What are you connecting with in your life? Run through this exercise to find out if you are wasting your time on things that are not improving your quality of life or empowering you in some way.

You are choosing to connect with something, some attitude, person, thing, etc all the time. Are you doing it consciously and choosing things that are empowering or things that weaken you? Are you choosing to let petty excuses defeat you and allow you to settle for less? Lets find out.

Write down all of the things you choose to connect with over the course of a week:
Something you connect with includes any activity you engage in, and thoughts you routinely think, people you interact with, etc

Here are some of the things I connect in a given week:

• Video games (I like Enemy Territory)
• TV shows on hulu.com (usually crime shows)
• news sites  (reddit)
• social media websites (facebook, twitter)
• misc. web browsing looking for something interesting (delicious.com/popular)
• cooking lunch or dinner with my wife
• listening to podcasts about business (internet business mastery, mixergy, other paid courses)
• blogs (personal development blogs like stevepavlina.com, finance blogs like iwillteachyoutoberich.com, internet business blogs like smartpassiveincome.com, Seth Godin’s blog, and many others)
• consulting clients, including one primary client and several smaller clients
• new technical material (blogs, how-to’s, books, etc)
• idle chatting with friends (best case) or complaining with friends about whatever (worst case)
• writing down ideas as they come to me throughout my workday
• checking email
• worrying about whether or not I will be successful
• day dreaming and looking at shiny things I want to acquire
• thinking about what I really want to accomplish and identifying the blockers to it and systematically removing them

There are quite a few things there – lets ask ourselves if these activities are empowering or weakening me?

Video games, day dreaming, worrying, tv shows, idle chat, incessant checking of email, news, and social media sites are pretty obvious examples of weakening connections. There are a several more things that are stealth weakeners though – things that on the surface appear to be useful or important but really aren’t doing much at all (in fact are just serving as fuel to further delude yourself with.) such as:

Most reading that is unfocused or without specific intent; always looking out for the next personal development, marketing, or personal finance tidbit that will make me successful. If you’re anything like me you either have in the past or currently read at least 10 articles every week, buy multiple paid courses and read through them as fast as possible, minimizing the actions taken, and finding reasons to fail or why it doesn’t work for me.

Continuing to work with the wrong clients (even if they pay in a timely fashion, etc) is hurting you in the long run if it is doing something you don’t want to be doing.

Think about what you are choosing to connect with – you can’t connect with everything. Make damn sure that you are connecting with things that further empower you to achieve your dreams, and let the thoughts, things, activities, and people that drag you down fall out of connection with you.

I even know by careful reasoning what the actual effect is on my life to NOT do those things, in the sense that I know I could be missing out on all kinds of life improvements and happiness. That isn’t always enough for me either. I don’t think it’s enough for anyone to look at a calculation and see that eating out costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars 30 years from now to get them to stop doing it.

But why not? Theoretically I know I would rather have the hundreds of thousands of dollars vs any given meal out. Because of this, I don’t think the loss of perceived opportunity or future gain is enough to motivate you to take action consistently.

It’s like the lazy lurker that just wants you to coast along instead of really push yourself to achieve. Everyone does this because of several reasons, which I believe partly include the following:

1. you think you can always ‘make up for lost time’
2. the cost in your current quality of life is greater than the perceived benefit down the road
3. you want something NOW

Luckily, I have a guaranteed way to defeat your own worst enemy (yourself).

Make it impossible to fail by increasing the pain of failure. Tony Robbins talks about linking pain to certain activities you’d like to stop doing. How I actually applied that, was to create myself a 30 day challenge – I increased the cost of failure, and so I succeeded.

I made an agreement with my friend Lars that I would do several things, and for each failure to do one of those things, I would pay him $50. The things I decided to take on were going to bed by 10pm, waking up by 7AM, and working 8 hours every day, including weekends. I do not recommend the same things. At the time when I took this upon myself I decided I needed to convince myself that I was capable of working hard, given the right motivation to do so. Indeed, I was capable.

It was exhausting, but also tremendously empowering at the same time. I knew I could do anything and succeed at it, by simply increasing the cost of failure. I’m working on some new challenges for myself that are longer term, and more sustainable. The biggest mistake in that first challenge I did, was that the cost was great on both sides – hard to fail because I didn’t want to keep paying out, and hard to succeed because I was burning out.

A couple more things I learned:

• Taking massive action is not the same as creating the results you desire. I was realizing that I was doing so much every day, but I found myself filling up my day with non important work when I had to fill my quota. I was confusing motion with action.
• Working 8 hours every weekend day is not a good idea – especially because of the reduced time I had to spend with my wife and friends.
• Working hard is still tremendously valuable – I (l)earned more in those 30 days than I did in any other month. I earned quite a bit from consulting, but even more valuable was everything I learned doing the experiment. If you read a book one page at a time you will learn much slower than if you read it several pages in one sitting.

