I had some technical difficulties with my blog recently. Some files got corrupted, and I wasn’t able to log in. I don’t know if I was hacked, but it made me wonder.

Since then, I’ve been a lot more interested in WordPress security. That’s how it goes, right? We’re not concerned about what could go wrong until something happens. But if you have a blog, there’s a good chance that someone will try to hack it someday. When that happens, you don’t want them to succeed.

John Hoff from WpBlogHost offers a WordPress security upgrade, normally priced at $49.95. From now until Thursday 5/7/2009, use the promo code “Hunter” to get it for just $24.95.

Here are some of the things included in the security upgrade:

• Rename your database tables so they don’t start with “wp_,” making them harder for hackers to find.
• Protect your login page from brute force password attacks.
• Prevent other people from accessing pages and directories you don’t want them in, such as your login page.
• Block people who attempt common hacker attacks, such as SQL injection.
• Hide your WordPress version number, so you won’t be seen as a target if your version isn’t up to date.

Of course, nothing is 100% secure. But just like a bank is far more secure than a hot dog stand, a blog with these security upgrades is far more secure than a blog using the default installation. I highly recommend a one-time investment in this security upgrade to all WordPress bloggers. I feel way more secure now than I did before.

Whether you have a blog or not, take a minute to consider all the passwords you use online. Just because your password is a little harder to guess than “password1″ doesn’t mean it’s secure. Make sure you’re not using dictionary words, or names, or sequential numbers. Use a mix of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Don’t use the same password for every site, and change them periodically.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

I’ve always loved that quote, but I don’t think he took it quite far enough. Let’s try again:

“A human being should be able to make six figures online, write an enthralling novel, design a relational database, mix a perfect margarita, calculate a stock’s annualized return, juggle five balls in the lotus position, nail every shift point in a drag race, throw a murderous left hook, solve Rubik’s Cube while discussing the latest tax laws, do heavy squats without a back brace, stand with their legs straight and touch their palms to the floor, identify a stranger’s Myers-Briggs type, separate fact from fiction in the law of attraction, make a baby feel safe, make a child laugh, make an elderly person feel respected, and be the guy everyone wants to be, or the girl everyone wants to be with. Specialization is for insects.”

That’s better!

In 11th grade, I took a class called American Civilization, which was English and history combined. Officially, my schedule showed that I had English class with one teacher, followed by history class with another teacher. But the two classrooms were right next to each other, so they took down the divider and made it into one big classroom. Both teachers taught both subjects, blending them together as if they were the same thing.

The idea was that you can’t fully understand literature without understanding the history of the time it was written. And history doesn’t come alive until you read the literature from that time. The teachers said it really didn’t make any sense to separate these subjects. In college, I remember thinking that if I became a professor, I’d like to teach a class that combined differential equations and art history, because I didn’t see any reason to separate them.

What other things does it make sense to mix? When is generalization a better idea than specialization?

Before we get into this, let’s acknowledge that this is a really huge question, and a complete answer could easily fill a book. For one thing, where do you draw the line between specialization and generalization?

Is Jack Bauer a specialist? He’s really good at catching bad guys, and it’s hard to imagine him in any other job. But when it comes to that job, he brings the full package. He’s a weapons expert, unarmed combat expert, interrogation expert, and operations expert. He’s the best field agent, the best tactical leader, and he was director of CTU. He easily goes undercover with criminal overlords, and somehow forms a personal relationship with every U.S. president (well, except for the evil one).

When the bad guys are trying to beat information out of him, he doesn’t have the luxury of saying “Sorry, but withstanding torture isn’t really my thing. Let me get the guy who does that.” He needs to be CTU’s one-stop shop for all their counter-terrorist needs. Whatever the job, he gets it done. The only thing he really can’t do is computer hacking, but he effectively outsources that to Chloe O’Brian, a specialist. (Or is she?)

I was talking to spiritual coach Akemi Gaines about this, and Henry Ford was one of the names that came up. I called him a specialist, and Akemi said:

“I don’t think Henry Ford is a specialist. Sure, he knew a lot about automobile, but what his greatness is that he gathered people (specialists) and made a modern assembly line style manufacturing company. He is well known for what he said in the trial (!) � ‘I don’t know the answer for that, but I can get someone who does.’ (something like that).”

I agree about what his greatness was, but I didn’t consider his specialty to be the automobile. For all I know, he didn’t know what a steering wheel was. I considered his specialty to be leadership in manufacturing. So depending on how you look at him, you could see either a specialist or a generalist. Was Einstein a specialist because he just did physics, or the ultimate generalist because he worked on a theory to explain the entire universe?

Furthermore, isn’t it possible to wear different hats at different times? Can’t you be a great web designer to one set of customers, a great travel agent to a different set, and a great spouse to someone else?

