"Do you wake up every morning eager to start your day? Do you bound out of bed before sunrise so you can maximize your awake time?"

Great questions by Erin Pavlina in Steve's podcast #14.

Do you hate going to bed at night because it needs you to take a break from your life until morning? I really do. I'm really looking forward to meet people like this. Feel free to contact me in e-mail if you think these sentences describe you.

(Any girls with a similar mindset to Erin's in my age around? ;))

Being a GTD fan for over six months, I have to admit it works. Things doesn't always get done as fast as I wish but it does what the definition promises: "transforms personal overwhelm and overload into an integrated system of stress-free productivity". So now I really have an integrated system and I'm almost stress-free. (or at least I'm free of stress caused by the huuuuge amount of the tasks that need to be done).

I have built my own Hipster PDA for the purpose. Douglas Johnston over at DIY*Planner has created a Hipster PDA Edition of his DIY*Planner templates. I use the 4up version so I can use standard A4-sized papers.

What I have in my Hipster PDA is this:
- 2 weekly planning forms (for the next 14 days)
- notes of habits which I'd like to establish
- around 60 project sheets in 6 folders
- a calendar of 2006

I had much more earlier (next action cards, agendas, todo lists etc) but they didn't fit my current lifestyle.

The 6 project folders are the following:
1. Routine - Predefined tasks for the sleepy mornings
2. Lifehacks - Preview before starting the day
3. Waiting for - I prefer reviewing this daily
4. Survive - Covey Q1 tasks [explanation]
5. Grow - Covey Q2 tasks
6. Someday/Maybe - Review weekly

There are two bad smells/habits I often encounter:

1. forgetting about the Hipster habit
I often find myself forgetting about the Hipster completely; then some hours go by and I start feeling depressed because I know that I am not doing the things I should. Unluckily it takes some time to realize that I'm not using the Hipster where everything is organized. I am surprised because I have been using it every single day for 6 months. Hopefully I just need some more time, at least I'm getting better every day.

2. not using the Inbox habit
In every 5-15 minutes somebody/something interrupts me. Many times I found myself acting/replying immediately instead of putting the task to the inbox and processing it when the time arrives.

If I can successfully get rid of these bad habits, things will surely be great (but its okay now too).

Anyways, using the Hipster is so much fun. Reminds me of my early school years. In this digital age its truly a gift, I'd warmly recommend a Hipster to anybody.

Let me explain what I meant when writing Being Proactive IS Feeling Alive some weeks ago (I couldn't/didn't want to put it in words yet).

Most people are always in the unconscious unconsciousness state. They just hang around doing nothing and they even don't realize it. And they are boring.

Some of them will realize that this is actually painful and needs to be changed: if they want to feel good, they need to start doing something. They are usually doing it poorly and have no idea about it. But they are at least doing it sometimes.

The problem is with the sometimes. Most activities involve multiple persons. If you only deal with your thing sometimes, the other party won't see you as reliable. If you make promises, you will even become untrustworthy in their eyes.

Finally, some of these people will do it long enough to have the chance to look back and analyze what (and how) they did and where they need to improve. They will get conscious about their mistakes so that they can start working on preventing them in the future.

There are lots of things matching this.

Take learning for example. First you are unconsciously unconscious; that is, you have no idea what you don't know. Then you start experimenting with things and after some time you will be able to tell what you need to learn/where you need to improve. This is conscious unconsciousness. Finally, you will oversee everything and you get to the point of conscious consciousness, the state where you do things with reason. Thats where I am with programming right now and I can tell you its an awesome feeling when all your steps are backed with a reason. Jeff wrote about this in Expert and Novice Programmers.

Music is similar. When I started out with electronic music, I loved everything that had electronic elements in it. Today I am in love with the trance genre mostly because I know how complex and hard to produce it is. If you are one of the people being not really familiar or not really liking electronic music, you probably say its not music at all and anybody can produce such songs. And you are right. The skills needed to produce the shit that you are likely to have ever heard on the radio can probably be picked up in some weeks. If you are one of those people, you are totally unconscious about this yet. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that there is an actually huge enough piece of electronic music that is art. But how many art do you get on the radio or the TV?

Most people are unconscious. Thats why we get on the TV what we do. I believe unconscious people do unconscious things. Watching TV without a reason equals being unconscious.

The problem with being unconscious is that its one of the most boring things on Earth. On the other hand, being totally conscious about something is one of the most exciting things that exist.

I believe the more things you do consciously than unconsciously, the better you feel and the more successful you are.

Turning to my previous post which was about integrity, I suspect that doing enough things consciuosly is integrity itself. I am still unsure because I haven't reached there yet, but I'll definitely report about it as soon as I'm experiencing it in the long run.

I only enjoy partial integrity in my life and seem to loose motivation frequently these months. This is not unusual at this age I guess. At least I am aware of it, so I can consciously work on solutions. Even for Steve it took a decade and hundreds of personal development books to "get it".

It was sometime in 2005 that I finally "got it" at a deep enough level and recognized that consciousness gives me the freedom to create my own inner experience at all times, and my inner reality projects outward into the world and then feeds back into my perceptions.
(interview with Steve at Entrepreneurs Journey)

I'm sure it won't happen overnight. This is a process and not a single event.

Last week I have added Integrity by Dr Henry Cloud to my Personal Development Wish List. It was reviewed by John Richardson at Success Begins Today and I feel like it has many ideas/new aspects to offer.

This night I met Zig Ziglar's "Success for Dummies" audiotape. Despite its title it provides lots of information on motivation.

Here are my favourite quotes from it:

"In short, its not the absence of opportunity but the absence of motivation that is the problem for most people."
"Being motivated means being ready to take action."

"People with integrity do the right thing."
"Integrity. Character, consistency, persistency."

