Defining the reason I write Far Beyond The Stars.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

There comes a point in every movement when you have to tell certain people they can’t come along for the ride.
I think it’s time I set some proper expectations about who Far Beyond The Stars is being written for.
The reason I’m doing this is simple:
I’m becoming tired of receiving e-mails and comments from people who want me to stop telling the truth. These people want my blog to be something other than it is.
These people want me to write a safer, cleaner, more picturesque idea of what reality actually is.
I won’t change my blog to cater to these fantasies. The harsh reality is that being minimalist can free you. You can’t have the McMansion and also do what I’m doing, it’s just not possible.
So, I’m sorry, I’ve got to establish some limits. I can’t cater to these people and still make meaningful change. So, at the end of this post I’m going to do the unthinkable, I will ask these people to leave.
I don’t care of my subscriber count goes down. I don’t care if less people buy my book.
The most important thing is that we weed the naysayers and the dream zappers out of this movement, so we can focus on the ultimate goal for everyone involved: being minimalist in order to live and work from anywhere.
This is where I’m coming from.
I’m writing this from the perspective of how I’m actually living my life. I know it’s possible because I’m living the life that I write about.
It’s my fault, it’s not very clear when you come on the site what I write about. The internet is a big place and there are a lot of different people (with different goals) who may stumble across my blog. I’m going to make some changes to the layout so my purpose for writing is clearer.
I borrowed the above headline from Jonathan Mead’s Illuminated Mind (a blog which I highly respect), because I think it is the best way to describe the way I’m feeling. I hope you’ll agree, or stop reading this blog.
Far Beyond The Stars is about being minimalist in order to live and work from anywhere.
What Far Beyond The Stars is not about:
- Being happy at your day job until you get old retire and die.
- Purchasing heaps of disposable goods because the TV told you to.
- Buying expensive handbags and reading fashion magazines.
- Having babies, getting a minivan, and going to soccer practice.
- Being content with having a dull and stupid life.
- Settling for less for the best because you think you aren’t good enough.
- Accepting the status-quo and embracing mediocrity.
Why am I saying this?
The comments and emails are from people who want to live safe lives buying too much stuff, instead of pursuing their dreams until they get old and retire and then die.
I’m challenging their perception of how they live their lives. It makes these people scared, because I’m different.
I’ve found a way to live free in a society that wants you to conform, spend more money than you make, and settle for less than the best.
It’s no wonder people think I’m wrong. These ideas destroy the notion that a safe, secure, and incredibly expensive future is what everyone wanted.
The American Dream is dead, there are now millions of American Dreams. This is simply one dream.
A brief definition of being minimalist.
Being minimalist, for me, is about living with less than 100 things so I can move wherever I want. This allows me the freedom to move to San Francisco Bay in May for literally $125 (plane ticket!) + costs for new housing.
I can do this because I am not moving a huge U-haul full of junk across the entire country. All my stuff fits in a backpack.
This doesn’t mean your definition of minimalism can’t be different. Joshua Becker is one of my favorite minimalists, and his e-book Simplify is about applying rational minimalism while living in the suburbs with a family of four. If y0ur definition of minimalism is closer to Joshua’s, I definitely suggest reading his blog (maybe even instead of mine.)
I define minimalism for myself and for my blog as reducing your possessions to make it easier to live and work from anywhere.
There are many ways to apply minimalism, mine is simply one way. It is not the only way.
The benefits of being minimalist.
Being minimalist, as I’ve defined it above, also means that my life-overhead is only food + housing. For instance: last month I spent $750 on rent in Brooklyn and $350 on food. I had a few beers with awesome people. There are a few other costs, but it’s not uncommon for my life in New York of all the most expensive places to cost less than $1500 because of the life choices I’m teaching you to make here.
When I tell people to move to Portland, it’s because your rent will be $350 and your food costs $200. I know because when I lived in Portland these were my expenses.
The reason this scares people is simple: If your life can cost less than $1500 in New York, why aren’t you here if you want to be? It’s a myth that living in a city has to be more expensive. It can be, but it doesn’t need to be.
This freedom from cost enables you to build a better life.
It’s a myth that our lives should cost so much. This lie is perpetuated by advertising and a dying factory culture that dominated our society for the last 150 years.
If your life costs $5000 a month and you’re struggling, it’s because you’ve been lied to by society. Not because I’m writing things that aren’t true.
I assume that everyone reading this blog is somewhat into the idea that being minimalist leads to having more freedom. This is what the blog is about, this is what The Art of Being Minimalist is about.
A brief definition of working anywhere.
The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we do business. People who bought things in a physical form and in physical stores (except for food, which will eventually all be locally grown) are becoming a dying breed.
I’m 25 years old, and my generation is revolutionizing the way we learn and the way we consume information. We do not listen to what the TV tells us to buy. We get our information online, and for the most part we don’t pay for it — unless it’s incredibly good stuff.
What does this change mean?
The reason you hear about newspapers dying, bookstores struggling, and the car manufacturers filing for bankruptcy is all connected. It’s all one big conspiracy that almost everyone doesn’t know about yet.
Everything is changing because of one simple fact: everyone can make a difference.
Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, wrote about this redistribution of power and influence on his blog a few days ago.
The democratization of everything.
The Internet has enabled every single person in the world to be a creator. Previous to this only the people who could get on TV could create things — which led to 150 years of big business domination.
This is why I keep telling everyone to start creating online. Because now, right now, is the moment in time when it is actually possible to create amazing work, start a movement, and make a difference while supporting yourself online.
I don’t think it’ll get any harder to create a movement online, but you might as well start now. You could have 2600 subscribers after 6 months of blogging, like I do. This is plenty of subscribers to support your life without a day job if you apply minimalism the way I do.
How are being minimalist and working anywhere connected?
It certainly isn’t easy to strike out on your own and start creating your own movements in order to work from anywhere. This is why I combined the idea of being minimalist in order to live and work from anywhere.
If you have less stuff, if your overhead is low, you give yourself permission, funding, and time to pursue your goals.
If your life costs $500 a month, you can do almost anything.
If your life costs $5000 a month you will be a prisoner to the dying corporate system until someone decides you aren’t needed 5-10 years down the road. Then where are you? Out on the street because society changed while you were working under florescent lights.
This is what happened to the people who lost their jobs (and the ones who still don’t have them) when the great recession happened. They woke up one day to a world that was vastly different for the one they thought they’d signed up for. Then they were asked to pack up their stuff and leave their cushy cubicle chairs.
