A big part of me thinks that we were exposed for not working hard, for enjoying the fruits of a life we had yet to earn, and that the reason we’re in the mess we’re in is because we’ve gotten away from what makes us American.

Work a little harder.

Spend more time on the details.

Deliver faster.

Serve More.

Give more.

Think more, help more.

Not blame more, want more.

This is an opportunity to relearn a national work ethic that won two world wars, got us through a depression, etc.

Just a thought for a Superbowl Sunday.

For my part, I’ll be working harder and smarter than as many people as I can.

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Beyond the kitschy BS that we used to make, Steve and I gave every effort to make some good advice.   And it’s a blast, saying that your basement doesn’t need to look like Brutus Buckeye’s asshole, and making money doing it.  It’s going to be a blast promoting this over the holiday break, and doing what it it takes to sell this thing.  And it’s going to be a blast to do this.

Stay tuned compadres.  More f–king goodness is available.

Also–for those of you that read me, I’m going to give away the 1.0 and 2.0 stuff that gets me more freelance business than I cn handle.  I want to make sure that I keep freelancing alive and kickin’ and thus, in the sidebar is a way to get my e-book.  Yes, I want to build my mailing list, but yes, I also think that permission rented is permission destroyed.  So sign up, especially if you’re a freelancer.

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www.chrisbrogan.com/if-i-started-today great post by the illustrious CB on what he’d do now.

Second:

DoFollow:  This builds your backlinks.  No substitute for mattering, but here we go:

http://seoimp.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-then-1000-dofollow-blogs.html

LifeHacker some time ago had a place to go to get your username on all sorts of blogs:

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/401713928/find-out-where-a-username-is-already-registered

Then Athol said g’bye.  I liked Athol.

Freelance Switch had a fab. post the other day: feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreelanceSwitch/~3/4GBo…

Ok, it was a month ago.

Remember Brother Jed?  He doesn’t show up in Reason very much, so here he is.

Andy Whiman’s taste is better than ours.  Here’s his list of good albums for 2008.  His blog is currently fantastic, mixing metaphysics, rock and roll and tech writing.

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http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/steal-this-idea-im-begging-you/

Regarding ideas, he writes:

If it’s that good, people will try to knock it off the moment you gain any level of traction, notoriety or both. Maybe sooner. In fact, if they don’t, it just may speak to the fact that what you’ve got is either not nearly as cool as you think it is or you’re not able to communicate it’s coolness…

I know that people will steal ideas.  I steal ideas.   I work with great people at places like Lenderama and BHB and those folks throw off great ideas all the time.  For free.  For real, and they keep on doing it, all the time.  One of my synapses will fire a half formed idea, and then Tood or Greg or Pat will throw off some nugget that I didn’t know before.  And I’ll be enriched with thoughts and thought, and I’ll be able to do my job more effectively.  These ideas are given away for free.  All the time.

And they are precious.  Look–if we apply the lessons that are here already for the taking, we’re going to get so far ahead of the curve, so enriched, so smart, that we’ll never finish.   The value of Twitter is mostly that we see other brains having firing synapes together.  Ideas are everwhere, and they’re precious.  An idea to use a spammy plugin like FeedWordPress to create a non spammy blog network came out of a conversation.  Anyone can use it.  There you go.  It just requires putting it into use.

And there’s the rub, isn’t it?  We all know essentially, in broad strokes, what to do to to make life happen.  We know that we need to pick up the phone and call people, we know we need to connect, think, help, add value.   And yet, we find ourselves not executing because the next big idea is right around the corner.   Well, the next big thing…is simply executing what we do well already.  It’s taking the bull by the horns and getting things DONE and not started.  Execution is more profitable than shere creativity.

There is nothing staggeringly new about what’s happening now.  The best of what we do is about elegance, not novelty.  Facebook could have been twitter, could have kept twitter from happening.  They didn’t go that route.  Twitter could have been blogging.  Livejournal could have been WordPress.  Etc.  Etc.   All of those ideas were half thefts, and just SCAMPER type solutions.    What was different is execution.  There isn’t really an ‘information advantage’ out there right now that has a lot of meaning, except in the realm of execution, finishing projects, getitng things all the way done.

Even though they are abundant–ideas are precious.  Having what it takes to finish, to do, to be, to have whatever we seek…starts with being created in the mind.   Instead of fighting over who owns the knife, we should help one another grow a bigger pie.  Or mix a better metaphor.   All it takes is a realization that scarcity and value are different things.  In an abundant world, we can continue to freely throw off knowledge.  Hoarding knowledge is going to become a thing of the past.

How can we encourage others to think?

How can we encourage ourselves to think?

How can we continue to make sure ideas grow?

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The two things I have left to do are my schedule and my checklists.

My schedule is when I’m doing things; my checklists are what to do in a given day. Again, I return to Google (something about Google wants to make me give them information on my life), and again I put forth what I’m doing on a daily basis. I have some definitions for each task, and this is not quite ready to share, but since it’s web 2.0, everything is in ‘pre beta,’ so, a sharing we will go.

A lot of the stuff is self explanatory, and I’ll post about “affirmations,” “mission statement,” and more a little later.

(click to embiggen)

The gist is to wake up intentionally, and get my engine fully fired up. I don’t have it in me to act correctly in an innate way like Ayn Rand’s cardboard heroes do, so I have to decide what I’m doing using this kind of stuff. If I was left to my own devices, i’d probably hit the drive through at Objectively, I know it works because when I was most closely aligned with this stuff, I was having the most outrageous success of my time. The routine above takes a couple of hours to accomplish; I need to leave the house by 7:15 to get to the gym by 7:30 (new goal).

The only ‘work’ thing I batch in the beginning is to update clients and realtors–this saves me oodles of time down the road. This will become part of the dashboard when I’m partly or mostly done with this thing. I’ll get the formatting done…but really–this keeps me from forgetting to do things that enhance my day.

So today, I’ll be making contacts and updating it. I may call you, who knows.

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And that habit has been going on for a couple of weeks, but it’s paid dividends:

1. I’m already up to go to the gym again.
2. I’m aware of what needs to be done.
3. I’m already ready to kick some ass.

One of the lessons that led to this–is this: never decide anything in the first 10 seconds of waking up.

During that time, I almost always am not totally engaged. I almost always feel crappy. I am almost always ready–at that second–to go to bed. About 15 seconds later, I feel a little better, and then I’m ready to start my day, and I feel even better…and then I think of my goals…and I get really pumped.

But the first ten seconds? Man, sometimes you wanna hit the snooze. Sometimes it is more comfortable to go to bed.

I decide the NIGHT BEFORE that I’m waking up at 4:45, that I’m likely to feel like crap for a minute or two, and that it will pass, and i’ll get after all of my goals. I think about it, and in my mind I say, “It’s settled, them.” One phrase is all it takes. My mind stops resisting me, and I wake up and think, “man, I feel like crap….

…but it’s already settled that I’m gonna wake up early.” So I let the dog out, hit start on the coffee pot, grab my daily checklist…and I get moving. I come to the basement, write my goals, do my affirmations, and I’m already feeling better.

It wasn’t always like this–before I made this trick, I’d hit snooze…as much as not. “Well, feel like crap today.” I’m guessing now that I’ll do this on 2 or 3 hours sleep. And I’m guessing that i’ll feel good, and I won’t need much of a nap.

What tricks do you have for hitting your goals?

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