Achieving Goals
How to Radically Change Your Life
I have a friend named Layla who is one of the best people I know; when she was about 20 years old, in the 50s, she left her nice little home in Britain, and went by herself, literally wading through the jungles of Central Africa. Chest deep in muck, elephant gun held high above her head, she found the famous explorer she’d been looking for and spent the following years [...]
Commander in Chief
Ok, look, hippies. There’s something New Agey people need to understand. We’re always busy looking for signs from the universe about our path, and shit like that. We say that when we’re following our path, it gets easier because the universe says “yes” and helps us. It’s more complicated than that. There’s a danger here of learning helplessness, groping through the dark, frustrated at not being able to figure out [...]
Enduring Value
I start working around 8 in the morning, and I’m normally done by 8 at night. Last week I took Sunday off, and built some games. But what am I doing that I call work? How can I look back at the end of the day and know I was “productive”? Hours worked are irrelevant. The real question is: What have you built today that has enduring value? I could [...]
Goal Orientation: Action vs. Outcome
Summary: To achieve an outcome, you have to take action, and that action should be your goal. You can’t directly choose an outcome, but you can always choose to take action. Jason wanted to lose 20lbs. His “goal” was to lose 1.5lbs per week, and he started by just doing “a little” more exercise and “trying to eat better.” He started strong, with a big push of enthusiasm. He would [...]
Erica Douglass: Success in Vulnerability
Update: I called Erica “a millionaire entrepreneur” in this interview, but she corrected me, clarifying that while she did sell her hosting company for $1.1 million when she was 26, she is not a millionaire. Buying companies is more complicated than buying a candy bar in which you get a whole candy bar for cash up front. She’s still damned impressive, but some people are pedants, so consider it disclosed! [...]
Art
Cosmic Bloom
Fractal Heart
A throbbing pulse in the cosmic womb »
Thief in the Labyrinthine Garden
Thief in the Labyrinthine Garden Like a thief into the dark Labyrinthine Garden stole a ray of light through murky dusk Sent from the third moon to fetch the Golden Heart Fled from there the brigands, from lurking phantoms skulking through the thorns and bramble; shades who caressed by light are now only memories Brighter still the ray becomes as it dances with joy for the beauty and love it [...]
Benevolent Sun
“Scorched by his burning love, the world dies and is born anew.”
Become Productive
Enduring Value
I start working around 8 in the morning, and I’m normally done by 8 at night. Last week I took Sunday off, and built some games. But what am I doing that I call work? How can I look back at the end of the day and know I was “productive”? Hours worked are irrelevant. The real question is: What have you built today that has enduring value? I could [...]
9 Ways to Change For Good
Achieving freedom means changing the way we interact with and experience the world. You don’t think yourself into freedom, only actions can take you there. You may think I’m telling you something you already know, but are you sure you know how to truly change your behaviors in the long term? Most people don’t know how to motivate themselves to act toward their passion without any lunch bells, office hours, [...]
What is the Key to Success?
You have goals and projects that you want to be wildly successful. You’re a writer who wants to be published. You’re a programmer who wants your weekend project to turn into a company. You’re hoping you meet the right people, learn the right things, have the right ideas. You’re waiting for the day that you are in the right place at the right time to grab and opportunity and run [...]
The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work
“If you keep too busy learning the tricks of the trade, you may never learn the trade.” – fortune cookie I am a professional software developer by trade, and there’s a movement within the field called “agile software development.” Agile basically means that instead of trying to plan and schedule every aspect of a project in minute detail, we just build the minimum version that does something useful, then iterate. [...]
Be Consistent To Be Successful
It’s relatively easy to be great. Most of “great” is just putting in the time and practice. The factor that divides the successful from the average is not greatness. It’s consistency. No matter how busy or distracted or distraught you are, if you show up every day and do what you do, and you do it and do it and do it and do it, you will win. Go do [...]
Building Income
Enduring Value
I start working around 8 in the morning, and I’m normally done by 8 at night. Last week I took Sunday off, and built some games. But what am I doing that I call work? How can I look back at the end of the day and know I was “productive”? Hours worked are irrelevant. The real question is: What have you built today that has enduring value? I could [...]
Erica Douglass: Success in Vulnerability
Update: I called Erica “a millionaire entrepreneur” in this interview, but she corrected me, clarifying that while she did sell her hosting company for $1.1 million when she was 26, she is not a millionaire. Buying companies is more complicated than buying a candy bar in which you get a whole candy bar for cash up front. She’s still damned impressive, but some people are pedants, so consider it disclosed! [...]
