Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead ; follow him on twitter . If you want to wake up happy on a daily basis, you have to own your own time . You have to be the one that dictates what you do and when you do it . Otherwise, you’re at the mercy of your owner boss. You may think that you should be grateful for your job, and you should. But when it comes down to it, you’re not going to hit a ceiling of happiness and purpose if you’re not working for yourself. (I know there may be a few exceptions, but let’s be honest, they are exceptions .) There’s no getting around this . But working for yourself is a scary idea, right? No one to tell you what to do every day. No one to say when you can go to the bathroom and when you can eat lunch. No one to tell you what to wear or who to talk to. Taking off the leash is frightening when you’ve worn it for so long. Here’s the clincher, here’s the real mind-blower: Most of us don’t even think we have leashes around our neck at all. Most of us think that we’re in control. But we’re not. Let’s take a look at how this typically breaks down: Steady paycheck? Check. Benefits? Check. Comfortable routine? Check Free paper clips?  Check. Meaning? Rarely. Purpose? You mean that unintelligible corporate mission statement? Security? Not really. Freedom? Asking for permission is not freedom. Do you really think you have job security? You have no control over whether your company goes under. That is not job security. So what’s the difference between a renegade and the average cubicle citizen? It’s mindset. It’s astonishing that this makes difference between the people that end up being “lifers” at a company (by default), and gives up on their dreams vs. those who steer their own course and live their dreams. What’s the gap between dreams being fantasy and reality? Obviously, it’s a matter of action. But, what makes the free man take action where the cubicle citizen recoils? This is the question that has been burning in my mind for some time. This mindset makes the difference between success and near certain failure. We all have these traits in us; it’s just a matter of cultivation and practice for them to become fully expressed. Here are the seven things you can do now. 1. Reclaim your mind. This might seem a little strange, right? Who would think that they don’t own their own mind? The truth is that most of us live with partially free minds. We act on our intentions as long as our comfort zone is not violated. We rebel when the risk is minimal. In order to reclaim ownership of your mind (and stop renting it out) you have to demand of yourself nothing short of a completely free, unadulterated mind. Underline this in your mind: “I won’t let anyone else have control or dictate the contents of my mind. Only I have that power.” 2. Put yourself on auto-response. The ability of the leader to take action, despite not having a clear course, is a highly coveted skill in the entrepreneurial world. A leader takes action while others wait around for the situation to become more favorable. He has the “auto-response” of “I’ll figure it out.” When faced with a tough decision, or unclear path, he takes action instead of waiting for orders. The more you’re able to take action despite having all the facts, the faster you’ll get results. You’ll adjust your course when you make mistakes and ultimately get there much faster than the person waiting around for the perfect plan to materialize. 3. Think holistically. All of our decisions are interconnected. A choice in our health could create an improvement in our productivity. A shift in our spiritual practice can cultivate a calm state, where your focus increases. A move toward working for yourself will dramatically impact your freedom of time and movement, and greatly improve your happiness. All of our decisions are interconnected and a smart renegade knows this. She tries to make high leverage holistic decisions that will have a ripple effect across all aspects of her life. Think holistically. See how the changes in all areas of your life impact each other, not just in business, but in the areas of health, fitness, finances, mental/emotional and spirituality. 4. Question authority. Too much skepticism will make you unbalanced, and will honestly probably turn you into a conpiracy-theory nutcase. A healthy amount of skepticism, on the other hand, is essential to working intelligently. One of the oldest living renegades, Siddhartha Gautama (also known as the Buddha) once said, “Do not believe anything that you’ve been told, unless it agrees with your own common sense.” The same advice applies 2,000 years later. Listen to yourself first, before you listen to the experts. Test before you assume. 5. Focus on interdependency. We all have certain communities of people or tribes that we naturally connect with and are attracted to. Seek out these people, help them, start conversations with them. These are the people that are most likely to identify with you, therefore the most likely to also support and promote your work. Find a way to connect with influential leaders or members of your tribe today. Whether it be through sending them a message on twitter, contacting them through their blog or emailing them directly. And if you can, try to get one of these people to mentor you. It can’t hurt to ask and you’ll be surprised at how genuinely helpful some of these people can be. 6. Defrost your passion. If you’ve been stuck in a cubicle-farm for some time, or have been in a less than ideal work situation, you’ve probably given up hope on some level. Being surrounded with people you’d rather not work with, grey walls, no windows and bad coffee tends to dampen your spirits. This dispirited condition may have progressed so far that you have trouble remembering what it’s like to be excited about your life. That’s got to change. It’s time to reconnect with what you’re truly passionate about and wake up to the possibility that you can start making your own rules. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle of paying your dues with the occasional bit of fun. Realize that you don’t have to live in the way you think is required. 7. Be ridiculous. There’s obviously a certain societal value to being practical. But what’s easily overlooked is the value of being highly impractical. You have to be willing to take risks, and keep your head in the clouds to be a successful trailblazer. You have to strike a balance between having roots (practicality) and wings (innovating). Realize that all major revolutions in the world were first seen as crazy, ridiculous and absurd. If you want to innovate, you’ll have to accept that the majority of the population will view you as a lunatic. You secretly know, though, that your level of lunacy is quite possibly your most valuable skill. Working for yourself forces you to grow One 0f the coolest things about entrepreneurship is that it’s one of the biggest catalysts for personal growth. Starting your own business is one of the most meaningful rights of passage you can go through. It will challenge you. It will make you question yourself and force you to get really clear about your purpose and what you want to contribute. It boosts your confidence and your intelligence. But most of all, it makes you feel proud of yourself at the end of the day. I feel so passionately about this that I created a manifesto called the Liberation Revolution - Time to Cut the Cubicle Umbilical Cord. It’s a wake up call to help you reclaim ownership of your time. To help you figure out a way to gain the courage to say Dear Boss: You’re Fired. Click here to download the FREE manifesto This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind . To learn more about how to not ruin your life, grab a subscription to Illuminated Mind.

