What Does Independence Mean to You?
83 CommentsWhat does independence mean to you?
I asked our community on Facebook and Twitter this week, and here are a few things I heard ...
Author Archives for
How To Make Decisions
10 CommentsMuch of the time, we don't actually want to make decisions. We want to defer or postpone them, allowing another person or some external event to determine our future. In that case, see how to put off making decisions about your life.
But what about those times when you really do want to make a decision, but you aren't sure of the right one?
Here are three approaches ...
You Can Do That? Great. Go Ahead.
83 CommentsWhen I shared the story of a man who tightroped across Niagara Falls, someone said, “That's easy! He had a safety harness.”
Every day I hear from someone who thinks my quest to visit every country in the world is invalid because of some technical reason.
When I talk about people who leave their jobs to make their own way through self-employment, I hear about the advantages these people have and how it must be so simple for them.
Life Is Full of Things You Can’t Fix
Leave your thoughtsBroken hearts. Mistakes that changed the course of a life.
Things that went wrong through no fault of your own, and the things that were your fault.
Global problems. Poverty of all kinds. The war, the famine, the flood.
The activist chooses to believe in the ability to make all things better, sometimes in the face of reason itself. Life is full of things you can't fix, no matter how well-intentioned you are.
The Six-Step Plan to Establish a New Income
44 CommentsMost people want at least one of these things:
a) more freedom
b) more money
Whether you want to quit your job as soon as possible or just establish an additional source of income to have more freedom, you have to take specific action. This post will show you how.
Conversations: Turning Pro, Bravery, and the Get-To World
Leave your thoughtsThis week I've been reading Turning Pro, a new call-to-arms by Steven Pressfield. Here's an interesting section on making a choice:
Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career involves no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us. Are you pursuing a shadow career?
Fame vs. Community: The Small Army Model
32 CommentsI don't often discuss news articles or reblog things from elsewhere, but I loved a recent article on an independent musician who recently raised $1.2M through Kickstarter for her new album.
A couple of things struck me from this story.
Point #1: “It doesn’t feel like a windfall,” Ms. Palmer said in an interview before the party. “It feels like the accumulated reward for years and years of work.”
Time Travel: What Would You Do?
193 CommentsWhat if you could flip a switch and go back in time?
It's right up there with flying and invisibility—the ability to travel in time, to revisit the past and alter the future.
What if you could return to some point in the past and do something different?
On Destiny, Influence, and the Impossibility of Being Self-Taught
49 CommentsBack when I played music I used to say I was self-taught, because I never went to music school or took lessons. But then someone corrected me: “Really, you taught yourself everything?” he said.
“You never listened to other people's music?" he continued. "No one ever showed you something? You never asked for help? You didn't steal your early ideas from other musicians, like all musicians do?”
I got the point: I may have lacked formal education, but I benefited from those who had gone before. One way or another, I had learned from my peers. And after that experience, I stopped saying I was self-taught.
Welcome, New Readers (What AONC Is All About)
Leave your thoughtsAwesome people of The $100 Startup event: San Francisco, Tuesday, May 29th
Greetings from Santa Cruz, California—soon heading down to Los Angeles for a book reading party at Vroman's bookstore tonight.
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. The $100 Startup launched as an instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. We've sold 30,000 copies in the first three weeks and plan to reach many more people over the next few months with the message of freedom and value.
Adventures in Travel Hacking
Leave your thoughtsGreetings from LHR Terminal 3, soon to be departing to San Francisco after a weekend in London for the U.K. launch of The $100 Startup. We've had a lot of new readers join our community over the past month (hi, everyone!) and I thought it would be good to provide an overview of travel hacking: the means of seeing the world in style while on a budget. For the past five years, I've been to at least 20 new countries a year on my quest to go everywhere. In addition to overland travel by bus or train, I get to many of them through a variety of paid and almost-free plane tickets ...
The Decision to Go (Also known as “Now Is the Time!”)
22 CommentsGreetings, friends and readers. This week I'll be in Milwaukee and Columbus, then flying over to London for the first international stop of the new tour. I hope to see many of you on the road! Dates and schedule here.
Report from the Road
Leave your thoughtsGreetings, friends and readers. I've been on the road for 10 days, meeting people in 7 cities and counting so far.
We kicked things off in New York City with a great crowd.
The next day I rode Amtrak up to Boston for a return visit to the Harvard Coop, where I was 18 months ago for The Art of Non-Conformity tour.
The Lesson of Skill Transformation (Also known as “You’re Good at Many Things”)
Leave your thoughtsOne week down, many weeks to go. I've met 700 people on the $100 Startup tour so far, and looking forward to seeing many more.
This week: Chapel Hill, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, and Denver.
And have I mentioned ... THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! I'm extremely grateful.
The Lesson of Convergence (Also known as “How to Change the World”)
45 CommentsThe book is out, and I'm on the road!
The launch party in New York was extremely fun. Last night I was in Boston at the Harvard Coop, and tonight I'm heading down to Washington, DC. We're hitting a new city almost every day for the next four weeks. Tour dates here. And by the way ... THANKS FOR YOUR HELP! It's going very well so far, and we hope to keep it going for a long time.
