I wanted to walk in memory of my grandma, in honor of survivors in my family, and in support of a friend battling the disease as you read this. That and the fact that I was lured by the sweet sound of Reese Witherspoon’s voice on the TV commercials advertising the walk. But don’t tell anyone that. Please.

To strut my pink pride, I first had to raise $1,800. The number loomed large in my head and made me slightly (totally) nervous. I knew that I’d need to ask people for donations, but I hate asking for favors. I feel extremely guilty if I participate in the first part of the Need a Penny/Take a Penny – Have a Penny/Leave a Penny shenanigans at the checkout line. I sucked as a Girl Scout (big time) because I didn’t want to ask anyone to buy my cookies (barely earned the cookie badge).

Despite my preference for only barking up the parent tree for money, I sent out a mass email to just about everyone in my address book, including the people I work with. I raised $1,800 in exactly one week, and by the day of the walk I had raised even more.

My boss congratulated me on my initiative and told me how she had done the walk years before. She even loaned me the back pack she had used. Both she and the founder of our organization were two of my most generous supporters.

As part of my training, I began walking to work every day– a 4-mile distance that changed my perspective about what you can accomplish with a little determination (and a supportive shoe). I planned on listening to NPR during the 75 minute commute so I could feel more informed, but I quickly discovered a radio station with a non-stop music hour from 8:00 – 9:00 a.m. and a proclivity for Rod Stewart and Sting. Maggie May and Roxanne won me over (though I didn’t put up much of a fight).

In the beginning, my boss was surprised by my metro-abstinence and most mornings would ask, “Did you walk to work today??” Sporting sneakers and a thermos with the last sip of coffee inside, I’d assure her that I did.

“That’s great. That’s so great,” she’d respond. And sometimes I’d overhear her favorably speaking about my walking to work with other staff members. My stride made it to the water cooler.

When the founder of my organization heard about my walking to work, he bought me a pedometer. Turns out he had recently taken up early morning walking for exercise and was excited to talk to me about the positive changes he noticed in his attitude and his waist line.

Over the next few months, I’d sometimes send him emails that simply read, “10,483 steps so far today, and you?”

Walking to work was a goal I met because it was well-defined, I told other people I was going to do it (I’m a yuppie of my word), and I changed my life to support the goal.

I woke up earlier, making acquaintance with the rooster time frame.

I switched from this bag to this one because it was better for my shoulders.

I kept a pair of brown shoes and black shoes at work to change into.

I included more protein with breakfast. Whoop whoop for almond butter.

And, most importantly, I bought enough athletic socks (get the wicking material) so as not to increase the number of visits I make to the laundry room per month.

So how exactly did my calves improve my reputation as a professional?

• My boss saw that I kept my word. Light rain (thunderstorms just ain’t safe) or shine, I walked to work.
• She witnessed – on a daily basis – my commitment to something that was important to me. During my 6-month review (held during month eight…), she praised me for my follow through – with everything.
• My boss even avoided scheduling an 8:30 a.m. conference call one day because she knew it would interfere with my walking commute. When you show yourself to be strictly committed to something outside of work, a good boss will honor your stance (No pun intended. Well, maybe a little).
• Remember the old ad campaign, “Come see the softer side of Sears”? I committed to the Avon Walk four months into my job, a point when my work family knew me but didn’t really know-know me. In the fundraising email I sent, they got a glimpse into the softer side of Jackie (a variation of the advocate for filing old emails into methodically organized folders); I shared how I lost my grandma to breast cancer when I was five and how that still affected me today. While you don’t need to expose every skeleton in your closet to your co-workers (let Facebook do that), there are personal things you can share – like how a loss motivates you to seek fulfillment – that will reveal yourself to be an inspiring, thoughtful person (they said it, not me) and not just a sterile cubicle neighbor.

So what altruistic muscle can you flex to improve your professional reputation? Think about it. And then do it.

The real problem is this. If you work for yourself and you haven’t been doing it for very long, you are probably not a Creative Director. Creative Directors direct other people. More often than not, they shout a lot, work terrible hours for no extra pay, chain-drink espressos and call their closest friends things like “f*ck face”. This may sound like you, but you have to stop using the title. When people realise you’re a one-person start-up, they will laugh at you.

