Entries from April 2008 ↓

Loren at Writing Power asked a question the other day that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently since I was thinking about metaphors and how language affects our thinking and behavior.

Her question:

“What term would you like to see replace “passion” in our personal development lexicon?”

The reason we want to switch terms is because passion’s etymological roots and current connotation don’t capture the concepts or feelings that we’re trying to describe.

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This Friday’s meditation is an original in the Taoist spirit:

Try to be everywhere, and you will find yourself nowhere.
Try to be there for everyone, and you will be there for no one.
Try to always be available, and you will never be available.
Try to work all the time, and you will not work anytime.

Build a small fire and sit close to it,
and you won’t need as much wood.

Thoughts:

This koan was inspired by correspondence I had with a friend last weekend.  He’s burning himself out by trying to do too much - the success he has found exceeds his ability to keep it going.  But he can’t stop feeding the fire.

I wrote yesterday that productivity is not about getting more things done, but rather about the nature of things we’re doing and how they fit into our flourishing.  Sitting close to your fire and basking in its warmth is far better than doing so much scrambling to keep the fire going that you never enjoy its heat.

What’s your fire?  Are you sitting close to it or struggling to keep it going?

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to my feed, commenting, or sharing it on one of the social media sites below. Thanks for sharing your time with me, and I appreciate your support!

(Don’t forget to switch to Productive Flourishing’s new feed, if you haven’t done so already. Click here and your browser will do the rest of the work.)

Photo Credit: starfires

Many of you have probably noticed that my pages load really, really slowly.  I’ve been doing some research on the guts of my system, and I’ve been able to determine why.  Some of it is due to my ignorance, and others go way beyond that.

While doing speed tests this morning, I came across something very interesting.  The old theme I was using was really, really heavy on file weight and server load.  When I switched away from that theme, my file size went from 60.91KB to 48.29 KB.  Yes, my file size is now 21% lighter - just from switching themes. Speed tests were comparable and between 20 and 30 percent faster.

However, after playing around with some other stuff on the blog, I broke some of my widgets and things generally went to hell.  I hadn’t completed the blog theme I wanted, but I wasn’t going back to the old theme - so I compromised and modified an old favorite…the Copyblogger theme.

It is not complete yet, but I wanted to get something workable back up.  I’m trying to balance minimalism with navigation at the moment, and the color scheme is supposed to evoke an old woodsy, earthy theme - imagine an old forest that’s thriving with old and new life. It’s a work in progress, but it at least works without bloating my file size.

Please check it out and let me know what you think.  I’m particularly concerned about ease of reading - if I’ve broken functionality for aesthetics, please let me know so I can fix it.  Also, the color scheme is meant to calm, focus, and refresh - if it depresses and frustrates, let me know.

As for the other things that cause this blog to be so slow, I’ll be fixing what I can and will document it after the fix.  I’ll quickly say this-if you’ve been looking at a good domain host for your blog, avoid Dreamhost’s shared service.  I’m in the market for a new host, though I don’t at all want to have to make yet another move.  <Sigh>

Are you feeling down today? Want to know how to save time? He’s in a dark mood today. I’m trying to get more done.

All of the sentences above involve the use of metaphors. “The essence of metaphors,” Lakoff and Johnson argued in Metaphors We Live By, “is understanding one kind of thing in terms of another.”

(Sidebar: The Metaphors We Live By was one of the most influential books I read as an undergrad. It’s a mind-blowing read that’s well worth the time and money. Use the link above to grab yours from Amazon.)

Many of us don’t realize the power of metaphor even though our thinking is inherently metaphorical. For one thing, humans are generally very visual creatures, which is precisely why visual aids to goal setting help motivate us to actualize our goals.

But the more fundamental point about metaphors is that they have a powerful effect on our behavior. Since our behavior is partly determined by how we think about things, changing metaphors can have a powerful effect of changing behavior. Another important fact to remember is that metaphors do their work below the cognitive level - we don’t think about the associations, yet we act on those associations.

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Friends and flourishing are like cookies and milk: the addition of the one makes the other so much better. But friends and flourishing are unlike cookies and milk in that you can’t have one without the other.

“Friends,” Aristotle says, “are our second selves.” They help define who we are and improve our character. They are, he says, the highest external good.

All friendships are not created equal, though. We have this somewhat strange phrase that we apply to those friends of the highest caliber: best friends. I say it’s strange because it’s not uncommon for us to identify multiple friends as best friends.

But why it makes complete sense is because we aren’t really ranking friends like we do restaurants. What we are describing is the type of relationship we have with our best friends that’s different than the type of relationship we have with the other people we interact with.
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There’s a new money transfer game in town besides Paypal, and they want your membership so much so that they are giving $25 for you just to sign up. There are no strings attached, no obligations to use the service, no trial offers that you need to remember to quit, and the process is really quick.

Actually, to be correct, I should say that you make $35, because I get $10 for every one of you that sign up - so, even if you don’t use the service, consider it as a donation that you actually get paid to give. If you don’t need to know anymore than that to get your easy $25, then click this link and sign up for Revolution Money Exchange.