How to Choose a Profitable Niche Topic
Taking a break from soul searching posts, I want to address the question that I get most often from readers. I haven’t addressed it so far because I don’t want the topic of internet marketing to overtake my site. However, over and over, every time I talk about my business Kenrose Media, people ask me: How do you choose a profitable niche topic for your books and sites? Today I’m [...]
One Customer At A Time
Many of you have dreams of one day quitting your job and supporting yourself with your software, book, or other sales. If you’re reading this you are probably bright, creative, and ambitious, and you probably have a particular disease that’s endemic among online entrepreneurs. It’s a disease that holds you back from your real potential. It’s a disease that has a simple cure (although maybe not an easy one). You [...]
Be Consistent To Be Successful
It’s relatively easy to be great. Most of “great” is just putting in the time and practice. The factor that divides the successful from the average is not greatness. It’s consistency. No matter how busy or distracted or distraught you are, if you show up every day and do what you do, and you do it and do it and do it and do it, you will win. Go do [...]
Definitions
Akrasia, or How to Stop Checking E-mail
My calendar says I should write today from 8:00am until noon. I began thinking about possibly writing at 9:28, and I’ve been glancing back and forth between potential titles, hacker news, and my e-mail since then. It’s 10:31. I like writing. I want to write. The moment I get stuck on a word or I’m not sure how to structure the essay, I “give myself a minute to think” … [...]
Loss Aversion Bias
Numerous studies have shown that people feel losses more deeply than gains of the same value (Kahneman and Tversky 1979, Tversky and Kahneman 1991). Goldberg and von Nitzsch (1999) pages 97-98 A friend of mine, we’ll call him Joe so I can feel free to ridicule him publicly, complained to me the other day about a kit he bought called the “Robot Builder’s Bonanza”—it’s a beginning robotics kit. He bought [...]
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Sunk Costs are costs which have already been incurred and cannot be recovered. The Sunk Cost Fallacy is a mistake in reasoning in which you consider the sunk costs of an activity (instead of the future costs) when you decide whether you should continue the activity or not. “I’ve put everything I have into this business. If I stop now all that time and money will be lost! I can’t [...]
Incoherence
I’ve had a few people ask me to clarify what I mean when I say that a statement is “incoherent.” There are three types, each increasingly sinister. Type 1 Incoherence `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Jackwocky, by Lewis Carroll, is a good example of one type of incoherence. The syllables in the [...]
Experiments
Solitude as a Dream 10 Day Follow up
I’m on my 10th day of zero communication in the morning. Practical Stuff It’s been a little difficult to stick to a full hour in the morning as I planned. I find myself getting bored and restless before my time is up, so I give myself a break if I’ve sat longer than 30 minutes. Generally, I make it about 45 minutes before getting to work. One thing I noticed [...]
30 Day Trial: Solitude as a Dream
This trial started with my Solitude of the Mind experiment, in which during my first day of zero communications, I thought that maybe a media fast similar to meditation is a better way to process analytical thought than dreams are. During that morning I experienced a sense well being and smoothly flowing thought. While sitting on my porch, trying not to think, I generated enough thought for a series of [...]
Ideas are Real
This is a follow up to Solitude of the Mind, which explains why I went on a “zero communication” diet. I was a tourist into the life of a monk, having taken a vow of silence in the interest of uninterrupted contemplation. That, and a chance to connect with some more fundamental reality. Something I didn’t expect the night before, was going to bed feeling very nervous or excited, as [...]
Solitude of the Mind
Today I’m getting ready for an adventure. For this adventure, I’ll be sleeping in the same bed, eating the same foods, and wearing the same clothes. This is an adventure of the mind, into solitude and reality. The World of Language As modern people, we live in a world that’s literally made of language. Most of what we think about and do only exists in our minds collectively; it’s not [...]
Getting your Mind Right
Birth Defects and Superpowers
Nate has a secret birth defect that seriously impacts his life. He’s lived in fear of being found out since he was a preteen, and it preoccupies his mind when he’s with his girlfriend. He was with that girlfriend of his for two and a half years before finally working up the nerve to tell her about his issue because he was afraid he would lose her when she found [...]
When the World Ends
The world ending today on December 21st, 2012 reminds me of one of my favorite songs, called “H.” Western culture is steeped in Abrahamic cosmology, and one fundamental difference between the universe of God, the Father, and that of say, Brahman or Buddha, is that it only flows one direction. God created the things, the things did stuff, then God came back and everyone died or lived forever or whatever. [...]