Big business cares about you until the moment they don’t need you anymore, and then that dream you have of retiring to the beach dies with your job — this happens far more frequently in the velocity of the modern world. Besides, waiting until you’re 65 to have fun is a silly way to live your life.
When someone tells you it’s safer to be a career employee at a company (or in education for that matter,) they are the ones telling lies to you.
Be free now, stop waiting for when you have arthritis.
Why I write Far Beyond The Stars.
Far Beyond The Stars is written to teach people, who want to change, how to make the transition to the life that I’ve described above.
This movement is training people to live a minimalist freedom lifestyle like Karol Gajda and Cody McKibben are in Asia right now. To live like Colin Wright is living in New Zealand right now.
Far Beyond The Stars is not being published to teach you how to be ordinary and to settle for having a boring life where you don’t push your limits.
I’m actually living this life. I’m a minimalist, I live and work from anywhere. It’s possible.
So, please stop emailing me and asking me to write a blog about being conventional. You don’t need to read a blog to learn how to be normal, it’s easy enough to do what everyone else is doing. The hard part is making a meaningful change in your life in order to make a difference in the world.
I hope that wasn’t too much to handle, I hope it didn’t blow any minds.
With all of that being said, I have one request of you:
- If you aren’t interested in living a minimalist life.
- If you aren’t interested in working for yourself.
- If you aren’t interested in living anywhere in the world.
- If you don’t believe what I’m saying is true.
I want you to unsubscribe from this blog. Because Far Beyond The Stars isn’t being written for you.
The ideas that are put forth on this blog are different. I believe this movement is nothing short of a revolution in the way we consume and the way we live our lives.
I have a feeling that this minimalist movement will go down in history. A generation of influential people are rising up, saying no to stuff, and they’re starting to live their lives in freedom. Now that is change happening.
Thank you to those who believe in what we’re doing here, and I appreciate your help and I love hearing stories about how you’re changing your lives.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” -Henry David Thoreau
Bonus: Sam Spurlin interviewed me at The Simpler Life. Definitely worth checking out — forgive the fact that it was my first time doing a video interview, it’s a little awkward.
So you’ve quit your job to live and work from anywhere. Now what?
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
There’s a decision that everyone has to make at a certain point in their lives. After toiling for years searching for the modern myth of job security, you wake up to the reality that is.
The decision we make is simple:
Give up and settle for a life of mediocrity at a job that doesn’t care about you and won’t pay you enough to survive.
Or:
Strike out on your own in search of the opportunity to make great work in new places. To boldly go where your heart is taking you.
Ignore the people who say it’s “hard” and you “can’t make it.” They’ve already made the other choice.
This is the last post in my extended series on using minimalism to free yourself from the mediocrity of your day job. The other three posts are:
The Minimalist Guide to Leaving Your Soul-Crushing Day Job
The Simple Guide to Making Money Online
The Surprising Truth About Using Minimalism to Leave Your Day Job
Fair warning: this article is 3,000 words long. It’s incredibly in-depth and I hope that it helps you become successful after leaving your day job. Definitely read the other articles first.
Also: this guide assumes that you’ve saved up at least enough money to survive for three months after quitting your day job, as discussed in the previous articles. As I noted in my e-book, The Art of Being Minimalist, $3000 should be plenty of money if you’re living with less than 100 things and you don’t buy anything except food (which is all you really need) and pay for cheap housing.
Portland, OR and anywhere in South America is probably an ideal place to move for your first three months, while you’re getting established. If you’ve figured out how to make money in your sleep before you quit your day job, all the better!
Set aside some time and bookmark this page in order to study this and the other articles thoroughly.
There are two things you have to do before you strike out on your own.
1. Decision day.
Before you can be free you have to make the decision to go there, this is decision day. This is the moment I described above, when mediocrity just becomes too much to handle. This is the breaking point when change is inevitable.
Decision day can come as either a silent revelation. Sometimes it can take much longer than one day — I spent an entire year contemplating the decision to strike out on my own. I’d suggest not taking a whole year, that was a lot of time to spend on one decision.
Decision day might be a loud exclamation to the world, when you update your blog and you say: “I’ve had enough, it’s time to go.” Then you might call your mom, who will think you’re crazy and tell you to think about your (non-existent) career options in mediocrity-ville. Just smile and tell her you’ve made up your mind and that you’re a grownup now.
2. Quitting day.
This day is harder. It’s the moment when you walk in and make the change known to your manager.
Here are a few things to think about for quitting day.
- Prepare a price point for which you’ll stay. If you’re valuable enough the company might just want keep you. I suggest a 50% pay raise, a ROWE work environment, and more decision making power than you currently have. If they only want to give you $1000, it’s not worth it.
- Don’t burn bridges by being very clear about your goals. Even bosses love the idea of freedom, don’t underestimate their willingness to embrace the idea that you simply want to pursue a life that doesn’t require you to be in the office every day.
Prepare a written statement if you’re unsure of being able to articulate exactly what you mean to say. Rehearse in the mirror before you go into work.
Here’s a script, if necessary.
Hi X,
I’m quitting this job to pursue a freer life by working for myself. This has been a huge opportunity working with you for the last X years. That you for your guidance and leadership. I’m really sad to go, but I feel that I need to pursue a freer lifestyle at this moment. I hope you understand.
Best,
Your name here.
3. Give two weeks notice.
I know, you’re valuable and your company can’t survive without you. It doesn’t matter if the company is going to explode at the seams after you leave, the moment you give notice everyone will look at you like your an alien life form.
Save yourself the three months of weirdness by not telling everyone that you’re quitting three months in advance.
4. Plan for the fact that you might not have two weeks.
I’ve known people who gave their two weeks notice only to be fired immediately. This is rare, but if you’re counting on pay from those last two weeks it might complicate things if you’re let go on the spot. Save more just in case!
Two weeks later, and you’re free!
The minimalist freedom survival guide to month 1.
The first month is the hardest. You’ve been in captivity for awhile, so the freedom of your new life will be quite a shock. You’ll wake up on Monday morning and frantically get dressed only to realize that you have nowhere to go.
First things first: take a mini-retirement.
After X years of corporate slavery, with only two weeks of vacation, I can guarantee that you will be burned out. Don’t expect yourself to recover after a weekend and start working for yourself.
Take a few weeks and don’t do anything. Practice yoga. Slow down. Watch the trees move. Read good books. Do the minimum of things during this time.
Go somewhere new. The best way to start a new life is to get out of town. Book a flight to that place that you’ve always wanted to live but were scared to move and go with all of your stuff on your back.
