Predictions for your future in the information age.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
20 years ago it was incredibly difficult to create a reality that you could effect.
You had control over the people you came in contact with. You could reach out to anyone who you could look up the phone number too.
In order to build anything, you needed to pander to the established media. They thrived on this, of course, because no one had a choice but to talk to them.
Now no one needs the media, and you can see how much of an empty shell it was –reality dumbed down to fit into 20 second sound bites. A 24 news-cycle thriving on the degradation of others. I know first hand, I’ve worked for the media.
For 50 years we sat idly by and watched “Lost”, now it’s time to reclaim your time.
Television domination is over now. Anyone can publish what they believe in. It is fairly easy to gather followers who will support your cause. This blog proves this, and so does every other blog out there with a following.
There is no longer any excuse to not do what you love. Seriously, create your own movement.
There are millions of things you could be doing tonight instead of watching TV. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that you should destroy it entirely.
If you must watch something, watch TED. Ideas are far better to fill your brain with than the emptiness of the airwaves.
Here are a few of the changes that I see coming in the next five years because of this change:
Everyone will be supporting a community of minimalist businesses.
As business diversifies, so will the support. Twenty years ago big business dominated because they could buy many more television ads than the rest of us. This is why there’s a Burger King in every single town.
With the rise of social media, everyone now has a chance to find their true following.
As society moves away from that drudge and start appreciating quality hand-made work again, we will start to see consumer support move in that direction. Everyone will be the business owner, the marketer, and the consumer. We will support individual’s single-operator businesses from across the globe.
It will become much easier to rise to the top at what you’re passionate about.
It’s already so easy to Gatejump your way to success, and it will become even easier as good ideas float to the top of the cloud faster. All you have to do is create exceptional value, which isn’t actually that hard. Yes, you’ve been trained to do nothing by the TV in your living room for the last 50 years.
You need to destroy it now, and start working on your own projects every single night until an idea worth spreading appears to you.
Go on walks. Get in touch with nature. Start drawing. Get a camera. Take a dance class. Eat new foods. Write something that means something. Finger paint on your wall. Do something that will make people look at you weird, because the weird people are kicking your economic butt in it’s fluorescently lit chair.
Everyone will have to unlock their inner creativity.
Robots, computers, and outsourcing are quickly replacing cubicle drones. If you have no talents and no inspiration in your daily life, you need to up your game. The robots are coming for you.
Anything that can be done better by a computer is not a good career aspiration.
You are an individual, and it’s totally your fault if you continue to take orders and do repetitive tasks all day, and then go home and watch CSI. Make a change, start to design your freakin’ life, and get out of there. You need to become an artist, a creative, and an original thinker if you’re going to get out of the unemployment line.
A college education is quickly becoming less needed.
20 years ago, the only way to access information was through teachers at a school. This is no longer the case. Many universities are at a major disadvantage in the chain of information distribution, because they’re a bottleneck. They contain numerous teachers who haven’t seen the light of day since 1982.
The world has changed a lot since many of the teachers got to these schools, it also moves a lot faster. The real time information available on the net and through recently published books far exceeds the educational ability of larger institutions.
School teaches you to be good at school.
It’s not to say you won’t learn something there, and I did go, but is it worth $150,000? You have to ask that question.
Don’t go to business school, get a Personal MBA. Read business books, like Jason Fried’s Rework.
You will have to figure out what you’re passionate about.
If you’re stumbling around wondering what you’re actually interested in, that’s okay for a bit. Eventually you need to start doing something though. Sit yourself down and contemplate: what do I really enjoy doing?
If you don’t have an answer, here’s another solution: Stop doing everything you hate doing and see what you’re left with.
The silence of emptiness can be a huge motivator to finding your true calling. Stop running around, start silently contemplating what you want to do for the rest of your life. Once you find that sweet spot, you’ll actually be happy.
What else can you remove to free yourself further?
Once you know what you care about, you have to go further. What ballast do you need to throw overboard to get to the next level? The more junk you remove from your life, the more time you will have to pursue your goals. You will reclaim your dreams. As you remove each task that you hate doing, you will free yourself to make positive choices towards creating great work.