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Cut the Cubicle Umbilical Cord: The Seven Traits of the Free Man

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead ; follow him on twitter . Caring is supposed to be a good thing, yet, it can become unhealthy and have an adverse effect on our lives. When we care too much, we become obsessive and it often leads to dysfunction. There are definitely times where passion fuels our desire to act. Working towards change, being involved in a social movement, and contributing in a meaningful way to others are all examples of this. But it’s the not caring about things that don’t matter that allows you to focus your attention on these big, important things. It’s the lack of out-of-control caring that brings more levity into your life . Here are a few classic examples of caring gone too far: Caring too much about things that don’t matter. Caring too much about things being perfect and reach a point of diminishing returns. It can take four hours of studying to get a 95% on a test, but it may take fifteen hours of studying to get a 100%. Are those additional eleven hours really worth it? Caring too much about always being updated. We want to know what’s happening on facebook, twitter, email, and we lose our ability to focus. Adversely caring about what others think and don’t give enough credit to what we think. Caring too much about the future. We’re always thinking about what will happen next. I could go on and on about all the possibilities of toxic caring. It’s already plain to see that caring — something usually seen as a positive action — can be highly undesirable. I’ve seen so many people waste so much time caring about things that don’t really matter. They have dreams and they have big ideas , but they can’t get them off the ground because their attention and concern is in the wrong place. If your mind is too focused on what’s happening in the next five minutes, you’ll never make progress on the things that will impact your life five years from now. If you’re too focused on tidying up your desk, reorganizing your paper clips and making sure everything is filed immaculately, you’re just spinning your wheels. Things like this have a place, and organization is important. But when it’s taking up more time than your most important tasks, you might want to rethink things. The same thing applies not just with organization, but with caring too much about getting everything done. If you have a lot of little loose ends and small tasks that you need to close, you could easily get overwhelmed. And you might think that finishing those things is a bigger priority than working on your something amazing . But trust me, it’s not. There will be more little things to obsess over. There will be other things that you can find to do that will creep into your consciousness. These things are your enemies. I repeat: These minutiae must be not be allowed residence in your mind. They cannot take up the precious and sacred focus of your attention. This is where you need to learn the art of putting things off. Yeah, I know that might sound controversial, given how many of us have issues with procrastination. But, this is actually good news for you procrastinators! Now you can use this valuable skill to your advantage. Put off or procrastinate all the stuff that doesn’t matter. Do this for the survival of your dreams. If you don’t learn how to skillfully put off the trivial details of your to-do list, your dreams will suffer for it. If you don’t learn how to stop caring about all the stuff that won’t matter in ten minutes or ten years, your dreams will be left as nothing more than a phantom of your imagination. I will admit, this is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. While I haven’t fully learned the skilled art of putting off the inconsequential, I am making serious progress. I used to obsess about the little things, partly because I’m a recovering perfectionist. But it’s also largely due to the fact that I was afraid of facing my dreams. I was putting off the wrong stuff. I was putting off facing the reality of what I really wanted and coming to terms with whether or not it was truly possible. I was afraid of failure; but most of all, I was afraid of the unknown. Now I see that when I’m putting off the wrong stuff (my true desires), I need to take a closer at myself. I see it as a clue that I might be avoiding what I really want for some reason. Maybe it’s fear, maybe it’s something else. But I know that getting too wrapped up in the details means that I need to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. Take a step back, and breathe… When you realize that you’re spending time on a lot of insignificant things, take a look at what the deeper message might be. Maybe you’re afraid of taking the first step toward your dreams. See what happens when you put off or stop caring about… Checking your email every ten minutes. Having everything finished on your to do list. Having an immaculately clean house. Trying to please everyone. Seeking praise and popularity. [Your malady here.] See this article for a full list of things worth giving up . When you’re left with your real, authentic self, you will probably be a little uncomfortable, as I was. But it’s better to be face-to-face with this discomfort than letting this lawless caring get in the way of you living your dreams. So put things off, be flaky. Stop caring about the stuff that doesn’t matter … your dreams depend on it. — If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg . I’d appreciate it.