Welcoming the Rain
Meru is a rural region of Kenya about three and a half hours outside of Nairobi, the capitol. When my woman was growing up in Meru in the 70s, picking coffee and going to primary school, she walked places instead of driving. Very few people had cars, and the roads were all dirt anyway. Sometimes she knew it was going to rain while she was walking, and she started walking [...]
On Needs and Violence
Shut the Fuck Up The cat’s litter box is stinky, and she’s sick of it. She’d asked her boyfriend to clean the thing, but he just didn’t do it enough. Plus when he did do it, he didn’t do it with soap and water or anything, so it continued to smell. So the argument started when she told him the litter box was making the room smell because he wasn’t [...]
How to Get Over Grief
I was 21 years old when my dad killed himself. Dad had left after a big fight with my mom. I had been talking to my mom for the whole week he’d been missing, and that morning was no different. I had to hang up with her to go to class, and I called her back afterward to keep her mind busy while we figured out where dad was driving [...]
Habits & Discipline
Enduring Value
I start working around 8 in the morning, and I’m normally done by 8 at night. Last week I took Sunday off, and built some games. But what am I doing that I call work? How can I look back at the end of the day and know I was “productive”? Hours worked are irrelevant. The real question is: What have you built today that has enduring value? I could [...]
You Suck At Everything
People are born with talents. You better hope you get one that’s impressive or lucrative, because otherwise you’re screwed. Take these two artists for example: I didn’t choose these two artists so I could pick on the first one though. I actually picked these two because they illustrate my point, and there’s something really interesting about both of these guys: they have the same name. It’s not impossible, but “Jonathan [...]
The Art of Honesty
Honesty is something I’ve talked about here because being honest begins with self-honesty. You can’t “be authentic,” or build the life you want without self honesty because you’ll have no idea who you are or what you want to do if your entire mental life is walls and facades. James Altucher is a good blogger because he’s honest. From Do You Have to be Rich to be Honest? For 15 [...]
Words Have Power
“Tiff’s a chocolate whore.” Ben is Tiffany’s husband, and he’s a well-meaning guy. He has a bit of a way with words. The three of us are walking into a Godiva store to pick up a treat for Tiffany. Ben says “Tiff’s a chocolate whore.” “Aficionado? Chocolate princess, maybe?” I offer. Ben doesn’t care about word choices, it’s all the same to him, and he’s a person who chooses the [...]
Ritual Creates Change
Some days I try to inspire you to make you feel like success is within reach (it is). Other days I tell you to just do something, anything, every day. I go on about showing up, and adding one stroke to your gallery, even when it’s hard, even when the stroke sucks. That emotional oomph that fills your chest and makes your mind race with possibility isn’t enough. If the [...]
Hypernatural
Highlights and Humans
1. When you look at a sphere that’s glossy, you normally see a white point of light, called the highlight. You can measure the highlight. You can see that it’s white, not, say, purple. You can say that it’s half an inch tall, and three quarters of an inch wide, and roughly oval shaped. These are empirical, verifiable, undeniable truths. When you move, the highlight moves with you, and from [...]
Vastness Q&A
Following up on the fact that you are a gift. 1. Why do we exist in the limited and disconnected way we do? What we’re experiencing is a game of our own creation. We are playing each other by imagining new ways to love and connect. What if we loved like this or had a connection like that. And like giggling, cosmic children, we embrace those whims and find out [...]
The Gift and the Vastness
The Wave There was once a wave in the ocean, speeding along the surface, basking in the sun with the wind in his face, loving his life and playing with the other waves. He was always happy until he looked away at the distance, and saw the coming shore. He was horrified to see other waves ahead of him crashing into the rocks, breaking and dying. Another wave nearby noticed [...]
Commander in Chief
Ok, look, hippies. There’s something New Agey people need to understand. We’re always busy looking for signs from the universe about our path, and shit like that. We say that when we’re following our path, it gets easier because the universe says “yes” and helps us. It’s more complicated than that. There’s a danger here of learning helplessness, groping through the dark, frustrated at not being able to figure out [...]
Powered by Intuition Interview
Angela Artemis from PoweredByIntuition.com just did a great interview with me about energy work and my book Energy Anatomy. In the interview I talk about: My background as a healer The path that got me to healing What “energy work” means to me The value of skepticism Physically seeing energy Analytical versus Intuitive balance in the Third Eye Who should go for energy healing? Discord among the many selves How [...]