Starting a new career is a lot easier in a place where you don’t know anyone. If you don’t go somewhere new, you have the danger of getting sucked into hanging out with friends who still remember the corporate drone you. Your life is different now, you don’t want to spend the first couple of weeks in a social drama with everyone asking you questions like “how will you possibly survivvvveeeee?”
Do yourself a favor, distance yourself from your friends during this period of time. You can come back home after everything is settled and reconnect with people once you have an answer to the “how will you…?” question.
Budgeting the first month.
The first month after you leave your job needs to be the least costly. This is the time when you slow down and reconnect with yourself. Here are some ways to make this month the cheapest.
- Cook all of your own food.
- Don’t buy anything at all.
- Move to a cheaper house. When your rent is $450 you can survive longer than when your rent is $2500.
- Live with less.
If the idea of getting your finances under control scares the crap out of you, I suggest reading a copy of Adam Baker of Man Vs Debt’s amazingly useful e-book Unautomate Your Finances. Adam used his financial techniques to sell his ‘crap’, dig himself out of debt, and travel the world with his wife and daughter. His signature Unautomation technique is very similar to the way that I saved money before and after I quit my job in order to be free, it’s definitely worth studying.
If you’re already a financial master, you should be good already though.
Just don’t buy stuff and save your money, because who knows when your next paycheck is coming. It’s a recession, money isn’t growing on avocado trees.
Don’t have any expectations for yourself (for the first month).
One of the biggest mistakes that I made when I jumped onto a plane to Portland in September ’09 was that I would be doing the same thing that I did in New York once I got there. I eagerly got off the plane telling everyone who greeted me that I intended to be Portland’s greatest photographer.
Well, that didn’t happen for a number of reasons that don’t really matter now. Eventually I had to acknowledge that my planned assumptions about my career weren’t going to pan out.
When you have no expectations, you can be free to see the best options.
The most important element of the first month of freedom is to not put boundaries on what you can become. Take the mini-retirement. Sit in the grass at the park and just be open to the universe of options that are available to you.
You aren’t who you used to be anymore. You are a blank slate, free of expectations and freed from confinement. Don’t ask yourself what you’ll do with that freedom until…
The minimalist freedom survival guide to month 2.
After a long mini-retirement, there’s a moment that happens to everyone, when you realize that it’s time to get back into the game.
You want to create things. You want to work hard. You want to make a difference.
Once you get to that moment, it’s time to harness that new-found creativity explosion and begin to craft your ideal life.
What to do when you want to work again.
How this moment happened for me: after a month or so wandering Portland’s drippy-wet streets in silent meditation for a few weeks, I suddenly found that I had a huge hunger for knowledge. One day I wandered into Portland’s Powell’s book store, grabbed a handful of books from the business section and started reading in their coffee shop.
Over the course of the next week, I’d read two books business books a day. I liked to read one leadership book combined with one marketing book.
The first book I picked up was Tribes by Seth Godin, which promptly blew my mind and completely changed the way I thought about creating movements and generating income online.
Tribes literally opened the door to the successful blog that you’re reading now.
Here are some business books to get you started: The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz (sounds cheesy, but this book is a brilliant classic. Seth Godin and Timothy Ferriss both cite it as one of the books that completely changed their lives.) The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. Purple Cow and Linchpin by Seth Godin. Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pam Slim. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Working for Yourself.
For other awesome books I’ve read this year, see my newly updated list of the books that I’ve read so far this year.
I read probably 20-30 business books in two weeks. This experience completely reconfigured the way that I thought about self-employment, how work can be done, and how money can be made.
Everyone actually likes to work when they’re intrinsically motivated.
Why did I suddenly want to devour business books during every waking hour of the day? Because after you get past being a burned out corporate corpse you start to regain your humanity.
You discover that there is still blood flowing through your veins and you want to make great work.
This is why I’ve designed the first month of your release from the cubicle chains as complete recovery time. Yoga, meditation, walking in the park, sitting on the beach. All of these things enable you for what comes next: the will to work again.
Intrinsic motivation is very different from being forced to work at the threat of losing your health insurance. It comes naturally, and it’s spontaneously brilliant. Learn to harness it, and use the skill for life, because it’s remarkable.
For more on intrinsic motivating, see Daniel H. Pink’s amazing book Drive.
Create a home base online.
Month two is all about establishing a beachhead on the web.
I really mean this: everyone should have a base on the web. If you restrict yourself to the real world the only way you will find work is through 1 to 1 communications, which means it very hard to land jobs because you can only talk to two-three people a day.
The internet allows 1 to infinite communications. This means you can reach out to many more people. Focus your attention on the web and you cannot fail.
Learn the tools to establish yourself online as a reputable person who people can trust in your field. When you do this successfully you will be able to rocket yourself above 80% of your competition.
- Register a domain name for yourself.
- Install a blog.
- Become active on Twitter.
- Get a decent template, then stop messing with it.
- Set a blog schedule and start creating helpful* work at least three times a week.
*Helping people is a huge theme here for a reason. Very few people are truly unconditionally helpful, and that’s why I’m so into teaching you how to be helpful.
“If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” just doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s a dated mentality from when we were forced to work in factories pre-2000. Do not expect compensation in return for your services on the internet. Give away everything for free and be unconditionally helpful to an outrageous extent.
Helping people is the best way to make outrageous amounts of money. I know it sounds counter-intuitive to conventional wisdom, but it’s the way the world works.
The top-secret non-scientific method of determining helpfulness.
How do you know when you’re being helpful? I find a good judge is your Twitter follow count. For a quick “helpfulness points count”, divide your follow count by the number of people you follow. If the number is larger than 1, you’re being helpful. If the number is .002, that means you’re not.
Leo Babauta‘s helpfulness under this non-scientific method is: 775 helpfulness points.
Tim Ferriss‘s: 443 helpfulness points.
Mine: 13.6 helpfulness points.
Random dude who followed me just a second ago: 0.001 helpfulness points.
Why you shouldn’t send out resumes.
Resumes are so 1985 and don’t get people jobs anymore.
Hiring managers receive untold numbers of bad resumes from people who aren’t qualified for their jobs.
It’s impossible to sort through this many resumes to find qualified people.
Because the barriers in the cost of communication have broken down, now any old unqualified individual can send their resume to 5,000 people a day. This has destroyed that system of hiring, and thus it should be avoided by intelligent people like you.
This means that the people with the cutest resume get hired instead of people who are qualified for jobs.
You don’t want to work for a company who hires people via Career Builder, because they’re backwards — there are much better ways to find people than to sort through a stack 10,000 sheets of paper, not to mention that a tree just died. The chances of getting a job at a company that hires people via submitted resumes is like trying to win the lottery.