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Put Things Off and Stop Caring to Realize Your Dreams

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead ; follow him on twitter . Have you ever been annoyed by a successful person, because you thought you were more intelligent than them? Maybe it was a boss. Maybe it was a political figure or a leader. It’s especially maddening when this person is creating rules that dictate your life. I can definitely relate. I’ve had my share of bosses that I thought were less than brilliant. So what is it that makes them successful? That’s what I’ve always wondered and what has always bugged me. I mean, shouldn’t intelligence be a prerequisite to leadership? The answer… not really. It turns out the biggest reason people are successful is: consistent action, not intelligence. Then the question is, are these three words ruining your life…? The unmagical words Those words are: I don’t know. It’s not drive, it’s not motivation, it’s not lack of passion that keeps people from doing what they want. It’s not knowing where to start, or how to get from A to B. That’s the single biggest reason people don’t take action to make their dreams a reality. So how can we overcome this? How can we stop letting obscurity keep us from becoming successful? The answer is pretty simple: You have to develop the ability to stop caring about not knowing. (I’ve written about this before, where I call it “ putting yourself on auto-response .”) You have to cultivate the habit of doing before knowing. This seems like a daunting thing to do, but it’s really actually a very easy habit to create. And there are a multitude of possibilities that exist right now that you can practice it. Easiest thing in the world For example, how many time does your spouse or partner ask you “What do you want to have for dinner?” and you respond, “I don’t know.” (This happens to me all the time, and it’s maddening.) Next time, instead of using those three dirty words, just ask yourself, “What’s something I’d like to have for dinner?” and then respond. Now do this when someone asks where you’d like to hang out, or what you’d like to spend the evening doing. Instead of re-actively saying “I don’t know,” take the time to come up with a response. Even if you’re not 100% completely stoked about the idea, just come up with something you’d be satisfied with doing. Anything other than I don’t know is an improvement. Next, try asking yourself “How could I best use my time, right now?” or “What is the highest leverage use of my time, right now?” Take a minute to brainstorm and mentally prioritize. If you’re having trouble coming up with an answer, just pick whatever you think would be the most productive use of your time. Remember, anything is better than the three words we shall not speak of. Just imagine all of the possibilities for you to practice actively making decisions based on your desires, rather than re-actively defaulting to unconsciousness. There are so many little ways you can practice this skill. I think you’ll be surprised at how often you’re able to rehearse it. The difference between living and existing Okay, so you’ve mastered it with the little stuff. Now it’s time to use it on the things that really matter. Stuff like your passions and career. If you’re not doing something you love or at least like for a living, you’re selling yourself short. And I bet the reason why you’re not pursuing something better is because you don’t know what you’d rather do. Instead of allowing that not knowing to dwell in your psychic space, cast it out. Don’t tolerate it anymore. If you don’t know what you’re passionate about, move from not knowing to seeking a path that will allow you to explore what you might love to do. This might mean reading a book on different career pursuits. It might mean googling your hobbies for possible career intersections. Whatever it is, practice that until you move into a state of knowing. The reason I’m so passionate about this is because I’ve seen so many lives unfulfilled because of not knowing. It saddens me to think that such a simple phrase can have such a devastating impact. I urge you to practice moving in the direction of knowing, when you feel stuck in a state of indecision. All it takes is one little shift. It could mean the difference between making a dying and making a living. This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind . To learn more about how to not ruin your life, grab a subscription to Illuminated Mind. — If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg . I’d appreciate it.

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Are These Three Words Ruining Your Life?