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What predictions do you have for the future of the information age?
What steps are you taking to take advantage of the changes?
If this made you think, share it with 5 people. Thank you.
You’ll be dead sooner than you think. No kidding! Really! What are you doing with your life until then?
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
A few days ago I had a brief muscle spasm in my left arm. It stopped after a short while, but not before I remembered Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight. I’m having a stroke (I thought!)
Anyway I’ll spare you the imagined details, but I’d momentarily convinced myself that I was probably going to die mere days after my 25th birthday.
Well, I’m still here and have regained a normal feeling arm, but there is a way that thinking about your own death can stick with you for a few days.
You can die at any moment, and it could happen at any time.
Here are a couple of meditations on death, in regards to the topics that I write about here at Far Beyond The Stars.
1. You can’t take it with you.
It’s a well known cliche at this point, when you pass on most your stuff goes in the trash. No one cares anymore. I know some people will disagree with me on this, and have stories to prove me otherwise. There will always be someone who will save a dead person’s stuff, but the majority of everyone won’t.
I’ve seen the stuff that people leave behind. Most of it only has meaning to the deceased.
2. Being safe won’t save you.
So many people live their lives in fear of dangerous things happening to them. In some cases this is justifiable fear, but in a lot of cases it’s not. Staying inside your house won’t save you from death, it will lead to you dying inside from not seeing the world.
Get out and live your life, every single day.
3. Do the best with the time you have.
You only have so much time, do your best with it. If you aren’t happy with your situation, you need to start making a change. Sitting around complaining about it won’t make a difference.
Try to spend every day working toward your ideal reality.
4. Buying stuff is not living your life.
I know, the advertisers tell you otherwise every single day. This is why you should destroy your TV, because the ads are making you feel inadequate, so you go out to the store and buy another pair of shoes. You only need one pair of shoes, make it a good pair and they’ll last you three years. In truth, your consumption is destroying the planet, so stop doing it.
Going to the store does not equal living your life. Instead, seek experiences over consumption, and you’ll be much happier with your life.
5. What would you do if you only had a week to live?
I love this exercise, even if it’s so morbid. Steve Jobs lives his life as if every day is the last, and look at what he’s managed to accomplish.
Take a moment and dreamline what you’d do, if you had only a week to live. Actually write this down. Chances are it won’t involve sitting at a desk waiting until 5pm. Can you make every day into your last week? Imagine how much happier you’d be.
6. Having less can encourage you to find peace and happiness inside yourself.
When you remove all the clutter, you have a huge opportunity to search for the depth of ordinary existence. Many people fill up their lives with junk, because we’ve been taught by advertising that buying stuff will make us happy. It doesn’t do anything but give you a momentary spark of adrenalin.
When you remove all the nonsense, you start to see the wisdom at the basis of reality. This is very hard work, but I believe that every has the ability to ask these questions of themselves. Trust me, the answers are worth seeking.
As for me, I’m going to do my best to create my ideal reality every day.
At the moment, I’m listening to a live string quartet at Tea Lounge in Brooklyn. It’s beautiful.
Today might be my last, I want it to be a good one. Don’t you?
Ash has thoughts on this as well.
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Write a few sentences about your last week on earth and leave it in the comments, if you feel comfortable. I’d love to hear how you’ll spend it.
Retweet this story if it helped you. Thank you so much.
Karol Gajda can teach you to be free.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
Some people are content to live their lives in three places 95% of the time.
They valiantly wake up every morning, put on clothes, and walk the five steps to their car.
They fire it up and drive to work, where they spend twelve hours checking Facebook and doing what they’re told.
Then they go home, exhausted.
Once a year they hop aboard a flight to a cheap beach somewhere and spend a few days getting sunburned and sipping tequila.
Does that life sound familiar?
These people have convinced themselves that this is the only reality. There is no other option but to maintain the status-quo and deal.
Until they get to retire at some point impossibly far into the future, after they’ve wasted their youth. Then what?