Inspiration
How to Radically Change Your Life
I have a friend named Layla who is one of the best people I know; when she was about 20 years old, in the 50s, she left her nice little home in Britain, and went by herself, literally wading through the jungles of Central Africa. Chest deep in muck, elephant gun held high above her head, she found the famous explorer she’d been looking for and spent the following years [...]
Young and Dumb
1. I was a precocious kid, the kind that’s remarkably well-spoken for a 6 year old, and everyone thinks it’s cute. At that time I figured, since I got along with adults so well, I must be pretty much on par. I knew I had facts and figures to learn, but obviously I operated on a similar level. But then I turned 10, and I could plainly see how much [...]
Life is a Sunset
Earlier this week I wrote about the importance of being unattached to outcomes and someone commented that it was a very Buddhist philosophy. Buddhist see everything in this world as temporary and encourage people to disengage from temporary things to break the cycle of rebirth. I don’t consider myself Buddhist, because I think disengagement isn’t the right answer. I think we’re here having a human experience, and we should revel [...]
Say Hello 2 Heaven
There’s a creeping bitterness that nips at my heels. I think I do a good job of keeping it at bay, but everyone knows the cliche of the bitter old person, and I can see how the gray get there. Not everyone can keep it at bay. They get disillusioned after being broken one too many times. It’s hard to blame them for becoming cynical. There are only so many [...]
Dominoes and the Price of Admission
I really wanted to quit my job. I was too afraid of the domino effect to do it though. Quitting my job meant not being able to pay my mortgage and take care of my family. We get stuck because we start thinking about the domino effect. The fear that the changes we want are going to cause a cascade of changes we don’t want. The sticking point here is [...]
Meta
Sick and Tired
I’m alive! It was touch and go for a while, but I made it through about a week of being sick. Aside from a persistent cough, I got better yesterday, which was my birthday, so this is the first day I’ve had to catch up on things. I owe people some readings and phone calls, you know who you are, I’m on it!
PeterMichaud.com Begins Video Casting
In the spirit of expanding my horizons, I taught myself all I could in a short period about shooting video. After some initial failures, I feel like I’ve now turned my video-producing enterprise into something passable enough to make public. Some keen observers may have noticed that I put the video up on my about page for a few days. That is the very first of many videos I will [...]
The Post That Will Change Your Life
… isn’t this one. Sorry about that. I’ve been skipping my usual Friday posts for two weeks now. You might think I’m slacking, but actually I’m just expressing my inner non-communicative workaholic. Non-communicative because I should’ve warned you two and a half weeks ago, when I first planned my radio silence. I always expect things to go faster than they do. Workaholic because I’ve been hard at work during that [...]
Techzing Interview Tuesday March 23rd
TechZing, “News and views from the front-line of tech & startups”, was crazy enough to invite me to do an interview tomorrow at 6:30pm EST. I’m not sure when it will be available for listening, but I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s up. We’ll be talking about my publishing company, Kenrose Media, and how less than a year of unglamorous work (read: flailing) granted me financial freedom [...]
Content Survey Results
I let the poll run for two weeks, got plenty of responses, and the results are in. What kind of content do you want to see? Getting Your Mind Right: 50% Productivity Tools: 0% Building Income: 50% I’m planning some “Building Income” posts for the near future, look for them. I’m still going to publish some stuff about productivity, but it’ll be put on the back burner for now. Are [...]
Photo Readings
Photo Reading: Susan
This is a photo reading I did with Susan. The only information I had going into this reading was her name and this photo. Here’s how the reading went! My Reading Susan, You’re a beautiful and gentle soul. You have an almost child-like energy. You feel anxious and sometimes fearful, and that you have a man that balances that by making you feel secure. He’s masculine, and grounded, pretty traditional, [...]
Photo Reading: Karen
This is a photo reading I did with Karen. The only information I had going into this reading was her name and this photo. Here’s how the reading went! My Reading Karen, You’re beautiful, and I can see that you’re frustrated. You have children, but I don’t think you’re with their father anymore. I think that’s part of the frustration you’re feeling. It’s coming across as a jade about dating [...]
Photo Reading: Lauren
This is a photo reading I did with Lauren. The only information I had going into this reading was her name and this photo. Here’s how the reading went! My Reading Lauren, You’re a lovely girl, and very bright. You’re a little lost right now, which is fine. You’re not sure who you are or what your calling really is, so you’re just doing what you’re “supposed” to do according [...]
Quantum Mechanics
Self Sabotage
Dominoes and the Price of Admission
I really wanted to quit my job. I was too afraid of the domino effect to do it though. Quitting my job meant not being able to pay my mortgage and take care of my family. We get stuck because we start thinking about the domino effect. The fear that the changes we want are going to cause a cascade of changes we don’t want. The sticking point here is [...]
