“Everything has [already] been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.”
-Raoul Vaneigem

In 2005, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman injected a bestselling hit, The World is Flat, into the national psyche. The book’s 5th “flatting” factor is outsourcing. Friedman argues that the practice enables companies to componentize manufacturing and service efforts, thus making each component more efficient and cost effective.

In August of 2005, author A.J. Jacobs (author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically) read Friedman’s book and thought to himself, “why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun?” “Why can’t I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century?” “Why can’t I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can’t I outsource my life?” He then goes on to write a notable piece of cultural history for Esquire called My Outsourced Life (notable because it later catches on in a big way). In My Outsourced Life, Jacobs outsources everything from worrying and spousal relations, to email and work related research. It’s an entertaining read and one that I recommend.

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W. Clement Stone said “[w]hatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Back in the day, my former self tuned out whenever it heard that quote; it just seemed too cliché. But I became reminded of Clement’s words after seeing more than a few photoshopped goals.

Photoshopping a goal involves manipulating digital images to visually represent your goals as if they already existed. An example would be taking a PDF version of your bank statement and adding a couple of zeros to the balance. A low tech (i.e. non-photoshop) implementation might involving having a picture taken of you in your dream car (even if it doesn’t belong to you), and then meditating on the resulting picture while holding thoughts of ownership.

The idea is that photoshopped goals help your subconscious believe that you can attain things previously thought impossible.  Getting your sub-conscious to buy into a goal radically empowers you to materialize the goal in real life. Some call it self-deception, others call it the law of attraction.

 

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
-Bruce Lee

In Getting Things Done, productivity guru David Allen discuses the benefits of having a "Mind Like Water." Here’s the quotation . . .

In karate there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: "mind like water." Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.
-David Allen

He then explains why Mind Like Water is beneficial. . .

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your staff, your projects, your unread magazines, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a "mind like water."
-David Allen

A Mind Like Water is a beautiful thing and a grounded mode of existence. I’ve been there before, and it’s great. I want to make this one thing clear: the possibility of having a mind like water is not, itself, a myth.

So what is the Mind Like Water Myth? Here goes . . .

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“If you find stories with bad links, off-topic content, or duplicate entries, click “Bury.” That’s how we get the spam out of the system and let the good stuff rise to the top.”
-Digg

Most of us don’t lack resources, we lack insightful & creative goals that unlock our inner ninjas and wreak havoc on our world in beautiful ways. More on this later, let’s get started with some groundwork. . .

The Scoop on Digg

There’s a lot of whack stuff thrown up on Digg. Much of it is crazy and most of it is bad. But, every once in a while, a needle-in-the-haystack submission makes audacious promises and then delivers (like this).

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Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.*
-Benjamin Franklin

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.*
-James Thurber

It is accepted dogma — perhaps even holy writ — among more than a few personal development writers that getting up early leads to increased productivity. Becoming an early riser has become something of a rite of passage for productivity gurus, and articles on how to become an early riser have been among the first written — and most popular — posts by self-help bloggers such as Steve Pavlina. There’s even an entire blog devoted to waking up early, and the blog claims that "any person who…sets serious goals in his/her life turns to rising early, sooner or later."

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Editor’s Rating: 6.4

Editor’s Note: This review is a third entry in a series of weekly e-book reviews.  The review is a guest post by Thursday Bram of ThursdayBram.com.

The premise of Scott Young’s How to Change a Habit is the plain old fact that everybody wants to change their habits. Much of the blogosphere seems predicated on this fact, from Leo Babauta’s efforts on Zen Habits to J.D. Roth’s bettering of his personal finances through good money habits on Get Rich Slowly.

The key message in Young’s e-book is that the ability to change one’s habits is a simple skill that can be developed.

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Editor’s Rating: 8.2

Editor’s Notes: Here is a second entry in a series of e-book reviews.  This is a guest post by Thursday Bram of ThursdayBram.com.

Leo Babauta, author of the Zen Habits blog, seems to have the knack for writing effective material.

His e-book, Zen to Done, is no different. In 83 pages, Babauta distills hundreds of his own blog posts, the 267 pages in David Allen’s Getting Things Done and the 384 pages of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Babauta took his own mantra of a simple system to heart when writing this e-book. Despite the sheer quantity of information that could have overwhelmed a reader, Babauta managed to avoid the avalanche and provide readers with something that they could actually read one sitting or refer back to as needed. To put it simply, not only was I able to make my way through Zen to Done but it was also an enjoyable experience.

Technorati Tags: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, David Allen, e-book review, E-Book Reviews, getting things done, Leo Babauta, productivity systems, Stephen Covey, Thursday Bram, Zen Habits, Zen to Done