Anyway, specialization vs. generalization is a really big topic, but I can tackle part of it with a few posts. In this post, I’m going to come off as pro-generalist. Next time, I’ll be pro-specialist. (Does that style count as specialization or generalization?)

Can you combine seemingly unrelated career paths? Sure, why not? See if you can identify these people who eschewed specialization. Surely they were complete failures in the eyes of society, if they couldn’t even pick a niche.

Nicheless man #1: His tombstone lists what he considered his three greatest achievements, and being President of the United States didn’t make the cut. He was a distinguished architect, naturalist, linguist, horticulturist, statesman, archaeologist, and inventor.

Nicheless man #2: Although most of his work was in the field of Bible interpretation, he made tremendous contributions to many branches of science. In fact, he wrote one of the most influential books in the history of science, and invented calculus.

Nicheless man #3: He was an architect, poet, and engineer, but you don’t know him for these things. He created some of the most famous paintings in history, despite having a low opinion of painting. He’s mainly known for something else today. While still alive, he was called Il Divino, meaning “the divine one.”

Did you identify these nicheless slackers? They’re Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, and Michelangelo. Boy, imagine what Isaac Newton could have accomplished, if only he had stuck with Bible study!

Now let’s look at the archetypal Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. He was a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer, among other things. How many short-sighted people do you think told him to pick a niche and stick with it?

If he had stuck with one thing, he might have been a little better at that thing, but much of his talent would have been wasted. Should he have advanced the field of hydrodynamics a bit further, at the cost of not painting the Mona Lisa? Ridiculous.

Much of his ability must have come from natural talent. Much of it came from his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio starting at age 14, where he learned drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics, carpentry, drawing, painting, sculpting, and modeling.

But another part of it was his ability to learn holistically, and transfer skills from one discipline to another instead of treating them separately. For example, his paintings the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Virgin of the Rocks are considered masterpieces not just because of his artistic techniques, but because of his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany, geology, and the way people show emotion.

This is a critical point, because you don’t have time to learn everything from scratch. Details will vary, but principles stay the same. Master the principles, and the details will surrender themselves to you.

Steve Pavlina claims that all successful personal growth efforts come down to bringing yourself into greater alignment with just three core principles: truth, love, and power. He makes his articles interesting by finding common threads between personal development and seemingly unrelated topics, such as software, chess, or Star Trek.

In The Joy of Solving Problems, he describes a technique he used to solve a problem without having extensive knowledge in that field:

“One morning my physics teacher walked up to me at my locker before school and asked me to step inside his classroom. He presented me with a physics problem that he couldn’t seem to solve. I solved it easily, not because I was better than him at physics but because I’d been exposed to such an enormous variety of problems that my mind just saw the solution. That physics problem fit the pattern of a class of problems I already knew how to solve. My solution was unusual for a physics problem, but it wasn’t that unusual for a math problem�It was only later in life that I realized how helpful it is to generalize this attitude beyond math, science, and logic problems and into the realm of practical daily existence.”

In my high school chemistry class, our teacher gave us a problem and forgot to give us the relevant formula. The person next to me was completely paralyzed without the formula, because he didn’t know what to do other than plug in numbers like a blind gorilla. What did I do? I just used common sense, because the problem was conceptually simple. This strategy won’t always work, but when problems get more complicated, you’d better understand the concept even if you have the formula.

In college physics, I had a really boring teacher with a thick accent that made him very hard to understand, so I rarely went to class. On one test, there was a problem that I had no idea how to solve the way he wanted us to, but I figured it out knowing that physics is big on “conservation of stuff.” Fortunately I didn’t have to show how I arrived at the answer, and this wouldn’t always work. But when you know the principles, you’re that much more effective when you study the details.

Back when the computer game Doom was all the rage for its immersive 3D graphics, my friend saw me having a good time with it, and wanted to play. She did not have a good time with it. She couldn’t find her way out of mazes, she overlooked important items in the rooms, she didn’t see the monsters sneaking up on her, and she couldn’t use the space around her to dodge enemy blasts while staying focused on her target. As Marty McFly might say, she had a problem thinking 3rd dimensionally.

When we tried another similar game, she wondered why I picked it up right away, while she struggled again. It was because I had developed a general skill that she hadn’t: spatial perception. After learning that skill, I could apply it to any of these games. I can also apply it to a wide array of other situations, from juggling to geometric constructions to sweeping a building for terrorists (which hopefully I’ll never have to do). It’s all the same.

Conversely, I was very ineffective at a number of tasks she excelled at, because she had learned one general skill that I hadn’t: networking. Because she was good at that, she could easily drum up support for any cause, acquire business contacts, and get invited to things other people couldn’t. It’s all the same.

