Clutter and How It's Ruining Your Life

A recent episode of Back to Work got me thinking about the larger relationship inherent in all of the possessions we own. I’ve been a fairly vocal proponent of minimalism for a long time — even to go as far as committing a year and a half of my life to writing and maintaining a blog exclusively about minimalism. While my relationship with minimalism has been fairly unflagging for the last five years, I’ve tried to figure out what it means on a deeper level. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the title of “minimalist” for awhile but my actions have always been firmly set within that camp. In the aforementioned episode of Back to Work, Merlin talks about the effect clutter has had on his life. It was refreshing to hear his take on this subject as he has been unabashedly the anti-minimalism guy for awhile. It always felt kind of weird that he was who I most closely emulated in my own online writing ventures but I was positive  he’d despise what I write about.

I recently went through my apartment and took photographs of everything I own. I’m not really sure why I decided to do that — but I have some ideas. I don’t think it had anything to do with the minimalist pissing contest I’ve been critical of in the past. I didn’t count my possessions, only took pictures of them. Part of me has always been curious just what exactly I own. Taking pictures of everything made me actually think about my reasons for owning every item I touched. I’m fairly ruthless with how willing I am to let possessions go and yet I was still surprised by how much I had documented in my little photo shoot. It made me think about what it would have been like to do this activity if I wasn’t a minimalist and accumulated and retained items like a typical American.

While I’m definitely a fan of minimal aesthetics that my lifestyle leans toward, it’s not the main reason I’m so ruthless about restricting the physical items I own. I’ve become aware that each item I own represents more than just the simple physical object that it appears. Everything I own carries emotional and psychological baggage that may or may not be a positive contribution to my life. Getting rid of everything I own that I don’t find useful or beautiful clears my environment not only of physical items, but clears my head and my life of emotional and psychological detritus. It’s a very interesting feeling to look around my living space and let my eyes fall on the various objects and know that I made the conscious decision to keep it in my life. That sounds simple but have you tried looking at the things you own and asking yourself why you’ve kept something? Even me, Mr. Minimalist Guy, finds things that have wormed their way into my life without me noticing and need to be removed every couple of months.

Owning less makes me more aware and thankful for what I do own. I’m forced to take better care of my possessions because I most likely don’t have a backup if I break or lose something. At the same time, I can’t remember the last time I lost something. Considering I can fit nearly all of my worldly possessions into two duffel bags, it takes some major lack of awareness to lose something.

My favorite part of living this way, however, is simply for the personal challenge. That is a bit of a misnomer because I no longer find it to be particularly challenging, but I do like testing myself to see what I really need in terms of possessions to live a happy life. Before I decided to try this whole minimalism thing, I would have thought you were nuts if you told me I’d be living with as many possessions as I have now. What about all my video games? What about the rest of my clothes? What’s the point of working hard and making money if I’m not going to buy lots of things? Those were the questions I would have asked myself and these are the questions that people still ask me. However, now I know I don’t need a lot of what other people consider necessities and I have more flexibility and faith in myself because of it. It’s fun to challenge myself to see if I really need what society says I need to live and be happy. I’d much rather find out for myself and so far minimalism has been one of those activities that society says is weird but I’ve discovered is extremely exciting and liberating at the same time.

Living exactly like this isn’t for everybody, especially those of you with families. Being a student and unmarried definitely means I can make decisions about my environment that some of you don’t get to make. However, I don’t consider the end goal to be some magic number of things you should own. Instead, the metric should be whether you’ve consciously made the decision to keep something in your life. If you can look at something and immediately articulate why you have it (and are okay with those reasons) I think you should keep it. The problem arises when you begin looking at items you forgot you owned and/or aren’t sure why you even have in the first place. These are the items that represent a drain on your well-being and are prime candidates to make swift exits from your life. This criteria applies to me, the guy who owns almost nothing, and the most cluttered hoarder on the planet

There are certainly much more difficult and important aspects of living a good life than worrying about what your living situation or office looks like. However, spending some time to think about your physical environment is one of those tasks that seems unimportant but can actually have pretty big ramifications down the road. It only makes sense that the places where you spend the majority of your time should be as energizing as possible. Creating positive relationships, doing great work, and making a difference in the world are all difficult enough. Don’t let your environment drain the precious energy you need to take care of the bigger things in life.  

Beyond Task Management

I try to be a keen observer of the world around me. Not only is it a good exercise in mindfulness, but learning how to observe myself and the way I interact with my environment has led to a wide array of improvements in my life. For example, realizing that my energy waxed and waned throughout the day allowed me to restructure the way I work to utilize my time more efficiently. Another result of learning how to observe has been developing a new way to think about the way values impact my life. Recently, a new observation has fought its way to the forefront of my attention: installing a task management system and adopting a lifelong learning approach appear to be inextricably linked.

For me, that has manifested itself as the Getting Things Done (GTD) system popularized by David Allen in the book of the same name. While that is my specific example, I don't think my overall point is reliant on this specific system. Instead, the overall principles that installing a task management system require seem to be the same principles that predict a life full of learning.

A task management system, at it's simplest, is a way for us to keep track of the commitments, requirements, responsibilities, and various tasks that make up our lives. Our jobs, lives, hobbies, families, friends, and interests constantly serve as impetuses for things we have to do and remember. Usually, sometime during high school a teacher hands you some sort of agenda or day planner and for many people that's as close as they ever get to adopting a true task management system. I distinctly remember feverishly filling out my agenda with the previous day's to-dos before the teacher came around to check my diligence in tracking my tasks.  

In high school we can usually get by with just keeping track of everything in our heads with perhaps an occasional note written on our hands. It's not too difficult to keep everything straight when you visit the same set of classes everyday, have the same type of homework, and have people (e.g. teachers) constantly reminding you of everything you have to do. If the real world was like that, there'd be no need for anything more elaborate to keep track of everything. 

However, usually sometime in college, perhaps after the first nervous breakdown, we start to realize that our heads may not be the greatest place to keep everything. We sit down with a fresh piece of paper and crank out a massive list of everything on our mind. For a brief moment we feel better, relieved even, by seeing a clear list of all of our commitments and responsibilities. However, over time that list loses it's relevance and once again we have lapsed into a state of fogginess over what precisely we need to do.

