Lifestyle Experiments I’ve Learned From

by stephen warley

last updated 4/19/24

My closest friends and family know I’m the last person in the world who enjoys drawing attention to himself.

I don’t even like celebrating my own birthday. Not because getting older bothers me, I just don’t like being fussed over.

Sharing my lifestyle experiments from the last 24 years with you is actually a little uncomfortable for me. I’m not sharing them to show off or to even encourage you to follow in my footsteps.

You are you and I am me.

I want to share my lifestyle experiments to show you what’s possible.

Most of us make assumptions or have limiting beliefs about our options in life. I’m spent my career challenging the status quo.

I never accepted the options put before me. I pursued alternatives that made sense to me for how I wanted to work and live regardless of how much money, time or status I had.

I know you can do the same. The most effective method for learning about yourself and your potential is by conducting lifestyle experiments in my humble opinion.

Action is a better teacher than listening to the monkey chatter in your mind alone.

Some of my experiments are small changes to my daily habits. Others are major life events. Some are personal and others are professional.

Some I conducted on behalf of someone else’s benefit.

All the experiments I conducted take less conventional approaches to common problems and desires we all face in life. I’m sharing them in no particular order. 

If you have any questions about any of the experiments below, please contact me.

lived out of a bag for two years

After my divorce in 2019, I decided to hit the road and embrace my inner minimalist by living out of a bag!

I sold my condo in Boston and put everything in storage.

Uncharacteristically, I also had zero plans about how and where I was going to travel!

I left in June 2019 and spent the summer hitting a few conferences in the Northwest and visited one of my best “Internet” friends Mike Vardy at his home in Victoria, BC.

Later that summer, a member of one of our Accelerators invited me to join her and her family in the Amazon jungle! Her husband was originally from Marajó. It was the trip of a lifetime!

As part of this experience, I also wanted to live life with family and friends. In between trips, I would live with my parents in Florida or other friends for up to a month.

I have also met loads of amazing people through my work and life on the Internet, so I had the opportunity to visit them all over the world, including friends in Melbourne, Sydney and Noosa, Australia.

Just as the pandemic was breaking out in March 2020, I was doing yoga daily in Ubud in Bali. I left there and spent the first seven weeks of the pandemic living with friends and their young children in Cleveland, OH.

I decided to put down roots again in June 2021 when I bought 10 acres of land to build a tiny house in Florida, MA. I soon discovered building a tiny home is much more expensive than I realized, so I bought a duplex with my sister in North Adams, MA!

I’m itching to start traveling again in 2025!

What I learned: Discovering what it’s like to 100% live how you want and to be guided by your feelings.

I have a tendency to plan, but found it liberating to not know where I was headed next on my journey. I had so many varied experiences I couldn’t have possibly planned, but because I was so open, opportunities found me.

I also felt validated about my minimalist tendencies. Life for me is really all about the accumulation of experiences and not possessions.

Ran my business from Spain for four months in 2010

I wanted to be able to work from anywhere, so I tested out my desire by working abroad in Seville, Spain.

This was well before the whole “digital nomad” thing.

At the time I was running my online sales training business LocalBroadcastSales. I never told any of my clients and learned a ton of new ways to run my business more efficiently.

Everything went smoothly and working abroad exposed me to more efficient ways to run my business I don’t think I would have ever discovered if I stayed home. 

What I learned: I made a huge discovery. How to live two days in one!

Seville is six hours ahead of where I was based at the time in Boston. My “American workday” lasted from 4pm to 9pm in Seville, so I had the entire day to enjoy living in Spain and could even go out for tapas after I finished my work!

Helped get a friend out of $20,000 in credit card debt in two years on a $50,000 a year salary

The trick to getting out of a mountain of credit card debt on a limited salary is to design your lifestyle around your commitment to eradicating your debt. Period.

I worked with my friend to make some dramatic changes to her lifestyle. She ended up living with her aunt to wipe out her largest expense for six months, her rent. She made deep cuts to her entertainment budget and put every penny she saved toward paying down her debt.

However, it’s important not to completely cut out expenses that give you pleasure. You need some treats to help you stick to your financial diet. My friend loved going out to eat. She ate our less, but didn’t cut that expense out altogether because it was one of her top enjoyments. 

Once you create the habits for getting out of debt, you’ll never look at your money the same way again. It’s your first step toward financial freedom. Once my friend paid off her credit card debt, she started saving for a down payment on a house. 

What I learned: You can get out of debt on your current salary.

It’s true, you might have to make some uncomfortable choices, but those changes are temporary. All it takes to make yourself debt-free is to commit to designing your life around eliminating your debt.

Eradicated paper from my life

My life has been fairly paper-free for the last two decades. Paper is one of the key sources of clutter in the home. I don’t like clutter!

Clutter is draining because it requires you to have to make a bunch of decisions you don’t want to think about.

I still use toilet paper, but will be installing a bidet this year (2024) to remove that last bit of paper use from my life!

What I learned: When I first started eradicating paper from my life in 2005, I discovered getting rid of paper was more than eliminating clutter.

It showed me I had much more control over my life than I realized. It provided me with a template for purging other areas of my life that made me feel drained or inauthentic.

Stopped consuming all news media for three weeks

I was a history major and I’m a lifelong news junkie. Up until this lifestyle experiment, giving up news media for even a day was a huge deal for me. Sometimes you learn the most about yourself from the toughest challenges.

Funny story, as a result of this experiment I missed the coverage of one of the biggest news events of my life: the capture of Osama bin Laden! Even stranger, it took 48 hours before I even heard about it!

A friend finally told me about it. I lifted my news media ban for 12 hours and gorged on the coverage. It made me feel angry, sad and anxious.

It immediately made me realize the purpose of my experiment: how things out of your control can unnecessarily distract you from living your life on your terms. 

What I learned: Most information from media is designed to entertain, rather than inform.

If you want to be a truly informed citizen you need to be intentional about the information you consume and where it comes from.

I still struggle with my news addiction and regularly take week-long breaks from it. It never ceases to amaze me how much more positive I feel when I live without consuming “the news”!

been off social media since 2021

I admit it, I was never a fan of Facebook. That was the first to go. I started to abandon it in 2015. I finally deactivated my account in 2019 along with my Instagram account. I had no regrets and still don’t.

As part of my decision to pause Life Skills That Matter in 2021, I stopped using Twitter and LinkedIn for the most part.

I still use YouTube because I consider it a publishing platform. Fortunately, I never got sucked into TikTok.

I admit, I loved Twitter. I was on it since 2009. I met loads of incredible people who became friends. Its design was simple, elegant and useful.

It was a useful source of information until slowly the volume of noise from those seeking attention on the platform grew too much for me to handle. I deleted my Twitter account at the end of 2022.

I love keeping up with my family and friends, but prefer meaningful in-person visits and phone calls. I enjoy using video chat for business.

They are more personal, human and engaging (needs for my personality type). Yes, it might take more time, but it forces me to slow my life down to focus on the people who are most important to me.

What I learned: I’m not missing out. 

I stayed on Facebook as long as I did because I thought I was going to “miss out” on something. I haven’t missed much because all my friends keep me up to date with what’s happening on Facebook anyway!

My colleagues keep me in touch about the latest trends. They act as a filter by sharing stuff they know I’m curious about or is aligned with my values. They prevent me from wasting time sorting through all the clutter on social media.

Performed a cleanse

I decided to try a cleanse in 2011 because I was curious about how my food consumption affected my energy levels throughout the day. (You feel how you eat.)

There are lots of different types of cleanses out there, but I chose the one by Dr. Alejandro Junger after reading his book, Clean. I was drawn to it because of its focus on detoxing the body. I also liked the fact that I was NOT going to have to survive on fluids alone like many other cleanses!

It was more of an elimination diet to see how different foods affect you. It took three weeks. I’ve never had to worry about my weight, but the cleanse made me realize, how much I ate out of boredom!

I was also able to identify foods that drain my energy (grains, sugar) and those that boost my energy (fruits and veggies). As much as I would like to be 100% vegetarian I realized I needed a little meat in my diet to feel satiated.

I know it’s common sense, but doing it versus reading about it made me “feel” the change, so I was more likely to commit to altering my diet.

What I learned: I want to eat to feel energized, not comforted.

Comfort foods feel good in the short term, but drain you over the long term.

Gave up watching television for four months

I stopped watching television for an entire summer. Sure it was a little easier to give up because summer activities offer plenty of distractions.

However, I was surprised how many times I instinctively reached for the remote during the first week. I never considered myself a heavy TV watcher (around 10 hours a week), but I was indeed hooked on the boob tube.

When I bought my current house in 2022, I decided not to own a television. I do still catch shows by watching them on my laptop, but I’m less inclined to watch on a smaller screen.

What I learned:  Television was artificially keeping me up beyond my natural bedtime.

After a few weeks, I noticed I was getting up an hour earlier. I didn’t realize that I was starting to go to bed earlier because my old friend the TV wasn’t keeping me up! 

I never ran more than a mile in my life until I completed a half-marathon after six months of training

I actually lost a bet. (It was the first time the Patriots lost to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII). I always enjoyed biking, swimming and weightlifting, but not running.

Once I make a commitment to someone, I always follow through. The friend I lost the bet to was an assistant athletic director at the time.

She helped me design a training regimen to get me ready for the race. A couple of other friends lost the best with me, so we provided each other with weekly accountability check-ins about our progress.

I finished in three hours flat. I never want to run one again, but now enjoy running a few miles from time to time!

What I learned:  This is such a great example of challenging my limiting beliefs and my assumptions about my physical capacity.

I now use this experience as a frame of reference to challenge myself in other areas of my life.

Gave up alcohol for five months

I drank a lot in college. Too much. After college, I worked in New York City for nine years and went out three or four times a week. Drinking was part of the culture.

It was a regular habit in my life. By my late 20s, I wanted to experience life without alcohol. It wasn’t that hard to give up.

I discovered it’s harder for me to stop after three drinks than not to drink anything at all.

What I learned:  This significant habit change in my life showed me how many of my social relationships were based on drinking.

It began a process of looking at how fulfilling my relationships actually were for me.

It also saved me a ton of money (about $400 a month, yikes!) 

As of 2024, I no longer drink alcohol at all.

Conducted a social purge of all negative people in my life

In 2011, I was rethinking the direction of my life and realized I had a lot of negative influences in it.

I’m generally a fairly positive, optimistic and happy person, but I felt my energy being drained when I hung out with certain people.

I made a list of all the people I felt were too negative or I didn’t feel a meaningful connection with them any longer. I felt liberated. I felt energized.

I made room in my life for new people who were more in alignment with the direction I was taking my life. Within four months of this social purge, I started dating an amazing woman. I often wonder if I would have if I didn’t do this social purge.

What I learned: Breaking up is hard to do and is especially hard with friends.

Sometimes the reason that brought you together has faded because you have both grown in different directions.

You both are still great people, but you no longer fulfill each other in the way you once did. Sometimes those old relationships are holding you back from who you want to become.

Paid off my $5,000 credit card debt within a year of getting laid off

I love reading. The first book I read after being laid off in 2000 was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. (I strongly recommend you read this book.)

The first action I took after reading the book was committing to eliminating my credit card debt. Even while on unemployment I started hacking away at my debt.

The focus of my lifestyle was to become debt-free. Once I paid off my credit card, I maintained my rigorous habits to start building up my savings to eventually become financially independent.

What I learned: Spend below your means and always pay yourself first before any of your other bills.

Saved enough money not to have to work for the next decade based on my current lifestyle

Once I paid off my credit cards, I focused on building up my F**K YOU savings.

I believe a very simple method of defining your wealth is calculating the number of months or years you don’t have to make money by living exactly as you are right now.

First, you need to understand the cost of your lifestyle. How much do you spend to live the way you do?

Once you understand the cost of your lifestyle, you’ll want to assess all your spending to make sure it’s in alignment with how you really want to live your life.

Nothing will get you more motivated to cut your expenses than putting a spotlight on unproductive spending! 

Second, you’ll want to save your first month’s worth of expenses and then another until you have at least a year’s worth of savings to cover all your expenses.

What I learned: I can’t express how empowering it is to build that kind of self-funding!

It gives you the ability to work on your terms like almost nothing else can. 

Got rid of all my possessions I held onto out of guilt

I consider myself a minimalist, but even I was surprised to discover how much stuff I hung onto out of guilt!

After reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up I was finally permitted to let go of all the stuff I held onto out of guilt.

I held onto gifts people gave me because I felt like I had to and stuff my parents gave me when they moved out of our family home.

I never wanted any of it! I let it all go and it made me feel amazing!

What I learned: I realized everything has a purpose, not just living creatures, but inanimate objects too.

When you hold onto items out of guilt you are denying them their purpose.

Worse, you are weighing yourself down with guilt.

We hold onto stuff out of guilt because we want to honor the person who gave it to us.

A better way to honor them is by enabling the gifts they gave you to live out their purpose once again by giving them to someone else who will appreciate them in a way you never will.

(I still haven’t had the courage to tell my dad I sold his childhood train set he gave me! Honestly, the person who bought it was thrilled and I knew they would appreciate it more than I ever would.)

Worked from home for 24 years

I was a “reluctant entrepreneur” for a very long time. I was never taught about self-employment as an option. At the very least when someone did talk to me about it, I was told it was “too risky”.

Now I am happily and proudly unemployable. I am far more productive working from home than working in an office or even working remotely for a corporation.

I believe the pandemic was a big eye-opener for many office workers, who realized how unproductive offices can be!

I have always had enough income to sustain myself through all the ups and downs of the last 24 years.

I truly believe more and more people will become “reluctant entrepreneurs” like me, but I hope I can show you how to become “proudly unemployable” instead.  

What I learned:  Once you liberate yourself from the shackles of traditional employment, you have the opportunity to decide how you want to work and on your terms for the first time in your life!

Until you do it, it’s hard to imagine!

Designed a business that paid me a passive income of $250,000 a year

Before I even heard the term “passive income” I had created an online sales training business that did just that.

I spent a couple of years building an online archive of 600+ training videos.

The last three years I owned that business it paid me an average of $250,000 a year for roughly 20-hours of work per week!

Never did I think I could create such a lucrative part-time job! (Of course, I put in a TON of work the first couple of years to get it going.)

I ended up selling the online portion of the business in 2012.

What I learned: I now have a completely different view of my income.

Never again will I trade my minutes for dollars (even when I consult!)

I always want to create value and income by building systems that can run on their own and that I own.

Wrote two books in two years

I’ll admit these were not best sellers, but they did pay my bills!

I had never written a book before, but was paid $20,000 to write my first book!

It was a history of the New York State Broadcasters Association. I turned 100 interviews into 200 pages.

I was asked to write a second book on “how to get a job in media” while I was writing my first book.

It was an intense experience, but it taught me a lot about how to generate quality content very quickly. A skill that is still incredibly useful to me today.

What I learned: I could take on a daunting task I had never done before by making a plan first.

Making a plan makes huge projects seem more achievable. They help you understand how you can break them down into smaller, more achievable takes to tackle on a daily basis.

I know this might not sound like a “lifestyle experiment” per se, but when you want to take on a huge professional challenge like writing two books in two years, your lifestyle gets completely reorganized around that big goal whether you like it or not!

Saved $1700 by renegotiating all my monthly bills

You’d be surprised how much money you can save every year just by renegotiating your monthly bills once a year!

Typically, I save between $200 and $500 a year for a couple of hours of work each January.

I once saved $1700 by doing extra research on competing services for all of my monthly bills.

I negotiated with each of my service providers and told them it was cheaper to keep me as a customer than the cost of acquiring a new customer.

What I learned: Everything is negotiable. Everything.

Attend conferences for free

I’m a huge advocate for attending conferences. They are a great way to meet lots of like-minded people and acquire specialized knowledge very quickly.

As much as I like attending conferences, I don’t like paying for them. They can be very, very expensive.

I generally attend them for free by offering to speak or volunteer at the conference. I have also scored free tickets by covering the event as a “journalist”. 

What I learned: It never hurts to ask for what you really want or to come up with an alternative value of exchange.

I ended up getting an apartment in Seville, Spain for ten weeks for free in exchange for consulting the management company that owned the apartment about video marketing.

Didn’t own a car the first 10 years of my adult life (except for one year)

I know cars are a necessity in most parts of the country, but they are a huge financial drain.

I was fortunate enough to live in New York City and Boston most of my adult life where you can live without a car. I did own a car for one year when I needed to commute to a job just outside of New York City.

Today, there are so many hourly car rental services, ride-sharing and Uber/Lyft that getting by without a car is becoming more and more possible.

The cost of your annual usage of these transportation alternatives is often much cheaper than paying car insurance for a year.

What I learned: Just because everyone else accepts things as they are doesn’t mean you have to.

Having a car is a “must-have” for living your life in America, but it doesn’t have to be. If you want to do something unconventional in life or your work, there’s always a way. You just have to be curious about finding it!

Got all expense-paid trip to 1998 Winter Olympics and got paid on top of it

This was the highlight of my career as an “employee”. I negotiated a temporary leave of absence from my job at CBS News to work for CBS Sports at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Everything was paid for, even my meals. I was paid a daily salary plus a “per diem” to cover any extra expenses I had. I ended up investing most of it. I was also able to get tickets to any event for free!

I never thought my boss would let me go, but I worked up the courage to ask her anyway. To my surprise, she said, “Yes”.

What I learned: I learned to never make assumptions and to just ask.

How many amazing opportunities do you miss out on because you were afraid to just ask?

Retrained my superiors to lighten my workload to create more time for the work I wanted to do

When I landed my second job at CBS News I was barely hanging onto the lowest rung of the corporate ladder.

Most of my responsibilities were very administrative, but I desperately wanted to learn how to produce television, instead of running around doing errands.

