Why Some Procrastinators Succeed and What We Can Learn From Them

When I was in Architecture school at Berkeley (Go Bears!), my classmates and I suffered long, hard nights at the studio drawing massive plans, building detailed models and drinking lots and lots of caffeine.

Some of our semester long projects required over 60 hours of work per week, in addition to our actual class time for both Architecture and general education courses. It was nuts, and because we had segments of the semester long project due about every 2 weeks, I often found myself pulling all-nighters, crashing on a nearby couch, or in a sleeping bag under my desk.

Most of my classmates were right there with me, pencils in hand – however there were a few select students who just seemed to never be around until the last couple of days before each deadline.

My studio mates and I always thought, “There’s no way these people are going to finish in time. We’ve been here for almost 2 weeks straight, and they come in with 2 days left before the deadline with nothing.”

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How Well Can You Describe Your Website in Just Three Words?

This is a short post – yes, but a powerful one. It involves a little bit of participation, so please don’t be shy...

A couple of weeks ago, I shared this little exercise on my Facebook Page.

I asked my followers to share a link to their website and describe it using only three words.

Any words, but only three.

After over 100 responses, I found that this simple sounding task was actually quite hard for some people, and in fact it made some rethink the entire concept of their websites and why it exists.

So today, I invite you to do the same. In the comment section, please only respond with three words that describe your site. Do not include a link in the comment section, because my spam filter might block you. Instead, put the link in the URL field under where your name goes.

3 words only. No URLs. Oh, and no hyphens either…sneaky people!

I won’t leave you with any more instructions, but here’s something to think about:

What three words will you choose that make you stand out from everyone else?

This is your “abridged elevator pitch”, so make it good.

Oh, and there will be something nice in store for the few that stand out to me the most. Be sure to leave your correct email address in the required field so I can contact you.

Lastly, I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the launch of The Smart Passive Income Podcast this coming Monday. I’ve been working hard setting everything up, but it’s finally here!

Cheers!

Shadows of Marketing – Are You Paying Attention?

When I was attending architecture school at Cal, I took a class called Environmental Design 11A: Intro To Drawing. It was four hours of class on Monday and Wednesday, and a meetup for an hour on Friday as well. The crazy part was that this didn’t include the time that was needed to complete our weekly projects. In total, I was averaging about 35 -40 hours a week just for this one class out of my entire schedule. Ah, the life of an architecture student.

During the semester, we were taught that one technique to make our drawings look more realistic is to not focus on the object that you’re drawing, but to focus on the shadows on and around the object instead. Why? Because shadows are everywhere, we just don’t realize it.

If you take a quick glance around the environment you’re in right now, whether your inside a home or office, or outside in a cafe – you’ll begin to notice that shadows are everywhere. Even in and around the keys of your keyboard lie a very precise pattern of shadows.

If you try to draw something, it will not look realistic without shadows.

After I learned this lesson, I began to look at the world in a different way. I noticed shadows everywhere, and I became a better artist as a result. Some of my non-architecture friends thought I was weird, because I would point out certain shadows that looked really fancy or interesting to me. Ah, the life of an architecture student.

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The Best Day of My Life

If you’re not interested in my recent wedding and honeymoon, feel free to ignore this post and come back in a couple of days when I talk more about making money online. I just wanted to take a moment to share this special moment in my life with you, since it’s the reason why I’ve been gone the last half-month (hence all the guest posts.

I was recently married on 2/21/09 in San Diego. I make a joke about this date with my wife all of the time, and she always gives me a funny look as a result. The date, February 21st, also known as 2/21, or as I like to say, “two to one”, like two families becoming one…hah. Anyways…it had been raining the two previous weekends, so we were really blessed to have a nice, clear sunny day in San Diego for our wedding.

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My Second Month of eHow Unwrapped

In my second month of writing articles on eHow, I decided to let my articles marinate on the web without writing any more. I did this half because I was super busy, but also because I wanted to see how much more money, if any, I would make by just letting my articles sit. I’m actually very pleased with my results.

In my first month of writing on eHow, you may remember that I made $20.02 after reaching my goal of about 150 articles, or 5 articles a day. I’ll estimate that I averaged a generous 2 hours a day writing, or 60 hours in total. In order to see this in a way we can all relate to, that’s about $0.33 cents per hour of work. On paper, that’s chump change. But, as Yoda would say, “After some time, see results, you will.  Herh herh herh.” (I used Yodaspeak.co.uk for this, lol!)

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My Monthly Report – December 2008

This is the third of a series of reports that I will post each and every month summarizing my progress. I’ll first mention the major events that may have happened within the month that could have made a difference in my earnings. I will also break down the sources of my income so that I can keep track of how each one is doing. Lastly, I’ll conclude with the most important things that I learned and what I have planned for the near future. I’d love to respond to any questions or comments that you may have. Thanks!

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