I wrote a complete review of Steve Pavlina’s book on my other blog but I wanted to touch on some of the specific things in this book that apply to your internet marketing business.
Steve, unlike some other personal development authors I’ve read, actually seems to value hard work. His book deals with a lot of the practical aspects of meeting goals by changing your habits.
For instance, Chapter 3, which revolves around the principle of Power, suggests “Mastering the First Hour” in order to get control of the “rudder” of your day. It also introduces the concept of “Personal Quotas” and “Worst First“. These habits are pretty self explanatory and help you to gain mastery over your life.
I also love what he has to say about Goals, and not until I read this did I realize why I so often despise goal setting. In fact I’ve avoided setting goals for my business for a long time without really knowing why. Here is a quote:
“The purpose of goal setting is not to control the future. That would be senseless because the future only exists in your imagination. The point of goal setting is to improve the quality of your present-moment reality. Setting goals can give you greater clarity and focus right now. Whenever you set your sights on achieving something, always ask yourself, “How does setting this goal improve my present reality?”
If it doesn’t improve your present reality, then the goal is pointless, and you may as well dump it. But if it brings greater clarity, focus and motivation to your life when you think about it, it’s a keeper.”
That makes a heck of a lot of sense to me.
Goals that are long term and end focused but that don’t bring you any happiness or sense of purpose NOW are no fun because they make life a drudgery, always a striving for the future but not enjoying the present. Which leads to struggle, procrastination, and failure.
The concept of Triage is fantastic. Steve suggests you categorize tasks this way:
- Projects that will fail to have a significant impact, whether you do them or not
- Projects that will succeed anyway, whether you do them or not
- Projects that will have a significant impact only if you complete them in a timely manner
Steve says that if you spend most of your time and energy on the tasks in the 3rd group, you’ll be most profitable.
Chapter 8 is my favorite because it gives you concrete examples (instead of abstract concepts) of things to do to improve your results and your life. One of these is the 30 Day Trial.
I’ve done a couple of these in my business. Most recently was the 30 articles in 30 days challenge. I’ve also done 30 blog posts in 30 days and other trials. These are fun because they’re challenging – but because you’re focusing on doing ONE activity for 30 days (instead of attacking a bunch of different things), they’re not overwhelming.
The chapter on Money is also fantastic for business owners to read. Steve is obviously a person of integrity, you can tell that right away if you read his blog for any length of time. In the world of internet marketing and blogging especially, people with integrity are more likely to build long term businesses.
What he has to say about creating value by being a “Contributor” instead of a “Moocher” is thought provoking for us as online business owners too.
There is a lot of great stuff in this book and I enjoyed reading it very much. Personal Development for Smart People is available on Amazon.