Recently I’ve heard a few people say that Tim Ferriss is all over the place in his range of topics. This surprised me, because I thought he had a pretty clear focus. He’s the 4-Hour Workweek guy. He’s the lifestyle design guy. (And if they think he’s all over the place, then they must think I choose topics with a random number generator!)

Skellie clarified this in Escaping Niches, a really nice post, although I disagree with this particular part. She said that Tim’s blog “jumps all over the place, from road-testing supercars to extreme weight loss to travel tips to nutritional science. The range of topics is so broad that no one person could be interested in all of them.”

I just don’t see it that way. Someone who ends up at his blog after a Google search for the Audi R8 might not be interested in extreme weight loss. But Tim’s not writing for people who want to look up the horsepower of the Audi R8. He’s writing for people who are interested in what he’s all about – deconstructing, streamlining, and remapping any challenge. His ideal reader won’t mind that he doesn’t stay on the same narrow topic. Like me, they might not even notice.

I’ll point you to two great posts about generalization, which dispel the “jack of all trades, master of none” myth. First, Tim’s post The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades. He has some great points about the superior success and life enjoyment of the generalist. For example, what do you call the top military guys? Generals! This is also where I came across one of my favorite phrases: “Be too complex to categorize.”

The other is Michael Martine’s Hiring Help for Your Blog – Why a Generalist is the Way to Go. It might not perfectly reflect the services he offers today (click his Blog Coaching and Consulting link for details), but it’s a fantastic explanation of why you don’t want to hire a guy who won the Nobel Prize for CSS without knowing a thing about SEO.

Mike at Four Pillars gave me some blogging advice the other day, in response to I Am Part Time Blogger, Hear Me Meow:

“Anyway, the reason your blog isn’t more successful in terms of RSS is quite simple (yes, I know the answer). Your posts are not main stream enough – you don’t talk about everyday, common items which most of the blogosphere can relate to. Your posts are all over the map in terms of topics, you write about confusing concepts and ideas!

Obviously this is not meant as criticism – it’s just an analysis based on factors that I think popular blogs share. Most of them cover things like saving money, investment, budgeting etc etc but they talk about things like cars, homes, cable bills etc. Most people can relate to those things. If you have a blog that usually covers common topics, has some focus (ie saving money, investing, baby stuff), you are a good writer, can promote the blog and work your ass off then you will probably have fairly successful blog in terms of RSS.”

I kind of agree and kind of disagree. It depends on whether you want to give people what they want, or give them what they need. I agree that niche blogs tend to be the most successful. Most blog readers seem to love them, but I have no idea why. The problem is that they’re often redundant. Most of the examples mentioned here have been done to death already, if there was ever anything to say in the first place.

Saving money? Why does anyone need to read about that? You save money by spending less. That’s all there is to it. Investing? It can potentially be very complicated, but investment blogs usually just tell people what they would already know if they read the newsletter that comes with their 401(k) statement. Budgeting? Yeah, it’s important, but I don’t see how you can get much fresh material on such a simple topic.

Of course, people read blogs for reasons other than getting information. Community, for one. So many of these blogs, even if they don’t really have anything new to say, can still be useful. But I’d rather find new things to say. Even if an exhausted topic can work, it’s not really something we need.

For me, doing a niche blog would be a terrible choice. First, I’d keep having to think up something else to say on that same topic even if there was nothing left to say. Scott Young noted that the purpose of his website is to lose its readers. He said that after you’ve read a blog for a while, “you move on, not because the ideas weren’t great, but because you’ve absorbed them fully enough that there isn’t anything left.”

Darren Rowse found that to be true on ProBlogger, his blog about blogging that’s targeted at beginner and intermediate level bloggers. He said that most of his readers tend to be regulars for a few months, then leave. It’s not because he’s not doing a good job. It’s because he’s doing such a good job that he quickly tells people everything they need to know about that topic. They graduate and move on.

Many times, the blogger gets sick of their own topic. After writing thousands of posts on the same topic, they’ve long since outgrown it, and they want out. Some people seem to think that the ultimate goal is to hand the reins over to someone else, so you can step away. But instead of that, why not create a blog you won’t outgrow, so you never want to step away?

The other problem with niche blogs is that any idea you have that doesn’t happen to fall within the boundaries of your specific topic is wasted. And I’m certainly not going to start a separate blog on every topic I write about. I’d end up with hundreds of blogs with just a few posts each.

Instead, I choose to write about any topic that fits with my general focus. I might have a hard time putting my general focus into words, but it’s there. It’s kind of like Seinfeld – you can say it’s about nothing, but it still has a general focus, and you have some idea of what to expect.