This fogginess is where the connection to lifelong learning comes in. Operating in a fog means that we're always a little bit wary of taking on anything else. We realize that we've committed to a lot of tasks and many people are relying on us for various projects, but we're never quite sure what's on our plate. Instead of scanning the horizon for chances to take on new activities that align with our values, we scan the horizon in an effort to avoid additional requirements on our utterly taxed minds. This results in us staying in a narrow rut with our eyes down doing our best to get by. We're somewhat aware of the fact that we're missing out on excellent opportunities, but we're so caught in the fog that it doesn't seem important as merely staying the course and trying to stay afloat.

This is a problem of our own design and merely requires us snapping out of our teenage sensibilities and approach our work and our world with more than a seat-of-the-pants mindset. My experience is with GTD, so that's what I'll use to illustrate my points. In GTD, we create a system external of our own minds where we can place information about everything we've committed to on some level. Over time, we come to trust this system to hold everything so our minds are now free to do what they do best, think creatively and solve problems -- not remember things. 

The details of the system aren't important. If it allows us to place our commitments outside our own heads and to regularly see them in their entirety, then it will prove beneficial. It's only when we can see the boundaries around our work that we can make wise decisions about what else we undertake. Lifelong learning requires that we scan the horizon for opportunities to improve and grow. Knowing that we regularly analyze and assess our commitments allows us to know how much mental power and availability we have for new adventures, new ideas, and new projects.

Therein lies the greatest benefit I've received from seriously committing to a task management system. It has nothing to do with being able to get more done or being more efficient. While those are nice side effects of using GTD, what I'm most thankful for is the ability to always know, at a glance, what I need to do and whether I can commit to anything new. In the past I'd feel like I was drowning under the weight of everything I had to do. I eventually realized, however, that it wasn't because I really had that much to do -- it was because I hadn't clarified what I actually had to do. Once everything I'd committed to had been clarified and articulated, I actually had a lot more space in my life for new projects. Without GTD, or any other task management system, I'd still be slogging away on poorly defined projects, unclear tasks, and meaningless busywork.

I'm intrigued by the idea that task management systems or more than just a list of what you need to do. They seem to be the mature response to figuring out how to make the biggest impact in the world as possible. Gone are the days for most of us where tasks are laid out in front of us and someone else kept track of what you had to do. Knowledge work, creative work, whatever you want to call it, requires us to constantly determine what our jobs actually are. Our brains are pretty amazing organs, but asking them to simultaneously remember everything we need to do, decide if it's important, clarify what the actual task is, and search for new opportunities is a little ridiculous. Mindfully creating a system to alleviate some of that burden is the sign of someone who is serious about utilizing their abilities and opportunity.

My familiarity is with GTD, but it doesn't have to be the only way to keep track of your life. What is your task management system like? Have you noticed any changes in the way you interact with your environment since having implemented it? I'd love to hear your input in the comment section below.

Values Don't Make Your Life Better

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

THE CASE AGAINST VALUES

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

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

VALUES --> ACTION, OR, VALUES <--ACTION?

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

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

IDENTIFYING THE GOOD

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

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

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

BEYOND HEDONISM

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

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

ARRANGING YOUR LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

Are You Making an Ass of Yourself With Assumptions?

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

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

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

WHAT I DO

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

THE COUNTER ARGUMENT

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

GENETICS

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

ENVIRONMENT

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

OTHERS

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

THE CASE FOR ASSUMING WE CAN CHANGE OUR LIVES

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BUDDHISM CAVEAT

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

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

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

4 Productivity Lessons I've Learned From the Most Intense 4 Months of My Life

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

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

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

DON’T WASTE MENTAL POWER

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

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

DON’T GET SUCKED INTO THE SELF-HARM EQUALS COMMITMENT APPROACH

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

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

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

DO THINGS THAT SCARE YOU

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

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

USE YOUR ENERGY/TIME WISELY

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

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

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

I'M NO EXPERT...

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

The Power of the Weekly Review (Part Two)

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

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

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

4. CREATE AND CLARIFY PROJECTS

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

5. DOUBLE CHECK FOR STUPIDLY EASY NEXT ACTIONS

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

6. WRITE OUT “HARD LANDSCAPE”

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

Bam. Done.

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

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

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

The Power of the Weekly Review ( Part One )

WHAT IS A WEEKLY REVIEW?

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

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

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

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

HOW DO YOU DO A WEEKLY REVIEW?

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

1. CLEAN OUT MY PROJECT AND NEXT ACTION LISTS

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

2. COLLECT MY CRAP INTO ONE PLACE (INCLUDING MY HEAD)

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

3. GO THROUGH INBOX AND PLACE EACH ITEM ON A LIST (OR FILE AWAY AS REFERENCE)

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

Keep reading for Part 2!

Where Have All the Interesting People Gone

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

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

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

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

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

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

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR INTERESTINGNESS IS?

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

HOW TO CULTIVATE YOUR INTERESTINGNESS

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

1. Make time: There is a profound psychological difference between these two statements; “I need to find some time to do something,” and, “I need to make some time to do something.” When you make time you’re in control of the situation. When you try to find time, you’re at the whims of the universe. Very simply, you need some free time (some, not a lot) in order to protect your inherent interestingness. It’s up to you to figure out where it comes from. Can you approach your work in a more intelligent and efficient way so you have 15 minutes at the end of the day to devote to yourself? Can you get up 15 minutes earlier? Maybe you can cut a television program out of your routine? Almost nobody is operating at such peak efficiency and capacity that they can’t find 15 minutes anywhere in their day.

2. Set boundaries: If I wanted to I could do graduate school work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is always a paper to write. If I finish all the papers there’s always more to read. If I finish all the reading for class there’s always my own research to be conducting. It’d be never-ending if I were to let it. Very simply, I don’t allow that to happen. To the best of my ability I set boundaries about when I’ll do work and how much I’ll do. Where are your boundaries? Do you work on the weekends? Do you take work on vacation? Where is it okay for you to be separated from your work? If you’re currently boundary-less, try setting some very minor ones and then move forward from there. A simple boundary, like no mindless internet after 9 PM, is a great way to get started.