Unless you work in one of the rare fields where you need 15 years of higher education in order to be qualified to do what you do. Then you’re truly in a limited pool of talent.
The secret to avoiding this situation is actually fairly easy to master. Gatejump the competition by establishing yourself as an authority in your area of expertise on your home base online.
When you do this, potential companies will seek you out, because you’re an expert in your field.
Once you’ve established yourself as an authority, you can contact whoever you want and offer to help them out personally (for free.) Prove your awesomeness and they can’t help but hire you when they see how much you need you.
This is how you get hired at a new job — if you wanted a job in the first place.
The minimalist freedom survival guide to month 3.
Month three is all about elimination. If you haven’t been overwhelmingly successful, or built income streams independent of the job you already quit, you’re going to start to see the income dipping into the low-zone.
Don’t get depressed! But this is make or break time. The most important element of this month is focusing on the important by eliminating everything that isn’t necessary to your success.
What can you stop doing to leverage your abilities to make a living?
Create a not-to-do list.
Not to do lists are one of the most powerful ways to focus on the important. Take a sheet of paper and write down everything that you started in doing in month 2 that isn’t working now.
Be brutally honest with yourself. You probably reached out into many potential areas of possible income during month 2. Many of these aren’t panning out, so it’s time to eliminate them and focus on what you’re truly passionate about.
Pick one profession.
I see so many people who are all of these things: marketer, blogger, writer, social media guru, photographer, and also designers. Don’t label yourself as all of these things at once. In fact, the harder you look at most of the careers I’ve mentioned above, you start to realize how nonspecific they are.
It’s okay to have these skills, and everyone does to a certain extent. That doesn’t mean you should make them all your primary focus all at once. Eliminate every job title from your thinking until you only have one.
For instance: if you’re a photographer, writer, marketer, copywriter, social media guru who is only making money from writing. You are now a writer. The rest of those professions get axed in month 3.
Some people pursue dozens of careers at once for their whole lives. You can’t be successful at dozens of things all at once. Pick one path that you will take to success in month 3.
You can also reconsider later if it ends up to not be a path that leads to income.
Then focus on a niche within one profession.
If you’re a photographer, I want you to start to focus on one element of photography which you can really blow people away with. I want you to become the best nose-hair photographer, tail-less kitty photographer, or the only photographer who got permission to tour with a famous band.
You can’t just label yourself as a generic example of a profession and then hope to succeed.
I’m not a blogger, in fact, blogging isn’t a profession. Blogging is a communications platform which enables people to bring their ideas to the world. I am a writer who writes about being minimalist in order to live and work from anywhere.
In order to be the best writer who writes about being minimalist in order to live and work from anywhere, I had to eliminate writing about other things.
You can’t work on anything that suits your fancy and build a solid body of work.
You have to focus on one being the best at element of one specific profession.
Take your profession and find a specific area if it that you can dominate. Eliminate your work that enters into other areas.
Once you start working on something specific, you catapult yourself above all of the competition who are labeling themselves as writer, photographer, marketer, social media experts all at the same time. Then you can make money.
The foolproof way to figure out what to focus on.
I’m reading Good to Great right now, a business book on how to make a great business. One of the most key chapters is about a theory called The Hedgehog Concept.
Every great company was able to outdo the competition by focusing on the one element of their business that they could be better than everyone else at.
The hedgehog concept revolves around three overlapping circles. You can view the hedgehog diagram here (don’t want to embed it, because of the big copyright notice.)
Circle 1: What are you passionate about?
Circle 2: What can you be the best in the world at?
Circle 3: What drives your economic engine?
Every person and business needs to do this in order to succeed. Refine your aspirations until you find something that fits into the overlapping area of these three circles.
What can you be the best at the world at, that you’re also passionate about, that will also pay you?
The best in the world concept is key here. Take a look at how many generic ‘photographers’ there are out there in the world. Insert name of your career for photographer. Every individual with a camera phone is a photographer. Just like every person who can spell is a writer.
Focus on a niche, one that you can work to be the best in the world at, and by the end of month 3 you will be rocking the economic engine.
Eliminate any activity that you’re doing outside these circles until you only spend time on what is important to your success.
Go now and be free.
By now you should have the skills that you need to quit your 9-5 and survive in the wild. Congratulations!
Obviously there will be lots of things that come up that I haven’t addressed here. I give you the right to improvise and create systems up as you go. Make a difference in your own life by making your own key decisions.
Ultimately, your own success is up to you. You make your choices. Good luck!
Check out the other articles in this series:
The Minimalist Guide to Leaving Your Soul-Crushing Day Job
The Simple Guide to Making Money Online
The Surprising Truth About Using Minimalism to Leave Your Day Job
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If this helped you, I’d love if you’d share it with someone who could use the information. The best way to spread the word is to use the retweet button below, if you’re on Twitter.
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Thank you — and please let me know if you have any questions about this article in the comments. I’d love to help you out if I have the answers.
Best,
Everett Bogue
What I’ve learned from 6 months of blogging at Far Beyond The Stars.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
At some point at the end of last month we silently passed the 6-month mark since I began writing this blog. It’s time to celebrate!
Thank you so much for being a part of this minimalist movement.
I wouldn’t be anywhere without you, the amazing people who read this blog and support my work.
I’ve been fully supporting myself via income from this blog for two months now. This is the first month that my income surpassed my monthly income at my day job.
I can feel the momentum building behind my writing, my words. Change is happening. People are finding a way to bring simplicity into their lives in order to get their finances under control, stop buying junk, and start living free. It’s blowing my mind the kind of stories I hear from people on Twitter and over email.
Thank you for coming with me on this journey. I can’t wait for what comes next, I hope you’ll stick around for the future of this movement.
I don’t pay attention to stats that much, but here’s a few:
As of today (April 5th 2010) this blog has 2500+ subscribers. I have 1200+ followers on Twitter.
If you want to follow my writing and join these 2500+ amazing subscribers I’d love if you’d sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS. Thank you.
Far Beyond The Stars receives more than 35,000 unique views a month.
Some of the top traffic sources are Rowdy Kittens, Zen Habits/Mnmlist, and Becoming Minimalist. Thanks for your help guys, every mention makes change happen.
Many of the new readers find me via the wonders of Twitter. Thank you for every retweet — this makes huge difference in who finds this blog.
Thank you so much for everyone who’s linked into the blog from their own blogs. This is probably one of the most important ways to make this blog succeed. There are 710+ active inbound links to Far Beyond the Stars — thank you so much for your mentions.