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead ; follow him on twitter . Not everone get s GTD (Getting Things Done). I know I didn’t. It made my head spin. I have nothing against the system or David Allen. I’m sure it must be awesome for some people (that’s why it has all those followers, right?). But for others, it just doesn’t fit. Mostly with creative-minded people. When it comes to GTD and other systems, it’s often too easy to get into a habit of over-engineering your system. You “geek out” on your system and lose sight of the point of pursuing productivity in the first place. Plus, there’s a big gap in resources on productivity that doesn’t involve complex jargons and elaborate diagrams (see the GTD matrix ). Typically, this exists in the creative sector. I’m not saying GTD doesn’t work or that it isn’t wonderful. It just doesn’t connect with some people (and makes others want to vomit). Here are seven of the best, simple, and sometimes seemingly upside down tips for being more prolific. Create a “to stop” list. If you’re not getting the results you want, chances are you don’t care much about the things you’re doing. The best way to change this is to create a “To-Stop” list. We often spend lots of time creating lists for the things we need to do, but rarely do we reflect on the things that aren’t working. So create a list of all the things that are sucking away your energy and are wasting your time. Figure out which of those things is having the biggest negative impact on you doing the stuff you really want to do. Tackle that thing head on each day. Focus on short bursts. It’s a bit sad when you realize that the reason most dreams die is because of a lack of focused action. If you’re constantly distracted by the television, surfing the internet, reading blogs, or whatever it is, you’re just dragging your heels. Yet, we think that high levels of focus is something only super-humans can attain. But mental focus is akin to building muscle; it’s something that must be trained with resistance. So figure out how much “mental weight” you can lift, and start from there. Elect to focus for 50 minutes on your most important task, then take a 10 minute break to do whatever you want. Then repeat. If you can’t “lift” 50 minutes, try 20 minutes, or even 10 minutes. Gradually increase your “resistance” (the amount of time you focus) each week. Define your daily ass-kicking. What is your Something Amazing ? Take the time to clearly define your deep reason for moving toward that goal. Now make a post-it note of out of it, or schedule a daily reminder of that deep reason on your email program. Allow yourself to suck. One of the biggest reasons we avoid doing what we love is that we’re afraid we’re going to fall flat on our face, in front of everyone. And then they’ll laugh or think we’re not amazing and all our theories about how we’re not really a genius will be true. Here’s some good news: You probably won’t be as bad as you thought you were. Here’s some bad news: You’ll never be great unless you first allow yourself to suck. So embrace your suckiness. Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from doing what you love . Focus on the Three C’s . When it comes down to it, there are three major groups of things we need to do to succeed at whatever it is we want to do. We need to Create, we need to Connect, and we need to Consume. Or in other words, we need to produce/share, build and nurture relationships, and keep ourselves savvy in our field. An imbalance in these areas will stagnate our progress. If we’re always consuming, but never getting our ideas out there, we won’t make any progress toward our goals. If we’re connecting without creating, we’ll have nothing of value to share. And if we’re creating without continually learning, we’ll become outdated. Defining a focus of one of the Three C’s helps us stay focused on our purpose for the day. It also helps us realize that spending time on Twitter and socializing is just as important as creating. It’s all about balance. Stop caring about things that don’t matter. This advice seems so simple, but it bears repeating. It’s easy to get caught up in obsessing about little tasks and trivialities that aren’t really important. The best way to overcome this habit is to start thinking in terms of long term impact. Every time you start obsessing over the little details, ask yourself how long the results of those tasks will last. If you’re always spending the majority of your time doing tasks that will have little impact after a week or month, you’re always going to be stuck in the same position. Be ruthless about not caring about all the stuff that’s not important. Your life depends on it. Make it stupidly simple. If you’re struggling to make headway on the stuff you really care about, maybe you’re making it too complicated. Try making a really simple commitment, like working on that “thing you love” for an hour a day. One hour, every day. Don’t commit to finishing it or making it perfect. Just commit to doing that One Thing You Love every day for one hour, for 30 days. Complex productivity systems aren’t for everyone, and they don’t need to be. Don’t worry if GTD scares you or hurts your brain. You can still get the things done that really matter to you. Also, I should note a couple of people out there, such as Charlie Gilkey and Mark McGuinness , who are working hard to change the lack of productivity material related to creatives. For further reading and material on this topic, I highly recommended checking out their blogs. This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind . To learn more about how to live without limits, grab a subscription to Illuminated Mind. — If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg . I’d appreciate it.