We’ve found a lot of people are having trouble growing up. Some people never grow up. People who aren’t growing up are blaming the outside world for their problems, not taking responsibility for themselves, have low expectations of what they can achieve, and are generally just living mediocre lives. Growing up is the most important thing you can do in your life – but how do you do it?

So we decided to write an ebook to help young adults (and anyone else) grow up more effectively. I have spent years consuming content voraciously and producing nothing. I’ve been soaking up knowledge like a sponge and have not been applying it as well as I could. I considered starting a blog before it was cool and brushed it off because “I didn’t know what to write about”. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. Start something anyway. Get feedback and adapt.

Here’s my commitment to you – faithful readers:
We will release our ebook about growing up in 3 months – by February 15th 2010
We’ll keep you updated as we go along.

What about growing up do you need help with or would like to know more about? (leave a comment below)

In my experience, this has always been the case.

When I was in 8th grade, I started attending a small private school in my hometown. It was a small class of mixed middle and high school kids. I had been home schooled by my mother since about 3rd grade and I had struggled with Algebra 1 the previous year. Not surprisingly I started off having the same trouble in the new school. My mother recalls me coming home one day and complaining, “I just don’t get it.” Fast forward a few weeks and everything was starting to click, slowly and steadily. A few months later, I started helping the other students in my grade with Algebra. My teacher was not well versed in math beyond the 8th grade level so during the next two years, I ended up teaching the other students Algebra 1 and 2. Most of the time I would spend the entire day at school teaching myself the math from the book and then helping the other kids when they needed it. My other studies would just get pushed off into afternoon homework.

A similar thing happened at work more recently. Eight months ago I knew nothing about the technology our project was based on. Now I’m the team lead.

My circus coaches in Canada said the same thing. The first day of acrobatics training, the instructors told me, “The first two weeks are the worst. After that you’ll be fine.” And they were right.

So what’s the trick?

1. Give it two weeks.
2. No matter how hard it seems, don’t give up. You may not make any noticeable progress for several days. Don’t worry about it.
3. Give it your full attention. 20 hours a week minimum.
4. Concentrate on the parts that you know and improve them first. This will give you the momentum and confidence to tackle the more difficult problems.
5. Try an approach for a few days. If it seems like you’re hitting a dead end, change the context a little: try a different book or ask a new question (or rephrase an old question) . Sometimes it makes all the difference.
6. Sketch out notes and diagrams as you go along. They don’t have to be overly detailed or neat. Just keep a notebook handy. At certain points you’ll experience ‘Aha!’s. Be sure to write those down.
7. Work harder than everyone else. You will succeed.

After two weeks of concentrated study, you should know enough to do something useful with your new skill. You can apply this process to learning to just about anything:

• Juggling
• Programming
• Dancing
• Foreign languages
• Any academic subject

Whatever you’re trying to learn, just give it two weeks. Work hard and be awesome.

Say you live in a dead end town in Iowa with your girlfriend. You have no job and no skills to speak of. She is working as a waitress. You play computer games all day dreaming about how awesome you could be. Do you:

A: Look hard for a crappy job in the dead end town.

B: Move across the country to live with some friends who are making their lives awesome and are willing to help you do the same

C: Keep leaching off of your girlfriend and dreaming about being awesome.

Which of those things do you think I did?

If you answered B – you are correct. You win a prize. As a result of my doing that, I learned I actually did have some skills that were valuable (playing with Linux since early teens turns out to be useful), started my career in the tech business and got my first (real) job paying $20 / hour (many times more than I expected to earn back in dead-end ville). I worked with some really awesome developers for 2 years I think. Then I decided I wanted to go freelance (the company was unfortunately going down in flames.) So I moved again (back home – near dead end ville geographically) and learned how to work remotely.  I refused to get a ‘regular job’. I completely failed miserably for a good year and a half. I think I earned less than $10,000 in 2007. Then something amazing happened. I started earning more money than I knew what to do with.

I can honestly say that all of this happened because I burned the ships that led to mediocrity. So lets work on you now: What are you going to do to eliminate the mediocre path from your life?

You probably have some thing you WANT to do. Do you want to live in a new city? (Get in your car and go.) Do you want to get a new job? (Quit your current job… miraculously, you now have 8 more hours every day to find that perfect new job.)

Note: This takes serious gumption. (That word rules.)

What would happen if you did that? You would either:

A: Figure it out and survive, or:

B: Die.