Businesses such as H&R Block (HRB) and Zappos are now using Twitter to respond to customer queries. Market researchers look to it to scope out minute-by-minute trends. Media groups are focusing on Twitterers as first-to-the-scene reporters. (They were on top of the May 12 China earthquake within minutes.) Loads of new applications and services are growing around the Twitter platform, leading some to suggest that the microblogging service could become a powerhouse in social media.

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The best blogging advice I ever received came from, Jane May, who was once a very active force in the make money online scene of the blogosphere. In a review of my blog, Jane said:

Don’t try to monetize your blog straight away. Focus on building a loyal base of readers and visitors before you think about money.

Since Jane wrote that review last year, I’ve never really understood why she made that particular comment. Until now.

For the most part, I’ve spent the month of May at a self pity party. I wasn’t really sure where to take this blog. I was finding myself losing the inspiration, dedication and motivation needed to write. It just wasn’t fun anymore.

It took me a couple of weeks, but I eventually realised what the problem was.

The problem lay with the fact I was trying to make money.

With all my focus being lost on Adsense, advert prices, advert positions, advert sizes, affiliate programs and every other source of revenue, I had lost all my focus for community.

The Lack of Focus on the Community

When I started blogging in this niche last year, I was looking out over the playing fields. I could see the small bloggers, the medium sized bloggers and the larger bloggers. I could see the bloggers I wanted to build a friendship with. I could see the bloggers I wanted to guest write for. I could see the whole playing field from my perch.

As time went by, I slowly succumbed to the trap. I slowly developed my blog with monetization in mind. Over a long period of time, almost long enough for me to entirely miss the small signs, I started to look inwards to myself and my own blog, rather than looking outwards over the playing field. Suddenly, I could no longer see the community. I couldn’t see my friends. I couldn’t see the new bloggers.

I was so intent on earning some money, that I forgot to take part in the community.

When I started blogging, I would comment on every single post that came in to my RSS feed. Not one line comments either. I would write at least a paragraph and usually a lot more. Each day I would wake up to emails and comments from bloggers telling me how they loved my excellent comments on blogs they read. I was told on more than one occasion that the comments I wrote were the best comments they had ever read.

When I started looking inwards, I forgot about the community. I read the posts in my feed, but I lost the habit of writing comments. And with the lack of comments came the rest of the downward spiral. Suddenly, I was no longer emailing my blogging friends just to see how their day had been. Ya know, like real people do. Bloggers only seem to contact each other when they need a favour. In my early months, I would contact a select few blogging friends just to chat with them. I didn’t expect any favours, and neither did they. Just friendly chat.

Looking inwards made me lose all that. Suddenly my circle of friends had been reduced to just two or three. Not all because of my focus on money. In fact, many of the friends in my circle that started blogging when I did have now either closed their blogs and moved on or participated less in the blogging community.. Jane May. Stephen Welton. Jeff Kee (heh. Jeff had the biggest crush on Jane May and he used to write some of the most hilarious comments on her blog. ).

When Did You Realise You Lost Your Focus?

Actually, it was a couple of days ago when I was stood at the kitchen sink washing some cutlery. I contemplated what blogging would be like if I decided not to make any money. What would it be like if I focused on the community? What if I got my pleasure just from helping people? What if I got my pleasure from the compliments from those people saying they like my work? What if blogging became as exciting as it was when I first started?

It was then that it hit me. Losing the focus for money and rekindling the focus for community was the key to the success of this blog. And with that, I would like to announce…

As of May 14th 2008, I have made the decision not to monetize this blog. Maybe not forever. But for now, and for as far in to the future as my little pea inside my skull will allow me to see, I shall not be making any money from this Web site. Any reviews I do will be done for free on the basis that they help the community. Any Amazon links I publish in the future will not contain affiliate ID’s. Any advertising requests I receive will be directed to a Web design forum I manage where we maintain a list of sponsors to help us break even (we never profit from the forum).

While I was stood in the kitchen, I realised that community spirit and honest compliments from people I’ve helped are far more valuable to me than money. I realised that what I’m really interested in is not making money, but rather receiving comments, RSS subscribers, incoming links and emails. Not to make money, but just to get the sense of self-satisfaction that comes with helping others.