3. Cultivate your interests: Writer Julia Cameron advocates something she calls the Artist Date. Essentially it’s just time you take out of every week to take your inner artist out to do something interesting. I think you should do the equivalent to cultivate your own interestingness at least weekly. At least 3-4 times a week I spend 15 minutes reading something completely unrelated to school. It lets me get through books that I find enjoyable and interesting without cutting too much into my “productive” time. Maybe you can go check out a museum you think is awesome or watch a documentary that piques your interest sometime in the next week. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, expensive, or time consuming. 15 minutes can be enough to get your mind moving in a way that work, school, or stress usually prevent from happening.

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

You must guard it. You must cultivate it.

Nobody else will do it for you.

The Power of the Project: A Framework for Finding Passion and Meaning in Your Life

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

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

• Writing each of my e-books.

• Developing The Simpler Life.

• Launching and developing SamSpurlin.com.

• Launching and developing life coaching and personal development coaching.

• Writing a 25 page paper on an obscure historical topic.

• Training for my first half marathon.

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

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

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

WHY DO YOU NEED ONE?

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

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

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

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

HOW DO YOU PICK A GOOD PROJECT?

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOW DO YOU ACCOMPLISH IT?

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

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

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

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

New Year's Resolutions in October: Getting 2012 Started Right

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

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

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

KICKING 2012 IN THE FACE TODAY

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

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

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

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

Start Where You Are

On Saturday I had the privilege of attending my first all-day meditation retreat. Prior to this retreat I had never meditated for more than 25 minutes. Now, I can proudly say that I spent 6 hours alternating between seated and walking meditation. I won't tell you that I'm suddenly incredibly enlightened or an expert meditator. In fact, I distinctly remember spending about 10 minutes during one meditation session trying to decide if a shark with the arms of a bear or a bear with the face of a shark (there's a difference, trust me) would win in a fight.

Overall, I do think my meditation practice is much stronger and I felt like I did an admirable job for essentially being a beginner. I've spent the last month or so meditating consistently but I was worried I hadn't "trained" enough to be able to handle a 6-hour retreat. I was worried that I'd lose my mind a couple hours in and have to leave early. Instead, the exact opposite happened. I enjoyed it immensely and was disappointed when it ended.

One of my favorite parts was the short discussion we had at the end of the retreat. We each took a turn talking about what we experienced and had an opportunity to bring anything up that we wanted to discuss. I said something along the lines of what I already wrote. However, the lady directly to my left said something that I found particularly profound:

"START WHERE YOU ARE."

For some reason, that really hit me. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time worrying about what I haven't accomplished yet, about how everyone is ahead of me, and how I'm somehow not good enough. Accepting the fact that you just have to start is liberating. Everyone started at some point. Some people just didn't stop. We all start with differing experiences, skills, and aptitudes but that doesn't mean we have to stay where we start.

A start is just a point in time, not the path we must follow.

MY STORY OF STARTING.

It made me think about why I never started a serious blog before October of 2009. I've been reading blogs consistently and dabbling in my own writing since about 2006 but I never took the plunge into publishing my writing online. I would look at blogs I admired, and convince myself that starting a blog was pointless. How was I supposed to compete with the likes of those huge A-listers? Who was I to think that people would want to read my writing? Starting just seemed so daunting.

For whatever reason I finally decided to launch my first "real" blog, The Simpler Life, a couple years ago. I decided to stop worrying about where everyone else was in relation to me and just start. Once I got started it became a lot easier to move in the right direction. Eventually, a year passed. And then two (actually, I just realized as I was writing this article that I passed my two-year blogging anniversary five days ago). And now, even though it boggles my mind sometimes, people email me for advice about starting a blog. That never would have happened if I didn't decide to just start where I was two years ago (samspurlin@gmail.com -- go for it).

I'm a little bit surprised I've written so much about such a simple sentence, but I really do think it's one of the most important pieces of advice that people (including myself) need to hear. There's always someone more advanced than you. There's always someone who is less advanced than you. It doesn't matter -- just start where you are.

Start.

Keep starting.

Start where you are and you'll end up where you want to be.

How to Maintain Control During Times of Strife

Sometimes I psych myself out when it comes to writing for this blog. I tell myself that now that I’m a graduate student actually studying positive psychology, all of my articles should be steeped in references, research and data. That’s the type of evidence that we look for in my classes and there is certainly a place for it. Hell, my ultimate goal with all of my studying and research right now is to help make life coaching a more reputable and credible profession with the support of science.

But this blog is more than an amateur psychology journal.

Sometimes it’s just about a guy that’s trying to make his life a little big better by thinking about the best way to approach life. Sometimes it’s about a guy that takes a leap and moves across the country to study something he’s truly passionate about. And sometimes it’s about a guy that’s fighting through the same issues that everybody faces at some point — loneliness, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of the unknown.

It doesn’t always have to be about the science. In fact, science without humanity is arguably completely useless.

WHEN THE UNKNOWN SEEMS INSURMOUNTABLE

As I sat down in the library after a long day of statistics, research methods, and discussing complex articles with people who are much more intelligent than me, I was dreading having to write something for this website. My brain was fried and my analytical thinking capabilities had been completely tapped out for the day.

It’s time to just write about what’s on my mind right now, regardless of the science behind it. And right now I’m looking at some turmoil in my personal life, stress in my student life, and unknowns across the board. What do you do in a time like this? What should you do?

FOCUS ON THE CONTROLLABLE

For me, whenever I’m feeling out of control I always come back to the idea of focusing only on what I can truly control. When I sit down and think about what I actually control in a calm and collected manner, I’m usually surprised by how little I’m left with. The everyday worries that fill my life, and yours, are actions we can’t control. And yet, we worry about them. We fret. We let the uncontrollable control us. A renewed resolve to focus only on the variables within our grasp often leads to fresh outlooks on the true nature of our stress and worries.

What does that look like?

DAILY HABITS

Almost everything we do is the result of our habits. Our habits are built up over time by making the "right" decision over and over (which obviously varies depending on context). When your life feels like it’s spinning out of control it’s likely that what’s actually being neglected is the attention to your daily habits. Improve those, and you’ll find your life getting back under control.

