth victory has sounded. Championship caliber teams sustain their success over a grueling 82 game regular season and then an even more epic 2 month playoffs. They can’t rest on the laurels of their last game.

So you wrote one really popular blog post or nailed that extensive project you were assigned at work; give yourself a mental high-five and gear up for the next challenge. You can’t rest on the success of your last endeavor if you want to keep moving forward. Plan, execute, reflect, and repeat.

It’s time to tape up your sticks, tie up your skates, and hit the ice. Keep your head up out there.

Resetting the Defaults Across Your Life

Habit change has been written about to death and back. Anything you could ever want to know about how to change a habit can be quickly found by heading over to Zen Habits or spending about .3 seconds on Google. I'm not here to rehash that old topic again. However, I do want to talk about a specific type of habit that I've been working on recently.

A default is the setting something reverts to. It's the original configuration that you're stuck with originally. When it comes to computers, defaults are generally what feels like "normal." Lots of people like to tweak the defaults that a new computer comes with to better suit their needs. However, computers aren't the only thing with default settings. People have defaults, too. We all have the automatic actions we take without thinking about in our lives. Our defaults are what we do when we aren't thinking about what we're doing. Are you still operating with factory-set defaults? Do you think it's time for a little customization?

How many of your defaults are affecting your life in a positive way?

A couple months ago I sat down and took a serious look at what my defaults were. I didn't like what I saw.

1. 1My default behavior when I was bored was to check Twitter, Reddit, or my email.

2. My default emotion when I received criticism was defensiveness.

3. My default activity when I got out of bed in the morning was to plop down in front of my computer.

4. My default decision when I was procrastinating seemed to be pretty similar to my boredom default.

For every stimulus in your life you have a default reaction. What do you seem to automatically reach for when you get hungry in the middle of the day? Do you crack open a soda every time you get thirsty? It's 2:30 in the afternoon and you're tired, what do you always seem to automatically do?

Defaults can be very destructive if they aren't set to help you. There's no reason they have to be negative, though. In fact, harnessing and changing your defaults for the better is one of the most powerful things you can do to make a lasting positive change in your life. If you can mindlessly do something positive every time your default action is triggered, you are going to be in a much better position -- and you won't even realize you're doing something incredibly positive. Default actions are mindless so why not make them as positive as possible?

After I took stock of the negative defaults I wanted to change, I started systematically improving them one at a time. This is where the traditional advice about changing habits comes into play.

Now, my new list of default actions looks something like this:

1. When I'm bored I automatically pick up a book or my latest writing project.

2. When I'm criticized, I take a step back and decide if it's valuable feedback.

3. When I get out of bed in the morning, I pour a cup of coffee and read for half an hour.

4. When I get hungry in the middle of the day, I drink a big glass of water.

By changing my default behavior I've been able to add a huge dose of positive change into my life without having to think about it every time. It's just automatic. Once you've put forward the energy and the effort to change your default you are essentially reaping the rewards for free from that point forward.

HOW TO RESET YOUR DEFAULT SETTINGS

If you want to start profiting from your defaults instead of being hurt by them you need to do two things. First, figure out what your defaults are. Think about all the various triggers you face throughout the day that automatically make you do something. What do you do when you get up in the morning? What do you do when you get to work? What do you do when you turn on your computer?

Once you've made a list of your defaults you need to decide which ones to change. Don't bite off more than you can chew by trying to change too many of them at once. In fact, just do one at a time. It's not easy to break a default and if you spread your focus across many of them then you won't be able to break them. Start practicing your new default every time you hit that specific trigger. You'll have to think about it for awhile. In fact, I made sure I had constant visual reminders about what my new default was supposed to be. For example, when I was trying to break the default of always opening my email and Twitter when I opened my browser, I changed the settings so that it would automatically open my Google Docs first. That way I'd be reminded that if I'm just trying to distract myself from being bored, I should probably do some writing instead. Leave yourself notes wherever you're likely to see them until your new default becomes automatic.

I'd love to hear about the defaults you've broken in the past and your new, more positive, alternatives in the comments!

Who Decides Whats Good Enough For You

A new book raises a disturbing finding, a third of students at 24 universities did not improve their critical thinking or writing skills after four years. How can this be?