I quickly looked for opportunities to eliminate, delegate or automate my duties, so I had more time to help produce.

People would ask me to send their faxes (this was in 1997 folks), so I taught them how to send their own. I got endless questions about how to use Microsoft Word, so I had a computer trainer come in to teach the staff the basics. When producers asked me to do administrative work for them, I told them I would be happy to do it, but wanted the opportunity to help them produce their stories.

What I learned: Never settle for doing the job you were hired to do, learn the skills for the job you want. Managing doesn’t always come from the top down, it can also come from the bottom up.

I quit my job the day I was offered a promotion for my dream job that only paid $10/hour.

When you are starting a new career path, you can’t focus on the money. You need to show your passion for the work and your ability to do it.

Early on in my career, I was tempted to take a job with a more senior title and more money, but it was going to take me away from my goal of working in television news.

I ended up landing a job at CBS News that was actually a demotion and paid much, much less. Within a year I got a promotion and made even more money than if I accepted the promotion I was offered at my previous job.

What I learned: Focus on what makes you feel fulfilled and the money will follow.

I paid half the price for my MBA degree compared to my peers

The average cost of an MBA when I attended business school from 2002 to 2004 was around $100,000. I paid only $50,000 including the loans I took out!

I thought it was strange that business school students never used their business mindset to negotiate the cost of their MBA.

I managed to reduce my reliance on debt by securing a number of graduate assistantships, as well as working full-time during my second year of business school. Those two years were indeed challenging, but not having a lifetime of student loan debt was totally worth it.

What I learned: Don’t accept debt, even student loans (if you can). Countless students will be in debt for the rest of their lives.

When you have debt, it prevents you from focusing all your money, time and energy on how you want to work and live on your terms.

My Experiments Continue

I’m continuing to conduct lifestyle experiments. I stopped eating sugar in December 2015. I started working outside the house at a co-working space in January 2016.

I’m also happy to try out any lifestyle experiment you propose. I’d also love to here the experiments you’ve conducted as well! Send me your suggestions!

I encourage you to try your own experiments. Especially experiments that challenge your mindset, assumptions and fears.

I truly believe the only way to explore your potential is to test your limits through lifestyle experiments.

As you can see from mine they don’t always have to be dramatic to have a powerful effect on the direction of your life!

First Three Actions to Gain Your Work Freedom

by stephen warley

Want to gain your work freedom? Learn the very first three actions you need to take!

Lots of people think about working for themselves or on their terms, but too few ever do anything about it.

They either think they don’t have:

• enough time

• enough money

• clarity about the work that matters to them

• any clue about where or how to get started

We want to show you that you already have everything you need to start working for yourself right now!!

Below are the first three actions we recommend to begin your journey.

They will also help you sustain your motivation at each stage of your development. 

ACTION #1: Stop Work On Time

Honestly, this is the very first piece of advice we give someone who is currently employed and thinking about working for themselves.

On average, people can find an extra hour a day just by leaving work on time! I’m not advising you to blow off your current job, but don’t feel like you have to go the extra mile anymore either.

Do exactly what you’ve been hired to do and clearly establish boundaries about when you will start and stop work each day. No more working late!

Leaving work on time puts your job in a new context.

It’s now funding your transition toward designing work that works for you. It forces you to make more productive use of your time while you’re on the job.

ACTION #2: Schedule a Meeting With Yourself

Once you’ve taken back one hour a day from your current job, use that time to schedule a daily meeting with yourself to focus on figuring out how to work that matters to you.

You’re now your most important client! Treat yourself like it! Set up an appointment in your calendar with yourself just like you would do for anyone else.

How you spend your time says more than what you “say” you want to do. If you’re serious about working for yourself or working on your terms for someone else, you have to make time for it!

ACTION #3: Write Daily

I have interviewed 500+ self-employed people and they have said the number one habit for getting unstuck is writing daily. (Listen to some of their stories on our podcast.)

If you are considering working for yourself but haven’t taken any action, you’re stuck. You know the path behind you is no longer an option, but the path forward is unclear.

Writing daily enables you to get your thoughts out of your head, so you can gain a new perspective as you read them in written form.

Getting in the habit of writing regularly also primes your pump for idea generation and creativity.

I believe writing daily is the most important self-awareness habit you can develop.

You can track your fears, your unproductive habits and anything else holding you back from creating work that works for you.

Once your obstacles are in written form you can finally confront them!

Remember, your writing doesn’t have to be anything formal. It can be lists, random thoughts, drawings and anything else that gives you the freedom to express your thoughts and ideas.

Get our Daily Growth Journal to begin asking yourself four crucial questions every day to help you grow personally and professionally.

The Life Skills That Matter

by stephen warley

If you’re reading this right now, there’s a good chance you might be feeling overwhelmed, anxious, stressed out or just plain stuck.

Maybe you’re thinking about working for yourself, but don’t know how to get started.

Maybe you feel like you are losing control over different aspects of your life or you have absolutely no idea what you want to do for work. Worse, you might even feel alone in how you feel.

I felt that way for most of my 25-year career. I experienced all different kinds of success, but was always left feeling unfulfilled, unhappy and depleted.

I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to do, but my feelings weren’t matching up. I kept asking myself, “Isn’t there more to life than this? There has to be a better way to work.”

Ever since I was laid off on Election Day in 2000, I’ve been on a mission to find alternative ways of working from the way I was taught to work.

In that time, I  have interviewed 500+ people in various professions, read 200+ books, attended several conferences and conducted countless lifestyle design experiments.

During my research, I became most fascinated by people who successfully transformed their lives around their unique purpose, needs, motivations, abilities and values.

These people work on their terms. They get paid for being exactly who they are.

Not only were they comfortable in their own skin, it was the secret to their success.

You know why the rest of us are stressed out? We’re working out of alignment with ourselves!

How we’re being asked to work is out of sync with our values, personal productivity needs, abilities and natural motivations.

We’re working against the grain of who we are, instead of flowing with it.

We’re also being robbed of the basic life skills needed to adapt to our dynamically changing economy.

Then I began to wonder, “How did these people find a way to work on their terms?”

I started looking for common patterns in how these individuals designed their lifestyles around the work they’ve always wanted to do. Lo and behold a core set of life skills kept popping up over and over again.

I call them the Life Skills That Matter.

These are the skills that can get you unstuck, so you can work on your terms.

These are the skills that can help you find your purpose in life when you have no idea what you want to do.

These are the skills that enable you to do the work you’ve always wanted to do.

These are the skills that enable you to work in alignment with what makes you personally productive.

These are the skills that can make you self-reliant in our chaotic economy.

These are the skills that help you find the courage to be yourself.

These are the skills that weren’t taught to you in school, but have everything to do with your happiness and success.

These are the skills that finally got me unstuck!

They are the skills I wish someone taught me 25 years ago and I would love to share them with you now.

If you want to transform your life to work on your terms, you need to change your habits.  Your life is the sum of your habits.

To begin changing your habits, you need self-knowledge. You need to learn about yourself by identifying your patterns through a process of self-experimentation.

The Life Skills That Matter are the skills that will enable you you learn more about yourself than ever before.

What I find most exciting about these skills is their ability to transform multiple aspects of your life simultaneously without you even having to think about it!

Ready to get started? Read on to learn more about each skill.

1) Tell Your Story

Start reframing your identity by telling the story about the work you’ve always wanted to do.

It’s a simple action, but it takes a lot of courage. I believe it’s one of the most important life skills because practicing it helps you finally commit to your true self.

You are defining your purpose. It is the spark that begins the transformation of your lifestyle. It reframes your mindset. It gives you permission to change your habits and align them with your purpose.

What do you say when someone asks, “What do you do?” Most of us respond by telling them what we do for work right now even if it’s not the work we want to talk about. It’s the response we think we’re “supposed to give.”

When you start telling people what you really want to do, you begin to take on a new identity (your true identity). You stop being afraid of who you really are and embrace what you want to be.

The more people you tell about the work you really want to do, the more real the possibility becomes.

2) Purge Your Life

Make space for the big life change you want to make by getting rid of anything that might be unknowingly holding you back.

This is my favorite life skill, especially when I’m feeling stuck (read my story here) and don’t know what to do! 

Here’s the truth: the vast majority of your possessions, obligations, relationships and digital content no longer serve a valid purpose in your life. They are holding you back, so let them all go.

Any resource that does not make you feel positive in the pursuit of your purpose needs to be removed from your life or minimized immediately to optimize your personal productivity and happiness.

All your stuff has the potential for draining your attention, energy, money and time away from your purpose.

Purging will help you let go of your mental clutter, the real cause of what’s holding you back from what you really want to do. 

3) Practice Self-Awareness

Track your behaviors, thoughts and reactions to learn more about yourself than ever before.

The practice of self-awareness involves observing your actions from a third-person perspective for a more honest assessment of the motivation behind those actions.

It is the most important life skill because it provides you with the foundation for developing all the other life skills.

It’s about finally calling yourself out on your excuses for why you aren’t working the way that is most satisfying to you.

Many of us have no idea how we really want to work because we’ve never given ourselves permission to ask the question. . . .

How do I really want to work? Why? 

The only way you’ll ever find out is by starting a self-awareness practice.

We don’t make any time for self-reflection in our overscheduled lives. We have been taught that self-reflection is either a waste of time or self-indulgent.

This is a shame because self-awareness is the foundation of lifestyle and work design.

Lifestyle transformation begins by studying your habits to clearly understand what motivates you, makes you productive and makes you feel fulfilled.

You can only change your habits with the self-knowledge of your behaviors, tendencies and preferences.  The most effective method for accessing self-knowledge is through a practice of self-awareness.

Few people accept themselves as they truly are. Once you do, however, you’ll discover new possibilities only you are uniquely qualified to pursue.

4) Build Community

Hang out with like-minded people to dramatically build momentum for the change you want to make in your life.

Turns out your mom was right. You are the company you keep!

There is probably no bigger factor determining your ability to achieve your goal than surrounding yourself with people who want the same change as you.

We are a social species. We evolved to work together and to help each other. Most people never make a big change in their life all on their own.

When you recognize possibilities in others, you start to recognize them in yourself.

Your loved ones will always care about you. They just might not always understand what makes you truly happy or why you want to make this big change in your life. They are comfortable with who you are right now and are afraid of the unknown. 

It’s important to seek out people who can provide you with positive support, constructive feedback and the belief that the change you want to make is possible.

Make friends, not connections.

5) Learn How You Learn

Teach yourself new concepts, skills, methods and knowledge to achieve your goal and to continually increase your value.

Learning doesn’t stop with formal education. Unfortunately, too many of us stop learning because we were never taught to be “self-learners.” It’s a very different skill than sitting in a classroom.

Many of us don’t have a love of learning because we don’t know how we like to learn, what can make it enjoyable or what even motivates us to learn on our own.

Not only do you need to figure out your learning style, you need to learn how to set ongoing learning goals to become a lifelong self-learner.

Each time you acquire a new piece of knowledge or a skill you increase your value. People who don’t keep learning decline in value.

Our schooling also didn’t provide us with the mindset, knowledge, skills and freedom to meet the creative demands of the 21st century. Today’s economy is so dynamic and fluid, that the constant acquisition of new skills is paramount.

When you are constantly learning, you are constantly engaging with your purpose, connecting with like-minded people and increasing your personal value.

6) Align Your Habits 

Align your habits with your purpose.

Your life is the sum of your habits. I’ve come across research showing that as much as 45% of our daily activities are the result of habits, not decisions. They are automatic. They require no thought. 

Evolutionary biologists believe the brain formed habits as a way of conserving energy. It takes a lot of energy to think and make decisions. (By 8pm I’m useless when it comes to making decisions.) Putting a chunk of our daily actions on autopilot saves energy for new challenges.

If you want to transform your life, you need to transform your habits. Changing habits takes a lot of energy. It takes effort. That’s probably why so few people go through with it.

It’s definitely not the easy way out, but once your new habits are in place you can live and work more effortlessly in alignment with your purpose.

As you begin to assess your life you might be surprised to discover how some of your daily habits are counterproductive to the change you want to make in your life.

On the flip side, many of your existing habits can help you work toward your goal if you take the time to strengthen them.

7) Reframe Your Mindset

Adopt a growth mindset, so you can see new opportunities.

When you want to make a big change in your life, you need the ability to see options and new perspectives. Sometimes you are your own worst enemy.

We all have “limiting beliefs,” stories we’ve told ourselves about what we can and cannot do. Sometimes we’re completely unaware of what they are or where they come from! They prevent us from seeing new possibilities.

Reframing your mindset involves challenging your limiting beliefs by rethinking all your assumptions about work, life and your needs. 

Preserving a “fixed” mindset prevents you from seeing new perspectives, opportunities and solutions. You were born with certain personality traits, preferences and tendencies that make you view the world in your own unique way, but they don’t have to hold you back from defining your potential.

A “growth mindset” is a view of the world that seeks our options and alternatives without judgment. It considers a variety of perspectives. It views setbacks as learning opportunities, not failures. How you pursue new opportunities defines you, whether or not you succeed. Your actions say more about your potential than your nature. 

You need the courage to explore your limits, so you can pursue your own version of success. Instead of relying on your default thoughts, reactions and behaviors, you need to make yourself aware of alternative responses that might be more productive to your transformation.

8) Plan Your Actions

Understand your “why” for each of your actions to reduce your anxiety, increase your self-confidence and conserve your energy.

Effective planning is a balance. Too much planning and you get paralysis by analysis. Too little planning and you don’t even know where to start. Either way, you aren’t making much progress.

There are more choices than ever before about how we work and live. That’s exciting, but it can also be very overwhelming.

To make effective decisions about the multitude of choices before you, you need to have a plan. You also need confidence in your plan, so you can sustain your motivation for achieving your goals.

My secret for effective planning is to constantly ask yourself, “Why?”

Understanding your “why” is how you define your purpose. It is the foundation of all your decision-making. It enables you to live your core values in every action you take, giving you more confidence in your decisions, as well as helping you conserve your energy.

Your “why” also gives you the confidence to understand when your plan needs to stay the course and when it needs to adapt to changing circumstances.

Planning is all about making the best use of your limited resources: time, energy, money and motivation.

Those resources need to align with your purpose, your “why.” If you don’t have clarity of purpose, all the planning in the world is useless.

I’m all for taking imperfect action, but when done right, planning gives us pause, so we can take action on our terms.

Schedule a weekly appointment with yourself to review the previous week and to set goals for the upcoming one.

9) Embrace Discomfort

Take consistent, imperfect actions. It’s better than taking no action at all.

We all “think” about the big changes we want to make in our work and life. Some of us even take the next step of “talking” about it.

But that’s where most of us stop.

We never take “action” because it’s uncomfortable. It’s hard. We don’t like failing. 

Here’s something you might not want to hear, but our species is hardwired to learn best when it’s hardest.

That’s how we remember. Challenges help create more connections in our brain.

Each failure adds another piece to our puzzle of success.

Resistance is the best teacher you’ll ever have!

Paradoxically, we’re also hardwired to avoid almost anything that may cause discomfort.

At one point in our evolution, this made loads of sense to protect us from a constant stream of physical dangers, but nowadays we’ve successfully eliminated the majority of natural threats from our environment. Embracing discomfort today almost never results in physical harm.

Personal growth comes from embracing discomfort, not avoiding it. 

When you are challenged you grow and learn about your potential. Step outside your comfort zone and level up on your normal risk tolerance. You are either moving forward or falling behind in life.

Change is a constant, especially in the 21st-century economy. That change can either be on your terms or not. The choice is yours.

10) Manage Your Energy 

Manage your energy, not just your time.

I once thought productivity was always about doing more in less time. As I began to work for myself and had to direct my own schedule, I learned quickly that was a fool’s errand.

Personal productivity is all about conserving your energy. It’s about doing what really matters with your limited time plus your available energy.

The average American is working almost nine hours a day now, but you aren’t creating high-quality work during every hour of that time.

From my own experience and research, I believe the average person only has about 3 to 4 hours a day to produce their best work. That’s it. I call it your “peak performance period”.

The biggest change I made in my life to feel more energetic was getting clear on my purpose and how I wanted to work. It has also given me the confidence to honor my peak performance period (which is approximately 7 am to 12 pm), the time when I have my sharpest mental focus.

I have designed my work day around my peak performance period, so it’s used for my most important work: writing. I save all other work tasks for the remainder of the day. 

I’ve discovered that instead of trying to boost my energy artificially, making more effective use of the natural energy already available to me has made me more productive than anything else I have ever tried.

Ready to Start Practicing the Life Skills That Matter?

I hope you now believe, as I do, just how crucial the Life Skills That Matter are to your happiness and success. Maybe you were luckier than I was and already have more experience with them than I did 25 years ago!

If you really want these skills to have an impact on your life and work, reading about them isn’t enough. You need to start practicing them. Take small, consistent action on them each day.

To get you started, I’ve designed a series of weekly Self-Assessment Challenges to help you get to know yourself better and to prepare you for creating work that matters and on your terms by practicing The Life Skills That Matter.

Find Your Purpose Using This Unconventional Approach

by stephen warley

There are lots of different ways to find your purpose in your work or your life.

To be clear, when I’m talking about “your purpose,” I mean the motivating factor that gets you to want to make a big change in your life. It’s something you are naturally drawn to. I also like to think of your purpose as your “why”.

So how do you find your purpose?

From my experience I think most people limit the search for their purpose to activities like reading books and blogs, listening to podcasts and talking to people inside and outside of their social circle.

These common approaches to finding your purpose can provide you with lots of different perspectives.  They are valid and necessary.

However, I believe they tend to focus on seeking your answer from the “external world”.  You are consciously or even unconsciously looking for someone to give you the answer to a question only you will be able to answer.