ATTITUDE

I recently read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The main takeaway from that book is that regardless of the hopelessness of your situation, even if it is rife with suffering and despair, you still control the contents of your own mind. Frankl suffered through Nazi concentration camps and during this time of unbelievable suffering he developed his theory of meaning. Those who are able to find meaning in their lives are able to find any situation, even those filled with suffering, an opportunity for growth. Try reframing a negative situation into more positive light and you’ll be taking the first step toward reclaiming your attitude.

THE NEXT ACTION

Huge projects are not completed in one night. Grad school is not completed with a weekend of hard work. A happy life is not built upon a single event. Instead of looking at the big picture, try focusing only on the very next action you’re taking. Make a good decision about your next action. And then, make another good decision about the action after that. If you fill your days with good decisions about your next action then you will have control over your life.

I love positive psychology and I love science. I love data and the strength that empirical evidence gives to an argument. However, sometimes I get tired of numbers, theory, and variables. Sometimes I need a quick dose of inspiration — something to get me moving in the right direction.

Where are you feeling like you’re losing control in your life? Do you actually have control over it or is there something you should be focusing on instead?

Three Lessons I Learned from TEDx

Last Friday I had the honor of attending a TEDx event. When it comes to TED, I think most people fall into two camps. If you’ve heard of TED and know what it’s all about, you probably think it’s awesome. The other camp usually consists of the question, “Who’s Ted?”

For the uninitiated, TED is a huge conference of incredible people giving 18 minute or shorter talks on various topics. They are huge events but the real goldmine behind TED is on their website where nearly all the talks are available to watch and listen to for free. A TEDx event is a smaller and independently produced version of an "actual" TED conference.

At our TEDx event there were six speakers (check out their bios here) covering topics from non-profit funding, leadership, neuroeconomics, combating AIDS, urban farming, and music. I could write an article for each of these speakers as they all did a fantastic job and talked about incredibly interesting topics. However, instead of going through a point-by-point breakdown of the evening I’d like to just leave you with a couple thoughts that hit me the hardest.

THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT SOMETHING DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT SOMETHING

Jesse Dubois gave an excellent talk about urban farming. He is the founder of a company called Farmscapethat is trying to increase the amount of food grown within the city limits of Los Angeles. One of the main problems his company is facing is the fact that people have a hard time thinking about the production of food in a way other than what we understand as “farming.” People think that food has to be grown on mega-sized company farms well outside the city.

Is there really a reason it has to be this way? Jesse asks if the way we think about food production is really the only way to think about it. Going one step forward, why do we landscape our yards with aesthetically pleasing plants that have no actual value to our lives? What if it was normal to landscape your yard with food producing plants?

This talk made me think about other areas of my life where I might just be making assumptions about the way things “have to be.” Where can I reject faulty assumptions and develop a healthier and better way of thinking?

DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE YOUR DREAMS — JUST ATTACK THEM

Grammy award winning composer Mateo Messina booked a symphony in Seattle’s new symphony hall before he’d ever even written one. In fact, he couldn’t even read music. He just knew that he always wanted to write a symphony — so he figured out a way to make it happen. He tells the story of how he bought a children’s book about orchestras, a keyboard and some software that would transcribe the notes he played on it. He then sat down and played out the notes that each instrument in his orchestra would play (after checking the picture in the children’s book first, of course).

He had a dream and he didn’t overcomplicate it. He could play the piano and knew there was software that would transcribe what he was playing. Who says you need to be able to read music to write a symphony?

Where am I overcomplicating the things I want to do with my life? Attack your dreams with single-minded intensity and they won’t stand unconquered for long.

PEOPLE ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT INCREDIBLY DIVERSE THINGS — ASK THEM ABOUT IT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

The last, and probably most enjoyable, part about this TEDx was the conversation break we had in between the two sessions of talks. Everybody had a name tag that had 3 self-chosen “Talk to Me” points. The easy access to conversation starters and the environment of TED led to incredibly engaging and passionate conversations.

What if it was normal to expect someone to come up to you at any point and ask you about your passions? What if the spirit of TED infused every part of our lives?

If you ever have the chance to check out a TEDx event (or an actual TED conference) I encourage you to jump at the opportunity. I can’t think of another time where I’ve been so surrounded by passion and inspiration.

Have you been to a TED event? I’d love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments.

The Many Paths to Happiness

How do you define happiness? It's definitely something we think we understand but is very difficult to define.

Some positive psychologists don't even like to use happiness as a measurement and replace it with well-being, life satisfaction, or some other measure that is supposedly more specific or easier to measure. Regardless of whether you're going to use "happiness" as a topic of research, I think it's important to have a good understanding of what it actually means. Knowing what it is means we have a better chance of finding it for ourselves.

To that end, there's three ways I encourage you to think about your happiness -- through meaning, through pleasure, and through engagement. Christopher Peterson, Nansook Park, and Martin Seligman developed a questionnaire that aims to measure the various paths that people take to happiness (see the paper here).

MEANING

One way many people find happiness is through aligning their life with some higher purpose or meaning. Religion fits that description for some people. For others, it's the pursuit of a social ideal or the support of some type of organization. People who feel highly connected to their work and view it as a calling are likely to score highly in this subscale. Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia, or being true to one's inner self, is a concept that aligns closely with a life of meaning.

If you identify highly with this path to happiness, you probably feel like your life serves some kind of higher purpose. Your choices tend to take into account other people and how they will be hurt or benefit from your actions. You're likely to believe that your life has a lasting meaning and what you do matters to society.

PLEASURE

Hedonic pleasure, or the accumulation of positive feelings, is another path on the route to happiness. This is the philosophy that was supported by people like Epictetus, Aristuppus and later used as the philosophical core for utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number of people). A life of pleasure is concerned with the summation of all positive and negative events in an individual's life. Many people initially think of pleasure when trying to articulate happiness.

If you score highly in a life of pleasure, you enjoy doing things that excite your senses. You seek out euphoric activities and anything that will be physically pleasurable. You'd be very likely to agree with the statement, "Life is too short to postpone the pleasures it can provide."

ENGAGEMENT

Lastly, another path to happiness is spending time on activities that produce a sense of engagement, or flow. Flow is the timeless state that many people slip into when they're actively engaged in an activity that requires so much involvement and concentration that they lose self-consciousness and become completely immersed in an activity. Many athletes describe it as "being in the zone," but a life of engagement is available to anyone doing almost any activity.