The article goes on to talk about the culture of teacher evaluations and how the incentive is on teachers’ to entertain students, grade easily, and reap the rewards of positive reviews. There are other issues as well, but all of them have to do with expectations being lowered instead of heightened over time.

Schools, particularly universities, aren’t expecting enough of students. I only have to look back at my own college career to find no fault with that statement. However, I think there is much more to the problem than a lack of academic rigor.

The real problem is that students use the external measurements of success provided by the school as their only goal. Good grades are generally the goal and a serious student will adjust his or her effort to match the requirement for that good grade. Very rarely do students go above and beyond what they know will get them an A. I know this on several different levels. One, as a teacher I have seen this over and over. And two, I was a student who did exactly that.

WHAT IS "GOOD ENOUGH"?

Any time we allow a societal construct to set the standard of our personal success we are setting ourselves up for failure, especially in a school setting. Working hard to get an A because you value that A is not the same thing as working hard because you have the intrinsic motivation to do the very best that you possibly can. When I was in high school I was the king at doing exactly what the teachers wanted in order to get good grades. I thought my number one goal in school was to get good grades, and that was it. In my mind, if I got that 4.0 GPA then I was obviously doing everything I needed to do and I would be set for the rest of my life. What college wouldn’t want me? What employer wouldn’t want to hire me?

It’s only in the past couple years that I’ve been able to divorce myself of the idea that meeting societal standards of success is the same thing as meeting my standards of success. My standard of success should be far and away above what is required to get an A. Or make gobs of money. Or become influential and famous. My idea of success comes from the intrinsic motivation to work on things that intrigue me, that have a greater benefit to the world, and cause me to grow as a person.

The problem with our schools isn’t a lack of academic rigor (although it’s true). The problem is that most schools and workplaces are really, really bad at helping people uncover their intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation, doing something because you care about it a lot, is the driving force behind anything that has ever been done well. Not because somebody was going to get an A. Or a pat on the back from a boss. Doing something because you care about it enough to work your ass off even when you’re tired and nobody else seems to care is the core of intrinsic motivation.

MATCHING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION WITH A JOB

The most successful schools and workplaces of the future are going to be places where students and employees have the tools to chase their intrinsic motivation. Harnessing that power into productive output is what the best CEOs and managers do. Finding people whose intrinsic motivation aligns with the interest of the company is what good recruiters should be doing.

I’m really, really, tired of seeing people doing things looking for the pat on the head and excellent report card/review/evaluation. Even more, I’m really, really tired of meeting the minimum societal standards for excellence. I’ll decide what excellent is and you can bet your ass it’s worlds above where society thinks I need to be.

What could be better than people doing the things they love because the feeling they get at the end of the day is worth more than the paycheck/gold star/high five they get in return?

The Anatomy of a Major Life Change

I’ve written a little bit about why I’ve decided to go to graduate school already. However, I wanted to go more in depth as to the thought process that goes into a decision about giving up on a chosen career and finding a new path. I’m not the first person, nor will I be the last, to make a drastic career change midstream.

Since about my junior year of high school I knew I wanted to be a high school social studies teacher. Or so I thought. My number one love, however, has always been the content of social studies. Sometimes this put me at odds with some of my classmates in my education program who were becoming teachers because they loved working with kids. Don’t get me wrong, I like kids just fine, but I really loved the intellectual wrangling involved with being a teacher. I love history, sociology, psychology, economics, and government. Being the “practical” individual that I’ve always been, I figured the most marketable profession to enter that allowed me to work with these topics was teaching.

For the past three months I have worked as a full-time substitute teaching sophomores in high school economics and government. Before that, I had a year and a half of very steady substitute teaching jobs. I am now cutting my fledgling teaching career short to pursue graduate school. Over the past three months, I’ve learned some things about myself, what I need from a job, and the value I place on personal freedom.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM BEING A FULL-TIME TEACHER

1. I need more control over my time: Teachers have zero control over their time. Zero. I can’t even pee when I want to — I have to wait for my planning period, lunch, or the end of the day. This is something that really began to bother me the longer I taught. I need to have the freedom to decide what I’m working on and when. In hindsight, it seems really stupid that I decided to get into teaching when this is such an important aspect to my working life. I suppose it’s something I didn’t really realize until I got an actual taste of what it’s like.

