bsayer

Four-Steps to Choose What to Do With Your Life

I was listening to Linchpin during my commute this morning.¹ With good books this is a good practice because you’ll discover things you missed on previous passes. With great books like Seth Godin’s Linchpin, it’s a must-do because there’s so much gold in there it takes many passes to pan it all. This reading was no different.

The nugget I found this time was when Seth gave a tip that’s invaluable to guys like me who are trying to reclaim their lives by rediscovering their passions and self-actualizing:

“Find a niche where money flows as a regular consequence of the success of your idea.”

I built on this by thinking about the steps to make this lesson actionable. I came up with these four steps:

List what you love
Study how money flows in each situation where what you love is present
Pick the part of the situation with the best ratio of money to love², then do the work
Pick the part of the situation with the highest love² without regard to money, then do the work

Do the work that you select in both steps 3 and 4, unless the they are the same. If so, bonus!

According to iTunes, this was my fifth listening; I swear it’s been more than that.
These two are personal, so think it through.

iPad Unlock Motivation Wallpaper

By bsayer

I created a wallpaper for the iPad lock screen with a motivational quote I saw today:

Don't worry about what the
world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive
and do that.
Because what the world  needs
are people who have come alive. 
 
Howard Thurman

Grab a copy. I’s my gift to you!

Learning Linux

By bsayer

I was sick and tired of supporting Windows! I was sick and tired of dealing with Windows problems at work then returning home to deal with them there! It wasn’t always that way.

I embraced learning DOS and encouraged the adoption of Windows when it emerged. I even enjoyed supporting it at work and playing with it at home for the first few years. Then the novelty wore off and I was left wondering why it seemed everything in Windows was so poorly made. Not all operating systems were that way. DOS and its applications were pretty solid. I recalled using a Unix based, multi-user system just before the dawn of the world wide web. Now that was solid! The command line interface, bash, was a mysterious thing that reminded me of the wonder I experienced at my first sight of a CPM-80 command. My employer’s client had some SCO Unix PCs in the test labs and some of the mini-computers ran a different Unix variant. I thought perhaps Unix would hold the same appeal for me in my burned out state. I decided to switch from Windows to a modern Unix variant for my home PC. [Read more…]