I know a lot of you are also trying to become full-time bloggers, so I thought I’d put together a list of things that I’ve learned. I hope this writing helps you find success as well.
If you aren’t a blogger, these tips can probably apply to your field of work with a little translation.
Here are 15 bits of wisdom from my 6 months of blogging success.
1. Assemble a group of remarkable allies. I have the pleasure of being friends with some of the brightest minds in blogging today. In order to succeed you need a team of all-star people to share the stage with. This is why I spend so much time writing about and helping other bloggers succeed. Rockstar up and coming bloggers like Colin Wright, Jeffrey Tang, Tammy Strobel, Ashley Ambirge, Joshua Becker, Adam Baker, and Karol Gajda are making a huge difference in their own work, and their support of my work has been amazing. Thank you for being my allies guys!
2. Study the best and the brilliant. It’s so incredibly important to study the work of people who have been successful in any field that you enter. I owe a huge debt to the successful bloggers who’ve done this before I did. Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, Jonathan Fields, Glenn Allsopp, Hugh MacLeod, and Seth Godin have all contributed more than they know to my success. Thank you all for your brilliant work.
3. The more you give the more you get. Chris Guillebeau mentioned this last week over at The Art of Non-conformity, and it’s so true. If your blog is struggling, it’s probably because you’re not giving enough. The people who succeed are the ones who give as much as possible, that’s why I’m constantly pointing you in the direction of people who I respect and admire. I’ve had the fortune of some amazing support from remarkable people who’ve noticed and helped me out — I try to give twice as much in return.
4. Help your readers as much as possible. This is the #1 reason that I’ve been able to get to the professional level so quickly. If your blog is struggling, take a look at your posts. Are you honestly teaching anything important? Are you making a difference in people’s lives? One struggling blogger who I had a lot of hopes for is now simply selling bad products and writing boring information that doesn’t help people. Don’t be that guy.
5. Fortune favors the bold. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind, even if it goes against the status-quo. Some of my most successful work has focused on ideas that honestly scare people — these ideas are hard to hear. Sometimes I’ll write things that make people feel bad about their lives and consumption choices. Sometimes people send me emails telling me to stop saying what I’m saying because it challenges their perception of reality. This is good, we need to challenge people in order to make change happen. You can’t succeed if you aren’t willing to challenge belief systems.
6. If you aren’t passionate, don’t publish. If you’re not 100% certain that your writing is going to change the way that people think about the world, don’t publish it! I only hit the publish button if I’m absolutely certain that I’m going to help people. Sometimes that means scrapping multiple stories before I hit on one that’s contributing enough value to make the cut.
7. The moment you go pro, everything changes. When I told the world that I intended to make a living from this blog, everything started happening. I began getting offers from people who wanted to help me make it. I also started writing some of the best work that I’ve ever created. Going pro forces you to rise to the occasion in order to make everything come together.
8. Perfect is the enemy of done. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I focus on the ideas. Sometimes I don’t have perfect grammar and I’ll spell things wrong. I do my best to have perfect prose, but ultimately it’s the good ideas that matter. Don’t get caught up trying to be perfect, if it keeps you from making work. Generate ideas that will spur remarkable change — I don’t care of there is a comma missing, or a word isn’t spelled properly.
9. Give your best work away for free. You can’t succeed in the digital age if you withhold your best work for paying customers only. Prove that you have the ability to help people by giving them everything for free, and your audience will support you by buying your premium product. People will support the value that they receive. Give your best work away for free and you’ll reach so many more people who can help you make the change that’s necessary.
10. Don’t be afraid to change direction. Sometimes you have to kill your babies. At various points during the last six months I’ve had to make some hard choices in order to succeed in other areas. I shut down a business blog that wasn’t taking off. I stopped photographing professionally. Sometimes you have to make hard choices in order to succeed. Be flexible enough to follow your interests until you find what you’re really passionate about. Also, trying to run two blogs at once is like trying to date two women at once — neither of them end up very happy with you.
11. Social proof matters. Take a look at the front page of your blog. Can new readers tell you have a community? Can they see your best work right away? These factors matter. This is why my retweet button is the first thing you see (192 retweets? I better read this!) and my biggest accomplishments are easy to see (Interviews with Chris Guillebeau and Leo Babauta? This blogger must be with the in crowd!) Don’t bury your best work, and make it clear that other people are actually reading your blog.
12. Good headlines matter. I use professional copywriting techniques to craft every one of my headlines. Sometimes this means they’re a little over the top, and I’m okay with that. Think about it: most people decide what they’re going to read based on the headline as they’re reading other blogs, flipping around on their phone or in their RSS reader. Would you rather read a post titled “it’s my blog’s birthday” or “15 Bits of Wisdom from 6 Months of Blogging Success?” Don’t short your ability to grab someone’s attention by using boring headlines. A great resource for learning to write remarkable attention grabbing headlines is Copyblogger.
13. Don’t undervalue yourself. Yes, I give away my best work free, but I also am not afraid to ask for people to pay me. My readers understand that if my work helps them, they should also help me out in return. It’s not easy being a full-time writer, you can’t work for free — at some point you have to ask people to support you. You’d be surprised how willing people are to help people who contribute value to their lives. Thank you for everyone who’d purchased The Art of Being Minimalist or generously donated to support my writing. Your support has made a huge difference in my life, it makes the work I do possible.
14. Live what you preach. I write about being minimalist in order to live and work anywhere. I actually am a minimalist and I actually live and work from anywhere. Take a look at the message you’re sending, does to match the way you live? Some bloggers just talk about ideas they think might be cool if they were to try them. The successful bloggers and writers (maybe even successful people in general) actually live and breathe a reality that they believe in. If you’re trying to make change, you have to live the change you’re making.
15. Support the work of amazing people. When I see a good blog, or a good story, I do everything I can to help that person out. I want you to succeed, because this isn’t a zero-sum game. If you can surround yourself with a community who you enthusiastically support, they will support you.
Here are a few links you should check out from writers who I enthusiastically endorse:
An Interview with Ashley Ambirge by Tammy Strobel.
The Lost Art of Solitude by Leo Babauta.
Man Vs Debt Turns 1 Year Old by Adam Baker.
I also wrote a short guest post for Gaping Void on how to focus on the important.
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Thank you for reading this!
If you want to follow my writing and join these 2500+ amazing subscribers I’d love if you’d sign up for free updates via EMAIL or RSS. Thank you.
Stay tuned for the part 4 in my series on using minimalism to leave the 9-5 on Wednesday.