If you’re not extremely careful, blogging for money displaces your focus. It makes you look in, not out. It removes you from the community. It changes your face and your voice. Conversing with other bloggers happens only when you sense a reward. Writing is done, not because you want to help your readers, but because you want to help your bank balance.

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My advice is to lose the focus on money. Don’t even contemplate monetization. Focus on the community. Focus on your passion. You’ll build your blog far faster by losing the focus on the green paper and rekindling the focus on the people.

Are you motivated to blog by the sense of community that it brings, or do you blog entirely for the money?

While I don’t seek to emulate Leonard’s lifestyle, I very much respect him for having the guts to peruse his dreams. Leonard’s life is highly unconventional and wouldn’t work for most of us, but it got me thinking about . . .

The Diversity of Lifestyle Design

When I think about lifestyle design, I usually think about automated income, mini-retirements, making money online, traveling the world, and the 4-Hour Work Week. The truth, however, is that there are an unlimited number of tools in the lifestyle design arsenal. Lifestyle design is as old as life itself.

The philosophy of lifestyle design is actually quite simple. It suggests that there are limitless ways to arrange and configure your life and that the logistics of living are much more flexible than most of us can imagine.

There is one [movie line] that stands out for me. It comes from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, when the Charlie Sheen character — a promising big shot in the stock market — is telling his girlfriend about his dreams. “I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m thirty and get out of this racket,” he says, “I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China.” When I first saw this scene … I nearly fell out of my seat in astonishment. Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. The thing is, most Americans probably wouldn’t find this movie scene odd.
-Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts has perfected the art of long term world travel, Dan Clements can run a business from anywhere while roving the globe with his wife and children, Lea Woodward has freelanced from every continent, Doug Mayle and his wife are traveling across the world in a sailboat, Mark Hayword runs a bed and breakfast on the Island of Culebra, and Tim Ferriss works the famed 4-Hour-Work Week. I admire the real-life adventures of these excellent writers. I also think it’s important to acknowledge that these stories only convey part of the picture.

Lifestyle design also happens when a parent decides they want to stay home with their children, when someone quits college to leave civilization for a year and build a cabin in the woods, and when a middle-aged couple moves out of a large condo in New York to a small town in rural Iowa so that they can “retire” 20 years early. It happens every time an entrepreneur starts a business.

Lifestyle design is quitting your job to start an organic farm, selling your home for an RV in the Blue Ridge Mountains, or homeschooling (un-schooling) your children. It’s starting a consulting company so you can work 20 hours per week and make 35k per year instead of 50 hours a week for 80k (and using the free time to sleep in and exercise).

It also happens every time someone implements their answer to . . .

The Quintessential Lifestyle Design Question

The quintessential lifestyle design question is the “money question.” And the money question goes something like this: “what would you do if you had all the money in the world?”

I like the money question. I really do. It’s a good starting point, but it also misses the point because it feeds the notion that monetary abundance is the primary freedom enabler.

The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom. With this kind of mind-set, it’s no wonder so many Americans think extended overseas travel is the exclusive realm of students, counterculture dropouts, and the idle rich.
-Rolf Potts

I think there is a better lifestyle design question. A question that goes something like this . . .

“What Would You Do if NOT Having Money Weren’t an Issue?”

That is, what would you do if you didn’t need to eat out every day? What would you do if you didn’t have to own gadgets, subscribe to cable television, or pay $20 for drinks every time you went out with your friends? What would you do if didn’t have to own a nice car or large house?

And on a related note…

What Would you Do If NOT Having Status Weren’t an Issue?

While we’re at it, what would you do if NOT having status weren’t an issue? What would you do if you didn’t feel the need to tell your parents, family, friends, and spouse a reasonable story about what you’re doing with your life? What would you do if you didn’t feel the need to have a “good” job? What would you do if you were OK being a middle-aged married person living in a small apartment?

I’ve thought about these questions a lot recently, and the conclusion I’ve come to is this: needing very little money and status is more liberating than having lots of money and status.

Photo by TravelTrailerSNZ.