If you identify most closely with a life of engagement, you'd agree with the statement that while you're working or playing you're very often unaware of time. You'd be likely to seek out situations that challenge your skills and abilities and you often lose yourself in the day to day activities of living.

WHAT'S THE BEST PATH?

As you were reading the descriptions of the three different paths to happiness, I'm guessing you had a gut reaction as to which one was "right." At least, one may seem "more right" than the others. However, the three researchers who developed this scale discovered that people who scored highly in all three subscales were also the people who scored highest in other life satisfaction scales. Evidently, utilizing only one path to happiness is not as effective as cultivating all three paths to as great extent as possible.

When I completed the survey for a class that I'm taking, I wasn't terribly surprised by my results. I scored highest in meaning, followed by engagement, with pleasure bringing up the rear. All three of my scores weren't as high as I'd like them to be, but the order in which they appeared made sense to me. Even though I'm non-religious, I do believe that the work I do has meaning to the world and that I try to be in the flow state as possible. However, it's apparent to me that I'm forgoing some of the benefits of a life of pleasure and therefore giving up a completely viable path to happiness. There are things I can do, such as learning how to savor experiences, that gets in touch with what it means to live a pleasurable life.

If you read the paper and filled out the scale (which is kind of confusing, but I can't seem to find an interactive version of it anywhere online), did your scores surprise you? Even if you didn't fill out the scale, what do you think your scores would have shown you? What path to happiness are you currently neglecting and what can you do about it?

A good starting point for your personal development is identifying which path toward happiness you're neglecting and to figure out ways to make it a more prevalent part of your life. Living a meaningful life, finding ways to be engaged, and seeking out pleasurable experiences are all equally valid ways to increase your own happiness.

Edit -- The lovely Lori emailed me to say that she found a resource for taking this test, and others, online. If you click this link and scroll to the bottom you'll find the "Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire," which is the one I'm referencing in this article. Thanks Lori!

Values and Living Life Fully

It strikes me as incredibly odd that I haven’t written about values yet on SamSpurlin.com. Anybody who has worked with me in a coaching situation knows that I always talk about values during the first session. Regardless of the issues to work on (motivation, procrastination, fear, etc.) — they can all be better understood and worked through once values have been articulated and clarified.

Values, as I understand them, are the feelings and attitudes you hold about the world that take precedence over everything else. They describe the ideals that you hold yourself to while giving yourself a target at which to aim your daily actions. The values you hold will be the words people use to describe you long after you’re gone. Most importantly, when you’re living in accordance with your values you're operating at the highest level of wellbeing.

Your values (and if you don’t like that word, feel free to use another one) are a part of your consciousness whether you’re aware of them or not. They guide everyone’s actions and thoughts but not everyone realizes it. In my experience, happiness usually closely follows living in a way that is true to your values. In fact, people seem to define their own personal happiness in a way that sheds light on what they value. If happiness is directly related to aligning the way you live with your values it makes sense to spend some time figuring out what those values are. They’re a part of you whether you’re aware of it or not so you might as well use them to your advantage.

Secondly, if you can connect your values to your character and skill strengths, you’ve just opened a path to an incredible sense of power in your life and work. Strengths are something I’ll address in a later article, but I’m sure you can already think of some examples of strengths in your own life. Taking those strengths and using them to manifest your values is like using a magnifying glass to focus the sunlight into a point of fire.

The weird thing, however, is that the more time I spend thinking about values the less clear I am about where they come from, how you form your particular set, and how to make them a larger part of your life. Values can be tricky.

Values are developed through the socialization process that we all experience as we grow up. We form our values in a delicate interplay of peer influence, parental involvement, school, church, advertising, and observation of how we perceive the world to work. The problem, however, is that the values held dear by these entities are not always in our best interest. I’m sure you can think of some people in your life who very clearly have had their values shaped by reality television, extremist religion, or unhealthy parental involvement. Those are certainly all possible conduits for value development, but not necessarily positive ones.

I’m very interested in working with teenagers who are still at that delicate stage of figuring out which values they’re going to adopt into their life and which ones they’re going to avoid or ignore. Or, for that matter, is it possible to change the values of someone who is older than what is generally considered to be the “formative years”?

But, I digress.

Assuming you aren’t at the stage in your life where you’re still figuring out who you are, how can you figure out what your values are? The simplest tack, unfortunately, is nearly useless. Simply asking yourself what your values are is too broad a strategy to be particularly helpful, I’m afraid. That question quickly devolves into, “What should I value according to everyone else?”

I’ve had the most success with myself and with my clients by taking a backdoor entrance to the question. Instead of flat out asking what values someone holds, I’ll ask a couple of the following questions:

1. Who do you deeply admire? Why do you admire them?

2. Think about a time you felt completely at peace/invigorated/happy. What were you doing?

3. When you think about your future, what do you see? What is the Ideal You like?

The answers that are uncovered will generally set you on the path of figuring out what values someone holds.

Once you’ve figured out your values, what next? How do you strengthen your values? How do you let them guide your life? Can you change your values?

I’ve only just begun to open this can of worms and I can guarantee that I’ll write more about this in the near future. In fact, my own opinions and knowledge of my own values and values in general is always changing and evolving. I’ll definitely be sharing any new insights and further thoughts about values in the very near future.

The Quickest Way to Improve Your Personal Development

 Every once in a while I hit a stretch where I feel stagnant in my personal development. I’ll get stuck in an endless loop of Facebook, Twitter, email, and other addictive sites that can be very tough to break. However, I’ve come to recently view my time as having two different “modes”; input mode and output mode. Paying attention to how much time I spend in each mode has provided me with a great way to recalibrate how I spend my time and break out of those unproductive slumps.

INPUT VS. OUTPUT

Input mode is when I’m spending time acquiring new information. Sometimes that means I’m reading something beneficial, like a book for school, but most of the time input mode is characterized by mindlessly using the internet. Fiddling around on Twitter, Facebook, and reading blogs are all examples of activities where I’m more or less being a mindless sponge. It's becoming easier and easier to never leave input mode. Keeping up with all of the various sites and services that most of us use requires a very heavy toll on our time and attention for very little personal gain.