Here’s the thing: if you don’t do it, you will also die. It will just take longer and be more painful.

If you don’t do it now, at least set a deadline for when you will do it. Then you can fret about it all you want, dilly dally, and waste your time and your life for the next X days / weeks / months, but when the day comes, you know you have to do it. Or you will die.

Don’t set yourself up for total failure,  but don’t soften the reality. If something is draining your life, you need to eliminate it from your life. Move. Get new friends. Think about what a person who has already achieved what you want would be doing in their life.

I need to do this too. I love my job(s) in general, but I need to cut some of them off because they aren’t as fulfilling as others. I need to focus on what I want, and let the rest fall by the wayside. Let’s do it together.

Here are the steps you need to do, once more:

1. Find something you are doing that is pulling you towards mediocrity.
2. Create a rough plan in less than 30 minutes to eradicate it from your life.
3. Kill off the weak mediocre activity in your life.
4. Enjoy your awesomeness for a little while (but not too long) and:
5. Start at 1 and repeat the entire process again.

Coming Thursday: How I’ve actually done this recently in several areas of my life, and what I’m doing to keep the momentum going.

Say hello to your ‘hosts’ file

Do you know about your computer’s ‘hosts’ file? Whether you’re a user of Windows, some distro of Linux, or Mac OS X, there should be a ‘hosts’ file tucked away somewhere on your computer. On most Linux and Mac OS X installations, this file is located in the /etc/ directory. On Windows this file is located in the %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\ directory, where %WINDIR% is typically C:\WINDOWS\. [Edit: This is true for Windows XP. I don't know about Windows Vista or Windows 7 but I imagine it's about the same.] Go ahead and check now. Did you find it?

What does the ‘hosts’ file do?

When you type a web address (such as www.becomeawesome.com) into your web browser, your browsers queries a DNS server for the IP address of the website. This is how your browser knows “where” to find the website. (Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert on how this stuff works. Just keep reading.) The ‘hosts‘ a file where you can hard-code domain name/IP address combinations. What does this mean to us? It means that if we want to block access to time-waster sites, we can do it on our own computers by simply adding an entry to the ‘hosts‘ file. This will override the normal process and we can point a domain name (such as timewaster.com) to any place we choose. Here is what a typical Mac OS X ‘hosts’ file looks like (which will look about the same in Windows and Linux environments):

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost mycomputer
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost

If this looks confusing, relax. Let me explain. First, the lines which begin with # are just comments. You can ignore these. In fact, you can ignore everything that is already in here. All we care about is what we’re going to add to it. So, let’s do that.

Adding entries to your ‘hosts’ file to block websites

Before you do anything, make a backup copy of your ‘hosts’ file.
In Windows, simply copy the file and paste into the same directory. This will create a ‘Copy of hosts‘ file. I suggest renaming the file to ‘hosts.old‘.
In Mac OS X or Linux, open a terminal. (If you’re a Linux user, I’ll assume that you already know how to do this =P. For Mac OS X, open Finder, click Applications, open the Utilities folder, and double-click the Terminal app.) Then type the following command:

sudo cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.old

You will probably be prompted for your password.

Now, on to the blocking!

To block a website, simply append a couple lines of text to this file that look something like this:

127.0.0.1 timewaster.com
127.0.0.1 www.timewaster.com

If this is Windows, again, you can use Notepad. If this is Mac OS X or Linux, I recommend using vi or pico, unless you already have a favorite editor. If you don’t know how to use either one, do a web search for ‘vi tutorial‘ or ‘pico tutorial‘. There are plenty of good tutorials out there. I don’t need to write another.

Now, you might be wondering:

1. What is 127.0.0.1?
2. Why did you enter timewaster.com AND www.timewaster.com?

Let me explain.

1. 127.0.0.1 is the IP address of your computer’s loopback interface. In plain English, it’s your computer’s way of saying “this is me”.
2. In some situations, timewaster.com and www.timewaster.com might point to different addresses. I won’t go into to too much detail. Take my word for it: we want to block both.

When we add an the entry ‘127.0.0.1 www.timewaster.com‘, we are basically saying, “Redirect anything that wants to access www.timewaster.com and point it to my computer.” Your computer obviously doesn’t host the website, so when you do this you will no longer be able to access the site. Score!

To edit the file, simply open it the ‘hosts‘ file with Notepad. Add all of the sites you wish to block and save the file.

Verify that the site(s) is/are blocked

Now try to go to the sites that you just blocked. If you did everything properly, you will now no longer be able to access that site (and you will be much more productive). If at any point you wish to unblock a site, simply remove the appropriate entries from the ‘hosts‘ file.