The answer you are seeking lies within your “internal world”. Your purpose is inside of you. The quest to find your purpose needs to be directed inward, not just outward.  

You know what I tell people when they ask me how to find their purpose or how to find themselves?

I tell them to start purging their lives. Why?

It forces them to confront patterns in their behavior that can reveal what gives them meaning in their lives and even discover their purpose.

What I love most about purging is it gets you to take action. It provides a “quick win” to get you moving toward your purpose even if you don’t know exactly what it is yet.

Even when I’m feeling stuck, purging is one of my “go to” life skills to get myself unstuck again. It’s amazing how often I find the answers to my problems after I do a cleanse of my life!

Here’s why I believe purging is so transformative.

How Purging Sparks Change

Sometimes when we think too much about something, we create a mental block. The harder we think about it, the more elusive the answer.

When you are looking for something as big as your purpose, sometimes it’s best not to overthink it or even think about it at all.

That’s why I love purging so much. Here’s how the simple act of “letting go” can change your life and help you find your purpose.

1) Power of Subtraction 

When Americans want to make a change in their life, they generally want to “add” something to it without “subtracting” anything from their life. We live by the mantra that “more is always better”. I beg to differ. 

Subtracting stuff from our lives often helps us find what we’ve been looking for all along.

When you want to make a big change in your life, you need to make space for it. Your purpose is there, but it’s just hidden in the clutter of your life.

2) Lightens Your Load

Unfortunately, the more you have, the more it weighs you down physically and mentally. The more you have, the more you have to deal with it. It saps your energy that could be used for designing your ideal lifestyle.

There’s all kinds of stuff in your life that no longer serves the original purpose for which you brought it into your life in the first place.

You can’t have lasting change without letting go first. Your journey will be much more enjoyable with less baggage to carry. 

3) Regain Control 

When you feel stuck, you might feel as though you have no control over your life. Purging helps re-establish a sense of that control.

You get to make choices about what you are going to eliminate from your life or keep in it. You get to decide and no one else.

You’ll begin to notice how these small actions empower you to make changes in other areas of your life. Purging helps you recognize how much more control you have over your life than you think. 

4) Get Out of Your Head

Generally, when you feel stuck, you are stuck in your head. Your thoughts are trapped in a loop that offers no way out.

The only way to release yourself from your self-made purgatory is by taking action.  Stop thinking and physically engage with the world. I believe purging is the most productive action you can take.

Purging redirects those thoughts by focusing on the immediate influences of your external life, so you can have a clearer view of your internal life.

Purging also cultivates your self-awareness. As you get rid of stuff, you listen more and more to your feelings, instead of just your thoughts.

Purging is about making you feel better, so you can think better. Your remaining possessions will energize you because they are no longer lost in the clutter of all the other stuff that was unknowingly draining you.

5) Recognize Patterns

If you have no idea what you want to do with your life, purging will start to show you what’s important to you even if you can’t verbalize it. 

Look for patterns in the stuff you keep versus the stuff you don’t. The stuff that remains can start revealing your unique purpose. I strongly recommend keeping a journal to make note of any feelings or thoughts you have as you conduct your purge.

The process of purging can show you what’s been holding you back form living the life you’ve always wanted to live. It reveals feelings and emotions you might have trouble putting into words.

If you are starting to buy into the transformative powers of purging, here’s how to get started.

Purge Your Possessions First

There are several aspects of your life you can purge, but I generally recommend starting with your physical possessions.

It’s a fairly straightforward process that doesn’t require much thinking. It’s also very tangible and produces results quickly. You can see your life beginning to change before your very eyes just by getting rid of stuff!

Purging material items creates the momentum for purging less tangible aspects of your life like obligations, relationships and digital clutter.

Let’s use your clothes as a starting place for your purge.

Gather all your clothes from around your home (not just your bedroom closet) and put them in a pile in one room. I mean everything. Coats, boots, hats, scarves, gym clothes, etc.  

Hold each item in your hand and decide if it has any meaning to you. Either you’ve used that article of clothing in the last year or it makes you feel joy.

Create three piles: 1) clothes to donate 2) clothes you are keeping 3) clothes you need more time to think about (your “maybe” pile).

I have a couple of rules of thumb when you go back to your “maybe” pile:

a) If you haven’t worn it in the last year, your subconscious mind has already decided it doesn’t like it, so challenge yourself to get rid of it.

b) Hold onto each item for five seconds or less and listen to your gut reaction. The longer I hesitate, the more I know I need to let that item go. They generally represent emotions I’m clinging onto that I should have let go of long ago. 

c) Mourn the clothes you know you need to let go of, but hold onto for emotional reasons. Use this purging process to process emotions weighing you down.

Once you’ve processed your “maybe” pile into clothes you are keeping or donating, immediately get those clothes you want to donate out of the house. The most satisfying part of a purge is getting stuff out of your life once and for all.

Finally, put the clothes you are keeping away. See all that extra space you have now? Don’t you feel a little “lighter”? You’ve just made more space for the change you want in your life!

Other Aspects of Your Life to Purge

You can use the same process of purging your clothes for other physical possessions in your life like furniture, electronics, mementos, books, decorations, etc.

I strongly recommend taking on each category of items on its own, so your clutter doesn’t slow down your momentum by discouraging you.

When most people think of purging, decluttering or clearing out their lives, they generally focus on their possessions only.

My version of purging is focused on transforming all aspects of your life, so you can feel more energy and learn more about yourself than ever before.

Purging your possessions is just the beginning. Here’s everything else I recommend purging:

• digital media waste (documents, photos, videos, music, email, etc.)

• obligations (memberships, meetings, tasks that no longer have a purpose or give you joy, etc.)

• relationships (eliminating or spending less time with people who are negative or drain your energy)

• mental clutter (your fears, negative thoughts, unproductive mindsets, limiting beliefs, etc.)

• decisions (eliminate the number of decisions in your life or reduce them by turning them into habits)

• processes (reducing the number of steps in common processes in your life)

Purging is also not a one-time event in your life. Your first purge might be a significant event, but I believe purging is a habit worth practicing frequently throughout the year. (I purge weekly, but do bigger purges at the beginning of every spring and fall.)

We are constantly bringing in all kinds of stuff into our lives and it starts turning into clutter fast. It sneaks up on us. It starts weighing us down.

Purging not only keeps our lives more sane, but simultaneously provides an opportunity for self-reflection about the direction of our lives.

If you’ve tried all the usual approaches for finding your purpose, but still have no idea what it might be, give purging a try. Start eliminating all the clutter in your life. Get rid of everything and anything that no longer has any meaning to you.

It’s holding you back. It’s clouding your vision for your ideal lifestyle. Your purpose is being hidden by all of your mental clutter. You need to cleanse yourself to begin anew again.

Let go!

How To Tell Your Career Story

by stephen warley

What’s your career story?

What’s the work you’ve always wanted to do, but don’t tell anyone about?

When someone else asks you, “What do you do?” you have a choice. You can either:

a) Tell them what they want to hear, which is what you currently do for work (even if it’s making you miserable).

b) Tell them what you really want to do for work (even if you aren’t doing anything about it yet).

Most people choose the first option because it’s safer. We crave social acceptance so much we’d rather hide our true identity. Unfortunately, this leaves us feeling guilty and anxious inside because we deny our true selves.

I want you to be comfortable with who you are. The first step is having the courage to tell your (true) career story.

If you want to transform your lifestyle to work on your terms, you need to own your true identity. You need to start telling the story of your career you’ve always wanted to tell.

I believe telling your story is the most important of the Life Skills That Matter because it is the moment when you commit to the change you want to make in your life.

Here are some “rules” for telling your career story.

Rule#1: Share What You Really Want To Do

If you know what you really want to do for work, tell people (even if you haven’t taken your first step down that path).

Don’t hold back, go for it! Focus on where you want your life to go, not what you are doing right now.

When you verbalize it publicly, the change you want starts taking on a life of its own. The possibility of the work becomes more real to you.

When you talk about the work you’ve always wanted to do, you’ll naturally sound more excited than talking about the work that, while it currently pays the bills, makes you feel unfulfilled.

Your conversation will be more engaging because other people will sense your excitement.

They’ll start asking you questions which will give you feedback and perspectives about how you can make your work possible.

You will leave a more memorable impression and you might even inspire the other person to do the work they’ve always wanted to do!

Rule #2: Share Your Motivation

As soon as you tell someone about the work you’ve always wanted to do, immediately tell them about your motivation for doing it.

Communicate your “why.” Your purpose. Your reason for making a change in your work.

People will be more engaged and even more inclined to offer you help if they believe your intentions are authentic. Communicating your motivation is the way to communicate your passion.

You might even share a personal story. Don’t be afraid to share your feelings.

So what’s my motivation for the work I want to do?

I believe everyone has a great untold story that deserves to be told. I want to help people permit themselves to create that untold story by helping them design their lifestyle around the work they’ve always wanted to do.

Rule #3: How Are You Uniquely Qualified?

When we start thinking of the work we’ve always wanted to do, we unknowingly think of it as a new identity. In many ways it is.

However, that tempts us to throw out our current identity and all of our past experiences that led us to this point in our lives. That’s a big mistake.

Your past experiences have value. They provided you with marketable skills that you can use in new ways to support your new work. They are part of your new story.

When you talk to someone about what you want to do, share how your past experiences make you uniquely qualified to do it. How did they lead you here to take this next step? Show how they’re helping you work toward your new purpose.

For example, my work at CBS News helped me to tell stories. My work at dot-coms helped me understand the possibilities of the digital media. My work as a sales trainer taught me how to inspire people to change. My work as an entrepreneur helped me understand how to build communities.

All of those experiences have provided me with a unique set of qualifications to build a business like Life Skills That Matter.

Rule #4: Gauge Their Level of Interest

When you tell people about the work you’ve always wanted to do, you might feel very vulnerable. That’s perfectly normal.

Telling your true story will change your life forever, and that’s scary. It’s a big unknown, but I think it’s a very exciting unknown because it’s on your terms.

Once you’ve told someone your story, you’ll want to gauge their level of interest. There are some people you want to avoid and others you want to engage. Here’s how to spot them:

Uninterested

Unfortunately, some people might just not care about the work you’ve always wanted to do. They won’t ask any follow-up questions. They might simply respond, “Good for you.” Just move along and recognize they aren’t your people.

Politely Engaged

Sometimes people will ask you follow-up questions, but you’ll sense they aren’t interested. They’re just being polite. Their questions are generic, and they don’t ask you follow-up questions based on what you’ve said. Be polite in return, but as soon as you sense their disinterest, move along.

Don’t Get It

There will be some people who just plain don’t get what you are trying to do. Some tend to be more negative and others more positive about it.

You might feel like you are being interrogated by them. For those that give off a more negative vibe, just move along.

The more positive folks, however, can provide important feedback about the next steps you might want to take. If they are still struggling to grasp what you want to do, offer to keep them posted on your progress.

Pay attention to the people who are positive but confused about what you want to do. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in your understanding of your business idea that you lose perspective.

Hearing from people who don’t know anything about self-employment can provide you with valuable feedback, a “reality check” in the best way possible.

Genuinely Interested

Finally, you will meet people who are genuinely interested in the work you want to do.

They will have an engaged conversation with you. You might even feel a real connection with them. They might be as excited as you when they are talking. They might offer advice, help, or even introduce you to someone.

These folks have the potential to become your most important advocates. As the conversation is wrapping up, ask if you can keep in touch and even try to focus on a concrete next step to build a relationship with them.

What to Say If You Don’t Know What You Want

Some of you might have no idea what you want to do, but you do know the work you’re currently doing is unsatisfying. It’s OK to tell people you are exploring your options. You can even let them know what kind of work you don’t like to do and why.

Talking about your career path opens you up to new insights and perspectives that can help reframe your mindset, allowing you to recognize new possibilities.

What’s important is being true to yourself about where you are in life. You never know who you are going to run into that might change your life forever. It all starts with a simple conversation.

You Are a Work in Progress

The truth is we are all works in progress, including me.

As you begin to go down the path of the work you’ve always wanted to do, you will make adjustments to your story. Remember, always focus on your next step, so you entice people to keep track of your progress and provide them with opportunities to help you.

To boost your confidence about telling your story, write it down. Say it out loud in front of a mirror before you tell someone for the first time or tell a trusted family member, friend, or colleague.

When you do finally tell someone about the work you’ve always wanted to do, pay attention to how it feels. Personally, it is one of the most energizing feelings I’ve ever experienced in my life!

A Challenge For You

I coached a woman a couple of years ago who was frustrated by how she identified herself. She worked for a government scientific research lab by day, but was a novelist by night.

When people asked her what she did, she told them about her day job, even though she really wanted to tell them about her writing. She started to resent her day job even though she knew it enabled her the freedom to write without worrying about how to pay her bills.

I gave her a challenge. I told her anytime someone asks her, “What do you do?” she should proudly tell them she’s a writer. If they ask how she supports herself, then she can tell them about her day job.

A couple of weeks later we reconnected and I asked her how the challenge was going. She said it made an enormous change in her life!

It was hard the first few times, she admitted, but she felt energized by being her true self. She didn’t have to hide her true identity anymore. She was even surprised that a few people were interested in learning more about her writing.

Why did she feel frustrated in the first place? Her day job was stealing the limelight from her true purpose, writing.

Telling her real story made her feel less frustrated about her day job because she was able to put it in a new context. It now played an important supporting role to her leading role as a writer (even though she already knew that).

This simple exercise immediately shifted her mindset about her potential opportunities.

I offer you the same challenge.

The next time someone asks you, “What do you do?” tell them about the work you really want to do, or at least why you are exploring your work options.

How To Learn About Yourself

by stephen warley

If you want to truly feel confident about the work you do, you need to systematically learn about yourself.

One of the hardest questions in life to answer is “What do you want to do?”

Especially when you have no idea what you want to do or you are going through a transition. I can’t tell you how many times I flubbed through that question!

It’s also tough to respond to that question even when you really do know what you want to do with your life but aren’t doing it yet because you don’t know how to make it happen.

It’s a very simple question, but yet it’s tough for many of us to answer. Ever wonder why?

I believe that question causes us so much agony because as a social species, we don’t like disappointing other people. We want to feel accepted. We are hard-wired for it.

When you give someone an answer you think they want to hear, you might satisfy your feelings for social acceptance, but you still end up disappointing someone: yourself.

Quite a paradox, isn’t it?

You aren’t being honest with yourself because you didn’t permit yourself to be your true self. Not a fun feeling.

But how do you even get started with something as broad as “learning about yourself”? As big a topic as it is, getting started with it doesn’t have to be hard.

If you’re feeling lost, here is our recommended process to learn about yourself.

Describe Your Ideal Lifestyle

There are endless reasons why people want to transform their lives.

You might be motivated to get out of debt, become financially independent, gain more control over your life, spend more time with family, travel more, focus more on your passion or reduce your stress (like me).

Regardless of your motivation, I believe the process of transforming your life begins by making your work, work for you.

To understand how you want to work, you first need to learn about yourself.

It’s the most important subject you’ve never been taught how to learn.

Most people attempt lifestyle design by modeling themselves after someone else.

This seems completely backward to me!

I believe lifestyle design is about accepting who you are and aligning your needs with your purpose, not copying some online guru or lifestyle design “expert” (even me!)

The more you learn about yourself, the better equipped you’ll be to design a lifestyle truly unique to your values, needs, abilities and motivations.

Especially if you are considering working for yourself, you need to get to know yourself first. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs build a business seeking more freedom, but end up completely miserable because they built a business out of alignment with their work needs.

Your life is a huge and vast subject. There’s lots to know. Here are the key “subjects” I believe you need to know to successfully design your lifestyle around more satisfying work.

1. Your Personal Productivity

Why do you work?

How would you like to work?

What have you always wanted to do for work?

I’m encouraging you to answer those questions as honestly as possible.

We’ve all been taught to work in a way that might not seem natural to us as individuals. I think many of us don’t like working because we don’t work in a way that makes sense to us.

For example, my peak performance period for work occurs around 7 am to 12 pm each day. I also prefer a mix of working on my own and collaborating with others a few times a week. I want the value of my work to be based on the quality of my output, not the amount of time I “put in” at the office.

Additionally, I need to spend at least an hour a day performing a physical activity outside like walking, yard work or paddle boarding to energize myself. I also want the freedom to decide how much time I spend with my family.

As you might imagine, I’m not cut out for the 9-to-5. You might not be either, and it may be the cause of your stress.

The needs I listed above are the ingredients that optimize my “personal productivity.” It’s not what makes everyone productive, but it’s what makes me productive. Most likely the ingredients for your personal productivity will be different from other people as well.

I wouldn’t be nearly as productive if I had to spend most of my energy trying to conform my work style to a one-size-fits-all standard. One of the most draining experiences of my life has been working out of alignment with my work needs!

Let me be clear: I enjoy working but on my own terms.

I once thought being more productive meant getting more done in less time. I thought managing my time more effectively was the key to my productivity. I now realize the key to my productivity is all about how I manage my limited energy.

One of the biggest boosts to my energy was deciding to work in alignment with my needs. I may have 10 hours a day to work, but I now realize I only have 3 to 4 hours of energy to create high-quality work.

Believe it or not, I spend less time working now than I did in an office, yet I’m far more productive. I owe that to learning about what makes me personally productive.

What are your personal productivity needs?

2. Your “Why”

Beyond money, why do you work? Of all the different options for work, why do you do the work you do?

If you want to design your life around the work you’ve always wanted to do, you have to be clear about your “Why”. Your purpose. The reason that motivates you to work every day.

If you aren’t quite sure what you want to do, ask yourself, “Why don’t I want to do the work I’m doing right now?” Which aspects do you enjoy and not enjoy? Why?