If these words helped you, I’d love it if you’d take a moment to share this with someone who it can help. Thank you so much for your help.
Best,
Everett Bogue
7 ways why leaving your job doesn’t have to be hard.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
This is the 3rd part in a now 4-part series on leaving your day job. The 1st was on preparing to leave your day job the 2nd was on how to make money online.
The last article in this series will be on how to survive the first three months after leaving your day job. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free updates via RSS or EMAIL.
The idea of losing a day job is terrifying to most people in the modern world.
There are many reasons for this, but they’re pretty simple: we’re living overextended lives.
A number of factors contribute to permanent workplace servitude among them:
- Expensive car payment and insurance.
- Subscriptions to Cable TV, etc.
- Consumer debt that hasn’t been paid off.
- College debt, because of the rising cost of getting an education.
- Large expensive houses.
- Eating out at every meal, or pre-packed microwavable foods that make us fat and stupid.
- Spending on stuff you don’t need because you thought you needed it.
We can further reduce these contributing factors to one simple message:
You have too much stuff.
This is why you can’t leave your job, because your life costs so much that the moment you don’t have $2000-$4000 coming in with every paycheck, everything comes crashing down around you.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one in this situation. Luckily, there are other options.
The story of stuff: too much to less.
Tammy Strobel was in this situation a few years ago. Two cars, a big house. She couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t able to break even. Then she employed a healthy dose of minimalism, sold her costly cars and recently started a very small writing business. She details her story, and how you can go car-free in her new e-book, Simply Car-free. Now she’s happily biking around Portland and works when she wants on the projects that she cares about.
Tammy Strobel isn’t alone. A small army of creative individuals are realizing that they don’t need the junk that the televisions told us to buy.
Perhaps you’re already applying the principles you learned in the last article on making money online to build a small online empire destined for world domination like Chris Guillebeau? It certainly takes some time and a lot of effort to make this move towards freedom, but if you’ve got the goal of visiting every country in the world by your 35th birthday (like Chris), two weeks of vacation a year just isn’t going to cut it.
What you need is freedom.
The funny thing is that freedom is so easy to attain.
In September of last year I asked myself a simple question: what would it take to leave my day job and live and work from anywhere? If you’ve read The Art of Being Minimalist, you already know the answer.
This answer is too good to keep a secret though, I’d rather share it with you. I’ve decided to pluck the secret out of my simple e-book and summarize it to you right her. I hope it helps you find your own personal liberation.
If you apply these guidelines below, you’ll have no trouble freeing yourself from the confines of your day job — or any other goals you may have.
Here are 7 ways to apply minimalism to leave your day job.
1. Reduce your possessions to a more manageable amount.
The biggest mistake people make when they decide to leave their jobs is thinking they can keep it all. If you have a McMansion full of junk and you leave your day job, you will have to pay for the space to store these things, and also spend money on upkeep. Living with a lot also encourages rabid consumerism. The secret is to reduce your possessions to a minimal amount.
I live with less than 75 things, and I’m attempting to reduce that amount to at least 50 by the time I move to San Francisco on May 15th.
I realize that living with 50 personal possessions seems crazy to most people, but it’s how I choose to live. With 50 things I can move whenever I want with a backpack. You might think you need more than 50, that’s okay! 150 things is more than enough for most people.
When you find yourself living with less than 150 possessions, you’ll start to notice how much freer you are. Suddenly your mind is free to think about things other than your junk.
Make a list of your 100 most important things. If you feel the need to buy something, it has to displace one of those things.
2. Remove all dependence on expensive and needless entertainment.
In the modern age we’ve been trained to think our human lives should be spent in front of a TV watching endless hours of television.
This is absurd, you’ve been duped.
Sell your TV, unsubscribe from your cable. If you have a show you really need to keep up with — pick only one! Chances are you can watch it online. Anything else that falls under the category of entertainment and is either an addiction or a subscription needs to go. All of these costs add up, this is when you get into the situation where you have to work 60 hours a week to survive.
3. Stop needless consumerism.
Stop buying stupid stuff. Many people are hooked in the little adrenalin boost they get from spending small sums of money every evening.
This boost from consumerism is NOT a momentary happiness experience, it’s actual parallel is a low-dosage hit of heroin.
Corporations have scammed you into thinking that the only way that other people will accept you is if you have a new H&M top every time you go out. This is not the case. A week’s worth of simple and durable clothes is all a person needs to live comfortably. This frees you from thousands of dollars a month of needless expense. Stop shopping, start living.
Personally, I’d rather spend more on a pair of jeans that can withstand 4-6 months of daily wear.
4. Find joy in simpler things.
Many of the best pleasures in life are free, and infinitely more fulfilling than shopping.
Go for a walk with no destination. Go sit on the beach for a day. Lie on your roof and watch the stars at night. Cook a meal for your friends. Plant a tree. Climb a mountain and sleep on the top. Read a book. Minimalism doesn’t have to be boring.
There are so many inexpensive ways to have great experiences, you don’t need to go spend hundreds of dollars to live your life.
5. Move to a city where you can live without a car.
Cars are the second most expensive purchase you will make in your adult lives. Did you know you can live without them? Well, you can. There are a number of cities in America where cars aren’t the norm, move to one of them and suddenly you’ll have huge hunks of cash that you forgot you had. Go car-free and the possibilities start to open up.
It’s a myth that living in a city is more expensive. It’s not, because you don’t need a car. Check out Portland, OR for amazing quality of life. Brooklyn, NY for amazing opportunities. Both of these cities are walkable, bike-able, and awesome.
More at SuburbanShift: How Cars Rob Americans of their Retirement.
6. Focus on the important.
When you focus on only a few very important things in your life, you actually succeed at them.
What is important to you? Write that down, now! It’s sad story when I ask a person what their priorities are, and I get blank faces.
Worse is the people who tell me they’re a painter (or any artist,) but they’ve only done two canvasses. If you’re a painter, reduce your possessions to the essentials: your brushes, your canvasses.
When the TV is gone, the only way to entertain yourself is to paint. Eventually you’ll start to make decent work, this can be translated easily into making a living from your art like Soniei does. Focus on the work that is important to you.
7. Stop searching for the next half-assed spike of adrenalin (go for the real stuff.)
Shopping gives you a temporary high. So does drugs, alcohol, TV, video games, etc. These things are fun over the short-term, but forty years down the road no one is going to care that you watched the entire Lost series three times through.
If you’re into adrenalin, do something crazy, like move to New Zealand and go skydiving.