2. Assembly line teaching sucks: I had six classes of students. Each class was made up of as little as 31 and as many as 35 students. I saw each class for 48 minutes. It is impossible to explore anything in the amount of depth with that many students and that little time. The clearest way I can think of putting this is that every teacher, regardless of how good they are, has to learn to care a little bit less. It is absolutely impossible to do this job if you follow up on every single missing assignment, every single low test grade, and every single kid that isn’t living up to his potential. If you devote the amount of time that is truly necessary to analyze, critique, and improve a piece of writing to every single student’s work it is absolutely impossible to do anything else. You cannot care at the absolute highest level about every aspect of this job, planning, teaching, following up with students, parents, and providing feedback on work and keep your sanity. The best teachers figure out what aspects to care about the most and let other things slide. The worst teachers just don’t care about anything. My nature found it incredibly difficult to reduce my caring and by the end of the three months I had run myself fairly ragged. I would be burned out at the end of 5 years if I continued like this.

3. I have a desire to affect events on a larger scale: The American education system is falling apart. Plain and simple. The funding structure is disintegrating — just look at the recent protests in Wisconsin and Michigan. Every year since I began my studies to become a teacher, there has been almost zero good news about the educational system. Funding is constantly being cut. Unfunded mandates are constantly being placed upon schools. The result is a PERVASIVE environment of pessimism. I’m not talking about teachers’-lounge pessimism. I’m talking about up to down pessimism throughout the entire profession about the future of our educational system. Our system is on the verge of collapse and it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. I think positive psychology holds a lot of the answers to the questions kids are asking in school and not finding satisfactory answers. What should I do with my life? What actually matters? How can I be happy? I’m going to be tackling these questions in my graduate studies and the overreaching application of these answers excites me like nothing has in a long time.

4. I have a desire to affect events on an individual scale: This may seem paradoxical considering point number three, but I don’t think it is. While I want to affect and improve the world on a larger scale, a scale that wasn’t feasible as a high school teacher, I also want to have more of an affect at the individual level. With nearly 150 students I couldn’t give nearly the individual attention that each student deserved. I felt like I was skimming along the surface of my class and learning bits and pieces about my students. Getting involved in life coaching and small group workshops/speaking will give me the opportunity to help people on an individual basis. That scale is impossible in a modern high school.

5. My ideal day is impossible as a teacher: I’ve done plenty of personal development exercises that asked me to write out my ideal day in extreme detail. I’ve done this many times and it’s only now that I realize my ideal day is impossible as a teacher. Yet, it’s very possible if I run my own life coaching, consulting, and writing business. Why give up on being able to live my ideal day everyday if I can see a path to that end? It won’t be easy and it doesn’t mean that everyday will be the best day of my life, but I want to have a shot at being able to live my ideal day everyday.

I will be the first to admit that I obviously did not give teaching a lot of time to grow on me. I’m sure there are plenty of teachers reading this and scoffing, “Three months?! Of course you hated it after three months.” I know that the first year is generally considered very difficult. I get that. In fact, I was starting to get into a bit of a groove by the time my subbing assignment ran out. However, just because teaching may have gotten easier for me over time does not mean that my underlying issues with it were anywhere close to being resolved.

LEARN FROM MY EXPERIENCE

You don’t have to settle for less than ideal. I get that I’m a 24 year old single white dude with no responsibilities. I don’t really have much holding me back. I know, I know. But you can always take steps toward your more ideal future. I started this blog on a whim to keep me occupied while I searched for a job. I sat down nearly everyday and just wrote about what I found interesting and about my journey to improve myself. Over time this became an obsession that led me to research positive psychology more intently. Which led to investigating graduate school. Which led to filling out a couple applications. Which led to actually pulling the trigger on moving across the country. All while continuing to do the best job that I possibly could teaching my students and writing at my blog.

This process took nearly two years and now I’m on a path that I think is much closer to leading me toward my ideal life. But I never would have found this path if I sat back and settled for what I knew wasn’t fulfilling me in the way I expected. It was a matter of taking tiny steps toward the direction I wanted to go. It’s all you really can do anyway.