I have cultivated a habit of asking myself “why” about anything I’m about to do or I’m thinking about doing. It has been one of the easiest and most effective self-awareness habits for me to practice.

That simple question stops me in my tracks, so I can take a moment to make sure my decision is in alignment with my needs and my purpose. I can’t tell you how much time, energy and anxiety it has saved me.

Once you nail down your “Why,” all your decisions and actions will flow from it to design your ideal lifestyle.

Do you know your “Why”?

3. Your Values

What’s important to you? What kind of work are you willing to do or not do? Why?

I like to think of values as your personal code for guiding your actions and responses to various circumstances. They provide a core set of parameters for how you will design your life and work going forward. They are the foundation of your personal productivity.

They provide the blueprint for living your “Why”.

One of my core values is valuing experiences over material possessions. When I’m about to buy a physical product, I always think about how it can either enhance my experiences or detract from them.

I also value simplicity. I’m not necessarily looking for the easy way out, but rather actions that make the best use of my time and energy. I am constantly seeking ways to reduce the number of decisions I need to make each day or the number of steps in a given process.

What are your core values?

4. Your Motivations

What gets you excited to take action without being coerced?

If you want to work for yourself, you need to clearly understand your sources of motivation. Is it money? Working with others? Spending more time with family? Competition? Helping others? Solving a big problem?

Your motivations are how you live your “Why” and act in alignment with your values.

Your motivations will be your new “boss”. You’ll also need to understand how to harness the power of your motivations to provide you with a sustainable source of energy as you design your ideal lifestyle.

I’m very frugal with my money. It’s one of my motivations. For example, when I started Life Skills That Matter I decided to try out a co-working space to get the most from my “peak performance period” each morning (as described above).

It was $185 a month. I knew I would commit to using it every day because I wanted to get my money’s worth!

What are your motivations for work?

5. How You Learn

Learning new skills doesn’t stop once you leave college or get a graduate degree. Learning doesn’t just take place in academic institutions.

You are going to constantly need to learn new skills if you want to work on your terms and thrive in our dynamically changing economy.

Many of us have a fear of learning because the way we were taught to learn in school was out of alignment with our personal learning style. We were never given a choice.

I don’t ever remember being encouraged to discover my style of learning. I was taught by listening to lectures, reading books and doing homework to practice the new concepts I learned in class. I was told how to learn.

I learned primarily by rote memorization. I was taught to be motivated by getting good grades, but as an adult, I have realized my natural motivation for learning is the opportunity to experiment and figure things out for myself.

What motivates you to learn something new? Maybe you like to experiment like me and learn from your mistakes. Or maybe you have a totally different motivation.

Many people learn better in collaborative groups, so being forced to sit alone working on an assignment would be torture. Reading is a dreaded form of learning for some, so they prefer listening to audio lessons or lectures.

You might be a visual learner and need to see concepts drawn out and presented in different contexts.

Formal certification led by an instructor might be your thing to learn a new skill or maybe you are content watching a series of videos on YouTube at your own pace.

It doesn’t matter the method you choose, so long as it’s in line with your motivations and personal learning style.

How do you like to learn?

6. Your Habits

Your habits tell you everything about how you spend your time, money and energy. Your lifestyle is the sum of your habits. Therefore, it’s essential to build the right habits if you want to start working for yourself.

You need to start assessing your habits and decide which ones to eliminate, strengthen or change as you redesign your lifestyle. Habits are the engine of lifestyle transformation.

Weight loss, breaking an addiction or getting out of debt all start with changing habits. That’s it. Changing habits can be very challenging, but new habits can also make your life a lot easier when they finally take hold!

In terms of designing your lifestyle around your unique purpose, I recommend tracking the following habits: how you spend your money, how you spend your time, how you manage your personal energy and how you process your feelings.

Which of your existing habits will help you work on your terms?

7. Your Strengths and Abilities

Most of us limit our capabilities to the list of skills and work experiences we have on our resumé. Designing your ideal lifestyle requires you to assess a much wider scope of your abilities in both your professional and personal lives.

I define your abilities as your natural strengths, talents, marketable (hard) skills, people (soft) skills, life experiences, special work projects, hobbies and life skills.

What are your core strengths and abilities?

8. Your Personality

I like to think of your personality as your natural tendency and preference for interacting with people and the world.

Understanding the quirks in your personality will help you better understand how you like to work and the type of people that best complement your personality type.

Consider taking a personality assessment if you have never taken one. There are several options, but the Myers-Briggs assessment is probably the most widely used (and easily available) standard.

My philosophy on self-assessments: use them as a guide for your self-awareness practice, but not as a fixed interpretation of who you are. Take them with a grain of salt. They are a starting point, but not the final answer.

How would you honestly assess your personality?

9. Your Emotional Intelligence

There is a school of thought that believes your emotional intelligence may be a better predictor of success than your rational intelligence, your IQ.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is your ability to manage your emotions, how effectively you interact with other people, your capacity for empathy and how well you can focus. All crucial abilities to make your self-employed lifestyle sustainable.

You can start learning about your EQ by becoming more self-aware about how you react to people. This will give you a sense of how well you understand the needs of others and how to minimize explosive reactions.

Your ability to delay gratification is another area to consider monitoring to get a better sense of how well you can focus, cope and sustain your motivation.

How would you describe your EQ?

10. Your Self-Confidence

I want to be completely honest with you: abandoning predefined paths like the 9-to-5 lifestyle to create your own path takes a TON of self-confidence.

Please don’t be delusional about your abilities by overestimating them because you didn’t take the time to evaluate them. On the other hand, don’t seek validation for each and every decision you have to make.

Self-confidence is a delicate balance. It’s about cultivating feelings of self-assurance. It’s having the courage to experiment and to learn from your mistakes when you fail.

Most importantly, it’s about not worrying about what other people think!

You will also want to assess your sources of self-confidence when the going gets tough. Who can you call or what can you do to boost your confidence when it needs a lift? What reassures you?

Your confidence helps you know both when to hold back and when to move forward on your terms.

What makes you feel self-confident?

11. Anything Holding You Back

If you want to completely transform your life, it’s time to deal with your issues. We all have them. Face your fears. Challenge your expectations.

Here are some of the things that might be (unknowingly) holding you back:

• Your fears

• Your cravings

• Your negative thoughts

• Your desires

• Your expectations

• Your risk tolerance

It’s time to unload your baggage. Make space for the big change you want in your life. It’s holding you back from what you’ve always wanted to do!

How to Start Learning About Yourself

There are many different self-assessments you can take to learn more about yourself, but there are no formal assessments for many of the areas of your life I’m advising you to learn more about. So what’s the best way to learn about yourself?

Start a writing habit by tracking one or a handful of areas in your life. I interviewed 500+ people who successfully transformed their lives and asked each of them, “What was the most important habit that helped you make this transition?” Over half said it was a daily writing habit.

Some kept old-fashioned written journals, some built lists in Evernote and others tracked their thoughts by keeping notes on their phones.

It didn’t matter what they wrote or how they did it. What mattered was the creation of a writing habit that worked for them (I keep a running note on my phone, a written journal and a spreadsheet).

Start monitoring your feelings. Specifically your most positive and negative feelings each day. Look for patterns to discover new possibilities for your life.

Be a student of yourself. Start taking notes!

If you are interested, you can read my full self-assessment here.

Ready to Learn About Yourself?

To get you started, I designed a series of weekly self-assessment challenges. Each focuses on just one aspect of your life, like how you spend your money or how to discover your values.

These challenges force you to get out of your head and take action. There is no better way to learn about yourself than by taking action!

Remember, you are the first resource for your business AND it’s the biggest obstacle! The better you know yourself, the better decisions you’ll make for designing work that works for you!

What Is Self-Awareness?

by stephen warley

Once upon a time, I regarded “self-awareness” as something that was of little value to me. It seemed too touchy-feely. When people told me I had to “find myself,” I thought, “How can I find myself when I’ve never been lost?”

The self-assuredness of my early 20s was quickly shattered when I got laid off at the age of 26. Suddenly, I started feeling lost. I was starting to realize I had been directing all of my energies toward proving that I was an adult (whatever that meant!).

In reality, I had no clue who I was. Yikes!

Obviously, I missed school the day they taught us about self-awareness. Oh wait, that’s right, they never taught any of us about it!

I believe the practice of self-awareness is one of the greatest skills in life because it enables you to learn about yourself in a way no one else can ever teach you.

It teaches you how to manage yourself and how to productively engage with other people.

Most importantly, it enables you to design work that works for you, so you can design your lifestyle on your terms.

Before we dive into defining “self-awareness,” let’s break it down and focus on the meaning of “awareness” first.

What Does “Awareness” Mean?

I like to think of “awareness” as what you notice in life. It’s about paying attention.

It’s the details you pick up from your perception of the world. It’s your consciousness actively gathering and processing information from your environment. It’s how you experience life.

There’s lots of stuff to notice each day, each hour, and even each minute. Look up from this blog post for a moment and slowly scan the area around you. What did you notice? Which details can you describe?

I have a very good friend who notices very different things about the world than I do. I often tell her she could have been a CIA agent because she can recall an astonishing amount of detail from any given scene of life.

I’m more oblivious. Well, not really oblivious, just more hyper-focused on one particular part of the same scene my friend and I are experiencing.

I tend to be very aware of people. I easily remember people’s names. I feel their vibe. I notice how people interact with each other in a group. I catalog their stories in my brain. I can pick up conversations exactly where we left off even if months have passed.

My friend, on the other hand, will notice the physical details and movements of all people, even strangers. I tend to be more aware of people I know or spark my curiosity.

Neither form of awareness is right or wrong. They’re just different. It’s our natural tendency.

What Does “Self-Awareness” Mean?

If “awareness” is about noticing stuff in the world, “self-awareness” is about focusing your awareness on yourself.

It’s your ability to notice your feelings, your physical sensations, your reactions, your habits, your behaviors, and your thoughts.

You are aware of all those different aspects of yourself as if you were another person observing you.

Another way to think of it is paying attention to your intuition, also known as your 6th sense or your gut feeling.

Or as someone I once interviewed told me, self-awareness is about being honest with yourself.

We all have a self-image of how we want others to perceive us. You might view yourself as punctual, but in reality, you are often late to appointments.

Self-awareness is about focusing on the reality of your behavior and not on the story you tell yourself about yourself.

Stop Ignoring Your Feelings, Explore Them

Many of the people I interview or coach about feeling “stuck” in their lives, often describe a “feeling they could no longer ignore.”

On the surface of their lives, everything seemed fine. In fact, they were able to ignore and even repress this feeling because they didn’t have the self-awareness to explore it. Has this ever happened to you?

Some felt a physical sensation in the pit of their stomach or a tingling in their chest. Others felt more and more distracted. People also told me they felt unsatisfied or unhappy, but had no idea why because they could see no immediate reason for it in their lives.

Those who started to investigate the source of these unexplained feelings and sensations were those who began a deeper practice of self-awareness.

They started observing even more subtle sensations and the nuanced circumstances of their behaviors. They gave their feelings a voice and hushed the monkey chatter of their conscious thoughts.

Those who chose not to investigate these feelings increasingly felt more anxious. More stressed out.

Exploring the unknown can be scary. We believe we have to have everything “figured out” by the time we are 30. Becoming self-aware about unresolved feelings threatens everything we thought we were supposed to be working toward.

I strongly encourage you to stop ignoring those feelings because they’ll never truly go away. Instead, start exploring them through a practice of self-awareness.

At the very least you will learn more about yourself and how you can live in closer alignment with who you really are.

Listen to why practicing self-awareness is so important. 

How to Practice Self-Awareness

In the context of lifestyle design, self-awareness is the first step toward designing your lifestyle around the work you’ve always wanted to do.

It is the mechanism for acquiring self-knowledge, the path to learning which habits you need to alter to start working on your terms.

Step #1

The first step for practicing self-awareness is gaining a greater awareness of your emotions.

We have been taught to shut our feelings out of our decision-making process and to rely solely on our rational thoughts.

I believe this puts our decision-making process out of balance. When we rely solely on our rational thoughts, we often make decisions to try to live up to someone else’s ideals.

Our feelings are the internal advocate for our own ideals. To make effective decisions, we need both rational thought and our feelings. We need to pay attention to our gut as much as our brain.

I didn’t become actively self-aware of my feelings until my early 30s. I suffered from chronic anxiety throughout much of my career, and I owe that to my deficient awareness of my feelings.

Bring greater awareness to your feelings by including them in your decisions. Listen to your gut and explore why your feelings might object to the decision of one of your rational thoughts.

Ask yourself, “Where is that feeling coming from?” Make a habit of recognizing your feelings.

Step #2

The second step to practicing self-awareness is making a habit of tracking your feelings.

Very simply, start writing down your most positive feelings and your most negative feelings. Keep a journal or note on your phone. Try it for at least 30 days.

Begin to notice patterns and trends. This simple practice will help you better define your purpose, your values, your motivations, and anything holding you back from the work you’ve always wanted to do.

Here’s everything you can learn about yourself to design your ideal lifestyle.

I like to think of monitoring your feelings as communicating with your subconscious mind. It’s your true inner voice. It often knows what you want in life before you are able to put it into words.

Step #3

The third step for practicing self-awareness is expanding your practice to areas of your life beyond your feelings.

There are countless areas of your life you can monitor, but you should focus on areas you believe will have the greatest impact on designing your ideal lifestyle.

Once you’ve had some experience with tracking your feelings, I recommend tracking your energy next. This will help you identify your “peak performance period” each day. These are the period(s) of the day when you are most energized, focused, and able to create your highest quality work. Tracking your energy will also provide insights into what motivates you and what drains you.

Try these 4 self-awareness exercises. Listen now.

Self-Assessment Challenges to Get You Started

I know starting a self-awareness practice for the first time can be difficult, so that’s why I created a 12-week self-assessment challenge to help begin your self-awareness practice.

Each week you’ll be emailed a new self-assessment challenge that prompts you to explore a specific aspect of your life like how you spend your money or identify your values.

Developing a self-awareness practice is the foundation of lifestyle design. It is the primary method for learning about yourself and your needs.

It will also do wonders for reducing your anxiety and preventing you from getting “stuck” in the future!

The #1 Self-Awareness Habit

by stephen warley

Are you feeling stuck, but see no way forward?

I’ve been stuck too. Many times. Mostly because I wasn’t self-aware. I finally learned one habit that not only gets me unstuck, but enables me to change any of my habits.

If you want to make a big change in your life, you need to change your habits. Habit development starts by practicing self-awareness.

Over the past decade, I have interviewed 500+ people who got themselves unstuck and transformed their lives to include the work they’ve always wanted to do. I asked each of them, “What was one key action you recommend to someone to get unstuck?”

Over half of them said writing a daily journal.

Keeping a daily diary has been a key habit of successful people throughout the ages. Some avid journalers include Benjamin Franklin, George Sand, Thomas Edison, Virginia Wolfe, John D. Rockefeller, Kurt Cobain, Louisa May Alcott, Bob Dylan, Dorothy Day, George Patton and Buckminster Fuller. One of the earliest known diaries comes from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The most important self-awareness habit you can practice is writing.

You might be wondering, “So what exactly should I be writing about?”

A good place to start is to write about an area of your life you want to change or you wish were different in some way.

How to Get Started

Starting a journal can be intimidating. Staring into the abyss of a blank sheet of paper with no idea what to write about because it’s about you.

One of the most important rules of writing my 7th grade English teacher drilled into my head was “know your audience.” You are keeping a journal for no one else but yourself. You are writing for an audience of one.

So what do you want to learn about yourself?

The purpose of keeping a journal in the context of developing your practice of self-awareness is to get to know yourself in a deeper way than ever before.

It’s an opportunity to communicate with your subconscious feelings you might be overlooking or ignoring. The act of writing provides a stage for those feelings, so you can more easily bring awareness to them.

Here are my basic recommendations for getting started:

1) Monitor a specific aspect of your life to provide you with a focus.

2) Begin by monitoring your most positive and your most negative feelings each day.

3) Choose a system to record your entries like a paper journal, a note on your phone, or an app that will make it easier to commit to your new writing habit.

4) Schedule a time of day when you will journal to reinforce the habit (the time of day doesn’t matter, whatever works for you).

What You Can Monitor

There are a variety of reasons for starting a self-awareness practice like a daily writing habit, but one of the most common reasons is to make a big change in your life.

If you are reading this blog, your motivation for starting a self-awareness practice and a writing habit is to make a big change in your life.

Transforming your lifestyle requires changes in your thoughts, habits, and behaviors. To change them you need a benchmark.

This is accomplished by monitoring the following aspects of your life (once again I strongly recommend focusing solely on each one on its own for its own period of time).

Your Feelings

Monitor your most positive and negative feelings each day.

Paying closer attention to your feelings will get you to connect with who you really are. Your subconscious mind often knows what you really want before your conscious mind does.

Your Energy

Monitor your energy to identify your “peak performance period,” the time when you are most productive each day.

Ideally, you want to track your energy levels throughout the day. Consider tracking more than once a day: morning, afternoon, and evening.

This will help provide a more accurate read on your natural energy levels. If possible. note activities that energize you and drain you as they occur.

Your Time

Monitor your time to see how, with whom, and where you spend your time.

You might organize your writing by making a list of entries by time of day. If possible, describe your primary activities in 30-minute increments throughout the day. You may also want to use an app like Toggl.com

Your Spending

Monitor your spending to see where your hard-earned money is really going!

How you spend your money says more about you than you might imagine. You can use a spending app, but I highly recommend trying handwritten entries first.

Taking the extra effort to record each expense by hand will bring more awareness to how and why you spend your money the way you do.

