Advice

Finding your Ideal Pace

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Ever know someone who works slower than you (and drives you crazy?) or faster than you (and drives you crazy?).  Do you look at these people and wonder if you're overworking or underworking?

Let me put your mind at ease – we all have our ideal work pace.  We just have to find it.

I myself like to keep up constant activity, punctuated by breaks, with a decently full plate.  I know other people who ONLY work in huge, long, multi-day bursts of insane effort.  I know others who like slow and steady.  Everyone's different.

If you want to be a success, in your hobbies or your career, you need to find your ideal pace.

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Weekly Challenge – Mirror, Mirror

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Here's your weekly challenge.  We're going to get a bit psychological.

I want you to ask yourself, what your complete opposite is like. What's the "you" from the Mirror Universe, Bizarro World, whatever fictional opposite-land you prefer as a metaphor.  Who is this other you? what motivates them? What do they do – and what don't they do? What is their daily life like?

Once you have a good image of this UnYou, ask yourself a few questions:

  • What is it that they do that you wish you did or should?
  • What is it that you do they don't that you're proud of?
  • Is this alternate you happier or sadder than you?  Why?
  • What do they do for a living, and does it work?
  • What do they do for fun, and why?  Does it make them happy?
  • What can you learn from them and what can they learn from you?

This week, take a look in the mirror and find out what you learn.

(Though I won't go into much detail on my experience with this exercise, I realized I was much happier than my opposite.)

– Steven Savage

Visualization: The Beacon and the Television

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Visualizing your goals and dreams is a part of succeeding in your life and career that you can't avoid.  I am a big advocate of having a vision for your life with as much detail as possible.  I want you to not just see, but be able to taste, hear, smell, and feel the vision you have, as big and bold as possible.

Yet, if you know me and read this blog, you know that I also decry a lot of the "visualization" exercises and self-help approaches out there.  I despise "The Secret" and it's offspring and it's siblings; the idea that if you visualize it it will happen, the dream-and-be-positive exercises, and all the rest.  Yes, I advocate visualization while decrying some visualization methods and exercises.

There's a reason for what seems to be inconsistency.  This reason is not visualization itself, but the attitude taken towards in the various exercises people promote. I'm all for having big dreams, as visceral as possible – but its what those visualizations mean to you that changes what they can do for you.

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