Well you might be taking that path, but it’s not the only option.
There are people who’ve decided to opt out of this life sentence of working until you die.
These people want to teach you how to free yourself (if you want to.)
I want to introduce you to my friend Karol Gajda.
Karol went from having the house and an expensive car to living and working from anywhere in very little time.
Currently he’s teaching people how to attain his level of freedom over at Ridiculously Extraordinary. He just made a guitar with his bare hands in India! How awesome is that?
You can do this too, Karol can teach you how.
A few weeks ago Karol emailed me a Minimalist Quick Start Guide based off my work in The Art of Being Minimalist.
I’ve delayed too long in releasing it, so I’m just going to put it up here now!
The Minimalist Quick Start Guide explains Karol’s own journey towards living a minimalist life free from the confines of society’s expectation. It’s awesome, it’s free.
Download Karol Gajda’s Minimalist Quick Start Guide for free.
Definitely check out Karol’s work at Ridiculously Extraordinary.
I interviewed Karol a few months ago.
How adopting a minimalist approach of unautomating your finances can get you out of debt.
Interview by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

Adam Baker and his daughter Milligan
If anyone can teach you the skills to get yourself out of debt, it’s Adam Baker of the blog Man Vs. Debt.
Over the last year, Baker, his wife Courtney, and their daughter Milligan, paid off all of their consumer debt, sold all of their ‘crap’, and traveled to Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Now they’re back in Indiana, and Baker has written an amazing and simple e-book on taking control of your financial situation.
I don’t talk much about finances her on my blog, usually my advice is quite simple: stop buying stupid stuff, start living your life.
Luckily, Baker goes into a great deal more depth in his new e-book Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money.
I’ve been a huge fan of Baker’s, before I even started writing Far Beyond The Stars. His writing on Man Vs. Debt and as a contributing writer on Get Rich Slowly helped inspire me during my own journey towards minimalism.
My favorite part of the Unautomate Your Finances is Baker’s signature 2-page minimalist budgeting system, which is the simplest method I’ve seen to force yourself to acknowledge the money you’re actually spending during every transaction.
Today, I’m honored to present this interview I did with Baker over the weekend. We discussed the benefits of Unautomation, the danger of subscriptions, and how Baker sold all his ‘crap’ and traveled the world with his family.
Everett Bogue: Your e-book is called Unautomate Your Finances, and your theory of Unautomation is heavily discussed throughout the e-book. How can Unautomation help get you out of debt?
Adam Baker: Unautomation is simply any time you are willing to trade convenience in for increased consciousness (basically the opposite of what we do when we automate). It can help people get out debt in many ways!
First, it raises awareness of our situations. This is often the first obstacles in coming to grips with just how destructive debt can be in our lives. Unautomation also encourages us to focus on one goal at a time. Often, we never pay off our debt, because we are juggling so many of our “expected” responsibilities. We may be expected to live a certain life, save a certain amount, or do a certain set of things.
By ramping up and honing in our focus, we can start to really chew away at our debt.
Everett: What is one powerful way to Unautomate your finances?
Baker: In the guide I cover at least 27 “core action steps”. However, one of my favorites is adopting a simple budget.
Courtney and I primarily budget by hand, using two sheets of paper and a very straight forward system. It’s worked wonders for us and budgeting this way is not only easy, but it raises our awareness more than any other method!
Everett: I love your approach to stuff (sell your crap) in UYS. How can a healthy relationship with stuff help you get out of debt?
Baker: Excess stuff creates all sorts of burdens. Clutter begets more clutter. And excess stuff takes space to store and money to maintain. It trains us to want more and more. Look, there’s nothing wrong with having possessions, but like you pointed out we’ve crossed the healthy point as a society.
As a bonus, most of us can generate up several hundred dollars (or even more) when we go to actually purge our possessions. This can be used to aggressively attack our other goals!
Everett: What are some of the things that you got rid of when you were downsizing?
Baker: Oh gosh… Well, we really got rid of everything! We started with big obvious things… excess furniture, electronics, a television, and even one of our cars. But we kept going! Eventually we took what was an apartment full of crap and turned it into two backpacks to start our travels.