There are countless aspects of your life you can monitor, but these are the 4 areas that will generate the highest quality information the most quickly to help you design your ideal lifestyle.

Journal Format Options

There are lots of different methods for journaling depending on your personal preferences and what you’re monitoring. What’s most important is that you choose a format that makes it easier for you to commit to your new writing habit.

Here’s a comparison of some of the different options:

Old-fashioned written journal

I know we live in the digital age, but I truly believe there is something transformative about writing about yourself in your own hand.

It creates a sense of authorship. No one else in the span of human history has your handwriting. There is a deeper connection between your handwritten thoughts and your brain.

There are 2 writing approaches you can use to keep a written journal:

1) Free writing

The benefit of “free writing” is there are no boundaries. You can just start wherever your brain wants to begin. This approach has the potential to get your creative juices flowing and reduces the influence of your rational thought.

2) Prompts

Sometimes people (like me) need some direction to help spark their writing habit. Using “prompts” is a good way to go. They can be in the form of standard questions you ask yourself every day, lists, or predetermined entries to fill out.

An example of a prompt for tracking your feelings might be “Write your most positive feeling today.”

If you are tracking your time you might have a list of predefined entries dividing up your time into 30-minute periods to fill out as they occur.

Note on phone

It’s probably one of the easiest forms of tracking for me because I always have my phone with me, so there is no excuse not to do it. I also find that I record a greater volume of information and in much better detail because I record it as it happens.

Email yourself

You can also email yourself. It’s as easy as keeping a note on your phone, but has the advantage of creating a searchable archive of your entries. Most of us now have unlimited space in our email, so we can save every entry sorted by date, subject and keywords.

Apps

From my experience apps make tracking things like your time and how you spend your money much easier. I recommend Toggl.com for tracking your time, Mint.com for tracking your money and MoodFit for tracking your feelings.

Excel

I don’t believe Excel is a commonly recommended tool for journaling, but I have used it for that purpose often. It’s a simple tool that enables me to sort data in lots of different ways to provide me with new insights into my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Before you judge me, give it a try. 😉

Still Skeptical? Experiment With It

If you are serious about designing your lifestyle around work that satisfies you, you have to learn about yourself first. The most effective way to learn about yourself is through experimentation.

Explore your potential by engaging with the real world, instead of limiting it to the confines of your mind.

From all my experience, research, and conversations over the past 16 years, journaling will help you learn more about yourself faster than any other method.

At the very least experiment with it. The worst that will happen is you’ll learn a little more about yourself.

Here are a few more reasons to give it a try:

1) Unburden your mind.

Stop locking up your dreams inside the prison of your mind and set them free by writing about them! Redirect the energy of your mind from holding tightly onto your thoughts to turning your thoughts into a physical form like the written word.

2) Prime your creative pump.

If you think the ideas in your head are great now, wait until you start writing about them! Ideas beget ideas. The process of writing is a physical representation of your stream of consciousness. Unfortunately, your train of thought is backed up because you won’t let it leave the station of your mind!

3) Create a baseline for changing your habits.

The process of habit development begins by the acquisition of self-knowledge through the practice of self-awareness. A writing habit sparks that momentum of change like nothing else.

4) See new perspectives.

Turning your thoughts into a written form provides you with a new perspective. You get to see them outside your mind for the first time. You can engage with them in a new and different way.

5) Become your own coach.

Often it’s hard to see our blind spots or to be honest with ourselves. In the absence of a life or business coach, writing daily reveals patterns in your thoughts and behaviors you may have overlooked, but they become unavoidable as they keep popping up in your writing.

What I Write About

I didn’t journal for most of my life because I had preconceived notions of what it meant to keep a diary. Sadly, I thought it was only something teenage girls did. Pining away about my feelings didn’t seem like a good use of my time. How wrong I was!

I did, however, keep journals when I traveled, so I could recall every moment and experience. I kept my first one when I lived with a family in Southport, England for a month when I was 14 as part of an exchange program. I continued the habit for every major trip I embarked on through my late 20s.

My travel journals were more about what I did and less about my innermost thoughts. It wasn’t until my early 30s that I started paying closer attention to my feelings.

I have come to realize that journals at their best are a conversation with yourself about your feelings, nagging thoughts, your hopes, behaviors you want to change, and anything that’s bugging you. It relieves my anxieties, helps me change my habits, and grows my ideas.

I’ve Journal In A Few Different Ways

1) I keep a written journal for my “loop thoughts.”

“Loop thoughts” are thoughts that keep going round and round in my head with no resolution. They are distracting and drain my energy.

I can’t tell you how many times writing about them has helped me find a why to either resolve them or cope with them within days of turning them into written form.

I don’t write about them every day, but I write about them frequently throughout the week. I also generally write about them in the morning.

2) I also keep an Excel spreadsheet to track key behaviors I want to change.

Currently, I’m tracking behaviors like drinking, eating sugar, unproductive web surfing, and complaining about the weather. I track that last one as a way to bring awareness to how often I complain about anything. Living in New England, complaining about the weather is a pastime for many.

Each behavior has its own column. At the end of each day, I record the date and insert an “X” for each behavior I successfully avoided that day.

3) Record ideas and notes on my phone.

When I want to track my thoughts regardless of where I am, I generally keep a note on my iPhone. Anytime something pops into my head I want to track, I record it in a dedicated note.

Just Start Writing

Don’t get overwhelmed by all the recommendations provided in this post. They are just ideas to get you started. What’s most important is to start AND commit to a daily writing habit focused on changing whatever aspect of your life you wish were different.

Writing daily will help improve your self-awareness practice by providing you with a written record of your thoughts, so you can reflect on them more easily than relying on your memory alone.

As you write, you’ll begin to see what’s holding you back from making the change you want to make in your life. The practice of writing daily will provide a constant reminder of why you want to make this change in your life and begin to show you how to make it possible!

Try our Daily Growth Journal to start your daily writing habit.

What’s Holding You Back From Success?

by stephen warley

What’s holding you back from the work you’ve always wanted to do?

Think about that question for a moment.

When you want to make as big a change in your life, you need to face anything and everything holding you back from successfully making that change.

Everything that drains your energy, distracts your focus or clutters your mind.

Mental clutter can’t be measured in pounds or kilograms, but it is often some of the heaviest stuff we carry around in life. It either prevents us from moving forward or its weight makes our progress sluggish.

It’s baggage that needs to be unloaded.

You know the greatest obstacle to your own success? Yourself. No one else. Cliché I know, but it’s the truth.

Beyond the baggage you might already be aware of, there is plenty more you are carrying around with you that is unknowingly holding you back from the work you’ve always wanted to do.

Here are are a few . . .

Your Fears

A fear is a painful emotion triggered by an action your mind believes is dangerous and threatening.

Studies have shown that pain from fear is experienced the same as physical pain.

People are afraid of everything. Every one of us has fears whether we choose to recognize them or not. The worst fears are those that rule almost every decision we make in our lives and prevent us from testing the limits of our potential.

Fears have had a legitimate role in our evolution (read Seth Godin’s post about quieting your lizard brain). They make us more alert and protect us from harm.

However, modern life has mitigated many of the fears that once plagued our ancestors, but yet they still are a powerful force in our minds. We can reduce their power once we recognize them and get them out into the open.

What are my fears?

I’m afraid of dying before I’m finished with the work I know I have inside me, not being able to pay my bills (which has never been a problem, but alas still a fear) and letting people down who counted on me (the source of this fear is from enduring years of Catholic guilt from my loving mother).

What fears are holding you back?

Your Cravings

A craving is a powerful desire that needs to be almost immediately satisfied.

Generally, it’s a physical need. It’s also typically a need that comforts us, but has the potential to make us lose our self-control. We overdo it. We all have that temptation within us.

We need to reign in our cravings because they bring us out of alignment with our goals and our purpose. They are a huge drain on our energy, our time and our money. The little comfort they offer can end up being very destructive.

What are my biggest cravings?

Chips, sugar and alcohol are my downfalls. I crave them all. I can polish off a bag of tortilla chips or an entire Ritter chocolate bar in one sitting. Let’s just say once I have more than two drinks, the probability of drinking way, way more than I should is highly probable. That’s the thing about cravings, they fill you up with empty satisfaction.

What cravings are holding you back?

Your Desires

A desire is a strong feeling or wish to have something in particular in your life that will satisfy you.

Generally, it’s something currently out of your reach. It can be both an attainable and unattainable goal.

Desires can be both healthy and unhealthy. I believe healthy desires are lofty goals that can motivate you to create positive change in your life.

Unhealthy desires become obsessions. They become the sole source of your happiness. They become a need and not something to be enjoyed.

What are my unhealthy desires?

I once desired financial security. Who doesn’t want to have to worry about money? Once I mastered my desire, I was severely disappointed. Becoming financially secure didn’t make me feel any more satisfied or happy. I felt even more empty inside because I ignored all the other ingredients to my happiness. I learned the hard way that money isn’t everything.

What unhealthy desires are holding you back?

Your Expectations

An expectation is a strong belief that something will likely happen or it is a preference to have something happen in a certain way.

More often than not, expectations are not within our control. When our expectations aren’t realized, they can leave us very disappointed.

Your goals should be guideposts to give your life direction. Expectations are rigid. They can be walls of disappointment when you can’t climb over them.

Our careers are filled with expectations about when we’ll get promoted, how much money we’ll make, how successful will be in 5 years, etc. Sometimes those expectations are unrealistic because we haven’t taken an honest assessment of ourselves and our abilities.

We get easily disappointed when these expectations aren’t met and ignore all the progress we have made.

What are my expectations?

Honestly, I’ve had so many expectations for myself in my career it’s hard to remember them all! Looking back I have realized, my most productive expectations are those about how I live my purpose and my values.

The expectations that were counterproductive to my career were those tied to specific outcomes like getting promotions, making a certain amount of money by a certain age, constantly thinking my “next job” was finally going to make me completely happy or waiting for the “right time” to pursue an opportunity.

What expectations are holding you back?

Your Risk Tolerance

Your risk tolerance is your motivation for seeking untested opportunities and your ability to embrace change.

I also like to think of your risk tolerance as a measure of your “fear of failure”.

People with a low tolerance for risk direct all their energy into holding onto everything they already have. They fear change.

People with a high tolerance for risk direct all their energy into pursuing new opportunities that have no guarantee of success. They are driven by change.

The world around you is changing faster than ever before. Risk avoidance is probably not in your best interest because change is coming to your life whether you want it to or not. Let it be on your terms.

When you take a chance and fail, at least you will learn a little more about yourself and add another piece to your puzzle of success.

What is my risk tolerance?

Early in my career, I would say I was very conservative about taking on risk. Since I was laid off ages ago, my risk tolerance has grown tremendously and now I run toward failure because I know I will learn from it.

What is your risk tolerance?

Asking For Permission

Permission is giving someone else the authority to decide what you can and can not do. 

Asking for permission is ingrained in us as children and leaves a deeper imprint on us as adults than we would like to imagine.

We constantly look for the validation of others to tell us when it’s time for us to make our next move and which opportunities are best for us to pursue.

I’m giving you permission to stop asking for permission. You are the sole authority over your life and how you get to live it. You may disappoint many people in the process, but they aren’t living your life, you are.

How have I asked for permission in my career?

Before starting Life Skills That Matter I thought I could only build a business by having a partner. More often than not, I underminded several opportunities because I sought their validation.

Worse, I convinced myself I needed it. I slowly came to realize I was the reason for my business success, not my partners. My need for permission also held me back from choosing partners that best complimented my strengths.

What permission do you need to do the work you’ve always wanted to do?

The Number One Action To Start Letting Go 

If you want to design your lifestyle, so you can work on your terms, you need to liberate yourself from all the stuff holding you back.

I believe the most effective action you can take to start that process is to make a list of all your fears, cravings, unhealthy desires and unrealistic expectations.

Stop hiding that stuff in your head. Get it out into the open by writing it all down. Take an inventory of every last one of them.

You might even consider keeping a journal as you bring more awareness to ones you might not even know about.

For some reason, they start to lose their power once they are transformed from thought into your own handwriting. I suppose it’s because you get to view them from a different perspective outside of your mind.

As you read them, they might even seem ridiculous or funny. Your mind might even seem clearer now that you have unburdened it from having to be the sole record keeper of them all.

Most importantly, you are finally being honest with yourself by admitting that these issues are holding you back from what you want to do.

Now that you have a list, start coming up with individual strategies for dealing with each fear, craving, desire and expectation. What is the source for each one of them?

They are now problems that can be solved instead of ones weighing you down.

Most Important Advice About Lifestyle Design

by stephen warley

When you want to make a big change in your life you will have no shortage of advice about how to go about doing it.

Heck, even I’m going to share lots of advice with you!

I do have one very important piece of advice in particular I want to share with you now.

Actually, it just might be the most important thing I ever tell you!

Do what works for you.

My goal for you on this journey of lifestyle design is to live up to your own ideals, not the ideals of others. I want you to put your own take on the advice you receive from others.

I want you to work in alignment with who you really are. That’s what I believe lifestyle design is all about.

What works for one person may not work for another and vice versa. We are all unique individuals with our own eclectic mix of values, motivations, needs, emotions, fears, strengths, talents, personality traits, habits and purpose.

Be Inspired By Success, Don’t Copy It

When you are trying to figure out the next step in your life, it’s perfectly natural to seek out models of success to emulate. It’s as good as any place to start when you are still struggling to find your purpose.

You might think of a famous person you admire and how they achieved their success. It provides a tangible idea of the results, values and approaches you want for yourself, but struggle to put into words.

On the surface this can be a valuable exercise, but has the potential to become a dangerous trap by creating unrealistic expectations in 2 key ways:

1) People often want the results of someone else’s success, but rarely dig deeper to learn how that success was created.

We end up believing their success is due to superhuman abilities or genius inaccessible to us, so we feel we can never achieve what they have achieved. We don’t even try.

2) Those who do take the time to research the “how” behind the success often try to copy the exact formula.

People often believe the best way to achieve success is to mimic the same process, behaviors and habits of the successful person they admire. 

Playing copycat generally results in frustration because we are trying to be someone we are not. We are trying to live up to someone else’s standards, ideals and abilities instead of our own. We are denying ourselves the opportunity to find our own unique formula for success.

Experiment with the habits of successful people you admire. See what works for you and what doesn’t. Make them your own. You’ll discover habits that make you uniquely productive.

Create a practice of self-awareness and a habit of experimentation to discover your own path to success.

Be inspired by success, but don’t try to emulate it. Copying someone else’s path to success might seem easier, but it ends up being the harder way because you aren’t working in alignment with who you really are.

Seek Your Own Validation

If something doesn’t work for everyone else, but it’s working for you, keep doing it! Be guided by the results of your actions, don’t just follow the crowd.

We often seek validation from others because we are subconsciously seeking social acceptance. We can certainly learn from others, but we need to put that knowledge in the context of our needs and abilities.

You might get made fun of for your unconventional approach, but that could also be the secret formula for your version of success.

Have more trust in your gut!

You Are a Data Point of One

There are endless stories, studies and research telling us the “best way” to live our lives. They can be useful tools for making decisions about our health, our finances, our relationships, etc. They have the potential to save us time and to help us make more informed decisions.

They provide valuable insights, context and direction, but their results may not always apply to your unique circumstance. Their data generally highlights the “average results” of the subject being studied.

Your most important source of data is the results of your self-experimentation. Don’t take someone else’s word for anything. Try it and know it for yourself.

Research that is widely accepted generally requires large sample sizes to yield more accurate results. In the eyes of researchers, your single perspective is meaningless. You are a data point of one.

From your perspective, your “data point of one” is the research that will have the most relevant impact on your life.

Question Everything

Don’t make assumptions. Question everything. Never stop asking, “Why” or “How”?

When someone gives you a piece of advice, don’t just take their word for it. Test their advice through self-experimentation, but don’t just take it at face value.

Question everything in the context of finding out what truly works for you and not just what works for other people.

One Common Trait of All Success

I’ve read hundreds of historical biographies and interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs in my life. I’ve learned lots of different ways people have become successful.

However, there is just one common trait that is core to the success of all the lives I have researched: they chose to be themselves and no one else.

They found the courage to accept themselves. They made peace with themselves. They made the best of their natural talents and available opportunities. They focused on what they had, instead of what they didn’t have. It made them grow and expand their lives.

As you may know, one of the toughest challenges in life is accepting ourselves. It’s even harder in our modern world as marketing messages relentlessly tell us we “aren’t good enough” or could be better.

We spend most of our thoughts wishing we could change any number of aspects about ourselves.

The truth is we already have lots of great stuff to build upon within ourselves. We just need to discover it, commit to it and develop it.

I don’t think we really admire people who are successful for their money, fame and special accomplishments. We admire them because they are comfortable in their own skin. We want that too.

Lasting success comes from being yourself. There has never been and there will never be another person like you on this earth.

You have a monopoly over your abilities, motivations, values, experiences and abilities that make you a unique individual. You are a scarce and valuable resource with unique potential. We each have the opportunity to author our own version of success. Only you are the expert of you.

It’s possible. Be yourself. Don’t copy someone else’s story, share your own. It’s never been told before.

Do what works for you!

What Is Lifestyle Design?

by stephen warley

Are you living the way you’ve always wanted to live?

If you are, congratulations!

If you aren’t, it’s possible to become the creator of your own life. 

Lifestyle design is about living with intention and working in harmony with your purpose.

How I Define “Lifestyle”

I describe how you choose to experience your life as a “lifestyle”.

It is the pattern of habits for how you spend your time, energy and money.

Those habits include how you work, have fun, learn, energize yourself, spend time with other people and generally engage with life.

There are infinite ways to live your life!