Words Have Power
“Tiff’s a chocolate whore.” Ben is Tiffany’s husband, and he’s a well-meaning guy. He has a bit of a way with words. The three of us are walking into a Godiva store to pick up a treat for Tiffany. Ben says “Tiff’s a chocolate whore.” “Aficionado? Chocolate princess, maybe?” I offer. Ben doesn’t care about word choices, it’s all the same to him, and he’s a person who chooses the [...]
How to Break Your Limits
Gema is 23 years old and might be gay. She’s not sure. (Not news.) The problem about being maybe-gay is that Gema lives with her hyper-conservative parents, and has no legal rights as an unmarried Muslim woman in Indonesia. She was in a bind. Her parents expect her to find a nice boy (of their choosing probably), get married, and make lots of babies. At 23, she’s older than any [...]
Make it Obsolete
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller Fuller was, among many other interests, a systems theorist. When he said you have to make parts of a system obsolete to change anything he was talking about social change, and perhaps market changes. You can’t just kill the Big Four record companies by beating [...]
Akrasia, or How to Stop Checking E-mail
My calendar says I should write today from 8:00am until noon. I began thinking about possibly writing at 9:28, and I’ve been glancing back and forth between potential titles, hacker news, and my e-mail since then. It’s 10:31. I like writing. I want to write. The moment I get stuck on a word or I’m not sure how to structure the essay, I “give myself a minute to think” … [...]
Social Conditioning
Tailgating
On Thursday morning I started driving from Florida to Austin, Texas. My Cadillac was as full as it could be while still being able to make a 1,000 mile journey. I was a little stressed because the lady whose house I had arranged to rent had backed out of the arrangement. I was headed to Texas with nowhere to stay, but the wheels were already in motion, as they say. [...]
How to Break Your Limits
Gema is 23 years old and might be gay. She’s not sure. (Not news.) The problem about being maybe-gay is that Gema lives with her hyper-conservative parents, and has no legal rights as an unmarried Muslim woman in Indonesia. She was in a bind. Her parents expect her to find a nice boy (of their choosing probably), get married, and make lots of babies. At 23, she’s older than any [...]
TV Creates Cowards
This is the first episode of a British show called How TV Ruined Your Life. I’m sharing it because it drives home the point that the influences we subject ourselves to deeply influence our perception of the world. TV is the pet example here, but remember that it’s one of many.
When To Lie To Get Ahead
Summary Honesty is more difficult than you think, and the naive approach to honesty will sink your business. Lie to get ahead. It was painless and it only took 15 minutes. The only disturbing part was watching the smoke rise from my testicles while an early-20s blonde trainee watched everything. Dr. Stein had pulled my vas deferens out of a small incision in my scrotum and used a red hot [...]
How to Get Your Wallet Back
This is a story of empathy brought you by StoryCorps, a radio show that shares stories from ordinary people. Julio Diaz, the storyteller, gives us a shining case in point about choosing love over fear, just like in “No Such Thing as Monsters”. The acceptable response was anger and violence, but Julio chose love and empathy. Listen to his story below, or read the transcript. Transcript of the audio: So [...]
Social Entreprenuership
Software
Goal Mapping Alpha
It’s finally ready! As promised, the alpha version of my Goal Mapping software is ready. For those of you who aren’t down with geek lingo, an “alpha version” is a complete piece of software, but it has only been tested by the developer (me), so it has loads of bugs, it’s probably ugly, and may not do everything that later version will do. For those of you who didn’t have [...]
Linux Account Backup
If you’re on a linux host, you might find this useful. It will backup all the websites for a given user on the host into an archive folder that you can download regularly. This script runs weekly on my host, and backs up my dozen or so sites and databases. You’ll need a shell user probably, and the ability to set up CRON jobs. Create the folders In the root [...]
Roomba
I had a conversation about a Roomba once with someone who believed that it used the golden spiral to trace its path from the center of a room. To prove that it used a Sin function with a continuously increasing amplitude, I wrote this demonstration. The real robot uses a constant speed, with a variable turning angle. My demonstration doesn’t use a vector. Instead it uses a combination of Sin [...]
Kaleidoscope
The Kaleidoscope snowflake is a Javascript toy. Click the link below to reflect. To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. -Immanuel Kant The [...]
Hypercube
Hypercube is a JavaScript toy that’s sort of pretty, and kind of fun. Follow the instructions carefully. There is beauty in the mundane for those with a joyful heart »