By not restricting myself to a narrow topic, I can write about some things that others can’t, because some things fall outside all of the traditional niches. And because I can switch things up, I don’t have to repeat myself a whole lot. But writing about high-level stuff is very different from combining unrelated niches. A blog about finance and gardening won’t work, because it’s targeting two completely different kinds of people. I’m targeting one kind of person.

Leo Babauta seems to advocate non-niche blogging now, judging from his post Shattering the Myth of Blog Niches: How to Grow a Huge Readership. (Although if I remember correctly, he once attributed his success partly to his unique focus on simple productivity. Can anyone confirm? Oh, and simplicity is another niche that I don’t get. If it’s so simple, why do you need to write thousands of posts about it?)

Now don’t go crazy with generalization, thinking that specialization is for suckers. I’ve got one or two posts coming about the benefits of specialization. Subscribe now, and don’t miss them!

But generalization is seriously underrated. Just ask Benjamin Franklin, Galileo Galilei, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gottfried Leibniz, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, Cicero, John von Neumann, and countless other people who refused to be a job title, and insisted on being too complex to categorize.

I think Tim Ferriss has the second-best answer to the question “What do you do?” He sometimes just says “I’m a drug dealer” to end the conversation, because it takes too long to explain everything to someone who’s probably just making chit chat.

The best answer would be what escaped mental patient Billy Caufield said in The Dream Team: “What do I do? Well, it kinda depends on the circumstances.”

Photo by Annie Mole

In Boy Scouts, one of the most important things you do is work on earning your merit badges. And one of the most coveted merit badges, one required for becoming an Eagle Scout, is Emergency Preparedness.

To earn this merit badge, you need to demonstrate that you’re prepared for emergencies such as fires, explosions, car accidents, being trapped in the desert or a blizzard, food poisoning, flash floods, mountain accidents, boating accidents, gas leaks, tornadoes, hurricanes, avalanches, touching live electrical wires, carbon monoxide poisoning, and nuclear power plant emergencies (all of these are actually on the list).

I never earned this merit badge, but like everyone else, I’m still responsible for being prepared in the event of an emergency. And I experienced an emergency a couple of days ago, when my blog crashed.

To call this an emergency might sound like an exaggeration to some of you, but anyone who has a blog can imagine how it feels to first lose the ability to comment, and then lose the ability to log in. While I welcome technical challenges at work, it’s different when they strike where you live. I guess it’s like how a surgeon can operate on strangers with no problem, but not on their own kids.

And if something seems like an emergency to you, that’s how you’re going to treat it. Here’s a simple guide to dealing with emergencies (that aren’t really emergencies).

1. Freak out.

It’s not exactly constructive, but if you’re going to do it anyway, you might as well claim that you’re checking the first step off the list. Maybe the world really is coming to an end, and you need to react accordingly. Just get it out of your system, and then move on.

2. Realize that the problem is smaller than you.

You might overlook this truth, but your inner voice knows it. My inner voice told me that fixing my blog was not even remotely the biggest problem I’ve ever had to deal with. I said, “But I don’t know how to fix it.” My inner voice said, “But you know how to find out.”

3. Brainstorm solutions.

After you’ve calmed down a little, it’s time to actually do something. Determine specifically what the problem is, and come up with ideas of how to solve it.

4. Take action.

Pick the solution that seems most promising, and run with it. Repeat as needed.

5. Prepare for next time.

Once it’s over, decide what you’ll do to be better prepared next time. @bripblap said I inspired him to back up his blog that evening. We all know that regular backups are critical, but many of us don’t do enough of them.

John Hoff at WpBlogHost pointed me to the WordPress Exploit Scanner, a plugin that checks your blog for signs that it’s been hacked. I don’t know if I was hacked or not, but if it happens, I’ll sure want to know.

Are you prepared for emergencies?

Photo by Tina Keller

“I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school
Or steal my Daddy’s cue and make a living out of playing pool
Or find myself a rock and roll band that needs a helping hand
Oh Maggie I wish I’d never seen your face”

- Rod Stewart, in a moment of career confusion

This is a follow-up to I Am Problogger, Hear Me Roar, where I announced that I was going on a mini-retirement to become a full time blogger.

I went back to work nearly two months ago (didn’t realize it had been that long), so my mini-retirement lasted nearly 5 months. I’ve been meaning to post an update about the full time blogging experiment: what worked, what didn’t, and where to go from here.

The overall outcome

Looking at the total effect on my quality of life, the mini-retirement was a fantastic success. Being in control of my life (you know, like an adult) was like breathing for the first time. Just ending my sleep deprivation alone made a world of difference. There’s nothing like being able to do what you want, when you want. I ate better, exercised more, had better health, more energy, a better social life, and more time for both work and fun. Not that everything was perfect all the time, but it was a day and night difference.