Output mode, on the other hand, is characterized by creation. During periods of output I’m writing, brainstorming, and generally bringing new ideas into the world. It requires more effort and conscious thought than input and therefore sometimes gets pushed into the background.

Identifying the two different modes is just the first step to improve the ratio between them. When the ratio is skewed toward output, I always feel more productive, happy, and at peace in my life. It’s when the ratio is heavily weighed toward input that I begin to feel lethargic, lazy, uninspired and generally unmotivated. While much of personal development tries to pass as an input mode (reading books and blogs), true personal development is a function of output. How can we adjust our input/output ratio most effectively, then?

FIXING THE RATIO

One way to improve the ratio is to possibly increase the amount of time you spend in output mode. Focusing on spending more time creating whatever it is that matters to you is definitely one way to tip the balance of the ratio in favor of output. However, I don’t think that’s the best option. In my own experience, primarily focusing on spending more time in output mode usually just results in my stress levels going up. Without first addressing the amount of time I spend in input mode, I end up trying to cram more output into a small amount of time.

Instead, I think it’s more beneficial to first adjust input habits. When I feel myself becoming passive I take a hard look at how much time I spend in pursuits that don’t require any active engagement from me. Reading blog posts, playing with Twitter and Facebook, listening to podcasts — these are all input modes. Scaling back the amount of time I spend doing these activities has the same effect on the input/output ratio as increasing my output. The difference being that I find removing unnecessary activities is much easier than trying to cram more output into an already filled day.

GETTING INPUT UNDER CONTROL

If you’re feeling like your personal development has become stagnant, maybe it’s time to look at your input/output ratio. Try some of the following tips to recalibrate how you spend your time.

1. Purge: One of the first things I do when I realize I’ve been spending too much time in input mode is to purge my RSS feeds. At its highest point, I was following 30-40 blogs in Google Reader and spending way too much time trying to stay up to date. Blanking the slate and starting over is a great way to reclaim a bunch of former input time back into output time. You can also use this idea for things like Twitter (Chris Brogan recently did it), Facebook, and any other service that requires you to keep up to date with ever changing information.

2. Set limits: Everyone knows that checking email every couple minutes is an unproductive and borderline neurotic activity. But how many of us have actually set limits to how often we check it? How many of us have set limits for the amount of time we spend on sites that suck away our time? There are software programs out there that can help you block websites for a certain amount of time or even for a certain time of day. For example, I have my computer set up to only allow me access to input sites like Twitter and Facebook for an hour during lunch time and after seven o’clock in the evening.

3. Make output your “default”: I realized that at my most unhappy and unproductive nearly all of my default actions had something to do with receiving more input. If I was bored I’d immediately open the Twitter or Facebook app on my phone and mindlessly flip through the updates. I decided that I really didn’t need access to these services 24/7, so I removed those apps from my phone. Now, when I’m feeling a little bit bored I don’t have the option to just flip open an app and “fix” it. Instead, I do something like brainstorm an upcoming article or project. Or I just sit and practice meditating. Or I call my family. The difference is that my new default action falls in the realm of output, not input.

Thinking about your time and how you can better spend it is the hallmark of a conscious and aware individual. If you find yourself feeling lethargic your input/output ratio may be out of whack. Your initial thought may be to try to increase your output, your productive or creative, time. Instead, I encourage you to first scale back your input time. I think you’ll find that productive activities will automatically grow to fill the void.

What are the best ways you’ve gotten your input/output ratio at a more healthy level?

Harnessing the Power of Questions

The main weapon in any coach’s arsenal is the simple question. If you’ve ever worked with me or any other coach, you’ll know that we love to ask questions. The beautiful thing about a good question is that it gets you thinking about a situation differently. Even better, the answers that you come up with are completely your own. Think about the difference between somebody preaching to you about how awesome something is versus coming to the realization on your own. An ineffective coach will talk on and on about his theories and ideas. He’ll preach to you about all of these amazing things you should be doing, you’ll probably sit there and nod, and then wonder why you just paid this yahoo to talk at you for an hour. On the other hand, a good coach will hit you with a question you didn’t see coming and as you struggle through an answer your thoughts will coalesce and become clearer. Suddenly, you’re at a new level of understanding or are hit by an insight you haven’t had before. And the best part is that you came to it on your own.

Luckily, questions are not the intellectual property of coaches alone. You can, and should, ask yourself questions all the time. In fact, I have a list of questions that I like to ask myself every 6-12 months, every month, every week, and one super special one that I ask myself as much as possible.

6-12 MONTHS

The questions that you ask yourself once, or at most twice, a year are obviously fairly grand in design. They try to get at the underlying issues that drive your actions and thought. These answers probably don’t change very often either because at this level, you’re going to be questioning your values and assumptions. Ask yourself these questions every 6 months to a year, write down your answers, save those answers, and revisit them again in another 6-12 months.

• What are my 3-4 core values?

• How do I know these are my core values?

• What have I done in the past 6-12 months that proves these are my values?

• What can I do in the next 6-12 months that will make these values a larger part of my life?

MONTHLY

At the monthly level you’re trying to make sure you're staying on target with how you're spending your time. Every month I like to make sure my major projects are moving forward and that I have ongoing projects within each of my major 3-4 values. Stepping back every month and making sure you aren’t slacking off in one value or area of responsibility is a great way to let yourself focus on the day-to-day actions of living.

• How have I used my time this month?

• Am I addressing all my areas of responsibility (family, work, personal development, leisure, etc.)?

• Do I have an ongoing project in each of my 3-4 major values?

WEEKLY

Every week during my Weekly Review (GTD secret handshake) I ask myself a series of questions to make sure I’m staying on task. At this lower altitude of engagement the questions are more closely related to the actual work I’m doing on a daily basis. I’m free to dig into these details because I know I’ll be revisiting some larger questions that will keep me pointed in the right direction every month and even larger questions at the 6-12 month mark.

• What did I accomplish this week?

• What do I need to accomplish next week?

• Do I have a very clear and actionable next step on all my projects?

• What is on my mind and how can I get it out of there?