Dreamlining Vs. Baselining

Author Timothy Ferriss advocates dreamlining, which is actually quite a helpful process. The dreamlining process involves writing down what you would have (e.g. a motorcycle), be (e.g. a professional tennis player), or do (e.g. take a trip around the world) if you couldn’t fail, and then determining the costs of these dreams (for a better description and a great tool for implementing, see here). The dream lining process is designed to help you establish a plan for accomplishing your dreams. Regarding dreamlining, Tim writes …

Be sure not to judge or fool yourself. If you really want a Ferari, don’t put down solving world hunger out of guilt. For some, the dream will be fame, for others fortune or prestige. All people have their vices and insecurities. If something will improve your feeling of self-worth, put it down. I have a racing motorcycle, and quite apart from the fact that I love speed, it just makes me feel like a cool dude. There’s nothing wrong with that.
-Tim Ferriss

Dreamlining is fine, but I’d like to propose something that works better for me. It’s called baselining.

How Baselining Works

The process of baselining involves writing down everything you don’t have to have, be, or do, to live a happy and fulfilled life (for more on this, see here). For example, I don’t have to own nice furniture (thrift store furniture works just fine) or a house, I don’t have to finish graduate school, I don’t have to be able to tell a coherent story about how I make money. If you’re serious about doing a thorough job of baselining, you’ll download this spreadsheet and write down how much money and time you’ll eliminate by doing away with existing possessions, obligations, and self-images. (In the next week or so I’ll write a more lengthy and detailed post about the ins and outs of base lining).

What I’ve found is that my dreams naturally emerge after I’ve eliminated bullsh*t assumptions about what I have to be, do, and have in order to be happy (if this doesn’t happen for you, then simply do some dreamlining after you’ve done some baselining).

It is Possible to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

It is possible to have your cake and eat it too. It’s possible to travel the world and live off automated income while maintaining the lifestyle habits of upper middle class America. It’s possible, but the probability of actually starting the business you’ve always wanted to start, making the time to write the book of your dreams, or (to use an earlier example) ride a motorcycle across China will dramatically increase if you’re willing to embrace Abundance 2.0 and pay . . .

The Rabbit Hole Tax

“Alice falls down the rabbit hole and her dress poofs up like a parachute] Alice: Well, after this I should think nothing of falling down stairs.”
-Lewis Carroll

The rabbit hole tax is the price you pay for slipping down the rabbit hole of life. It’s the price you pay for joining a self-selected group of people who’ve sluffed off meaningless obligations, extricated themselves from the web of “shoulds” that this world can entwine us with, and decided not let self-limiting beliefs keep them on the treadmill of life. (Some of them do a lot of work for very little pay; some of them do little work for little pay; some of them live lives more lavish with time; but they’ve all living passionately and doing what they want to do with life).

The rabbit hole tax is . . .

• The flak you’ll get from parents when you tell them you’ve quit your job to travel the world;
• The look your spouse might give you after you quit your job to start a business
• The beautiful but uncomfortable weightiness you experience after you’ve said no to the “perfect” opportunity even though you don’t know what to do next

Also…

• The rabbit hole tax might involve being labeled a quitter, a lazy bum or a dilettante (not to mention a rebel leader).
• The tax might mean you can’t gave cable television, an extensive DVD collection.
• The rabbit hole tax might involve having to deal with imperfect grades, or having the humility to ask others for favors.

The rabbit hole tax is the price of radical growth.

But the tax is a small price to pay for a life lived on your own terms. It’s a small price to pay for designing a healthy life filled with creativity, spontaneity, and meaning. It’s a small price to pay for a life that allows you to consistently exercise your unique talents and abilities in a way that matters to you.

For a bottomless pit of references to Alice in Wonderland and The Matrix, subscribe to The Growing Life.

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For me, this scene illustrates a really interesting point about a difference in attitudes at different ages.  Obviously, as we grow older we develop a keener sense of our own talents when compared to others.  No, not everyone in the world can sing “well” or draw “well”.  But why should that stop our enthusiasm?

I’ve overheard people being recruited for the church choir say that they’re not a good enough singer to join the choir while expressing an enjoyment of singing.  Who cares if you’re not Renee Fleming??  If you have fun singing, sing!  Same thing with friends wanting to join the intramural leagues in college.  Gee, I really like to play basketball, but I’m not good enough to join a team, they say.  Who cares if you can’t make a three-pointer?  If you have fun playing basketball, play basketball!!

