Your Mornings Are Yours: Take ’em Back.
I have successfully taken back my mornings. Now, I don’t mean I’ve taken them back in a Tim Ferriss kind of way. Shit, I haven’t organized my mornings! But I do own them again. What that means is that no one tells me where to be or when to be there in the morning. It...
Time Management: Balance Goals with Down Time
Short Term Goals and Down Time Make for a Happy, Productive Worker "A project or task will expand to fill the time allotted to complete it." That's one version of Parkinson's Law. It is routinely stated in ways to suggest that bureaucracies, job scopes, tasks -...
7 Things to Do Other than Waiting
If you’re like me you hate waiting. You’ve taken some action on the notion that had been simmering in your head. You made your move. You put it out there. You put the project proposal in the mail. You’ve finally scribbled the last item on the to-do list. You hung up...
When Your Kid Teaches You To Follow Your Bliss
Follow Your Bliss Like a Kid I like to think of myself as the kind of guy who’s all about "follow your bliss" and open to other people’s crazy dreams. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I like to think that I sometimes relish creating awkward-feeling situations...
A Blog About How to Achieve Work Life Balance
Achieving Work-Life Balance: Changing Lifestyle and Perspective The quest for work life balance begins by looking around and wondering: When are my work and life going more accurately reflect the ideas I have in my head? Is this much of my Life really supposed to be...
My Morning Routine, Productivity Be Damned
The Morning Routine I Just Discovered I Have Tim Ferriss and Pat Flynn (two of my favorite podcasters) agree of the importance of the morning routine. Productivity begins in the morning and your routine sets the tone for your day in many ways: nutrition, exercise,...
Paying Taxes is Patriotic
I paid my taxes yesterday - yes, right on Tax Day. I owed a lot this year and had to write big checks from a bank account that is now pretty much depleted. And I know there are a lot of people, many of my friends among them, who would expect me to come over to their...
Wanderlust: Follow Your Bliss… again and again
Follow Your Bliss? What Bliss? Through his books Joseph Campbell told me: “follow your bliss.” Some complain that they don’t know what their bliss is. I would suspect that most of us have a thousand things that we could love to pursue; it’s just a matter of focusing...
Be a Hack not an Expert
I like to do a little of this and a little of that. Not too much of any one thing. I'm curious about and interested in a lot of things - in grade school they labeled this “easily distracted” these days I might be medicated. I dreamed of a lifestyle where I wouldn’t...
Deaths Waiting Room
I have an elderly friend who lately every time I see him is complaining about getting older. He doesn't complain in the lighthearted way that people usually complain about getting older. He seems genuinely troubled by where he is and even more so by where he's going....
Full Time Jobs Suck: Tell the Truth and Blow Your Interview
Even though I know that full time jobs suck, I used to go to interviews and lie. I usually got the jobs. I would figure out what they wanted to hear and say that that’s what I am. “We need a screwdriver?” they would say. “Oh, yeah, well...
The Space Between The Notes: The Pause Principle
Whatever path you choose, you will eventually hit a wall. Artists and writers know these obstacles and they call them “blocks.” Our natural inclination when we’re being blocked is to push against, to assault, to throw all our weight against these perceived barriers....
Wanting What You Have
The transitions we're aiming for can ultimately be summed up in one word, right? Happiness. We are trying to scratch an elusive itch. Contentment might be another word for it. Enjoyment of life or even Fun might be other ways to put it. The most important and...
Work Sets You Free
Worried about the future, bummed about your past? Will the next check make its way into your account? Get into your work. All those worries will disappear. That's it. It's great advice. This is the most magical thing I know about work. And it's a great realization...
Write Your Big Idea
You’re sitting in your evening traffic jam and the idea hits you! By time you get home and try explaining it, it’s gone. Mowing the lawn, same thing. Waking up from a dream, same thing. What had the power and impact as a fantastic, perhaps even life...
Choose Work Carefully – One Size Fits None
The cashier refuses to let you have it your way, avoiding your eyes she points to the clock and says: It's after eleven and we have to stop serving it that way at eleven. Or some other ridiculous claim. She doesn't love her job. She doesn't think about better ways to...
More A Step Of Faith Than A Leap Of Faith
Feel like taking a leap of faith? You're watching a trapeze artist a hundred feet above you doing flips, catches, releases and all sorts of amazing feats. And you find yourself becoming overwhelmed with inspiration. As you study him you're sure you actually can feel...
Dealing with Depression: Double Down When You’re In The Doldrums
The phone hasn't rung with new business in days... or has it been weeks? The visits to your website are down. The few customers who come through the door seem to have nothing to offer you but complaints. Home life isn't much better. Where is the quality life you're...
Constructing Your New Identity on the Web
The virtual storefront! Wow! What a concept! Who ever thought we'd see a day when having a internet address would make a business as legitimate as having an actual physical street address. And already there is a generation among us who have never known a world...
Observations of Work and Life Without the Grind
I haven’t written blog entries in a while. The reason, plain and simple, is that since its inception, this blog has been about pursuing the longing to take back my life from the 9 to 5 grind – focusing on the anticipation of readying myself to take the...
5 Steps for Sawing My Assistant in Half, Quitting My 100K Job (And Other Seemingly Death-Defying Tricks)
Every conjurer worth his weight, every blogger of minimalism, has a certain repertoire. Certain tricks that are expected to have been mastered within a practitioner's oeuvre that must be performed with a certain dash of flair that separates the practitioner of the...
Defending The Hustle
You go to a strip bar and talk to the strippers. Every one of them is just passing through on their way to a better place. It's a cliche. And maybe it's easy to cop an attitude of superiority because no matter how bad your own life is going they will feign an interest...
Wikileaks and True Democracy
I have been thoroughly enjoying the ways both the political and media establishments have been thrown off balance by the recent releases by Wikileaks which at first glance doesn't seem to contain much substance or firepower. So, our dignitaries and heads of state are...
Aubrey DeGray And Eternal Life
Sometimes when I think of my dream for A Day On, of finding a proven, methodical alternative path toward achieving greater fulfillment not only for me but for all of those out there who seek self-actualization, I feel overwhelmed. It seems that there exists, so...