Here are some examples of common lifestyles people live today based on how they work:

• 9 to 5 corporate

• military

• artist

• full-time parent

• self-employed

• politician

• entrepreneur

• spiritual vocation

• government employee

• teacher

• lawyer

• scientist

• freelancer

• medical profession

• teacher

• coder

• union employee

• hourly-wage employee

• farmer

• traveler

• truck driver

Most of those professions prevent you from choosing how to use the vast majority of your time, repress your potential for becoming financially independent and compel you to work according to a common work standard.

Of course, if you don’t want more time and more money or don’t care about choosing how you get to work, that’s your choice too!

Sure, those lifestyles don’t prevent you from choosing your profession, where you work, where you live, how you eat, your friends and how you spend your free time.

Unfortunately, you’ll spend more time working than anything else in life. Like it or not, your career path influences how you get to live the rest of your life.

Imagine having complete control over every decision in every aspect of your life? I know that sounds intimidating to some, but that’s what lifestyle design is all about.

Let’s Discuss What “Design” Means

When I use the term “design” I am describing an intentional plan based on thoughtful research outlining the actions to be taken to achieve a specific purpose.

Design is used in each and every aspect of our lives from the house you live in to the car you drive to the clothes you wear to this website you are using right now.

Funny how “design” has made our modern lives possible, yet most of us don’t think of using it as an approach to living our ideal lifestyles.

Too many of us are stuck in “survival mode” as our limited personal resources of time, energy and money are drained away by the latest demands of the moment.

Life is running us down, instead of us running our lives.

Want to live and work on your terms? It just takes a little planning.

What Is Lifestyle Design?

I like to think of lifestyle design as living every aspect of your life with intention by living in complete alignment with your purpose, values, motivations, abilities and needs.

My version of lifestyle design is about living a self-directed life. It’s about making my own daily schedule. It’s about working on my terms. It’s about building a meaningful lifestyle that includes work that matters.

I know many people think of “lifestyle design” as a method for getting out of work to maximize your leisure time. I completely disagree. I’m not in favor of workaholism, but I’m also not in favor of sitting on a beach for the rest of my life.

Lifestyle design is about finding your balance of meaningful work and time to restore. Life is all about the tension between the expenditure and recovery of your energy.

I do believe the rise of the Internet, mobile devices and social media have the potential to give us more control of our time, so we can live more of our lives on our terms as first advocated in the Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

After all, if you are going to spend most of your time working, you might as well work in a way that makes the most sense to you and gives you the most meaning.

Lifestyle design offers infinite new possibilities.

• If you only want to work sux months out of the year, it’s possible.

• If you never want to work in an office again, it’s possible.

• If you want to have a side business outside of work, it’s possible.

• If you want your work to fund your travels around the work, it’s possible.

• If you want to spend more time with your family, it’s possible.

• If you want to make as much money as you want, it’s possible. 

Benefits of Lifestyle Design

The greatest benefit of lifestyle design is liberating yourself from the traditional expectations of what it means to work.

1) Work Should Be Meaningful, Not Miserable

I believe most people believe work needs to be “miserable” to be defined as “work”.  I think that’s just plain crazy. I’m not saying work still isn’t going to be hard, but it can be much more satisfying and rewarding.

I enjoy working and I probably work more now as an entrepreneur than I did as an employee because I’m in alignment with my motivations for work. I love what I do for work.

2) Be Valued for Your Output, Not Your “Facetime”

When I worked in an office, I never liked my work to be judged by how much I was “seen” in the office. I wanted to be judged on the quality and output of my work.

Now YOU get to judge my work (and I know you don’t care how long it took me to write this post!)

3) Become Self-Reliant

Someone once asked me, “Stephen do you want to live in a zoo or in the wild?”

Basically, she was asking if I wanted my food brought to me or do I want to go find it myself. Do I want a steady paycheck or to constantly find sources of income?

I definitely want to live in the wild.

I enjoy choosing how much money I get to make. Lifestyle design has made me more self-reliant and has given me the opportunity to share those skills with a community of people just like you.

When you live in the wild outside the walls of Corporate America, you are more adaptable and flexible because you are constantly seeking new opportunities.

You are exposed to alternative ways of working you never knew were even possible. As an experiment, I once ran my businesses from Spain for four months and never told any of my clients!

You can adapt more quickly to new advances in technology than a large organization because it’s more accessible and cheaper than ever before. You are also more nimble.

You are constantly meeting new people and learning new skills. Coasting and getting comfortable aren’t options. You maintain your edge.

4) Control Your Long Term Income 

I have never had an interruption in my income in the last 25 years since I was laid off and started working for myself.

The majority of my family members, friends and colleagues on the traditional employment path have all lost part of or all their income at least once in the last decade.

Employment once seemed the more secure method of making a living. Now it is becoming less secure by the day.

You no longer have to accept the traditional employment paths laid before you. You can design your own path now.

Start Designing Your Ideal Lifestyle

The first step toward designing your lifestyle is by answering this question, “What is the work you’ve always wanted to do?”

You might not have an answer or maybe just a rough idea. That’s ok. From my experience, you are in the majority.

To begin your quest to find an answer to that question, you need to start learning about yourself, so you can make decisions about your lifestyle in alignment with your ideals.

To start learning about yourself, you need to develop a practice of self-awareness. It is easily one of the most important skills in life never taught to you. I believe it is the most effective method for learning about yourself.

Your life is the sum of your habits. Your self-knowledge directs the development of your habits. As you practice self-awareness and learn about yourself, you will become aware of the habits that will have the greatest impact on helping you design your ideal lifestyle. 

Check out our Guide to Habits to learn about effective habit development.

Feeling Stuck? 5 Limiting Mindsets To Avoid

by stephen warley

Do you feel stuck right now?

If you had to think about that question, you’re probably stuck.

I’ve been stuck lots of times throughout my career.

Lots of people feel stuck because they are in transition. They are uncertain about the future direction of their work or life, but at the same time, they are certain they no longer want to be on their current path. 

Not sure how to put your “stuck” feelings into words?

I’ve talked to hundreds of people about why they feel stuck. From my experience, that feeling can be attributed to five different limiting mindsets or “stuck” mindsets.

The 5 Stuck Mindsets

1) Unawareness

When you are “unaware,” you have no idea you are even stuck or you are suffering from one of the limiting mindsets!

When people notice you’ve changed (and not in a good way), it’s a huge indicator of being stuck!

Losing or gaining weight, increased anxiety, moodiness, negative thoughts, lack of interest in your passions, social withdrawal, drinking more alcohol and chronic fatigue are some of the warning signs.

You might be so deep into your work abyss that you are completely unaware of the physical and emotional toll it has taken on you. Your mind is locked into a loop of negative and frustrated thoughts with no end in sight.  

Unawareness is the worst form of being stuck. You have no clue you are wasting precious energy fighting to stay on a career path that no longer fulfills you. Transitioning toward more meaningful work might be a more effective use of your energy.

2) Inertia

You can’t seem to get started on the change you want to make in your life. You have no idea how to begin.

Most humans don’t like change. It’s hard. We go out of our way to avoid it.

There is comfort in going along with the status quo or feeling content.

Staying the course on cruise control takes a lot less energy than forging a new path in life (at least in the short term). You’ve got figured everything out (or so you think you do). You are coasting. Life is good. Why change it?

On the other hand, you might not be happy and know you need some change in your career or life. However, where do you begin? You feel overwhelmed by all the possible options, so you do nothing at all.

Either way, you get paralyzed by inertia leaving you stuck in your career. (I’ve been stuck on my career path for up to 5 years! Don’t make the same mistake!)

Eventually, your career path will change. I was laid off 25 years ago and had no choice in the matter. Do you want to get unstuck on your terms or have it decided for you by an outside force like me?

3) Permission

You are stuck because you are waiting for someone else or something else to decide your fate. You’ve given all the power away to someone else to make that decision for you.

When you want a change in your career and you have to ask permission for it, then you are stuck my friend. So what exactly do I mean?

When you want more money and have to ask for a raise, but don’t get it.

You might be stuck.

When you can’t start your new business without acquiring lots of debt first, instead of looking for alternative ways to fund it.

You might be stuck.

When you want to work from home one day a week, but your boss gets to decide the most productive use of your time.

You might be stuck.

When you only know how to apply for a job, instead of creating one for yourself.

You might be stuck.

Stop asking for permission and take control of your career. Do what works for you. Take action. Decide when, where and how you want to make the change you desire. It takes lots of work, but trust me it’s worth it!

4) A Missing Piece

You have more than a vague idea of how you want to change your career path, but you get stuck because you are missing a key ingredient to execute your plan.

Missing pieces come in lots of different forms:

• You might not have the right connections.

• You lack the necessary research or knowledge.

• You don’t have enough money.

• You don’t have enough time because of a previous commitment or obligation.

You do have a choice. You can either view the one missing piece that is holding you back from executing your plan for change as an insurmountable obstacle or merely a problem to be solved.

If you want the change bad enough, you’ll find a way to acquire the missing piece you need.

5) Unchallenged Assumptions

You make assumptions about why you can’t get started or make the big change you want in your life.

When assumptions aren’t tested they become excuses. We blame the assumption as the reason for holding us back when in reality we aren’t holding ourselves accountable. We aren’t being honest with ourselves. We’re scared.

If you are serious about lifestyle design and finding more meaningful work, test your assumptions by seeking out alternative perspectives and approaches.

How to Reframe Your Mindset

Once you understand which of the limiting mindsets is keeping you stuck, then you can figure out the best strategy for getting you unstuck.

The most effective method for reframing your mindset is to get out of your own head and seek alternative perspectives. Try some of these self-improvement challenges.

Keep a Journal

If you sense you might be unaware of just how stuck you are, then track your most prominent negative thoughts and your most positive thoughts each day by writing them in a journal or by keeping notes on your phone. (I believe writing is the #1 self-awareness habit.)

Take Imperfect Action

If you are suffering from inertia, then schedule 15 minutes each day to take an imperfect action to design your ideal lifestyle.

Imperfect action is better than no action at all. At the very least you’ll learn something about yourself.

Remember, perfection is a limitation. It’s not progress.

List Alternative Perspectives

When you are waiting for permission to take action it is because you can only see one course of action. Get unstuck by challenging yourself to list as many different alternatives as possible to overcome your obstacle or to make your big change happen.

Hang With Like-Minded People

If you are feeling stuck because you are missing a piece to your success puzzle, then start hanging out with people who are doing what you want to do. They can guide you more quickly to your missing pieces than going it alone.

Learn more about our Communities of Practice to get unstuck.

Manage Your Energy Not Your Time

by stephen warley

Want to be more productive?

Manage your energy, not your time.

You probably can tell me how long you work on average each day, but can you tell me how much energy you have available to use each day? It’s a lot harder to measure than time.

Time might be a constant, but your available energy isn’t.

I have come to realize the secret to personal freedom is accepting yourself and aligning your personal energy needs with the purpose of your work.

It isn’t necessarily about making more money or working for yourself (although those do help).

The more and more I have learned how to manage my energy, the more my anxiety has decreased and the more my satisfaction with my life has increased. I just feel happier and calmer.

My personal productivity has also increased the more and more I focus on the management of my energy instead of managing my time.

You know what else I discovered (or finally admitted to myself)? I have less energy than I have time every day!

That thought blew my mind and transformed how I worked! You really only have three to four hours a day when you are highly energized and sharply focused to create your best work. That’s it.

The trick isn’t how to extend that period of high energy, but how to make the best use of it.

Your life is the sum of your thoughts. Your thoughts guide your habits. Your habits create the lifestyle you are living. Your available energy is the fuel for your habit development.

The quality and availability of your energy have more influence over the development of your habits than the thoughts that guide their development.

Here are some reasons to seriously think about why you might want to manage your energy and not your time.

#1 Your energy is not a constant like time.

Your energy is the fuel that propels you through time, but it is inconsistent.

Our energy levels go up and down throughout the day (in approximately 90-minute cycles called ultradian rhythms).

There are several factors influencing our available energy:

• How much sleep

• What we eat

• How often we take breaks

• Who we spend time with

• What we are thinking about

• How we move (or don’t move)

• Our emotions

• Our purpose (or lack of one)

Those fluctuating energy levels influence how much time we use to get something done.

When you are more energized and focused, you probably perform a task more quickly and with fewer mistakes than when you are feeling tired.

Imagine driving a car. As you drive, your car uses more gas as it climbs big hills and less gas as it coasts downhill. That’s what our available energy is like every day: it’s constantly going up and down.

Instead of using the principles of time management to organize your entire day, imagine organizing your tasks by your level of energy.

Start becoming aware of your “peak performance periods,” when you have the maximum energy to do your best work. Try only using those periods for your most important work.

#2 Your purpose is the core of your energy.

You might believe you have all the time in the world to work, but if you aren’t focused on what motivates you, you are wasting both your time and your energy.

The purpose of your work is the core of your personal energy. It compels you to take action. It replenishes and sustains the rest of your energy sources.

When you gain clarity about your “why” in your work or life, you will feel a boost of energy (I know I did!). Your “why” will also help sustain your momentum as you continue the long journey toward your purpose.

#3 Habits take a lot of energy, but can also save you time.

If you want to design your lifestyle around the work you’ve always wanted to do, you are going to need to change some of your habits.

Habits are the foundation of lifestyle design.

Habits initially take a lot of energy to develop because you have to consciously think about developing them. Focused thought requires a lot of energy.

Once a habit is established, however, it will save you a lot of energy and time because those particular routines will now be automatic, not requiring any thought.

Evolutionary biologists believe the brain conserves valuable energy through the creation of habits. Approximately 45% of the actions you take every day are habits and require no thought.

Time management is about cranking through a “to-do list” as fast as you can.

Energy management is about developing a core set of habits around your most important work.

Ever wonder why “to-do lists” can be so exhausting? It’s because each task becomes a decision, requiring energy. Habits have the potential to drastically reduce your “to-do list” and save your energy by turning common work tasks into habits.

#4 Make fewer decisions.

In the 9-to-5 lifestyle, our status is enhanced the more responsibility we acquire. The more responsibility we have, the more decisions we have to make.

Yet this increase in status comes with a hidden cost. The more decisions we have to make, the more decision fatigue sets in and saps our energy.

Decisions eat up a lot of time and energy because our brain has to focus on making a new choice.

When you work for yourself, you must reduce the number of decisions you have to make to conserve your energy for your most important work.

Reduce decisions through elimination, automation, and delegation, so you can use your limited energy on your most important decisions.

#5 Monotask, don’t multitask.

There is plenty of research debunking the productivity effectiveness of multitasking. Trying to get a variety of tasks done in less time leads to mistakes, reduced quality, and wasted time to fix the mistakes that were made.

From an energy management perspective, a more productive method of working is “monotasking.” Monotasking means grouping related work tasks together. Examples include making phone calls, writing proposals, updating your website, creating marketing materials, etc.

Monotasking or working on one type of task at a time reduces the number of times your brain needs to switch between different connections, reducing the amount of energy required to get more work done.

Take our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge to learn more about yourself than ever before!

Your Personal Energy Performance Starts Here

by stephen warley

I know we were all taught to work at least eight hours a day, but I have come to find most of us can produce high-quality work for no longer than three or four hours a day. That’s it.

The work habits of the majority of the writers, philosophers, scientists, artists and other creatives throughout the ages I’ve read about confirm this observation. They were very aware of their personal energy performance.

It’s not that they only worked three to four hours a day, but they recognized the importance of reserving their most energetic few hours a day for their most important work.

Managing their energy was more important than just managing their time.

I call this period of each day your “peak performance period”. 

When I started working for myself I tried to keep working an eight-hour day, but soon discovered I didn’t need to.

I was able to get all my work done much faster because working from home eliminated all those counterproductive office distractions: endless meetings, people stopping by my desk to chit chat, office parties, getting IM’d questions people could have easily found the answers for themselves, etc.

You know exactly what I’m talking about!

I felt guilty about working less at first, but why shouldn’t I be rewarded for getting my work done faster? After all, wasn’t this one of the benefits of my self-employment lifestyle?

Then, I started becoming more aware of my personal energy performance and discovered my own peak performance period.

It’s mornings for me. From about 7am to 12pm is the time when my personal energy is at its peak.

I use this highly valuable period of my day to do my most important work. I spend my best energy writing blog posts like this and creating other forms of content for Life Skills That Matter.

I passionately defend my peak performance period from distractions and other forms of work that require less energy. I don’t answer any emails, I don’t schedule meetings, I don’t search the web, and I don’t check social media.

This period of the day is when I can work effortlessly because I am more physically energized and more mentally focused than any other time of day.

I can produce higher quality work and often more of it than I would if I tried to accomplish it during another time of day. After 8pm I’m mush. I’m in such a low-energy state that I’m almost unable to make even the most basic of decisions!

I spend the rest of my day on tasks that require less energy and focus.

To make this easier, I organize my work tasks based on the amount of energy they require:

• Low energy – Administrative tasks like accounting, website maintenance, and organizing.

• Moderate energy – Social interactions like meetings, email, and social media.

• High energy – Intensive mental work like planning, writing, researching, and interviewing

In the 9-to-5 world, you have to justify your income by showing how long you work. I’ve worked inside many companies that valued people who stayed in the office the longest, regardless of the quality of their work.

When you are self-employed you need to conserve your energy. Because the buck stops with you, it’s up to you to increase your hourly rate.

The goal isn’t to work longer for the same amount of income. It’s to make more money for every hour worked, resulting in a more efficient use of your energy.

Even if you are only in the early stages of lifestyle design, start paying attention to when your peak performance period occurs each day. You might even discover it is split between two different periods in your day.

I believe recognizing your peak performance period is the bedrock of personal energy performance management. At the very least you will start making more effective use of your highest energy periods for your most important work.