I think it’s tragic that when we age, we let our perception of standards inhibit us from enjoying things that we’re not especially talented at.  Think of all the fun we’re missing out on.  Think of all the experiences we’re missing out on.  Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that life isn’t always about being good or being the best, sometimes it’s just about enjoying ourselves.

1. Go for Quantity, Not Quality: If you are still single and looking for love, you need to go on as many dates as humanly possible. You need to ask your friends, co-workers, and yes, even your parents to hook you up. Try internet dating. As long as you meet in public, with whom it matters not. Like the efficient market theory, I believe in the efficient dating theory: that eventually by wading through all the crap you will find a priceless commodity, the one you don’t trade up for because you’ve found a mate that will make your love equity skyrocket.

2. Hold Your Tongue: Like having sex on the first date, learn to say “No” to sharing the first thing that comes to mind in the frenzy of feelings that ensues when you first think you’ve found The One. Learn to walk the fine line between intimacy and annoyance. After a week or so, we tend to get comfortable, clingy, and our feelings get hurt if The One isn’t following the puppetry of our expectations. That’s when things start getting weird. Just don’t say anything. I don’t mean lie, or withhold important matters. Simply, don’t be quick to judge or harshly opine with your new mate. You don’t know anything about them, and be assured, though you find their beard trimming habits tragic, or their politics dismal, they will find your inability to leave the house without doubling back three times, or affinity for sci-fi equally horrendous.

3. No More Hairy Eyeball: You’ll know you are in love when you are out and about, oblivious to glances from other potential suitors. I can say with assurance (sorry guys) that with every other boyfriend, I’d still be receptive to flirting with other guys. However, it all went away when I was dating my husband. It was like other men no longer existed in time and space. And on the off chance that my eyes met theirs, instead of getting all tingly inside, I’d laugh. A maudlin laugh as if seeing a sad clown, knowing that he could never capture my attention when I’d already got it so good.

4. Bridge Burning: Probably the most significant, and cathartic revelation in love is when you willingly, and happily, remove remnants from the wayward past you shared with various exes. I recommend gleefully cheering “Burn those bridges!” as you proceed. Deleting old phone numbers and ridiculous love emails is a delight, mementos you couldn’t bear to toss are now donated without mourning, and the only photos you keep are group shots or events you want to remember, not the singular poses of a beloved that used to arouse your affection. They now leave you unstirred.

Learn from me because I once was a bitter single woman. Painfully existing through the solitude of ice cream binges and Law & Order marathons alone. Ice cream and Law & Order are just so much better with a husband to share them.

Translators who buy email lists of industry contacts to send their CV to, beware: you could be making enemies of the very people you wish would hire you.

As editor-in-chief of Wired, an online magazine reporting on technology trends across all spheres of society, Chris Anderson is a key industry leader. So if you were promoting a new book about technology, you might think he’d be a good contact to send your press release to, right?

Wrong. Chris gets over 300 of unsolicited emails a day with just this kind of untargeted, randomly emailed information, and has resorted to drastic measures. On his blog, he has published the email addresses of anyone who has sent him “inappropriate” material over the past month. Plain as day, for all the world to see.

As always with these kinds of posts, it’s the discussion that takes place in the comments afterwards that is most interesting. Some people think he should get over it, and that unsolicited emails are a tool freelancers simply have to use if they are to compete with the big boys. Others cheer his actions, and love the idea that spam bots are likely to harvest these addresses as they crawl the web, resulting in a deluge of spam for their owners. In fact, even some of the named and shamed emailers themselves have responded, with (it must be said) some legitimate and valid explanations as to why they sent him these emails in the first place.

It’s worth pointing out too that Chris doesn’t take issue with unsolicited emails per se. He says:

…I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that’s why my email address is public). Everything else gets banned on first abuse.

I think many of us can see ourselves at both sides of the face-off here. Emailing agencies to look for work is a key (and often very necessary) marketing strategy for many start-up translators. But in an era of MySpace friends and Facebook pokes, it’s too easy to forget that commercial email is a whole different ballgame. Taking a legal eagle view doesn’t help as there seems to be little real, practicable guidance, especially when working across borders.

I have a few ideas of my own on this, but until I pull it into post, I’d be interested to hear: what do you think? What’s the best way to approach a potential work provider without being branded a pest?