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Life

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Perseverence (AKA “No, It’s Not OK To Quit”)

Late Saturday afternoon, I set out to run 20 miles. I'd love to say it was a beautiful run, filled with energy and good thoughts, but in reality it was terrible. After mile one I was in pain. After mile three it was worse. This was an important training run for the Chicago Marathon I've signed up for in October, and I almost quit. I thought about turning around or walking home, or even calling a cab and paying for it with the cash I had put in the bottom of my shoe.

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Life

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How To Be Unhappy

The pursuit of happiness is as old as modern civilization. Books, elixers, religions, and philosophies are all devoted to it. Happiness is a quest, an obsession, and a universal aspiration. But what does it take to be unhappy? In some ways, it's easier than happiness itself. New research and much life experience offers a simple recipe for genuine discontent.

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Life

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5 Short Notes on Gratitude

When I wasn't getting extorted or doing drugs in Yemen, I enjoyed touring around with my fixer. Several times, I noticed that when we passed a beggar on the street, he took a small amount of money from his pocket and gave it to them. Observing this behavior caused me to think. I'm supposed to give to the poor, but do I really?

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Work

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Want to Increase Income? Take a Quick Survey for Our Next Project

I'm excited to make an (early) announcement about our first business project in more than a year. This project is all about helping people improve their business—or create a successful new one—by understanding why people buy, and what they really want. If you're just getting started, you can spend a grand total of $13 and pick up a copy of The $100 Startup, which now has more than 100,000 copies in print around the world ...

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Travel

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Adventures in Yemen

Upon my arrival in Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, it took a while to get underway. Immigration was uneventful and I had met the guy who would serve as my guide for the next three days, but we had a problem finding a working taxi to take us downtown. After putting my bag in the back of the first taxi, I went to sit down, but a heated argument was taking place between the guide and the driver. Finally it was determined that this driver was attempting to extort us, so I retrieved my bag and we walked further down the road, where cheaper taxis were available ...

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Work

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Starting a Business While Working a Full-Time Job

For every self-employed person, there are a lot more people who would like to be. But many of these people already have jobs, and everyone is busy. Here's an idea: if you're working a regular job and want to be on your own someday, don't wait for a career break that may never come. Instead, start the business now ... without waiting to quit or take a leave of absence. Why would you want to do this? Two good reasons: opportunity and security.

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Travel

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Letter from Brazzaville

Brazzaville, the capital city of the Republic of Congo, has a spiffy new airport in the style of Paris or Madrid. Coming in on the RwandAir flight from Kigali, I'm shocked to see actual jet bridges where one can walk directly from the aircraft into the airport. Dozens of times I've landed in random African airports, deplaned the aircraft and been bused to the terminal, even if it's a short walk away and there are no other aircraft anywhere to be seen. As far as I can tell, the logic is, “Hey, we have these buses—we need to use them.”

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Life

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The Free Lunch Movement

You may have heard that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is untrue on every level, and also a terrible lie. Over and over throughout our short lives, all of us have been given something for nothing. We don't deserve free lunch, yet it continues to arrive on a regular basis. No charge, ma'am. This one's on me, sir.

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Travel

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On the Road Again: Next Stop, Republic of Congo

Greetings, friends and readers. For the past few months I've been confined to a short leash. I visited twenty cities in North America for the first leg of The $100 Startup tour, and I managed to hop over to London for the U.K. launch as well. Last week, I also went on a post-WDS vacation to Alaska. Aside from those trips, however, I've been homebound and my passport has been sorely underused. I'm now heading back out to see the world, with only eight countries remaining ...

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Life

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How to Do Big Things

If you want to change the world, follow a dream, or otherwise find your own identity, you need to be able to do big things. In addition to being a prerequisite for growth, doing big things is also a lot of fun. But how do you do them? What steps do you take? Thankfully, much of the work required to do big things relates to the mindset of deciding to do them. With that in mind, consider these suggestions for your own pursuit of meaning and adventure ...

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Life

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Moonlight in Alaska

I'm off the grid this week on my first vacation since ... forever. It's a little disorienting, but I'm working on it. A few items of random interest: The $100 Startup continues to race up the charts, returning to the New York Times Bestseller List again this week. Thanks so much for your support! We're planning to do more events in local cities during the first week of September.

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Life

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The $100 Investment

Have you ever withdrawn $100,000 in cash from the bank? Me neither ... until last week. This post includes a video from last weekend's World Domination Summit, and a brief explanation on why our team invested $100 in each WDS attendee.

A number of people have asked me to share more about the surprise we unveiled at the end of WDS 2012. As mentioned on Thursday, you can read the experiences of many other people who were at WDS all over the internet. (This list will be updated soon, since there are now more than 150 posts.)

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Life

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What Happened at the World Domination Summit

I've been having a hard time writing up my experience at the second-annual World Domination Summit last weekend. I feel exhausted, but mostly in a good way. Our team did a fantastic job, with more than 80 volunteers working together to put on an epic weekend adventure, complete with block parties, dunk tanks, keynote sessions, dozens of workshops and presentations, and ... so much more. I'll be going away for a few days to reflect more on the experience, but I don't want to keep you waiting on a recap—so I'll send you to a few of the 100+ reviews and writeups that have been published by others in the past few days.

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Life

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World Domination Summit 2012: Early Photo Recap

For the past five days, I've been immersed in a weekend adventure with 1,000 of our closest friends from more than 20 countries. They'll be able to tell the story better than I can, so at some point soon I'll do a roundup of their posts. (Attendees: link your posts to this one or tag them with #WDS.) For now, here are a few photos that might give the rest of you an idea of what our weekend was like ...

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