In the beginning, I was actually a little bit concerned that I might become bored. I didn’t really think so, but so many retirees have said they couldn’t figure out what to do with their newfound freedom, and they had to get a job just to have something to do. Now I can say I have no idea what’s wrong with those freaks. Equating freedom with boredom is the lie of the lie of the 4-hour workweek. If you get bored, something is seriously wrong with you. You might consider consulting with a neurosurgeon to see if you can get a chip implanted in your brain that would endow you with imagination, curiosity, and a sense of purpose.

I don’t know, maybe I was supposed to be European. I’ve never accepted work as a substitute for life. I don’t even think I’m lazy, just highly resistant to devoting my life to something that isn’t really my thing. But what is my thing?

Good question. I quickly found out that I don’t want to do something just to make money. Like if I was doing something that let me work from home on my own schedule, but it was something that I didn’t really care about, would that really be any better than having a job? No, it would probably just be far more work for far less money.

Knowing that allowed me to rule out a lot of options. A lot of the time, I’d consider something and think, “Well, I’d do it if it paid a lot from day one. But is it interesting enough to be worth putting in tons of effort, not knowing if it would ever pay a decent income?” And if the answer was no, I had to pass.

So far, the only thing for which the answer has been yes is blogging, and that’s why I’ve focused on it. (I use the term “blogging” in a very broad sense. Ebooks, affiliate marketing, even consulting or services that result from my blog–anything that turns my ideas into money–it’s all “blogging” to me. No need being picky about the delivery mechanism.)

So how did that work out?

The blogging results

Looking at my mini-retirement purely from a blogging perspective, it was an absolute disaster. In five months, my subscriber count increased by about 40%. In the five months prior to that, when I was blogging part time, my subscriber count increased by about 130%.

That’s right, I got more than triple the results when I was blogging part time!

And I’ve got to tell you, this was very disappointing. If I had maintained my previous growth rate, I’d have ended up with 1,400 subscribers. If I had doubled my growth rate, which would be reasonable since I was doing it full time, I’d have gotten to 2,200 subscribers. But why would my growth rate plummet?

I got this in an email from a new reader, who wanted to remain anonymous:

“From what I’ve seen, the quality of your posts truly stands out. How is it possible that you only have 800 subscribers? I mean, that’s a lot in its own right. But I think your stuff should demand a larger following.”

Why thank you reader, and I agree with you! But while my results were disappointing, they’re also encouraging in a way. I now have confirmation that blogging results have little to no correlation with how much time you put in. Which means you don’t have to work yourself to death. In fact, working too much can not only be unhelpful, but counterproductive (and when you consider the effect on your quality of life, it hurts you far more).

I don’t like things that appear random. Everything has a reason, and I want to know it. I know it’s not just a matter of “less work = better results.” I think the conclusion is that doing the right things is far more important than doing a lot of things. But what are the right things?

One thing I think I’m doing right is having a unique voice. There will always be people who don’t like it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be accused of being a copy of someone else. One reason I wanted to start a blog is because I was so frustrated that out of all the people I saw talking online, nobody was really saying anything. I eventually found people who would go beyond rehashing the same old stuff, but the really good blogs are a tiny percentage of the total. Even if your feed reader is full of blogs you love, remember how long it took to find those needles in a haystack.

Ron Hitson (no URL given) feels the same way. In a comment spliced together with an email he gave me permission to quote, he said:

“Hunter, your blog is the only blog I follow. You actually add value and a good perspective. IMO bloggers only offer opinions of things that have already occurred…I like your blog because you’re somewhat of a ‘thought leader’ (like Steve Pavlina). You guys bring fresh thinking to ‘the game.’ Most other bloggers have the same stuff, it’s just repackaged.”

OK, “thought leader” is totally going into my personal branding statement! But here’s the point: if there are even a handful of people saying things like this, I’m going to choose to listen to what they’re saying (keep going) instead of what the stats are saying (give up).

The new 3-step plan

Still, I was putting in too much effort for too little results, so something had to change. I’ve been trying a new strategy, and while it’s too soon to judge the results, it feels like a good idea. Here are the 3 parts.

1. Post less.

When I went full time, I increased my posting frequency from about twice a week to about four times a week. I didn’t want to increase it too much because it didn’t seem like it would help. A lot of people say you need to post every day to keep people coming back to your blog, but why? If someone’s subscribed, they’re subscribed. Why does it matter how often they visit?

In fact, I thought posting too much could hurt me. Giving tons of posts to people who are already subscribed won’t make them subscribe twice. But it might make them unsubscribe if they have too much to read. Actually, is that what happened? After all, I must have done something different that slashed my growth rate, and I don’t know what else it could have been.

I don’t want to overload my readers. I want to take care of them, but then spend as much time as possible going after new readers. That’s how you grow.