THE ALL-THE-TIME QUESTION

Lastly, there’s one question that I try to ask myself whenever I remember to. It’s really the core of my life philosophy and what keeps me grounded in the beauty of life.

• What am I doing right now?

That’s mindfulness at it’s core. When I ask myself that question and I either a.) don’t have a good answer or b.) realize I’m doing multiple things at once, I try to step back, regather my mind, and focus on the present.

The last thing I want you to do before you stop reading is open your calendar and put a little reminder in there for the end of this week, the end of this month, and 6-12 months from now to revisit these questions. I guarantee if you make this a regular part of your life and reflective process you’ll gain more than you think.

Questions are power.

Values Drive Motivation

TWO LEVELS, ONE PROBLEM

Lack of motivation is an issue can be dealt with on two different levels. One aspect of it can be addressed by tactical "tips & tricks." This is what you work on when your reasons for doing something are pretty clear, but for whatever reason you're having trouble getting over some specific hurdles.

The other aspect is much more broad and, I'd argue, more important. A lack of motivation is usually a situation where your values and the actual work you have to do are at some sort of disconnect. If you know what your values are and you can't see how doing a specific project supports them at all, then you're likely to not have any motivation. More commonly, people don't even really know what their values are. They have a vague sense of what they might be but haven't actually sat down and thought about them enough to really make them clear. When you have crystal clear values it's much easier to tie your everyday tasks into them and thus eliminate most motivation issues.

CLEAR VALUES CREATE CLEAR MOTIVATION

With that in mind, the first step to address any motivation problem is to first work on your underlying values. Come up with a list of values by thinking about the people you admire, how you view yourself, and what you consider to be the "ideal you." It can be helpful to look at a list of possible values if you're really feeling stuck. Once you have a large list of values (of varying importance to you) it's time to figure out which are the 3 or 4 that really drive you. One way to figure out which ones you really care about the most is just to start writing about them. Write about why it's so important to you, how you manifest it in your life, and how you want to improve on it in the future. If you have trouble explaining in writing why a value is so important to you, I'd argue that it's not that important. You should feel passionate about these values to the point where you can easily and clearly explain why they're so vital.

Once you have your list of 3 to 4 values that you've written about and clarified in your own mind, you need to make sure they stay visible. These need to become like second nature to you. Everything you do should be tied to these values as much as possible. Minimizing the number of things you have to do that don't support your values at all is the ultimate goal.

LETTING YOUR VALUES DRIVE YOUR PROJECTS

You've got a list of values and you've got a list of current projects. Now it's time to tie these two separate concepts together. Some of them might be very easy to correlate -- others, not so much. It's up to you to figure out what the connections are and how strong those connections need to be. I'm sure some of your projects are only on your list because you need to earn money -- but why do you need money? How does money tie to your values? Does it allow you to take more trips or do nice things for your wife or give you the freedom to pursue a hobby? Figure out the connection, tie it to your project, and write it down.

I know that you probably have some projects and tasks that you only do because they're expected of a responsible adult like yourself. Sure, "paying bills" may seem like a valueless/mindless task, but I'll bet you can reframe it in a way that supports your values. How about, providing for your family? Or creating a calm and stable home environment? Or responsibility and reliability? You can reframe almost anything in a way that will excite your mind more than what it might at face value.

When values are clearly tied to projects, it should be easier to build motivation to do them. You aren't just designing a website, your learning a new skill, earning money to support a passionate hobby, or challenging yourself with a difficult task. You need to make a connection between the task and your value in order to root it in something greater than your immediate situation. Tying values and tasks together allows you to transcend your current level of energy, emotions, and thoughts (to a certain extent) which in turn makes your motivation much, much clearer.

What do you think? Do you find yourself battling through motivation issues when your projects are clearly tied to and supporting your values? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Introduction to Flow

I’d like you to take a couple minutes and visualize a time where you “lost yourself” in whatever you were doing. If you’re an athlete, maybe it was during the last game or match you played? Perhaps you sat down to work on a project you really enjoy and the next thing you knew three hours had passed. During this time of intense engagement you probably felt like your skills were being used to their upmost capabilities and the task wasn’t too difficult as to frustrate you or too easy as to bore you. You probably don’t reach this state when you’re working on math problems that are above your ability to understand or destroying your little brother in a tennis match.

When you’re able to enter this state of optimal experience you generally feel really good about yourself afterward. You feel like the activity was worthwhile to have done even if it was physically uncomfortable or difficult during it. Looking at a marathon runner’s face would generally make you think that they don’t feel particularly well but most of them will tell you afterward that they were glad they did it. Everything I’ve described here falls under one heading that positive psychologists have spent a lot of time studying and trying to understand.

I just described the “flow” state.

I know I mentioned flow in the introduction to this series but didn’t go into too much detail. In this article I’m going to dive in a little bit deeper to what this psychological state is.

THE ORIGINS OF FLOW

The name that is usually attributed to the study of flow is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi began his research into flow many years ago when he noticed that many artists engrossed in their work would occasionally ignore personal concerns and needs like food or the bathroom. What was going on in their minds and why did working on their art seem to take precedence over everything else? Thus marked Czikszentmihalyi’s research into what he eventually came to call flow.

First of all, the name flow was given to this psychological state of extreme involvement because many of the people Csikszentmihalyi interviewed kept describing it as if they were caught up in a river or a current of water. They didn’t have to exert much energy and yet they were swept along.

As I described at the beginning, the flow state is characterized by losing track of time, being fully engaged with whatever you’re doing, and feeling like your skills and abilities are being used to their greatest ability. Because the experience seems to be so positive, it is often also described as “optimal experience.” As you can imagine, this is a highly enjoyable state to be in and being able to enter it usually means good things for the quality of your work and the quality of your life.

FLOW CAN BE TAUGHT

I have a soft spot for Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow because his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is what turned me on to the idea of positive psychology. Until I read his book I didn’t realize that a.) positive psychology existed and b.) that it holds many important answers for some of the world’s toughest questions. The thing that most excited me about flow is that entering and promoting it can be practiced and taught.

Think about that for a minute.