Lastly, I’d like to address the guilt that I’m feeling about this decision. I feel badly to be essentially turning my back on my future students. According to the students I’ve had for the past three months, my colleagues at the school, parents, and the administration, I was a damn good teacher. I will freely admit that I was good at being a teacher. I’m sure if I were to stick with it I would only become better. Casting aside a profession that I think I would have eventually excelled at in favor of an incredibly uncertain future is something I’ve sat awake with quite a bit over the past few months. What if I blow it? What if I can’t hack graduate school? What if I fail a class? What if I can’t start my own business or end up having to work at a job I dislike more than teaching? Everybody will face questions like this when making huge life decisions. What separates the average person from the exceptional is the way you respond to these uncertainties. I know the road will be hard. I know that people will be doubting my decisions. I know that some people will feel let down or betrayed by what I decide to do. I’m tired of letting other people’s expectations dictate what I do. Or, more succinctly, I’m done making excuses for my lack of happiness.

As I laid in bed a few nights ago one sentence kept flowing through my consciousness.

My excuses are going to seem really stupid when I’m dead.

Focus vs. Doing Work

Here’s a question I’ve struggled with:

What is the better course of action; spending time to clarify my focus at the expense of actual productive work or using the creative process to refocus?

It’s a classic chicken-egg situation that I’ve yet to adequately answer. I think I’ve experienced both sides of this coin so it leaves me at a loss to decide which is the better path (and maybe that’s my answer right there)?

The first option, spending time to clarify my focus at the expense of actual productive work, is probably the avenue that I’ve had the most success with. Every time I’ve felt mired in an unproductive mindset I’ve managed to break free by refocusing. Most cases of procrastination are best answered at a “meta” level. Procrastination is not caused by a lack of tips, tricks, or lifehacks. Reading a list post about being more productive is like buying a chair about running, to quote one of my favorite writers.

Instead, rooting out the cause of procrastination is usually best done at the level of values and goals. Unclear reasons for doing something or pursuing a particular course of action will result in periods of procrastination that can be extremely difficult to exterminate. A new distraction-free writing environment or handy-dandy timershaped like a tomato might momentarily jar your routine enough to push your procrastination problem aside, but these superficialities will not cure it. Incongruities between your actions, your projects, and your values or habits are what cause the procrastination that most of us know so well.

Answering the deeper questions, or as I recently tweeted, “Answer the questions that you are most resisting. You don’t break the dam by poking the surface.” Pounding away at the dam keeping my creativity and productivity at bay by addressing the deep questions; Why am I working on this? How is it supporting my goals? Why does this matter? This has been the best way for me to realize my own potential.

On the other hand, I believe that those who seem to never procrastinate or be unproductive don’t appear that way because they don’t feel the urge to let up. The more I read about the creative process, whether through blogs like 43 Folders or books like The Creative Habit or The Artist's Way, I’ve learned that true creative professionals do not wait for inspiration to hit to be creative. They show up, day in and day out, and do work. Sometimes that work results in excellent products and creations but I would imagine that a large proportion of it never sees the light of day. But that’s ok, because when you show up everyday even a small portion of usable work is much more than what the weekend warrior creative worker will produce.

So what’s the answer? What should we do when we feel the pull of procrastination? Do we stop the production of actual work to take time analyzing our focus or do we keep plugging away with the acceptance that our muse will return?

Luckily, real life is not structured like this false either-or situation I’ve just laid out. I don’t see why the best situation can’t be a happy hybrid of the two. For example, let’s hypothesize that you are working on a significant project but have recently had trouble sitting down to work on it. You’re procrastinating and you know it.

Showing up every day and continuing to put the time and the work into the project is important, but I don’t think blindly hammering away at a problem is necessarily the most intelligent course of action either. Or, as Stephen Covey puts it, why spend all your time climbing the ladder only to realize it’s propped up against the wrong wall?

Take the time to step back and analyze your focus. Analyze your goals and find (or rediscover) your reason for working on a project. That may be time that you’re not actively creating, but the clarity of vision you’ll develop will pay dividends later on. The key component, and this would make Aristotle proud, is to find the golden mean. Find your focus but don’t spend all your time gazing at the stars. Work hard but don’t lose your nose to the grindstone. Utilize the best of both worlds to continue creating the best products you possibly can.