Challenge For You

Organize your to-do list items by the energy each requires for you to perform them.

Identify each task as either high, medium or low energy.

Finally, schedule all tasks that require “high” energy during your peak performance period for one week and observe how it affects your productivity.

Most Overlooked Steps In Lifestyle Design

by stephen warley

I think many people believe the goal of lifestyle design is to gain more leisure time by automating as much of your work as possible.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all about working more effectively!

However, I believe this view of lifestyle design is a contemporary definition and only captures a small aspect of its potential.

More leisure time isn’t going to lead to a lifetime of satisfaction (I’ve tried it and felt empty), but I do believe designing your lifestyle around more meaningful work can provide the purpose you are seeking.

I define lifestyle design as living with intention.

It’s about living in alignment with your values and your purpose. It’s about living up to your own ideals and not someone else’s ideals.

It’s not about getting out of work, but rather setting up your lifestyle, so you can work on your terms.

Most of us feel anxious and dissatisfied about our work because we are working out of alignment with our purpose and our needs.

Many lifestyle design advocates believe you should quit your job and immediately start building a “passive income” business.

That is a “tactical” approach to lifestyle design, not a “strategic” one.

Let me be clear: I’m all for building passive income businesses, but in terms of creating lasting and meaningful change in your life, you are skipping over a few crucial steps in the lifestyle design process.

Before you quit your job, you need to learn about the most important subject that has never been taught to any of us: how to learn about yourself.

Take the time to really learn about your purpose, your values, your needs, your motivations and your strengths before you plan your escape from your cubicle

Get clear on your “Why”.

Why do you want to redesign your lifestyle? 

When you take the time to learn about yourself, you will think more “strategically” and less “tactically” about your lifestyle design plans. Each of your decisions will come from within, rather than taking someone else’s word for it.

Taking an extensive self-inventory will dramatically increase your chance for success. Before you work for yourself, know yourself first. You’ll make far better decisions and you will truly build a lifestyle on your terms.

Here are the 10 steps of lifestyle design I believe are the most important and often the most overlooked.

#1 Tell Your Career Story

Not only is “telling your career story” the first step of lifestyle design, it’s also the most important of the Life Skills That Matter.

It’s the single most impactful action you can take as you design your ideal lifestyle. It’s the spark!

Nothing else will set off a chain reaction of change until you commit to the change you want to make by telling other people about it. Of course, you might not be able to tell your boss or some of your colleagues, but tell as many other people as you can!

When you tell the story of the work you really want to do, you are making a commitment to making that change. You are beginning the process of assuming a new identity.

Even if you have no idea at all about what it is you want to do, be honest about your desire to explore your possibilities. Many of us don’t know what we want to do because we never looked. Give yourself that opportunity.

Tell people what you really want to do, not what you think they want to hear.

#2 Purge to Let Go

If you want to make a big change in life, you need to make space for it.

For those of you who don’t know what they want to do, the action of purging will help you discover what’s important in your life and what is not. It will reveal your previously hidden possibilities.

There are possessions, obligations, digital documents, relationships and thoughts that no longer have meaning in your life. They don’t have a productive role in the change you want to make.

They are holding you back. Let them go.

I truly believe an external purge of all the stuff in your life ignites a mental purge of your fears, expectations and cravings that have been holding you back.

Purging begins a process of enabling you to reframe your mindset and gives you permission to start telling yourself a new story of how your life will unfold.

(It’s also my favorite of all the Life Skills That Matter!)

#3 Practice Self-Awareness

Changing your lifestyle requires changing your habits. The process of changing your habits begins by gathering self-knowledge. The most effective method of learning about yourself is through a practice of self-awareness. 

In terms of lifestyle design, practicing self-awareness involves self-experimentation by tracking keystone habits that will spark the transformation you are seeking in your life. Some of your existing habits will be strengthened and others will be eliminated. 

Meaningful and lasting lifestyle design is taking the time to align your habits with your purpose, your needs and your natural tendencies.

Throughout your lifestyle design transformation be sure to practice the #1 self-awareness habit: writing daily.

#4 Calculate the Cost of Your Lifestyle

Do you have any idea how much you need to make each year to live your ideal lifestyle? It’s probably not as much as you might think.

We all know how much money we made last year, but most of us have no idea how much money we spent.

I think knowing how much money you spend is the more important number because it will provide context for how much money you really need to make to live your ideal lifestyle.

To quickly calculate the cost of your lifestyle right now, add up all the withdrawals from your checking account over the last year (this will include all your credit card payments, monthly payments and cash withdrawals).

I also generally recommend putting aside money to cover the cost of your existing lifestyle for one year. The process of saving that money might seem daunting, but it will force you to look for ways to align your spending with the goal of designing your ideal lifestyle.

Download our free Lifestyle Design Calculator

#5 Build Community

A good friend of mine asked me why I really wanted to start this business.

He didn’t care about my rational reasons.

He wanted to know my emotional reasons.

I told him that I never felt so alone in all my life than when I was redesigning my lifestyle, especially when I felt stuck for five years. I never want anyone to feel like that again. That is the feeling driving me to do this.

There is probably no other factor that will directly impact your lifestyle design success than building community. It will definitely increase the momentum of your transformation.

You need to hang out with like-minded people. You need to seek out people who want the same change as you.

When you surround yourself with other people who truly get you, they will offer you encouragement, accountability, emotional support and missing pieces to your success puzzle.

You will be inspired by the achievements of people who might be just a few steps ahead of you in their development. You’ll see that they did it and realize you can too.

Humans evolved to work together.  Go and find your people!

Join one of our Communities of Practice

#6 Plan Your Path

I know the idea of creating a plan can sound intimidating, but it can help you make strategic decisions about your life rather than purely emotional ones.

I’m not an advocate of formally written plans, but you want to create a plan in a way that makes sense to you.

Here’s a very quick template you can use to start your plan:

First, the most important part of your plan is understanding “your Why”. Think of it as your vision statement for your lifestyle and work.

• Why do you want to do the work you want to do?

• What is the sense of purpose that is motivating you to make this change?

Second, come up with no more than three primary goals you believe will have the greatest impact on helping you achieve “your Why”.

Third, create weekly goals as benchmarks to track your progress.  At least one of those goals should be learning a new skill or something about yourself in the context of “your Why”.

Finally, focus on no more than 3 daily habits you believe will have the greatest impact on the change you want to make.

Keep your plan simple. Make your goals achievable and accountable.

You might not always know exactly where you are going, but you want to know you’ve made some progress to encourage you to keep going.

#7 Align Your Habits

Stop being a slave to “To Do Lists”. They are a drain on your personal energy and it’s a “tactical” approach to lifestyle design.

A more effortless method for taking action is through the alignment of your habits with your purpose.

You will also dramatically increase your chances of success by embracing your own habit development rather than mimicking the habits of another person. When you make your habits your own, you’ll require less energy to make them stick because they are in harmony with your unique needs and tendencies.

You can start aligning your habits by  . . .

First, assess your existing habits by deciding which ones are helpful to your transformation and which ones are unproductive.

Second, identify the three primary habits you will practice each day that will have the greatest impact on your goals. That might involve strengthening one of your existing habits, creating a new habit or eliminating one. (Sometimes you have to create a habit to eliminate an unproductive one.)

We all have different sources of motivation, but I believe committing to a set of daily habits aligned with your needs and goals will increase your resolve to make a big change in your life without having to overthink it!

#8 Take Imperfect Action

We are often the biggest obstacle to our own success. We are afraid of making mistakes. We avoid failure. There are people in our lives who will inevitably have doubts about what we want to do.

As author Gretchen Rubin advises in her book Better Than Before, “Make progress, not perfection.” Perfection is someone else’s ideal. It holds you back. You’ll never learn anything about yourself if you stay stuck in your own head.

Make small, consistent and imperfect actions each day. Take the pressure off.

Making a habit of your habits is more important than the actual habit.

Life is unpredictable and maybe you only have 15 minutes instead of an hour to practice one of your habits. It’s better to practice that habit for just 15 minutes than not doing it all at.

Each action you take helps you learn a little more about yourself, as well as help you take another step toward your goal no matter how small it might be.

Make a habit of action.

#9 Stack Your Motivation

By this phase in your transformation, you will have learned a lot about your sources of motivation and your available energy to sustain your motivation.

Stacking your motivation involves maximizing the power of your motivations by integrating as many of them as possible into your habits and routines.

For example, I recently stacked my motivation by waking up an hour earlier to work at a co-working space to focus on content projects that have a monthly deadline.

I combined three of my motivations:

1) My highest level of energy each day occurs during the morning.

2) Although I have worked out of my house for years, I still am susceptible to any number of distractions, so working outside the house helps increase my focus.

3) I am also motivated to work on projects that have an end date. I completely lose my resolve for work when I don’t see the end in sight!

The process of lifestyle design can take one to two years or longer for some. Stacking your motivation can sustain your commitment and provide you with additional strength during the toughest periods that are inevitable during this process.

#10 Continue Practicing Self-Awareness

The process of designing your own lifestyle never truly ends.

You will celebrate many planned and unplanned milestones along the way, but the work on yourself is never truly done.

The most effective method for maintaining the lifestyle you created for yourself is by continuing to practice self-awareness.

Everything around us is constantly changing. You are a different person today than yesterday.

Change can be dramatic, but more often it’s incremental. It’s tougher to spot because it quietly sneaks up on you.

Practicing self-awareness can help you better prepare for those incremental changes, so you can avoid feeling deeply stuck again.

Enroll in our 12-Week Self -Assessment Challenge to learn more about yourself than ever before!

Top Question About Lifestyle Design

by stephen warley

When I talk to people about lifestyle design to be able to do more meaningful work, they have lots of questions.

The most common question they ask about lifestyle design is, “So, how long does it take?”

If you tend to look for quick fixes in life, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but redesigning something as complicated as your life takes time.

The length of time is different for everyone, but from my research and experience, it takes between one and two years or longer. Everyone is different. It took me fie years and I’m still a work in progress!

The sweet spot for most is around 18 months. At this point, their work is funding the most basic needs for their ideal lifestyle.

They also start to feel the effect of aligning their habits with the purpose of their lifestyle. They begin to feel “in flow” and have greater satisfaction in their work.

Why Lifestyle Design Takes So Long

Whether you realize it or not, you’ve been designing your lifestyle all along. It’s true!

Each and every decision you’ve made has incrementally shaped your path in life. Those small, daily and sometimes seemingly insignificant decisions led you to where you are today.

You may not like where you’ve ended up, but this is the life you’ve currently designed for yourself.

We got stuck in this place because many of those decisions weren’t intentional. We didn’t think much about them. We just went along with them.

Meaningful lifestyle design is about living intentionally in alignment with our values and our purpose.

Your lifestyle is the sum of your habits and your decisions. 

It involves making intentional choices about almost everything you do in your life. There are no excuses. You commit to taking responsibility for every decision you make.

Lifestyle design takes as long as it does for 6 key reasons:

1) You need to reframe your mindset.

If you want to redesign your lifestyle you have to reframe your mindset to be open to new possibilities and embrace the change that comes with that.

You also have to let go of the old stories and limiting beliefs about yourself, your views on life, obligations and relationships that are holding you back from creating a new identity.

Transformation won’t happen overnight. It’s a process.

2) You will be creating new habits.

Your current habits have created your current lifestyle. The lifestyle you desire requires a different set of habits.

You have to first assess a lifetime of habits. Some you’ll keep and strengthen, others you’ll eliminate or adjust.

Developing new habits is hard, but once they are created they make living your new lifestyle easier.

3) You need to really learn about yourself.

Most of us have never taken the time to deeply assess ourselves to understand our true potential.

The most enjoyable path in life is the acceptance of ourselves. That in itself takes time.

You need to get clear on your values, your purpose, your motivations, your work needs and your natural abilities, so you can discover work that is truly in alignment with who you are as a unique individual.

4) You need to deal with your demons.

We are our own worst enemy. Our fears, expectations, desires and cravings hold us back from what we want to become.

If you want to live and work on your terms, you have to take on your demons. It won’t be easy, but it’s better than being in their grip for the rest of your life.

5) You need to commit to your plan.

You can have the life you’ve always wanted, but you need to have a plan and to commit to that plan.

No one else is going to do this for you.

Inevitably there will be setbacks, but if you take the time to learn about yourself, align your habits with your goals and commit to your plan, there will be no stopping you!

6) You need to fund your transition. 

Once you’ve discovered more meaningful work, you might discover you’ll have to take a short-term pay cut to make the transition.

To prepare for that loss of income, you’ll need time to put extra money aside to help you fund your transition.

Lifestyle Design Requires Tons of Energy

By the way, all of those changes take a ton of energy!

Think about the sleep babies and teenagers require because they are growing so fast and absorbing so much new information every day! (Think also about how tired the parents of those babies and teens get too!)

Redesigning your life around the work you’ve always wanted to do is basically creating a new life for yourself. Personal growth and transformation on that level take more energy than almost anything else you’ve taken on in life.

However, once you get through it, you will be using your personal energy more efficiently to make you more productive than ever before.

The Easier Way

Is there an easier way? Sure, but it comes with consequences.

Everyone has the opportunity to design their own lifestyle, yet few people take on this challenge because it takes a lot of work. It’s hard.

Trust me, I’ve been through this process.

You can continue to drift along and do what you think you are “supposed to do”. You can work for your weekends, look forward to your 2-week vacation each year and count on vegging out in front of the TV for a couple of hours each night.

You don’t have to waste much energy to do that, but on the other hand, living that way might be draining you because you are living out of alignment with your purpose.

Maybe you are wasting your energy trying to please others. You can let external forces decide how your limited time on earth gets used.

You might end up with a lifetime of regrets and feel chronically frustrated because you feel little control over your life.

We live in a culture of immediate gratification. Even I struggle with it.

A year or two might sound like a long time to get what you want, but it’s just a year or two of your entire life. Actually, the process of lifestyle design is the beginning of the rest of your life. It will keep getting better as you learn more and more about yourself.

Sue, you can do nothing at all if it seems too hard. If you want to make a change, you can put it off too.

But why delay giving yourself a shot at living the lifestyle you’ve always wanted and doing the work you’ve always wanted to do?

Either you are going to be stressed out for the rest of your life because you are not living and working in alignment with who you are or you can be stressed out for a couple of years building the life you’ve always wanted.

My advice? Stress out on your own terms.

Stress Out On Your Own Terms

by stephen warley

Do you feel stressed out at all right now about your work?

We have all experienced some level of stress in our careers.

It’s caused by a variety of things like misunderstandings with co-workers, feelings of failure or our inability to fit in with the corporate culture.

Sometimes a quick conversation can easily solve the problem or requires more drastic action like quitting your job.

I want to make you aware of a more debilitating and chronic form of stress I believe is going to affect more and more of us because of our dynamically changing economy.

It once held me in its gripe for a very long time. It will leave you feeling paralyzed, anxious and even doubtful about your path in life.

Your thoughts will taunt you over and over again with the question “Is there more to life than this?”

This is the stress of feeling “stuck”. (I was once stuck for five years in my career, not a fun feeling!) You are feeling the tension between the path behind you and the one before you.

You know the path behind you is no longer an option, but you don’t know how to move forward because the path before you isn’t clear.

You feel stuck.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are going to experience a lot of stress whether you choose to stay stuck or choose to get unstuck.

One path offers a lifetime of (negative) stress. The other offers a couple of years of (positive) stress.

Time to pick your poison.

Stress out on your terms.

Why Do You Feel Stressed?

First, most likely you are starting to become more aware of your feelings for the work you really want to do in life or at least a desire for more meaningful work.

You’re experiencing stress because you have been ignoring or repressing those feelings in favor of doing the work you think you are “supposed to do”.  You are making other people happy at the expense of your own happiness. 

You feel stuck because the more you try to avoid those feelings, the more stress you feel.

Second, you are also out of alignment with your purpose and how you like to work.

You were taught to conform to someone else’s work standard without ever exploring your own needs for productivity. Years of working against the grain of your work style has left you fatigued.

Finally, most of us were never taught to fend for ourselves and to become self-reliant. 

We don’t possess the skills to work on our own terms.

We were taught to work on someone else’s terms.

We were taught to apply for jobs, not to create them on our own.

The web, social media, mobile apps, automation, crowdsourcing and outsourcing have turned our work paradigm upside down.

We have trouble realizing or even understanding the new possibilities for how to work in new and alternative ways. We can choose to explore these new possibilities and our feelings deep inside of us or choose to ignore them in favor of what is familiar.

#1 Option: A Lifetime of Stress

It’s hard for me to believe and sometimes even accept that most people choose a lifetime of stress. Why?

They are afraid of change. Our brain doesn’t like uncertainty.

People will use even more energy to stay on a familiar path even if they know it’s the source of their stress. The more they refuse to acknowledge their feelings deep inside of them, the more stressed out they become. 

As they lose more and more control over their lives, they hold onto everything they know more tightly. Their muscles become tenser. They have more sleepless nights.

This can last for years, if not for the rest of their lives.

They believe the stress of exploring new possibilities and potentially redesigning their lifestyle around the work they’ve always wanted to do is more stressful than maintaining the status quo.

Little do they know that “negative” stress is eating away at them, instead of making them grow.

They are denying who they really are.

#2 Option: A Couple of Years of Stress

From my experience, it takes one to two years to design your ideal lifestyle around more meaningful work.

Believe it or not, that’s enough to turn most people away from this challenge. They opt to choose “familiar” stress for the rest of their days.

We all love immediate gratification. We want the quick fix, but that’s not how lifestyle design works.

It’s hard because you are changing your identity. It takes so much time because there is so much to learn about yourself.

