Jumpstart Your Dream Life

8 Ways You’re Making Life Harder Than It Has to Be

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Do you crave the challenge?

When you see a problem waiting to be solved, you can feel your energy levels rise. Blood surges through your veins. Your mouth salivates. Like a hound tugging at a leash, you want nothing more than to lunge forward and tackle the issue into the ground.

Except the problem isn’t so easy to solve. After awhile, it stops being fun and starts turning into work. You wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into.

Sometimes, we don’t want to find the easy answer to a problem. We want to toil and struggle to feel like we’ve earned something. Otherwise, we don’t treasure the result.

While this helps us push through difficulties, the problem arises when you use this attitude towards everything. Some challenges are not worth the effort. Others can be achieved more quickly.

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Slow Down and Take a Deep Breath

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We normally think perfection is the final stage in a process. But it’s not. There’s another step that comes after: speed.

When you first learn a skill or create something, you struggle. You go through trial and error, trying to figure out what went wrong. The going is slow.

Then, you start seeing small glimmers of success. You receive positive feedback. You begin to feel more confident as you get closer to where you want to be.

Finally, you have it. The ideal prototype. Your technique nailed down. A system in place. Now that the structure is in order, the next step is to go faster, and faster… and faster.

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10 Things That Will Matter a Lot More in 10 Years

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Can you imagine your life in 10 years’ time?

It’s hard, isn’t it? There are so many variables, so many unknowns, it’s nearly impossible to predict what’s in store. Chance events happen, and you end up in situations that no one could foresee.

But then you look at people ahead of you for reference. They’re a decade or two older than you. You notice how their lives have panned out.

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How to Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Get Your Most Important Work Done

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Do you ever feel like you’re scrambling around like a chicken without a head?

Tasks just keep piling up on your plate. You frantically try to get everything done, leaving you flustered. In fact, sometimes there’s so much happening that your brain just ends up shutting down instead.

No matter what you do, there’s that sinking feeling at the end of the day that you haven’t really achieved what you wanted to. Sure, you might have done a number of things, but you can’t shake the feeling that something is missing.

If this sums what you’ve been experiencing, there’s a method you should consider using to organize your day.

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8 Subtle Signs You’re Settling for Comfort Instead of Embracing the Unknown

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Does it ever feel like you’re waiting?

Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the fog to clear, so you can see what lies ahead. Waiting for the moment the pieces come together, culminating in the perfection you spent your entire life waiting for.

If you’re still waiting, here’s news: you’re wasting your time.

Waiting is dangerous. It gives the false illusion that if you’re patient enough, time will reward you with everything you hoped for. It causes you to sit there and let things fall into place rather than doing something yourself.

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Focuster: Get Work Done Using To-Do Lists, Automated Scheduling, and Reminders

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At any given moment, you have over a thousand choices at your fingertips.

You’re sitting at your desk. You can fire up your computer and browse websites endlessly. You can go outside and grab coffee along the way. Or, you can finally buckle down and finish the work that’s been sitting on your desk for a week.

We assume that having more choices is better. Yes, more choices mean you can decide the best option for yourself. It means greater control over your circumstances. But there comes a point when we suffer from too many choices. When it comes to productivity, too many choices becomes debilitating to getting our work done.

That’s why accomplishing more is about paring down choices. It means minimizing distractions so you can deep dive into your most important goals. When you focus on one task at a time, you make greater progress.

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6 Questions to Figure Out If You’re Living Up to Your Potential

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The older we get, the more our dreams fade away.

It’s a sad fact of life, if not a very real one. Early on, you have an entire slew of things you want to accomplish. Enthusiasm, energy and excitement pump through your veins as you picture yourself reaching those achievements.

Yet those feelings gradually die down with time. For some aspirations, you might have set the benchmark incredibly high and then failed to get where you thought you’d be. Maybe you talked yourself out of even trying.

And when you did accomplish something, it didn’t live up to your expectations. Reaching a goal wasn’t the be-all-end-all you anticipated. Afterward, there was a void as you thought, “What next?”

Eventually, it becomes exhausting to keep trying (and often failing). You stop resisting to the pressures of everyday life and succumb to the routine. It’s comfortable. It’s safe.

But it’s also dangerous.

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Why Are YouTubers So Rich?

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Making YouTube videos for a living is nice, isn’t it?

You hear about it all the time. Ads showing YouTube stars’ multi-million dollar mansions. Viral videos exploding with millions of views. People making full-time incomes from the comforts of their home.

Top YouTubers can make upwards of $10 million in a year. When you add up the advertising revenue, sponsorships, and endorsement deals, those figures go up even higher. Being a professional YouTuber sounds lucrative, doesn’t it?

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10 Things That Will Matter a Lot Less in 10 Years

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“My life is over.”

Have those words ever crossed your mind? That moment when something so catastrophic, disastrous, and damage-inducing occurred that you never thought you would recover? That moment when there were no other roads, when you had run out of options?

And yet, here you are.

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Lessons from Voltaire on Finding Purpose in Life

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Few philosophers have made so great an impact on French philosophy as Voltaire. Born in 1694, Francois-Marie Arouet spent his early years in Paris, France. He was educated in the classics by Jesuits at the College Louis-le-Grand.

After finishing school, he wanted to become a writer. His father, though, wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. To appease him, Arouet pretended to pursue law while he wrote.

Arouet became popular amongst his peers for his satire and wit. Unfortunately, these same attributes soon landed him in hot water. After mocking the government, he was imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year. When he was released, he decided to adopt the name “Voltaire”.

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