Writing posts like the 5,336 word Lightworkers, Darkworkers, And The Other Kind was taking a toll on me. (That one took 3 days to write; I don’t know how many hours.) And now I just don’t have the time.

I’m still going to be posting regularly, just not as much. And maybe with more short posts (which for me means less than 1,000 words). And maybe being a little less thorough (I actually rented the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies as research for The Inductive Oracle, The Deductive Merovingian).

2. Stop reading blogs.

This was a really tough decision to make, but it had to be done. I was spending about 40 hours a week just reading and commenting on blogs. Then I’d think about how there were so many more blogs I wanted to read. I was living in reaction mode, with a never-ending to do list. At times I felt like I was going to snap. (I talked about this in detail in Why We’re Failing The 4-Hour Workweek.)

When I first started reading blogs, I soon learned that you could subscribe to a blog to make sure you didn’t miss any posts. And I remember thinking that no blog could possibly be good enough to subscribe to. While I’ve changed my thinking on that, I still don’t want to try to keep up with everything.

I’ve tried cutting back several times, but somehow I’d just get back in the habit every time. I had to quit cold turkey.

When I get home from work, I just have a few hours before I have to go to bed. With all the different ways I could spend my time, how many of those hours do I really want to spend reading blogs, as good as they might be?

(And in reality, I’m still reading blogs. Just fewer of them, with much more skimming and much less commenting. I don’t want to quit entirely. But if I tell myself that I’ve stopped reading blogs, my conscious mind will act accordingly. I think I can keep my blog reading to less than an hour a day.)

3. Use Twitter more.

But there’s a problem here. If I’m not commenting on many blogs, how will people find me? That’s where Twitter comes in.

I see Twitter as being very similar to commenting, only you don’t have to read a post first. I can send out tweets a lot faster than I can leave comments, and they can potentially be seen by far more people when I have enough followers.

This is an experiment for now, but hopefully it will prove to be effective.

Going forward

Some people took Blogger’s Paradise a bit more autobiographically than I had intended. I get frustrated sometimes, but I can’t imagine quitting blogging. I’m still getting warmed up.

As @stevepavlina tweeted, “The first million words of content are usually the hardest. ” I guess this can be considered the blogging version of the 10,000 hour rule. You have to pay your dues before you collect the rewards. I estimate that I’ve written a quarter of a million words on my blog. Make it a third of a million if you count my ebooks. Make it 335,333 if you count this post. It’s a start.

But I still continue to consider different options. Some people suggested that I get in on the iPhone app gold rush. And while that’s a reasonable idea, I’m already involved in one gold rush. If I’m going to do something else, it would have to be a better option than blogging.

But dare I say it, I actually seem to be connecting well with the new job. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be able to write a non-sarcastic version of Top 10 Reasons To Have A Job.

BTW, it’s come to my attention that comments aren’t working, at least for some people. I’ll try to get that working as soon as I can.

With this awful recession weakening people’s spirits, it’s important to remind ourselves now and then that there’s a lot of stuff to feel good about. Here are 5 of my favorite YouTube videos that never fail as mood boosters. Any one of them could make your day. Watch all 5 and you might choke on your own happy hormones.

Susan Boyle auditions for Britain’s Got Talent

I just came across this one yesterday via Career Renegade, but it’s quickly taking the world by storm. Susan Boyle, a plain looking, unemployed, 47 year old woman, did a singing audition last week before a highly judgmental audience, including the brutal judges Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan. (YouTube embedding is disabled for this one, but just click on the picture.)

Reunion with Christian the lion

John Rendall and Ace Berg rescued a lion cub from a sad life in a London department store in 1969. After Christian the lion got too big for them to keep, they had to return him to Africa. Then after he readjusted to the wild, John and Ace paid him a visit. Would he remember them?

Mister Rogers addresses the U.S. Senate

President Lyndon Johnson proposed a $20 million grant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but President Nixon wanted that amount cut in half. A youngish Mister Rogers went before the tough-as-nails Senator John Pastore, to persuade him that children are worth investing in.

Nick Vujicic living life without limits

Being a little different isn’t stopping Nick Vujicic from being happy, or inspiring millions of people.

Free parking changes the world

The short film Validation raked up awards at film festivals in 2007. No wonder, when you see what free parking can do for people. 16 minutes, but definitely worth setting aside time for.

By the way, a couple of these videos were popularized by big bloggers a few months ago, but subscribers to my newsletter saw them first. Sign up now, so you don’t miss the next one!

The secret to success is very simple: practice. Although most people think that world class performance requires huge talent, research shows that 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of practice can make anyone a top performer in pretty much any field, from sports to music to business.