What The Future Holds

I’ve been alluding to some big “life change” for several weeks and I know you’re all on the edge of your seats, biting your lips with anticipation, as you wait for the big announcement. Sadly, this is the type of life change that is going to affect me more than it’s going to affect you. I don’t have a big giveaway planned or any huge project about to hit the shelves. What I’ve been meaning to announce for a while, and is now official, is that I will be attending graduate school in the fall to earn a master’s degree in Positive Developmental Psychology.

In August (most likely) I’ll be moving from my apartment in the northern suburbs of Detroit to Southern California’s Claremont Graduate University. CGU is only one of two programs in the United States that offers an advanced degree (and the only one to offer a doctorate) in positive psychology.

WHY CLAREMONT GRADUATE UNIVERSITY?

Besides the fact that they are one of two universities that offered the program I’m interested in, I have some other reasons for attending CGU:

1. Comfort zone destruction: I grew up in Michigan, went to college in northwest Ohio and obviously feel very comfortable in a midwestern environment. I’ve traveled a little bit to places like Ireland, Hungary, and various locales in the U.S., but not for very long. I’ve never lived further than two hours from my childhood home. Moving across the country will be a brand new experience for me — and one I think will cause me to grow as a person.

2. The faculty: One of the most life changing books I’ve ever read is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This book opened my eyes to the discipline of positive psychology and the untapped power that lies beneath the surface in all of us. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi is a faculty member at CGU and will be teaching several of the classes I’ll be taking during my time in the program. The opportunity to study with and learn from one of the founding fathers of positive psychology is an incredible opportunity that I can’t pass up.

WHY POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (AND WHAT IS IT?)

Positive psychology is a fairly new academic discipline that focuses on the characteristics, habits, and traits of human flourishing. Topics like motivation, optimal experience, flow, happiness, resilience, and perseverance all fall under the umbrella of positive psychology. More specifically, my program of positive developmental psychology focuses on the positive aspects of human development and how those characteristics can be encouraged and nurtured.

As far as why I’m going to be studying positive psychology, I have you to thank. I started this blog almost a year and a half ago to fill the void of not having a full-time job. I decided to write about topics that interested me. That turned out to be how to live a simpler, more meaningful and more conscious life. I didn’t realize when I first started that there was an actual academic discipline that was interested in these same phenomenon. As I continued to write and grow this blog positive psychology slowly made its way into my consciousness. Finally, I decided that the passion I awakened by running The Simpler Life was something that I should pursue beyond my amateur writings here. I want to take my interest in helping people live more meaningful lives to a professional level. I want to contribute to the research that is being done to improve the lives of people across the world.

It seems like the ultimate goal of many bloggers is to go “professional”. For most, that means making enough money from their blog to live their life. It’s an admirable goal but one I don’t think I’ll ever meet. However, I see myself as stepping on to the scene of professional blogging in a different way. Instead of providing me with an income, my blog has provided me with an outlet to explore and develop my passion. Now, that passion and interest I developed by creating The Simpler Life is going to be fostered into a new environment, a graduate degree and hopefully a career helping people live better lives.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SAMSPURLIN.COM?

All in all, not too much. I don’t leave for California until August so until then I’ll have a lot of time to create as much content for the site as possible. Obviously, once I start classes my free time will be significantly curtailed. At that time I may have to cut back my posting schedule, but I won’t be closing the doors on The Simpler Life. In fact, I have a feeling that I’m going to have more ideas and “stuff” to write about than ever once I start spending my days learning and talking about positive psychology with like minded people.

Over time this blog will probably subtly shift focus from simplicity towards more specific issues of positive psychology. I still think simplicity has a role in a meaningful life, so I’ll never truly leave that topic behind. I just know that positive psychology is a broad and vast topic that will never be exhausted by my writing efforts here. My writing may take a more scientific bent over the next couple years but the focus will always be on applying those scientific principles to actual lives. I will always continue to write about my own experiences and experiments in conscious living.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

Really, the purpose of this article is to thank you guys for helping me clarify my life path. Without the readers that have made The Simpler Life a success, I doubt I would have stuck with it long enough to realize this is where my passion is. Because of you I will be studying a topic that I have uncovered a true love and desire to learn more about. You guys are the reason I’ve become a “professional” blogger. Thanks for always being there. I hope my experiences at CGU will serve as fodder for creating excellent content for you guys in the future. It’s definitely the least I could do.