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[Note #2: I've been on a small summer hiatus.  Thanks for sticking around.]

In this conversation on Duff McDuffy’s Precision Change , we talk about…

• Why computer hacks probably shouldn’t be considered “life” hacks…and what should.
• Why “if there’s a path, it’s not your path,” and how to find yours!
• How no Firefox add-on is going to help you ask the tough questions of what life’s about.
• Why there’s no “there” there in doing things that are “going to lead to somewhere.”
• Why you should never affirm “everything I touch turns to gold” or risk ending up like King Midas!
• The many forms of lifestyle design, and why only a custom design will do.
• Why if you are truly lifehacking, you might appear flaky for a while, but eventually you will work out the bugs.

Related links of possible interest:

• Precision Change, an awesome personal development podcast
• The Life Hack Misnomer, an article that goes more in depth into the “lifehack” language, and where it goes wrong
• The Cult of Abundance, Goal Autoimmune Disorder, & Abundance 2.0

For more more accidental crotch pointing, grab a free subscription to The Growing Life.

[If you read nothing else in this article, read about the income snowball. It's halfway through this article.]

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.  Now put foundations under them.
-Henry David Thoreau

Most of my articles focus on the “inner game”? of personal liberation (from traditional work environments and lifestyles). That’s because I — like a million other people in the personal development space — believe that change usually manifests on the inner plane before it manifests on the outer plane (see Socrates, the Bible, Thoreau, Stephen Covey, etc.).

But it’s hard to leave even a horrible situation and begin re-envisioning your life if you don’t believe you’ll be able to support yourself. Because if you can’t get around the money issue then what’s the point?

Here are two reactions to my last post . . .

Go ahead, tell the government to fuck off, go live in cardboard box if that is such a great improvement on your career.
-Ufia

I think many of us "real" people would happily become "unreal" if we could figure out another way to get money. Homeless people would fit into this "unreal" category, but I don’t want to resort to that to simply shed the title.
-Disillusion

In addition to the money issue, people also hold the self-limiting belief that all this lifestyle design stuff is for those who don’t have to financially support children. I usually hear guys making “the kid argument”? — it probably has something to do with our urge to provide). On the other hand, I’ve spoken with several women who are living creatively with children. (They believe that if you feed a child, love them, and spend time with them, that they’ll be OK. I couldn’t agree more).