“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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“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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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
-Alfred North Whitehead

Good goals are living breathing statements of who we are becoming, they should not be static and rigid representations of what we once longed for. Still, many of us have had the experience of writing down goals, only to feel alienated from them weeks later, as if they were a historical document from the past.

Technorati Tags: art of progress, authentic goals, breathe new life into goals, daily goal growth, goal maintenance, goal prioritization, Goals, good goals are living breathing statements, growing our goals, life goals, making goals better, Productivity