That feeling you get when you’re at your very best and doing something that you love can be practiced to the point where you can enter that state doing nearly anything. People who report entering flow regularly also tend to be happier and have higher life satisfaction. The thought of feeling like I do when I’m writing an article or playing a game of hockey all the time is exciting and powerful. I want to learn how to do that and how to teach others to do that as well.

Besides the obvious implications for living a happier and better life, think about the other myriad of applications where flow could be vital.

APPLICATIONS OF FLOW IN THE REAL WORLD

1. School: Think for a moment what education might be like if most of the students spent most of their time in the flow state. Think about what teaching would be like if teachers were able to enter the flow state during their lessons and planning periods more easily. A student who is fully engaged in their work is going to learn more than the disengaged student. The teacher that is fully focused on the task at hand will be more effective than his colleague who is going through the motions. How can flow be promoted in schools?

2. Work: Imagine going into a job every day that allowed you to use your skills and abilities to their fullest extent. Going into a job where you could lose yourself in the work will not be a drain on your psyche like many jobs tend to be. You’ll be more productive and be more invested in the well-being of the company. How can managers promote flow among their workers? How can the work environment be changed to increase flow?

3. Relationships: Ideally, spending time with your partner and closest friends should be an exercise in flow. Deep conversations and engaging experiences with the people you care about are what strong relationships are built of. If you know how to structure your relationships so that they are conducive to flow I’ll bet they will become more positive overall.

The potential benefit of knowing about flow and being able to enter it doing nearly anything is profound. I’m continuously working toward the point where I can feel just as engaged doing laundry, going for a run, or talking to a close friend as I do during my own periods of flow (usually writing). An engaged life is a conscious life.

Flow is our ticket to that reality.

Going Pro With Your Personal Development

I’ve always been fascinated by people who are the very best in their field. One of the most visible sets of people that fit this criteria are professional athletes. With my experience in playing and coaching ice hockey, I’ve been able to get a closer look than most at what it takes to be a professional or semi-professional athlete. These men and women have development and practice down to a science. They know what it takes to be the best they can possibly be.

You may not be playing a game in front of thousands of people or getting paid millions of dollars, but I think we can all take some lessons from the pros when it comes to our own personal development.

THE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE SCHEME

First of all, let’s look at how athletes practice. The first thing that most people don’t really think about is that being a professional athlete means you spend about 80% of your time practicing, training, and preparing and only about 20% of the time actually performing the skills you spend so much time practicing. We only get to see the finished product and very few of us get a look at what goes on behind the scenes. Athletes train for hours nearly every day to prepare themselves for the couple hours of performance that we all get to see. I’m not as interested in the final product as I am the work that it takes to get to that point.

Secondly, professional athletes approach their practice in a systematic way. Granted, the structure may be dictated by a coach, but no professional hockey player would just spend a practice session monkeying around without a plan (monkeying around WITH a plan, like improving stick handling skills, happens all the time, though). Practice sessions have a logical progression that allow the athlete to work on very minute skills that, when put together, equal the ability to do their job at a highly competitive level.

Now, I understand that most of us don’t have a job where we have the luxury of practicing all day and then executing our skills in front of lots of people who want to give us money. Most accountants I know don’t sit at home for eight hours practicing only to go into work for two hours in the evening. Doesn’t quite work that way in the real world. However, let’s forget about our careers and jobs right now and think about another way we are all professionals.

We’re all professional humans.

This is what we do and are every day so why not treat our personal development like the pros?

How can we go about treating our personal development in the same way pros approach their own development?

PRACTICE LIKE THE PROS

1. Deliberately Practice: Athletes break down their practice into the various skills they need to perform. And then they break down those skills even further. Breaking complex skills into simple parts that can be practiced over and over is what separate people who do amazing things from those who don’t.

2. Unfailingly Practice: Athletes show up for practice no matter what. I’ve gone to many a hockey practice when I was sore, tired, and didn’t feel like being there. But not going to practice isn’t even an option. It doesn’t even register into the realm of possibilities for professional athletes. You need to make a commitment to your development that goes beyond immediate gratification.

3. Practice With a Plan: Athletes and coaches approach the development of themselves and the team with a plan. On the coaching side of things, the practices that happen at the beginning of a season are very different from those that happen at the end of the season. Have you done an audit of your own skills and abilities to see what you need to work on the most? What is happening in your daily life that would benefit the most from improving a specific ability? You can’t practice effectively without a plan.

IS IT THAT SIMPLE?

But wait, athletes have coaches!

Seriously? You can’t make that argument when this whole website is being run by a life coach. Life coaches are to “regular people” what sports coaches are to athletes. Granted, I realize that the vast majority of people who read this blog will never hire me. I’m perfectly fine with that and will continue to write free articles for everyone to enjoy.

Let me give my quick little schpeil on how I see life coaching, though. In the past, personal development and your job went hand-in-hand. People would find a secure job and they would develop the skills necessary to move up the ranks in that job. Eventually, they’d hit a ceiling or retire with a decent pension and hopefully some savings to live off of. No need for a life coach when your employment situation was stable and your job would happily provide you with opportunities to develop the skills you need to work your way up.

But that is changing. In the new economy most of us will never have that life long job that will provide for us forever. We aren’t going to have our salary needs and our personal development needs met by our employers anymore. Instead, our personal development is going to become just that, personal. The steps that we take to improve ourselves are going to be what set us up for success in an economy where our job situation is constantly shifting with the winds of uncertainty. A job isn’t going to nurture you along anymore. You are going to have to take the initiative to improve yourself. And that’s where a life coach comes in.

But I digress.

The last argument that I can see forming on the lips of everyone reading this article is, “But athletes make tons of money and can afford to spend all their time getting better at their job! I have a job and a family and responsibilities! I can’t just sit around reading philosophy and learning another language all day!”

I worry that my answer is going to seem harsh, but I’ll take that risk. And that answer is:

So?

Are you going to let the excuse that you’re busy and have responsibilities be the reason you don’t take control of your own life? Are you saying it’s only worth the effort to become the best person you can possibly be if you’re being showered in Benjamins? You don’t believe that and neither do I.

Sure, it’s tough to find the time to improve yourself when you have real life demands that require your time and attention. But if effective personal development was easy there wouldn't be a humongous self-help industry, I probably wouldn't be writing this article, and there would be little reward for putting in the time and effort to improve yourself.