We’ve accumulated some more stuff since coming back home, but we’re desperately trying to fend off our urges to consume.
Everett: You talk in your e-book about how subscriptions can take an unnoticed toll on our finances. What are some of the unnecessary subscriptions that we sign up for?
Baker: Cell phone contracts, cable services, rental leases, magazines, newspapers, online apps, widgets, bells, whistles, monitoring services, etc…
Let me be very clear, though. There are plenty of cases where subscriptions are necessary and/or desirable! My suggestion is to mentally purge your subscriptions and start from scratch. Examine them all and figure out which ones you really want/need.
Also, be sure to look for creative solutions and/or alternatives to avoid them (this is sometimes not hard at all). Be careful of signing long-term contracts on anything. 2-3 months from now your “necessary” expense could quickly become not so important!
Everett: Leo Babauta discusses in the forward of Unautomate Your Finances about how he used many Unautomation techniques to get himself out of debt, but now he’s back to automation. At what point do you think it’s acceptable, or even advantageous, to go back to automating your finances?
Baker: I think automation is extremely powerful when applied to healthy, sustainable finances habits and when it is reevaluated on a regular basis. But we have to be careful of looking at automation as a solution to our problems or financial issues. It’s not a solution. It can be a powerful tool, but it only magnifies the existing habits we have!
Installing the empowering habits in the first place often takes the opposite of automation!
Everett: Thanks so much for this opportunity Baker. Good luck with your e-book launch!
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Adam Baker’s new e-book Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money is available now for only $17.
Because I’m a huge supporter of Adam Baker’s work, I’ve decided to become an affiliate for his work. 50% of the sale price goes to support my work here at Far Beyond The Stars.
If this interview helped you, I’d love if you could share it with anyone you know who’s having trouble with their finances.
Thank you.
Special Launch-day Bonus (March 9th ONLY!): I’ve just been informed that the first 100 people to purchase the e-book get access to UStream with Baker himself, where he will discuss any questions you have about the e-book and finances in general. Don’t miss out!
We need you to change the world
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
Over the last week the popularity of Far Beyond The Stars has skyrocketed (again). I don’t pay attention to stats often, but needless to say, they’ve gone way up. My traffic and subscriber count continues to double every month.
This ongoing success all because of you, the people who support these ideas.
Today I’m releasing a brief free e-book that I wrote over the last week. It’s a short 20 pages, and it covers what I believe are the basics of how to create a movement online.
Disclaimer: This e-book is completely free, and released under a creative commons license. You will not be asked to give me your email, or subscribe to a newsletter when you download it. It contains no affiliate links, and is not intended for any purpose other than to help you learn to create a movement.
How to Create a Movement by Everett Bogue
Download the free e-book, How to Create a Movement.
This e-book isn’t for everyone. If you’re content to sit at home, watch TV, and embrace the status-quo… well, you won’t find much information that helps you here.
How to Create a Movement is for people who want to help people, support themselves through their art, and change the world.
Why I wrote How to Create a Movement.
I continue to get emails from smart people who are seeking change, who want to learn my ‘secrets’ to making money online. There are no secrets, but I hope this can help.
I believe that the easiest way to find success online is through creating or joining a movement. A movement is anything that seeks to change the world in a small way. There are a number of mediums you can use to create one. Some create a movement through art, others through music, speaking.
I choose to create a movement through words and ideas.
I hope this e-book can help you start your own movements. I hope that it helps you find greater success in your life. Most of all, I hope it helps you change the lives of others.
Thank you for all of your support over the last few months, it’s been a wonderful experience so far. I have a feeling the next few months we’re going to see even more powerful changes.
Download the free e-book, How to Create a Movement.
If this e-book helps you, I have two simple requests:
- Help spread the word. You can do this using the retweet button, or any way you should choose.
- Let me know what you think. Please leave a comment below, find me on twitter or contact me. I’d love to hear what you think.
-Everett Bogue
Special thanks to Chris O’Byrne for his editing expertise.