The more you know about yourself, the better you are going to be able to work for yourself. You also need to mentally and financially prepare yourself for making such a dramatic change in your life.

Deciding to design your ideal lifestyle is indeed stressful, but it’s “positive” stress because you are going to grow as a person.

Lifestyle design energizes you, instead of draining you. It empowers you.

Once you get through the initial phase, you’ll have a system of work that you built on your terms. You can now work in alignment with your purpose and work needs. It’s yours for the rest of your life. 

You will be more flexible and adaptable to the changing needs of the economy. You’ll be able to spot new opportunities in a way you were never able to do as an employee.

The best part? You’ll be liberated from the chronic stress of feeling stuck!

You’ll also possess new skills to see the warning signs of stress more quickly and be able to cope with them more productively.

You’ll finally be working on your terms.

It’s Your Choice

I’m hoping if you’ve read this far, you might give option #2 a shot. (If you do, here are some resources to get you started.)

I’ve laid out two very clear choices for you. Your stress is no longer something to complain about. You can do something about it.

Either choose the illusion of certainty your current path provides and be chronically stressed out for the rest of your life or explore a new path of possibilities and feel stressed out because you are growing as a person.

Complain about your stress or see it as a source of possibilities.

The choice is yours.

How To Create A Budget Without Depriving Yourself

by stephen warley

Budgets are like diets: people go on them with the best of intentions, but they rarely stick to them.

Why?

Because they make us feel deprived.

We view budgets as temporary financial punishments. They are something to be endured.

Once we go off them, we splurge and erase the gains we made. This is why budgets are so frustrating.

A more effective approach to budgeting is to focus on changing your habits.

Nothing is worse than nickeling and diming yourself to save money. It makes you feel resentful instead of feeling empowered.

People think short-term budget cuts will result in lasting changes in their financial standing. Not true.

You can only permanently change your financial health by committing to long-term changes in your spending habits that are tied to the purpose of your ideal lifestyle.

If you are looking to save money you can try the more common “cash diet” (or, as I like to call it, the “cheap method”) or a less conventional one I like to call the “frugal method.”

The Cheap Method

When most people want to save money, they choose the “cheap method.”

This means they make budget cuts across the board regardless of how important something might be to them.

They nickel and dime themselves. They waste time clipping coupons or chasing sales at stores instead of saving even more money by coming to terms with their overall spending habits.

In the process, they make themselves miserable.

It’s like being on a crash diet.

Sure, counting every calorie or drinking some weird juice blend may lead to radical weight loss in the short term, but in the long run, it just makes you so miserable that you quickly revert to your old habits and erase all your progress.

The same is true with trying to save money using the “cheap method.” A cheap person pinches every penny regardless of their needs or wants. They save money for the sake of saving money.

They are willing to withhold their spending even if it means not fulfilling their passions or even sharing with their closest friends and family.

Those with liberal spending habits get easily discouraged using the “cheap method” of saving money. When they give up and stop saving, they often go back to their old ways and blow even more money on stuff they really don’t need!

The Frugal Method

The “frugal method,” on the other hand, prioritizes your spending according to your needs and wants.

Instead of across-the-board cuts, spending reductions are based on your passions, interests, basic needs, and overall life priorities.

The deepest cuts are made to expenses that are unproductive in terms of helping you achieve your goals. In many cases, they might even be eliminated.

For example, I eliminated my “drinking” budget (I’m being honest with myself and you) of $400 a month for an entire summer a year after I was laid off when I was 26. I redirected that spending toward paying down my debt.

And it’s not all about decreasing spending. Reduced spending in unproductive areas can enable you to increase in spending on your most important “must-have” priorities and spending habits that can help you live your purpose.

Using the Frugal Method

Disclaimer: I am proudly frugal. It’s one of my core values.

Now I want to teach you how to create a budget using the frugal method.

Rather than penny-pinch to save more money, here are some strategies for creating long-term spending habits to help you on the road to financial independence, while still enjoying your most important priorities in life.

1) Make a list of all your recurring fixed monthly expenses.

These are expenses that are the same or approximately the same amount every month like your:

• rent or mortgage

• car payment

• student loan

• cable bill

• phone bill

• Netflix/Hulu subscriptions

• gym membership

• utilities

• insurances

• any other fixed expenses you pay on a monthly basis

To get started quickly, look at all the bills that are automatically deducted from your checking account each month first.

Put these monthly expenses in order from the largest dollar amount to the smallest.

2) Identify which ones you can cut immediately.

Unless you are already a fairly frugal person, there are always one or two monthly expenses you can cut right away. These are expenses that are doing absolutely nothing to help you achieve your goals and are easy to live without.

Once you take a look, you’ll likely find something you aren’t using all that much or something else you’ve considered getting rid of before, but haven’t until now!

3) Negotiate a reduction for each one of your remaining expenses.

You’d be surprised how many different ways there are to save on the rest of your monthly expenses.

First, negotiate with yourself and come up with at least three different ways you can reduce each expense, no matter how dramatic they may seem to you.

Second, call each company to ask for lower-cost alternatives or threaten to switch to a competitor. It never hurts to ask. Learning to never accept the given price is a great habit to cultivate!

I save around $200 a year using this strategy, and several years ago I was able to save $1700 a year!

If you are doing this for the first time, I’m confident you will save a nice chunk of change for a couple of hours of work!

4) Make a list of all your irregular monthly expenses.

You have other regular monthly expenses that aren’t fixed like:

• spending on groceries

• eating and going out

• video games

• electronics

• clothes

• gas for your car

• car repairs

• home maintenance

• stuff for your pets

Calculate your average spending over the last six months for each expense.

Put those average monthly expenses into a list from largest to smallest.

Negotiate with yourself again and look for expenses that can be reduced or eliminated.

5) Choose 3 “guilt-free” expenses and then look for ways to reduce the rest.

Here’s a recommendation you don’t often hear when it comes to managing your personal finances: identify 3 “guilt-free” expenditures that don’t require any spending reductions.

These represent spending on your core needs, your “must haves,” your passions, or your goals.

I’m not recommending having an unlimited budget for each of these expenses, but don’t feel guilty about spending money on them either.

This is the heart of using the frugal method for managing your money: spend on your priorities, but reduce spending on anything you can live without or that distracts your from your goals.

This method of budgeting also focuses on cutting spending from a “habit” perspective and not torturing yourself each and every time you spend money.

Any cuts you make to your spending are rooted in your purpose and goals, so you have a clear motivation for making those cuts.

If you want to learn how to create a budget to identify the gap in cost between your existing lifestyle and your ideal lifestyle, download our free lifestyle calculator.

Create An Emergency Fund For one Year: Here’s Why

by stephen warley

Conventional wisdom tells people to save between three and six months of cash for their emergency fund in case they lose their job. That cushion isn’t as big as you think.

It doesn’t leave you much time to find the best work opportunity for you. As your cash runs out, you’ll become more desperate in your job search and take anything just to have income again.

How much money do you think you need to last a month if you were laid off today?

Do you know how much money you spent in the last year?

How much money do you think you need to live your ideal lifestyle?

How much money do you think you need to achieve financial freedom?

Know the answer to any of the above questions? If you do, where did you come up with that number?

You most likely know your annual salary figure or your take-home pay, but the number you really need to know is the cost of your current lifestyle.

Once you know the cost of your lifestyle you can more accurately estimate how much money you need to save to create an emergency fund or, as one of my professors in business school called it, “your f**k you money.”

If you are thinking about lifestyle design because you want to work on your own terms or become self-employed, I believe you need to create an emergency fund to cover a full year of all your current living expenses.

I was able to do it within a couple of years after leaving business school, and it was one of the most empowering actions I’ve ever taken.

F**k You Money

I had a professor in business school who started one of our classes by calmly telling us we needed “f**k you money.” The F-bomb definitely got the attention of the entire classroom!

He advised us to calculate how much money we spent over the last year. Not what we thought we spent, but what we actually spent.

Then he encouraged us to save one year’s worth of cash based on how we currently lived.

At some point in your life, you’ve probably heard about creating an emergency fund to cover your living expenses for at least three months in case you lose your job.

Keep in mind, however, that during the Great Recession, millions of Americans were out of work for a year or more! Yikes!

Here’s the point my professor wanted to make: You will experience a sense of financial freedom like never before when you have a year’s worth of cash behind you. It doesn’t take a million dollars to feel financially independent.

Increasing your emergency fund (or as I now like to call it my “life fund”) to one year’s worth of expenses from the conventional wisdom of 3 months will give you more work options and greater confidence.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of losing all your income at once, you’ll have even more time to find the best work opportunity for you.

Hands down, it was the most valuable piece of information I got from my MBA. Knowing that number can be more liberating than getting a small annual bump in your salary.

Today, my emergency fund can cover me for six years. If that sounds like a lot, consider this: I believe financial independence is defined by how many years or months you can continue to live your current lifestyle without income.

Financial Freedom Is Within Your Reach

There are different levels of financial freedom. Most of us think financial freedom is unattainable because we have confused it with being “independently wealthy” or having enough money so we never need to work again.

But the financial freedom I’m describing is very attainable. I call this stage “building your runway.”

It can be defined in three ways:

1) Saving a year’s worth of cash to meet all your expenses for your current lifestyle.

2) Saving money with the purpose of buying time and freedom to work on something you’ve always wanted to do.

3) Saving money to seamlessly transition between sources of income.

Once you have a year’s worth of cash saved up, you’ll no longer be dependent on a paycheck. You’ll gain the confidence to take more calculated risks in your career.

After I finished building my financial runway in 2008, I decided to keep extending it. Once I started working for myself, I discovered I could save even more money more quickly. I can “buy” about one year of my life back now for every year I work.

I almost feel like I’m buying myself out of servitude. I’m no longer playing catch-up. I feel in control of my destiny. I don’t need to “just be happy to have a job” even if my work is making me miserable. I now have a viable backup plan.

How to Start Building Your Runway to Financial Freedom

Assessing your current financial state is the first step toward building your financial runway. Once you understand your outflow of cash, you can start making the necessary adjustments for buying your freedom.

1) If you have any credit card debt, pay that down first.

Any kind of debt will weigh down your aspirations for financial freedom, but the worst is credit card debt. Before you start building your runway, do everything within your power to eliminate your credit card debt. I paid off mine before I put money into my emergency fund.

2) Calculate the cost of your current lifestyle.

For a quick snapshot of your annual spending habits, calculate the total amount of money that left your checking account over the last year. Add up all the debits from your checks, automatic withdrawals, debit card transactions and cash withdrawals. (To make this even easier, just download our free lifestyle calculator.)

3) Identify expenses you can reduce or eliminate.

As you diagnose your current financial state, look for ways to reduce your spending. Cut spending on your highest monthly bills and the money you spend on your worst vices (think alcohol, buying clothes or eating out). Use the extra money you save to build your runway.

4) Calculate your average monthly, weekly and daily spending.

Now determine the average cost of your lifestyle on a monthly, weekly and daily basis. Use these numbers to compare against discretionary purchases you might want to make.

For example, the cost of my current lifestyle is approximately $175/day. I could buy an iPad for around $500 or I could buy another three days of freedom.

That’s seriously how I think about spending my hard-earned money!

5) Get support if you can.

When you’re making any kind of big change in your life, you are much more likely to stick to your new set of habits when you have support. Find and hang out with others who also want to build their own financial runway.

Building your runway is saving with purpose. Your primary purpose is to buy time and freedom.

Don’t build your “emergency fund” with the mindset of preparing for the worst. See it as your first step toward financial independence and a symbol of your growing wealth.

You might even think of your financial runway as the allotted time you’ll need to transition from one income source to another. The length of your runway depends on your level of risk, current lifestyle costs, responsibilities and the ramp-up time needed for your next income source to take hold.

Your financial freedom is close at hand! You can achieve it!

Calculate the Cost of Your Ideal Lifestyle

How much money do you think you need to make every year to live your ideal lifestyle? Download our free Lifestyle Calculator now to find out!

Once you know how much money you really need to make every year, you’ll know exactly how much money you’ll need to build your financial runway.

Five Productivity Hacks To Make More Money Per Hour

by stephen warley

Want to make more money per hour?

Who doesn’t?

If you want to start thinking more like an entrepreneur, don’t just focus on how to raise your annual salary; instead, start figuring out how to make more money per hour. After all, your time is one of your most valuable assets.

Understanding your true hourly rate (not just the hours you put in at the office) will help you assign a cost to all of your work-related activities. It will help you look for ways to work more productively and to better assess opportunities in your career.

All that extra effort you put into chasing after a promotion or a 5% bump in your annual pay actually drives down the value of your hourly rate today.

You are working extra hours in the short term for delayed rewards in the future that you have no control over.

When you work as an employee, someone else decides if you will be rewarded with a promotion, raise, or new opportunities for your hard work. Entrepreneurs make that decision for themselves because they are constantly thinking about how to boost their short-term hourly rate.

When you are aware of your true hourly rate, you will value your time and the impact of your work very differently. First, let’s help you calculate your hourly rate before I offer you some recommendations on how you can boost it.

Calculating the Hourly Rate of Your Salary

If you’re a salaried employee, you can probably determine your weekly salary by checking your paycheck or by dividing your annual salary (after taxes because that’s your real take-home pay) by 52 weeks.

Here’s an example: say you make $50,000/year after taxes

1. Calculate your weekly salary

$50,000 annual salary / 52 weeks = $961.54 weekly salary

To calculate your hourly rate, divide your weekly salary by the average number of hours you work each week.

2. Calculate your hourly rate

$961.54 weekly salary / 50 hours = $19.23 per hour

This calculation represents your hourly rate after taxes for the time you spend working in the office. Unfortunately, this isn’t your true hourly rate.

Calculating Your True Hourly Rate 

Most people only consider the number of hours they spend at the office when calculating their hourly rate.

Entrepreneurs know the true cost of work including all related and supporting activities. Think of it as your personal Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

To calculate your true hourly rate, you need to also include:

• Your average commuting time

• The time you spend working at home

• Even the time you think about work outside the office

Let’s expand on our above example: say your average daily commute to and from the office is one hour and you spend an average of five hours a week thinking about and/or performing office work at home.

3. Calculate your TRUE hourly rate

50 hours at office + 5 hours of commuting + 5 hours of working at home = 60 hours

$961.54 weekly salary / 60 hours = $16.03 per hour

Once your time commuting and work-related activities at home are included in the calculation your hourly rate drops by just over $3 per hour to $16.03 per hour!

When you are putting in even more time at work in hopes of a promotion or a raise, will that bump in your salary offset the short-term losses in your hourly rate?

After performing this calculation, if you think you need a raise or want to work more productively, you’re getting my point. 

Your time is more valuable than the salary you’re being paid.

You can always save money or make more of it, but all of us only have 24 hours in a day, and unfortunately, none of that time can be banked for future use.

five Productivity Hacks to Make More Money Per Hour

Now that you know your true hourly rate, here are some ways you can boost it without even asking for a raise or a promotion!

1) Stop staying late at the office

Don’t work more, work more efficiently. The quickest way to increase your hourly rate is by giving yourself a fixed start and end time to your workday. You’ll be forced to work more productively on the tasks with the biggest impact on the quality of your work.

2) Work outside the office as much as possible

I’m not advocating working more outside the office on top of all the hours you already spend there! Instead, look for ways to shift a few of your office hours to outside the office.

There are no bigger time sucks than meetings, managers, and traffic. If you can, try working from home at least a couple of days a week.

When you need to get important and quality work done, close your office door, work in a conference room, or even go to a local library. Minimize office distractions and do everything you can to reduce the amount of time you spend commuting.

3. Eliminate, automate or delegate more of your work

Successful entrepreneurs understand they can’t do all the work of running their business, so they hire people.

As an employee look for ways to automate as many of your administrative tasks as possible. Have the courage to eliminate unnecessary tasks.

Even if you don’t have anyone to manage, look for ways to delegate work that isn’t helping you grow professionally or really isn’t one of your core responsibilities.

Here are three strategies for delegating work when you don’t have anyone directly reporting to you:

• Delegate to people more junior than you. If there is anyone hired after you, ask your manager if you might be able to delegate tasks to them, so you have time to work on more advanced work.

• Ask your direct peers for help when you need it. If you are taking on a new work challenge and need to pass along some of your easier duties to someone else, then ask for help!

• Guard against temporary tasks turning into permanent ones. More often than not, a temporary duty turns into a permanent one and you need to bring that to the attention of your superiors if you feel it’s not within your core job description.

Show your managers you are interested in producing more valuable work, rather than trying to get out of work.

4. Don’t multitask, group related tasks together

Multitasking is an illusion. Monotasking is far more productive. If you want to get more work done in less time, group related tasks together.

For example, email is one of the biggest office time sucks because we allow it to constantly interrupt us throughout the day. Spend less time on your email by processing it in batches no more than three times a day. Respond to urgent emails first and spend the last half hour of your day answering the rest.

5. Start a side business

Each of the previous recommendations to increase your hourly rate focuses on reducing the amount of time you spend at work.

But you can also increase your hourly rate by starting a side business. How? You can start a side business by becoming a consultant or freelancer to generate income from your existing expertise. You’ll discover that you can get paid more per hour for the exact same work you do in the office!

The real magic of increasing your hourly rate is by creating a source of passive income. This can be a side business you build that continues to generate income without your direct involvement. I do admit, that you’ll have to put in a lot of work upfront for long-term financial rewards, but at least you’ll own all the work you put in!

Calculate Your Ideal Lifestyle

Knowing your hourly rate helps you better assess the value and impact of the work you do. It also provides you with a benchmark for better determining your own monetary and work/life balance needs on a daily basis.

While you’re maximizing your true hourly rate, you might also want to understand how much money you really need to support your ideal lifestyle. To do this, download our free Lifestyle Calculator.