Sites you should block

Here are some suggestions for the types sites of time-waster sites which you could block:

• Social networking sites
• News sites (I personally think that most of them are garbage)
• Web forums (at least those not related to your work or education)
• Video/TV show streaming
• Chat rooms
• Any other sites which you spend significant amounts of time on which provide little or no value to your life

Later, you’ll either thank me or curse my name. Either way you’ll be more productive.

Forty years ago this was awesome advice. If you went to college immediately after high school it meant that you probably wouldn’t have to fight in Vietnam. I’d choose school over war any day, and I’m not even a pacifist. Our generation (the teens and twenty-somethings), however, has a much better set of circumstances. We no longer have a draft and there are all sorts of new options for us to choose from. We no longer have to go to college to avoid premature death. In fact, I highly recommend that young people do not go to college right after high school–at least not full time.

In high school, I’m sure you’ve met a few people who have decided their next moves on the planet for the next 10+ years: “I’m going to Brown to study Marine Biology. Then I’m going grad school and I’ll travel the world and help people.” Hey, that sounds great. But the path isn’t always that clear for everyone, though, is it? When I talk to young adults about college, the conversation usually goes one of two ways: “I know exactly what I want to do. Let me tell you all about it.” OR “I don’t really know what I want to study. Psychology might be interesting, or maybe literature. Chemistry or architecture might be cool, but I don’t really like math. I haven’t decided yet.” The scary part is, some people who “haven’t decided yet” still go to college right after high school. They wander through classes with a half-hearted plan and end up changing majors a couple of times before finally graduating 5 or 6 years later. Then they find a job somewhere, or they move back in with their parents. One or the other.

So why do it in the first place? The reasons can be many, but likely a combination of the following:

1. Your parents told you to do it.
2. Your teachers told you to do it.
3. Everyone else is doing it.
4. You have nothing better to do.
5. You like racking up student debt. (Changing majors can be very expensive.)

Let’s take a look at each of these and explore a few ways to deal with the pressure.

1. It’s time to start thinking for yourself. Until now, most of your decision-making has defaulted to authority figures like your parents and teachers. I’m sure they had all lots of useful things to tell you, but now is the time to start exercising your decision-making skills.
2. See 1.
3. See 1.
4. This one is a little more difficult. If you really believe that you have nothing better to do, at least explore some options that don’t cost quite as much. Be creative. Don’t be submissive.
5. Okay, this one is obviously a joke. But you get the idea.

Back to my original point. There are several reasons why young people shouldn’t go to college right after high school, even if they are pretty sure of what they want to study. Why? Because teenagers are mostly insane. The tsunamis of hormones don’t really mellow out for a few more years, at which point young adults are finally ready to rejoin the human race.

So what can you do instead?

1. Get a job.
2. Get your own place (apartment or whatever).
3. Pay your own bills.
4. Learn how to cook.

If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (which I find to be an excellent way of checking the balance in my life), you can see that this satisfies the first two layers of the pyramid. If you are unable to independently satisfy your most basic needs (food, clothing, and shelter), higher achievements will not come easy. Get a good foundation. Don’t be “top-heavy”.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate college. I actually love college. It’s challenging, it’s fun, and you get to learn cool stuff. College is great, but in my experience, you don’t need it to be good at something. I’ll give you an example. At the time of this writing I work for a large engineering company. A few months ago, I was talking with co-worker and I mentioned a class I was taking. So he asked:

“Are you working on your Master’s?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Bachelor’s?”
“Not yet.”
“Associate’s??”

I had been working with this guy for a year and a half. He had no clue that I was “uneducated”.

I’ll give you another example. I started working on a new project a few months ago and I’m now the lead developer for a team of five people, all with B.S. degrees and work experience. They’re all very smart and very sharp people. I’m not special. I’m not a prodigy. I am, however, reasonably intelligent and I like learning. I work very hard, I ask questions, I tap experts for advice, and I take notes. It’s simple.

You don’t need a piece of paper to be awesome. Some people with degrees are brilliant and quite talented (like my mother and my sister-in-law). Other graduates are utterly incompetent. The point is, a degree does not make you who you are.  You can do anything with enough time and hard work. Maybe all of that effort culminates in a degree. Or maybe it doesn’t.

College is a fine path, but it’s not the only path.

So the open rate stats are probably underreported. I’m not sure exactly by how much. To increase the response rate, you need to give your reader a reason to turn images on. Perhaps include a graph, or some other image that adds to the content of the email. Or even a superfluous image of a cat with a line underneath it saying “If you can’t see this cute cat, turn on images in your email client”. If you can increase the value to your customers with images, it will increase their value to you as well.