The talent myth is very easy to believe when you look at people at their peak. People forget that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, or that Abraham Lincoln lost numerous elections, or that Barbara Blackburn failed typing in high school (she went on to become the world’s fastest typist, with a peak of 212 wpm).

The good news is that practice makes perfect, so anyone has a chance. Just put in your 10,000 hours, and you’ll make it. But I’ve heard a lot of people citing this statistic lately, and they tend to miss one critical point: not all practice counts. Fortune Magazine reveals what it takes to be great:

“So greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call ‘deliberate practice.’ It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – that’s deliberate practice.”

So before punching your time card and starting to count your 10,000 hours, make sure you’re doing the right kind of practice. Undeliberate practice doesn’t count, which is why it’s possible to work in the same office for 30 years without becoming good at anything.

At my high school graduation, one of the speakers told us what it takes to become an expert. Just read about your topic of choice for an hour a day. After a year, you’ll be a national expert. After five years, you’ll be an international expert. And I heard someone say that reading six books on any subject will make you an expert.

These feats take far less time than the 10 years or 10,000 hours mentioned about, but I guess we’re talking about different levels of expertise.

The 10,000 hour rule comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. I haven’t read it yet, and I haven’t found out exactly what the 10,000 hour rule applies to.

To be a great blogger, do you really need to blog for 10,000 hours? Or do you just need 10,000 hours of writing experience? Or 10,000 hours of experience in your subject matter? To be a great programmer, do you need 10,000 hours of experience with one particular language, or does all experience count? Does 10,000 hours of reading the news make you an expert of world events, or is that too broad?

Do you know? Do you have 10,000 hours of experience in anything?

In my review of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, I basically just said “this is awful, don’t buy it.” I didn’t expect that review to get much attention, but it did. There was a lot of discussion in the comments about how much your mindset matters compared to the more tangible things.

I think mastering the inner game is hugely important; I just don’t think that book was very helpful in this regard. But today I came across something that is.

Mary Anne Fischer’s site is called i Profit On Purpose, and there are a couple of double meanings here. The lowercase “i” is for “internet,” as in i[insert Apple product here], and “on purpose” refers to life purpose. So it’s about consciously creating an online business that fits with who you are.

She has a free ebook called “What Everybody Ought to Know About Making Money Online.” It had been on my list of things to read, but I didn’t get around to it until Michael Martine gushed over Mary Anne in his latest Remarkablogger newsletter.

He got an early look at her not-yet-launched program and loved it. And while I haven’t seen her program, I can tell from her ebook that she knows what she’s talking about. She talks about things like core strengths, core genius, and the “you” factor, putting it all together to help you create an online business that’s both profitable and enjoyable.

I read through it pretty quickly because I’m trying to leave town, but I saw it as a very extensive overview of the personal considerations that most people ignore when building an online business. I’m very curious to learn more, and I hear from Michael that a lot more is coming.

If you get on her list, you’ll have a chance to win a full scholarship to her program when it launches, but the deadline is 1 AM EST Sunday morning. Sorry for the short notice, but I just discovered it myself.

Let me ask a very loaded question to get some conversation going: do you think an online business should take your passions, strengths, and life purpose into account, or is it better to follow a one-size-fits-all solution?

What an awful book. I received this as a gift from someone who had some extra copies. I appreciate the gesture, and I would gladly link to them, if it didn’t reflect so poorly on their judgment. It’s that bad.

How Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker became a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller, I have no idea. It’s like the guy started with Rich Dad, Poor Dad, threw out all the good parts, and padded the bad parts out to 200 pages.

I don’t even need to tell you what’s wrong with it. I’ll let the author do that for himself:

“This is a special ceremony, so I’m going to ask you to eliminate any distractions right now. Stop munching, stop talking on the phone, and stop whatever you’re doing. Men, if you like, you can change into a suit and tie, although a tuxedo would be best. Women, a formal evening gown and heels would be perfect. And if you don’t have anything that’s classy or new enough, this would be an occasion to go buy yourself a brand-new dress, designer label preferred.

If you’re all ready, let’s begin. Please kneel down on one knee and bow your head in respect. Ready, here goes. ‘BY THE POWER INVESTED IN ME, I HEREBY ANOINT YOU AS ‘WORTHY’ FROM NOW UNTIL FOREVER MORE!’

Okay, we’re done. You can stand up now and hold your head high because you are finally worthy.”

Feel better now?

“The play account rule is that it must be spent every month. That’s right! Each month you have to blow all the money in that account in a way that makes you feel rich. For example, imagine walking into a massage center, dumping all the money from your account on the counter, pointing to the massage therapists, and saying, ‘I want both of you on me. With the hot rocks and the frickin’ cucumbers. After that, bring me lunch!’”

After that, bring me humility!