Okay, so you may want to know more information if you’re still reading this. There are a lot of things I don’t like about Paypal, but the biggest thing I don’t like about it is that the recipient of the transfer is charged Paypal’s processing fee. For instance, if you were to send me $20, Paypal takes $.88. Larger amounts of money come with a larger percentage of the cut. Not cool.

Revolution Money Exchange doesn’t do that. There’s no charge for either sending or receiving money. This makes it a great service for friends, families, and non-profits, as the full amount of money is received on either end.

I believe in this service so much so that I’m a) writing about it and b) going to put it as my primary link for donations. Paypal will still be there, unfortunately, but only because I think so few people know about Revolution Money Exchange.

I appreciate your time and consideration. Sign up for Money Exchange by clicking the link. The offer is only good until April 15th, so hurry to sign up if you haven’t yet.

(Don’t forget to switch to Productive Flourishing’s new feed, if you haven’t done so already. Click here and your browser will do the rest of the work.)

Okay, I’ve managed to move everything to the new domain name.  Everything should now be under Productive Flourishing.  It wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be.

Except for the feeds.  I think I have it set up so that the old feed still works and you shouldn’t have to switch anything up.  This message partly tests that.  However, if you would be so kind as to switch to the new feed, I’d very much appreciate it - since the old feed was acting a bit goofy anyways, and it would be far easier to track one feed than two.

To switch feeds, just click here. Your browser should do the rest of the work.  (This will be in the next few posts, so please forgive the redundancy.)

The next step: changing this template. I think I’ll save that for tomorrow.

One of the things I love about approaching the weekend is that it is a time to relax, step back, and think about things. I read something that stood out to me and I wanted to share it and my thoughts about it with you:

Fame or integrity: which is more important?
Money or happiness: which is more valuable?
Success or failure: which is more destructive.

If you look to others for fulfillment,
you will never be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.

–Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Thoughts:

It’s easy to lose track of why we are doing our daily activities. Are we doing it because we want to be famous and win the respect of others, or are we doing it because it’s an expression of who we are? Living our lives by the esteem of others makes us their prisoners; our happiness ebbs and flows with their whims and fancies.

Money without happiness is just another way to be empty. Money enables us to buy things and live comfortable lives, but questing for money for its on sake leads to unhappiness.

Sometimes our success destroys who we are. We forget our friends, our values, and our purpose - there are few ways to more thoroughly destroy oneself. But failure often times reminds us who we are and what we have; is our fear of failure thus warranted?

When we are content with what we have, we do not quest for things we don’t need. Rejoice in what you have and the value you bring to the world, and you will fill satisfied.

I don’t proclaim that I’m a master of any of these things. I’m just a signpost to wisdom that I sometimes grasp and sometimes don’t. So simple a statement, so powerful a message.

(This selection came from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching (Amazon, $7.96). It’s a great, short book that can be read in an hour, yet it takes a lifetime to understand and practice. I highly recommend it.)

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to my feed, commenting, or sharing it on one of social media services below. Thanks for sharing your time with me, and I appreciate your support!

Photo Credit: Erroba

There are some major changes that are going to happen to this blog that I’d like to announce:

1. This blog will be moving to a new domain name and renamed to “Productive Flourishing.” There will likely be some hiccups, but I hope you make the switch with me.
2. Most of the ads will come off of the blog. I instead will have a spot for products and services that I either use or think will add value to your lives.
3. I’ll probably go through two different themes - the first to transition from the one you currently see, and then the final one that I either design and create myself or design and have someone else create.

I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’d rather not have to lose what Google rank and familiarity I already have, but I think the move will make me more comfortable with the stuff I write about. The ads coming off are mainly because they slow my blog down, get in the way, and are a distraction to all of us.

I appreciate your continued support.

“If you know you have to swallow a frog, swallow it first thing in the morning. If there are two frogs, swallow the big one first.”-Mark Twain

You know how it goes. You wake up in the morning, and there it is. Ribbit!

You pour your morning coffee, and there it is looking at you. Ribbit!

As you’re working and glance at the clock, there it is looking back at you. Ribbit!

It’s that task or project that you don’t want to do. You know you’ve got to do it, but instead you put it off. Maybe you’ll feel like doing it later.

You won’t.

Getting it done first thing in the morning assures you that, if nothing else, you complete that one thing for the day. Leaving it hanging there may make it such that you don’t get anything else done from worrying about it.

There’s also this: getting those things done first thing in the morning often provides additional motivation to complete a lot of other things that day.

After all, if you’ve already swallowed a couple of frogs, can the day really get any worse?

But wait - what about the whole “plan your day by your productive capacity” bit?

(New readers: if this is unfamiliar to you, check out A General Theory of Productivity, The Daily Heatmap, and The Daily Productivity Planner)

Generally, having those things that you want to do hanging over you ensures that you won’t be at your productive peak due to distraction. Remember, decreasing distractions and increasing motivation makes you more productive.

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to my feed, commenting, or sharing it on one of the sites below. Thanks for sharing your time with me, and I appreciate your support!

(The picture above is of a huge toad we encountered in Costa Rica. That shoe is a size 12 - and we took it like that to give the scale of the toad. So it’s not a frog, but I still wouldn’t want to swallow it!)