Destroy your Guitar Hero (if you spent as much time playing guitar as you do on Guitar Hero, you’d actually be talented at music) and actually go on tour. Trade manufactured happiness for the real experience. Stop engaging in the detached distain of current affairs by reading the newspaper and go try and make a difference in the world.
Is this really so surprising?
I realize that the idea of adopting all of these systems is incredibly difficult for most people. I know this because I’ve been there.
You’re used to living in a fantasy world.
This world is propped up by over-extended credit and modern day wage-slavery.
You can either continue to live that life, and I know many of you will. Keep waking up every morning, stumbling to the car, sitting under fluorescent lights for the entire day.
Alternatively, you can pop the red pill and choose to wake up.
Reduce your possessions to the basic essentials that you need in order to build a life outside the confines of this corporate system.
When you get to this point you’ll start to notice long a basic amount of savings, such as $3000, will actually last you. Then you can start to build your own minimalist business and find your own personal liberation.
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Here are a few links to check out, I hope they will help you.
Pavarotti’s Secret to Success by Chris Guillebeau.
How to Say ‘No’ Gracefully by Tammy Strobel.
An In-Depth Guide to Buying and Selling Websites by Glenn Allsopp.
A Little Celebration of Less by Jeffrey F. Tang.
The Reality of Digital Content by Seth Godin.
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Did this article help you? The best way you can help me out is to take 10 seconds and share this post. If you have five minutes, I’d love if you could write about me on your blog, this really helps people discover my writing.
Thank you so much.
The most successful people have only a few priorities. Here’s how to refocus when you lose track of yours.
Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.
The inconvenient truth of entrepreneurship.
I have a confession to make, I’ve been working too hard.
The whole idea of working for myself was so I could have more time to live life, remember?
Well, over the last two weeks I got carried away with my entrepreneurship. I’ve been working over 40 hours a week on the blog and my next e-book. This is far too much time to be spending on my minimalist business.
I was supposed to be living the minimalist work week to the fullest, and concentrating on my real priorities: Yoga, Cooking, Writing, and Reading.
Instead I’ve been working all day, cooking fattier foods, and I had totally forgotten about yoga for a week.
I’ve got to refocus, maybe you do too?
Everyone loses focus on their priorities occasionally.
This is okay though, everyone loses focus on their priorities once in awhile. Occasionally it’s beneficial to lose the balance in their life in order to achieve greatness in one direction.
But after working hard in one area, there comes a time when it’s necessary to refocus on what you’ve identified as being truly important. For more on identifying the important see: The Stunning Truth About Focusing on the Important.
This is why I’ve compiled a list, below, of 32 ways to focus on the important. I hope it can help you re-find the focus in your life.
I’m going to be refocusing in the coming weeks.
As some of you know, I’m working on a new e-book called Minimalist Business. The e-book explores my journey to creating a low-overhead business which supports my location independent lifestyle.
I’m writing this e-book because I’ve received hundreds of emails about business side of my work on The Art of Being Minimalist. These emails have given me many ideas to think about as I did my best to help everyone who emailed me create their own minimalist businesses.
I hope it can help you achieve the same kind of life, if you’re interested.
In order to get the e-book done, and maintain focus in my life, I’m going slow down the schedule here at Far Beyond The Stars to two stories per week. This way I can work on making two posts twice as useful to you, and also have time to work on completing the e-book.
On to the focus!
Feel free to apply one or a few of these to your life, but don’t try to do them all at once. Definitely feel free to bookmark this page and return to it whenever you find yourself losing focus.
Here are 32 ways to refocus on your priorities.
1. Slow down. The best way to refocus on your priorities is to slow down. Take 10 deep breathes. Walk slower through life and appreciate every moment. You’ll start to see clarity when you take time to appreciate every moment.
2. Stop checking email. If you read my post on Timejacking, you know my opinion on email: it’s not as necessary as you think. Set two (or even one) specific times to check email during your day. This can save you up to 3 hours of time sitting in front of your inbox waiting for messages to come, so you can react to them. Turn this around, and you’ll start to focus on your priorities and create great work. I’ve been checking email less (trying for one time per day as much as possible) for a number of weeks, and my productivity has exploded.
3. Change up your routine. Turn your routine on it’s head. If you exercise in the mornings, try exercising at night. If you work during the week, try working on the weekends or at night instead. If you walk down 5th Avenue every day on your way to work, try walking on 6th Avenue instead. If you always go out to eat, try cooking at home instead.
4. Disconnect from the internet. Turn off your wireless router, or unplug your Ethernet cable, and just sit there. At first you’ll go crazy without being able to constantly click around on Facebook. It’s okay, you’ll be fine. Before 1990 no one had Internet in their homes, remember? Let alone Internet in their pockets! You’ll survive. Just sit and stare at a wall until you’re able to refocus on your priorities.
5. Write your priorities down. This is so incredibly important. Take out a sheet of paper, or open a blank document on your computer, and simply write down your priorities. I like to keep them to 4 or less. These are the things that are really important to you. These are passions, not obligations.
6. Take a few days off. Nothing fixes focus like a good long weekend. Take a few days off and do something fun. Don’t think about work. Don’t do any work. Just focus on having fun, or creating something that you enjoy. When you get back to work you’ll have a fresh mind and be able to refocus on your priorities.
7. Take a walk. A good long walk can do wonders if you can’t focus. The repetitive motion of your feet has a way of centering the left and right hemispheres of your brain. Just pick a direction and start walking, don’t have a destination, just walk for the journey.
8. Go to the beach for a day. I love going to the beach. It’s a great place to sit in the sun and let your worries wash away. If you don’t have a beach near you, a park can do too, (but beaches are more awesome.) Bring some sandwiches and spiked punch. Don’t forget your sunscreen! Definitely forget your cellphone.
9. Up your intensity. Sometimes the best way to refocus is to take everything to the next level. Take one of your priorities and spend 80% of your time doing it. I plan on doing this with Yoga in the next few weeks. By spending all of your time, you’ll be able to refocus on your priority and take it to the next level.
10. Work somewhere new. If you’re used to working in an office, or in your home, make the decision to change your location. Work from a coffee shop or the library. Go to a friend’s house and work together. Take your work out on the porch and work in the sun, or go to the park.
11. Hang out with different people. We can sometimes fall into a routines of hanging out with the same good folks all the time. The trouble is, this can lead to social stagnation. Try hanging out with new people once in awhile. This will open you up to new ideas and you’ll have new experiences.
12. Sleep more. This is a no-brainer. The studies all show that we don’t get as much sleep as we need. Take a few days and catch up on your rest. Sleep for 9 hours a night instead of 6. You’ll start to notice your priorities come into focus when you have enough rest.