"Motivators:
1. The desire for gain.
2. The fear of loss (legitimate fear for realistic reasons is not only natural but also desirable).

Rewards: powerful tools for motivation."

The very next step is to identify what would bring more motivation to every single thing that I'm seriously doing and bring them into effect. The good news is that I'm very good in coming up with ideas so this shouldn't take too much effort ;) Heck, I already have some tips for the most important ones.

Here is a quote that I'd like to keep in mind, that's why I'm posting it.

"If you talk openly about your "big" plans for opening and succeeding in your own business you are telegraphing an important message to everyone you mention it to: You're looking for them to approve of your plans. You're LOOKING for approval without realizing it.

What else does it telegraph? You have no confidence in yourself.


The two biggest causes for not getting started has to do with:

1. TALKING too much about what you are going to do, instead of DOING it.

2. NOT taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life - it's always someone else's fault. It's NOT!"

This is from David Vallieres' newsletter. You can subscribe somewhere on that page.

Please remind me of this occassionally everybody.

I have so many thoughts on my mind to blog about. I have even more drafts. Until I get myself to blogging regularly again, here is some reading for those of you sharing my views.

1. Phil Gyfords' Notes on David Allen's Getting Things Done

2. How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham

"It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a) spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I'd prefer? Honestly, no.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month."

1. Looks like Personal Development will be my greatest hobby in the following years. I'm reading tons of materials in this topic and I'm enjoying it currently more than anything else.

a) Here is this professor who (by his name) comes from my country, called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He wrote some books that I definitely wish to read in the following months.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
The Evolving Self
Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life
Good Business : Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning
Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play
The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter
The Meaning of Things : Domestic Symbols and the Self
Talented Teenagers : The Roots of Success and Failure (Cambridge Studies in Social & Emotional Development) (Am I still considered to fall into this category? I think no. But it will probably open up my eyes in many areas; at least I'll know what to teach to my child when the time comes)
Optimal Experience : Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness

b) Then comes David Allen:
Getting Things Done
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life or the translation of it (probably the first because I prefer original content)

c) The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

d) Books by Kiyosaki

e) Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham (I share his views).

2. Tech Books which don't fall either into the personal development nor the business category but the web development/architecture field which I love too.

a) I'd like to read Jason's one called php|architect's Guide to Design Patterns

b) Some more PHP/Web/Architecture-related books:
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky
Enterprise Integration Patterns : Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions by Gregor Hohpe
Extending and Embedding PHP by George Schlossnagle
Scalable Internet Architecture by Theo Schlossnagle

The last blog entry was about dedicating a timeframe to work and leaving the rest to other activities. The intention to restrict myself is to establish a better life/work balance.

Thinking about this for some more hours has led me to create a daily plan that I want to follow.

The two main parts of the plan are:
1. spend fixed amount of time in the office
2. spend fixed amount of time in the studio

By having only a limited time to finish things, my performance is much better. My goal has turned into maximizing the usage of the office/studio time instead of just being there and waiting for something to happen.

Other important points in my daily plan are fixed times for getting up, going to sleep, doing sports (actually running), spending time with family/friends, home/garden thingies and so on.

I think the only thing that can make this plan succeed is to leave up with whatever I do when the time comes, forget about it until next time and move on to my next period of the day.

I've created a spreadsheet with the days of August on the top and the tasks that I need to do on the left. To each cell, I either put an X or an O sign to log whether I've succeeded or not.

Take daily action on a long term and results will be unbelievable. I wonder where I'll be one month later.

The key point is getting down to the tasks. I noticed that thinking like "I need to start the next task" actually leads to finishing while "I need to finish this project today" does not. Steve Pavlina writes about this in his Overcoming Procrastination article and I do agree with him.

Blogging every morning is also part of my daily plan as I promised yesterday in Steve's blog entry about Overcoming Negative Emotions and Boosting Motivation.

Have a great Sunday afternoon!

Though I'm an atheist, this is such an inspiring story that I have to share it with you. Whenever you feel down (just like me now), it might bring back the hope.

God Will Never Quit

One day I decided to quit... I quit my job, my relationship, my spirituality... I wanted to quit my life.

I went to the woods to have one last talk with God. "God", I said. "Can you give me one good reason not to quit?" His answer surprised me...

"Look around", He said. "Do you see the fern and the bamboo?"

"Yes", I replied.

"When I planted the fern and the bamboo seeds, I took very good care of them. I gave them light. I gave them water. The fern quickly grew from the earth. It's brilliant green covered the floor. Yet nothing came from the bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the bamboo. In the second year the fern grew more vibrant and plentiful. And again, nothing came from the bamboo seed. But I did not quit on the bamboo." He said.

"In year three there was still nothing from the bamboo seed. But I would not quit. In year four, again, there was nothing from the bamboo see. I would not quit." He said.

"Then in the fifth year a tiny sprout emerged from the earth. Compared to the fern it was seemingly small and insignificant... But just 6 months later the bamboo rose to over 100 feet tall. It had spent the five years growing roots. Those roots made it strong and gave it what it needed to survive. I would not give any of my creations a challenge it could not handle." He said to me.

"Did you know, my child, that all this time you have been struggling, you have actually been growing roots?"

"I would not quit on the bamboo. I will never quit on you."

"Don't compare yourself to others." He said. "The bamboo had a different purpose than the fern. Yet they both make the forest beautiful."

"Your time will come", God said to me. "You will rise high"

"How high should I rise?" I asked.

"How high will the bamboo rise?" He asked in return.

"As high as it can?" I questioned

"Yes." He said, "Give me glory by rising as high as you can."

Thanks a lot to this blog and these scrolls for repeatedly reminding me which way to go.