“[At my workshop] I then pull out a wooden arrow with a steel-pointed tip and explain that as a practice for this discipline [going beyond your comfort zone], you’re going to break this arrow with your throat. I then demonstrate how the steel point goes into the soft part of your throat, while another person holds the other end of the arrow against their outstretched palm. The idea is to walk straight into the arrow and break it using only your throat before it pierces through your neck.”

And if you survive this, next you drink the Kool-Aid!

I really don’t have much to say. For an infinitely better financial motivation book, try Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It has its flaws, but anything negative you can say about it goes ten times for Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.

So why did I even bother writing a review? Because I had to say something. It greatly concerns me that a book like this can become a bestseller. We’re in an economic crisis because too many people checked their brain at the door when making financial decisions, and I don’t think books like this are going to help restore sanity to the American public.

Have any of you read it? Did you find it helpful? If so, tell me what I’m missing.

It’s hard to say exactly what separates us from the animals. For now, I’m going to say creativity. That’s not perfect, but creativity separates us from all but dolphins, chimpanzees, Lassie, and the loosely-based-on-reality velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

In order to write this post, I unfortunately had to take a break from playing Sokoban, one of the many creativity-inducing resources that Marelisa Fabrega points us to in her new ebook. See, the thing about creativity is that it takes you into the flow state. And once you get there, you don’t want to leave.

But it wouldn’t be very nice of me to keep these secrets all to myself, would it? And so I’m taking a break for just long enough to tell you about this ebook called How to Be More Creative: A Handbook for Alchemists.

Anytime I hear someone saying that there’s nothing new out there anymore, or everything that can be done has been done, I want to smack them. Creativity has taken us from apes to where we are now, and it continues to take us forward every day. But people often limit themselves by thinking that creativity is reserved for a select few.

I completely agree with Marelisa that creativity is not something that either you have or you don’t. Everyone has it, but it’s a skill that needs to be developed to its potential. And the more you train your creativity, the more you can do with it, whether it’s in the form of making more money, writing a novel, cooking better meals, entertaining yourself, or doing any of those other things that separate us from the animals.

The only concern I had is that since Marelisa has already written so much about creativity on her blog, I wondered if there would be enough new material in her ebook. And yes, there is. She’s included information from some of her best posts, but she also has lots of new info, stories, tips, examples, and enough fun and informative resources to take your creativity as far as you want to take it.

How to Be More Creative: A Handbook for Alchemists is something you can start putting into practice right away. It’s reminded me that I need to start using my Moleskine notebook the way Leonardo da Vinci would. (Which I’ll get right on, as soon as I’m done with Sokoban!)

In the new millennium, the most important currency is information. Gone are the days when widgets ruled the world. Today, knowledge is power. If the Industrial Revolution made us civilized, the Digital Revolution will make us enlightened.

But while we have access to extraordinary amounts of information, we still remain ignorant of much of it. The internet is pretty good, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the universe’s biggest and most critical database, the Akashic records.

You aren’t a body that happens to have a soul. You are a soul that happens to be in a body. Your soul is the core essence of your being, and as it incarnates in different bodies over multiple lifetimes, it goes through many amazing experiences. All of these experiences are stored energetically in the Akashic records, somewhere out in the ether.

In the past, the only way of accessing the Akashic records was to hire a practitioner who had been trained in the intuitive arts. But while this method works for reading your own record, many people want far more information than can be obtained in a single reading. And for them, there was no better way…until now.

At last, the complete Akashic records are available to everyone. Get them delivered to you on one million CDs, with a handy carrying case.

This includes, for every person who has ever lived, their soul’s place of origin, primary chakra, soul condition (such as any energetic blocks or tears), full information about their spirit guides, and a detailed description of everything that has happened in their current and all past lives. (You might think this would be illegal, but current identity theft laws don’t apply to soul records.)

Just think of what you can do with this information:

- Read Jesus Christ‘s record to learn the location of the Holy Grail. It’s bound to get some serious bids on eBay!

- Where is Adolf Hitler‘s soul today? Is it possessing your next door neighbor with the moustache? Better safe than sorry!

- Did O.J. Simpson really do it? Enquiring minds want to know!

- Matt Cutts knows Google’s search ranking algorithm. Learn it for yourself, and never settle for less than the number one ranking!

- Tip off the White House about Osama bin Laden‘s location. Place a curse on him while you wait for the armed forces to get there!

How much would you pay for all this? $10 million? $100 million? Well, you can get everything for just $999,997. That’s less than a dollar per CD! And the price ends with a 7, so you know you’re getting the best possible value.

This isn’t quite ready for release yet. But if you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll get a significant discount when it comes out.

If the server crashes, please keep trying. Don’t miss out on your chance to learn all the world has ever known.