Image courtesy of Moriza

Since you’re reading Pick the Brain, it’s a safe bet that you’ve got some level of interest in self-improvement, personal development, or simply getting a bit more from life. Whatever your goals, you’re hoping that you’ll find some advice that will help you reach them. You might well read a number of other popular blogs on similar topics, such as Dumb Little Man or Zen Habits.

Yet, although you’re getting some good advice and putting some tips into practice, you might feel like you need a bit more. You’re skimming blogs on coffee breaks at work, or in between childcare duties at home. And with bite-sized posts of 600 words or so, bloggers are only covering individual topics in discreet sections.

If you want to take yourself to a new level, you need to read books as well as blogs.

Why Should I Read Books?

Don’t get me wrong, blogs are great, and you can get true and deep insights from individual blog posts. They’re also easy to fit into your day, and there tends to be a focus on practical, easy-to-implement advice. But books can complement blogs powerfully:

Books Give You Greater Depth

It’s an obvious point, but a three hundred page book allows an  author to fully explore a particular theme or theory: a three hundred word blog post doesn’t allow for much depth. Books can help you to make a paradigm shift or step up a level in your thinking.

When You Read Books, You Focus More

Are you skimming this? Look how I’ve put in subheaders to help you follow the argument. If this was a book, the paragraphs would be longer and you might have pages and pages without a subheading. When we read on paper, we tend to be much more focused than when reading online: no stopping to answer emails or see what’s being said on Twitter.

You’ve Paid For The Book

We often value things we’ve paid for over things that are free. Whilst I’m fully in favour of the amount of free content available online, I do find that I’m more likely to commit myself to in-depth reading when I’ve paid for a book.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you of the “why” – now you just need to find time to do some reading…

Finding Time To Read Books

With most of us spending a lot of the day in front of a computer screen, blogs slip easily into little gaps of time, with content designed to be read in just a few minutes. Books are trickier – do you buy books and leave them unread on a shelf for months, even years? Do you make resolutions to read every day, but end up falling into bed each evening without having cracked the spine of your book?

I find that the best way to “make time” is simply to get into a book: once I’m hooked, the extra time seems to materialize from nowhere! Having said that, you might find it easier if you can establish a routine of reading at a particular time of day:

First Thing In The Morning

Reading something motivational can be a great start to your day. The beginning of the day is a great time to work on any big goal: it means that your reading won’t be squeezed out by other demands on your time.

In Your Lunch Hour

If you tend to work through lunch – or if you end up watching YouTube clips and looking at LOLcats – try reading a book instead. It gives your eyes a break from the glowing screen. Find a park bench (which means you’re actually outside!) and steal half an hour away from fluorescent lights and glowing computer screens to really immerse yourself in a different world. Just this switch in environment will allow more absorption and enjoyment of the material.

End Of The Working Day

If you’re a freelancer, or if you have a lot of control over your own hours, you might find that reading a few pages of your book is a good way to close the working day. This can also help you to “switch off” from work mode.

What Should I Read?

So you’ve got the time and the desire to read some useful, insightful books … now you just need to find the reading matter.

I’ve got a few favorites, but I won’t recommend them here: your needs might well differ from mine. This is how I found the books that I now love…

Read Book Reviews

Most popular books are heavily reviewed on Amazon.com. Don’t focus too much on the star rating – instead, read some of the reviews. You can often get a feel for which reviewers have similar objectives to yours. Sometimes, one or two star reviews don’t mean a book is bad – they just mean that a reader thought it would be a different sort of book!

Don’t just rely on Amazon though: I’ve found it very useful to read book reviews by bloggers who I admire. You might want to check out these lists of reviews:

If you find that everyone seems to be recommending one book, it’s probably worth checking it out!

•    Steve Pavlina’s list of Personal Development Books (very short description of each book)
•    Tim Brownson’s Inspirational Books By Inspirational Authors (short reviews of each book)
•    Trent Hamm’s Twenty Big Ideas: Detailed Summaries and Reviews of Great Personal Finance and Development Books (does what it says in the title!)

Do you have any favorite self-improvement, personal development or similar books? Do you struggle to make time for reading books? Let us know about your tips, experiences and challenges in the comments…

Related Articles:

5 Simple Ways to Increase Your Intelligence

101 Self Improvement Resources

Image courtesy of Hacksomia

Ahh, motivation hacks!