13. Eat good food. We are what we eat, literally. And yet some people eat garbage from the take-out. Don’t do this! Try cooking dinners at home every day for a week (perhaps consider doing this for the rest of your life.) Use fresh vegetables, beans, nuts, berries, etc. Eat fresh fruit for breakfast in order to have more energy. When you eat better you’ll overcome obstacles with much less effort.
14. Sit in silence. Simply sit in silence for 30 minutes. Don’t worry about meditating. Sit on a comfortable pillow, or in a chair, close your eyes and let the thoughts pass through your brain. A time-out like that can change your thinking and help you refocus.
15. Kill your bad habits. Choose one bad habit and take it to the guillotine. Just stop doing whatever you hate about yourself. There are so many things that humans compulsively do that are bad for us. When we have the courage to tell ourselves no we can free up space to focus on what we really want to accomplish. Some bad habits you may have: TV, smoking, drinking, Twitter all day, email, negativity, pessimism, driving.
16. Stop worrying so much. Anxiety is simply failing over and over and over again in advance. Tell yourself to stop worrying. The simple reason for this is that worrying doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t help to guess at what the outcome of an action will be. Make a decision about what you think the outcome will be and stick with it. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe it won’t. At least you didn’t spend 5 hours chewing up your stomach anticipating your own failure.
17. Throw out the plan. Plans are just guesses. Too many people spend 80% of their time planning and half of the time they never get to the actual execution. I’d like to let you in on a secret: execution is everything. The plan isn’t necessary if you don’t do anything. In most cases you can do something without a plan. Cut out the preparation and start making things happen.
18. Read for new ideas. Take a day and go to the bookstore. Find a great book. If you need suggestions, I’ve read a bunch of books so far this year. All of them were very good. Now, sit down and read the book. Slowly let the ideas flow off the page and into you. This will rejuvenate your focus on the important.
19. Turn off the TV. If you know me, you know I hate the TV. Two years ago I helped my roommate paint three of them and turn them into an art installation. Two weeks ago I helped my girlfriend finally sell her flatscreen. The average American watched 5 hours of TV a day in 2008 (according to The Story of Stuff), that’s 35 hours a week. Tell me there are better things you could be doing with that time.
20. Take a mini-retirement. There’s no sense in wasting the prime of your life working yourself to death. Save up a few thousand dollars and go incommunicado. Rent a boat and sail down slowly down the coast. Rent a beach house in Mexico and disappear for a month or two. Trust me, the world will be here when you get back.
21. Move somewhere new. So many people never make the decision to leave their home town. It can be one of the best decisions you ever make it leave a place one you’ve been there for awhile. Pick somewhere and go there. Leave behind all of your crap, you don’t need it. Just go somewhere before it’s too late.
22. Radically change your diet. If you’re eating pancakes every morning, try eating fresh fruit. If you eat steak for dinner, try eating tofu. There are a million ways to radically change your diet. You are what you eat, so when you transform your diet you transform yourself.
23. Declutter your living space. Take a day and get rid of clutter. Find a home for every object that you own. Put things in drawers or closets. If you can’t find homes for everything, you need to get rid of some things. Make a box and put things in it. Take these things and donate them to someone needs them.
24. Limit your work schedule. We work too much. The worst part is, we can usually manage to fit our work into as long as we give ourselves to complete our jobs. No one ever achieved great things by working 80 hours a week for an entire year. If you normally work 60 hours, reduce your schedule to 40. If you work 40, reduce it to 20. Once I get to 10 hours a week of work, I’m going to try and reduce it down to 4 as soon as possible. I bet you can get the same amount of work done by strategically batching requests and eliminating the unessential.
25. Turn off your smartphone. What a terrible idea, giving yourself the ability to be constantly in touch via email. (full disclosure, I do have an iPhone. I mainly use it for capturing ideas via Evernote, taking photos, and communicating with readers via Twitter during set batched intervals.) Turn your smartphone off for periods at a time, if you can’t get rid of it completely. You’ll notice a world of difference, and you’ll be able to focus on the important.
26. Leave your phone at home. Go out into the world and leave your phone at home. Trust me, you’ll be able to tell what time it is. You can ask somebody! It’s important to disconnect from people once in awhile. If you’re constantly available, you’re simply going to be reacting to requests. Bonus: let every single call you receive go to voicemail first, then batch call everyone back at one set time per day. This will save you tons of time if you’re a heavy phone user.
27. Rearrange your house. Take a day and change how your home is arranged. Or maybe even just your living room or office. Put the couch on the other wall. Take the TV and throw it out the window. Consult a Feng shui expert (or ask the Internet) and make sure your space is obeying the right rules. When you’re done, the new perspective will help you refocus.
28. Go vagabonding. Put the essentials for survival in a bag. Book a ticket somewhere and just go. It doesn’t matter where you go, just go. Email the hostel and book a few nights, then take off from there. Don’t have a destination, don’t go see touristy stuff, just live somewhere new every single day. Read Rolf Potts’s awesome book Vagabonding for more on how to have this amazing experience.
29. Read different blogs. We fall into reading the same bloggers over and over again, but that can be a trap. I try to write about new things, and delve deeper into topics, but inevitably I’m still me. Other bloggers are still them. After reading a blogger for a number of months, you might find yourself just reading out of obligation. Try reading new bloggers to change things up.
30. Stop reading the paper. Newspapers are dead. Most of their employees have taken huge pay-cuts over the last few years. Most of their writers are forced to write about topics that they don’t have expertise in and don’t interest them. This leads to sloppy writing and boring stories. Stop reading newspapers, you won’t be missing much.
31. Eliminate obligations. People tend to collect obligations like we collect junk. The problem is that sometimes we don’t take stock to see if we’re getting anything out of them. Take a moment and make a list of everything you’re obligated to do every week. Now strike out everything that you hate doing. This can free up a huge amount of time.
32. Let it all go. Finally, just let it go. The world can do without you for awhile. Just relax and let things happen when they happen. Don’t worry so much, or you’ll get gray hair and you’ll need anti-depressants. When you let it all go, it’s only a matter of time before you start to refocus on your priorities and start to make great work.
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Here are some links that will help you:
Be Your Own Guru by Jonathan Fields.
The Joy of Walking by Leo Babauta.
Paying it Way Forward by Colin Wright.
The Most Important Blog Post You’ll Never Read by Glenn Allsopp.
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How do you refocus on your priorities?
If this article helped you, I’d love if you’d take 10 seconds and use your favorite method to share it.
Thank you.