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Seven Productivity Tips For People That Hate GTD

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead ; follow him on twitter . Not getting enough items on your To-Do list checked off? Do you feel guilty because you’re not doing enough? I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t always remain calm, zen and un-phased when I don’t get everything done. Sometimes I get distracted; sometimes unforeseen events happen which get in the way of my ambitions. Sometimes I have a hard time not caring about unimportant things. I want the dishes to be clean and the house spotless, all my errands to be finished and everything neat and tidy. The problem is, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, things don’t usually work like this. In fact, they almost never work like this. There’s always something to be done, always that “thing” in the back of your head that you forgot about that needs to be taken care of. There’s always something else that needs to be finished, and then you can feel happy. (Or so you think . ) But then you remember another task, and the cycle repeats. Of course, there’s only one problem… Nothing is ever complete. Not for long, at least. So if that time and place is impossible to reach, we have to stop caring about unimportant things. The constant desire to want to be done, then be happy , creates the background feeling of anxiety. If you’ve ever found yourself doing the dishes as fast as possible, when you have no reason to be in a hurry (like I have), you know what I mean. If we’re ever to get at that feeling of peace — being OK with taking things slowly — we need to start enjoying our lives. We need to start being instead of just doing . Here are a few of my (humble) suggestions on how to create more space in your life: Realize that not having everything done is a good thing . “Blasphemy!” you say. I know, I know. This sounds awfully backwards, but it’s true. Having things in your inbox means that your time is in demand. And that’s a good thing. You don’t need a two week vacation to create space . When you pull up in your driveway after work, take a minute or two to just relax and breathe. Turn off the radio, and just sit in silence for a moment. Enjoy the space. Two minutes is all you need. Now don’t tell me you don’t have time. Look for the gaps . Between your thoughts, there lives little gaps. They may not be huge, but they’re there. Start paying attention to those gaps. Allow them to grow by just letting go of thinking all the time. You might think that you need to think about things in order to work or to live. But the opposite is usually true. Most of the time, thinking is completely unnecessary. Most of the time , you’re just thinking about the same things over and over. That’s called a pattern. Or brooding, whatever label you prefer. Listen, feel, engage… be there . The reason we’re usually in such a hurry is due to a mind-created obsession with finishing things. So the way out of that is to be where you are. Listen to the ambient sounds you hear, feel your feet on the ground when you walk, feel your hands running through the water while you wash the dishes. Let go of the need to become . Sure, there will always be things you want to change about your life. There will always be goals, dreams, desires and all manner of wonderful experiences to seek out. Great, seek them. Desire them. But don’t sacrifice the present. Don’t sacrifice the place you’re in right now. There’s too much beauty. With that, I’d like to leave you with an excerpt from one of my favorite lectures by Alan Watts : “Lightning flashes, sparks shower. In one blink of your eyes, you’ve missed seeing. Why? Because here is the light. The light, the light, the light, every mystic in the world has ’seen the light.’ That brilliant, blazing energy, brighter than a thousand suns, it is locked up in everything. Now imagine this. Imagine you’re seeing it. Like you see aureoles around Buddhas. Like you see the beatific vision at the end of Dante’s ‘Paradiso.’ Vivid, vivid light, so bright that it is like the clear light of the void in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It’s beyond light, it’s so bright. And you watch it receding from you. And on the edges, like a great star, there becomes a rim of red. And beyond that, a rim of orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. You see this great Mandela appearing this great sun, and beyond the violet, there’s black. Black, like obsidian, not flat black, but transparent black, like lacquer. And again, blazing out of the black, as the Yang comes from the Yin, more light. Going, going, going. And along with this light, there comes sound. There is a sound so tremendous with the white light that you can’t hear it, so piercing that it seems to annihilate the ears. But then along with the colors, the sound goes down the scale in harmonic intervals, down, down, down, down, until it gets to a deep thundering base which is so vibrant that it turns into something solid, and you begin to get the similar spectrum of textures. Now all this time, you’ve been watching a kind of thing radiating out. ‘But,’ it says, ‘you know, this isn’t all I can do,’ and the rays start dancing like this, and the sound starts waving, too, as it comes out, and the textures start varying themselves, and they say, well, you’ve been looking at this as I’ve been describing it so far in a flat dimension. Let’s add a third dimension; it’s going to come right at you now. And meanwhile, it says, we’re not going to just do like this, we’re going to do little curlicues. And it says, ‘well, that’s just the beginning!’ Making squares and turns, and then suddenly you see in all the little details that become so intense, that all kinds of little sub figures are contained in what you originally thought were the main figures, and the sound starts going all different, amazing complexities if sound all over the place, and this thing’s going, going, going, and you think you’re going to go out of your mind, when suddenly it turns into… Why, us, sitting around here.” See, when we’re always in a hurry, always looking to achieve a goal, we miss out on the miracle that’s around us. Right here. Right now. This article was written by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind . To learn more about how to reclaim your life, grab a subscription to Illuminated MInd.

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How to Create Space and When You’re Always in a Rush