Pete Michaud

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

Planning Right? You’ll Fail.

Planning Right: The Problem Imagining your future is usually right brained: your creative center generates a story for a future that could plausibly happen. It hits the highlights, and it puts magical arrows between them as if one event leads inexorably to the next. Get into MIT, start a successful company...

Pete Michaud Techzing Interview

I had a great interview with Jason and Justin at TechZing. Click here to listen to the interview → Click here to read a transcript of the interview → We covered quite a bit of ground in the interview: The details of the business that allowed me to “retire” at 25 My business strategy...

5 Steps to Stop Procrastinating Forever

Obvious truth #1: We think about the things we like to do, and those things make us feel happy. As a result, we do those things whenever we can. Obvious truth #2: We try not to think about the things we don’t like to do. Those things make us feel frustrated, stressed, bored–anything but happy. As...