If you’re anything like me, you have tried dozens of motivation hacks in your life, with varying degrees of success. (Ever tried the one of spinning a dead cat around your head thirteen times in a graveyard at midnight during full moon? No? Weird, I thought everybody knew that one…)

Thankfully, your search is now over! You have reached Vlad’s Ultimate Motivation Hack Formula! (I was going to throw in a few other fancy words, like “passion” and “synergy”, but if I ever decided to trademark it, the paperwork would kill me.)

I’m not just going to throw a simple technique at you. Oh no. We’re going to dig deeper into the STRATEGY of motivation. And from there, I will help you build the ultimate Motivation Hack that works for YOU personally!

Okay, ready?

Why do you need a motivation hack anyway?

Let’s face it. If you’re looking for a motivation hack, that means there’s something you feel you HAVE TO do, or SHOULD DO, but you don’t feel like doing it.

Pause for a moment and think about it. It’s so obvious you probably never even considered it. And yet it holds the key to motivation.

When I was a kid I used to jump out of bed at 6 am on the weekend, all excited. Why? Because the morning cartoons were on! And yet during weekdays, I would be hard pressed to drag myself out of bed by 7:30.

Notice something? During the week, I HAD TO get up. On the weekend, I WANTED TO get up!

So if you’re looking for a motivation hack, that means you don’t really WANT TO do something. You logically know you SHOULD be doing it, but your emotions tell you otherwise. You associate pain with doing it.

In a moment, I will share the Ultimate Motivation Hack with you. But first, there’s one more thing you need to understand. It might even shatter your model of reality. I’m going to show you why bribing yourself is directly COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE as far as motivation goes!

Why bribing yourself doesn’t work:

Let’s say you have some writing that you want to get finished. But you don’t feel like doing it. So what would most people immediately do? Bribe themselves! They decide to stick it out, and then reward themselves with a cold beer or a chocolate bar or any other kind of reward.

Nooooo! That absolutely KILLS motivation in the long term!

“But it works!” I hear you say.

Well, yes and no. Bribing yourself might get the task done this time. But it also associates even more pain to doing the task, because you now see it as this annoying painful thing you need to get through to get your reward. The next time you want to do the same task, it will be even harder to get motivated.

Through bribing, you don’t get yourself to the point where you WANT to do something. You only reinforce the notion that it’s something you HAVE TO suffer through to get a reward.

Remember when I told you it’s all about what you WANT TO do vs. what you HAVE TO do? It’s a deep principle. Remember it every time you struggle with motivation.

Okay, now let’s move on to the grand finale! How to build your own motivation hack for every situation!

The Ultimate Motivation Hack

Hold this in mind – you want to get to the point where you WANT TO do the task.

The best way I found was… to make the task itself FUN!

Like this one time, I had to sweep the living room floor. I spent hours procrastinating and thinking up excuses for not doing it. Then I stopped myself! I realized I was procrastinating because sweeping the floor was bloody boring! (i.e. painful). So I thought about how to make it fun for myself, and I came up with a solution! I decided to make it more challenging!

I stood on one leg, lifted the other one up while bending my body forward (forming a T-shape) and swept the floor like that, hopping around on one leg! (I also started talking in weird voices and eventually fell over from laughing at myself.)

Don’t take yourself too seriously . In fact, making a fool of yourself is a great way to start enjoying the task again.

A couple of months back, I started really strugging with writing. It became a painful chore, and I even thought of quitting blogging. But when I stopped myself and thought deeply about the problem, I realized I simply started taking myself too seriously! I had built up a readership, and I started caring about what they thought. (As in, “What would they think of me if I wrote this silly stuff?”)

Then I realized it doesn’t matter. If somebody doesn’t like my writing style, they’re free to stop reading. Being myself is more important than impressing strangers. And once I realized that, and stop censoring myself, the floodgates opened! Writing became easy again, because I was having FUN while doing it! (Plus, I got a lot more positive responses from readers!)

So if you want to build a motivation hack for yourself, just remember: It’s about making the task FUN.

You can make it more challenging, or more silly, or more ridiculous (I had a friend in high school who hated how formal the essays had to be. One day he decided to instead make it AS FORMAL AS POSSIBLE, using incredibly long convoluted sentences and fancy words, to see if the teacher caught on to the irony. She never did…)

I’m not going to give you “the one hack”. Because no one technique works for every person in every situation.

Instead, I will let YOU create hacks that work for YOU in each particular situation! Based on the principles I shared in this post, you can create your own motivation hack for every situation. And THAT is the Ultimate Motivation Hack.

Vlad Dolezal is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain. Check out Vlad’s blog Fun Life Development for more fun and exciting personal development tips. He’s even got a few posts waiting there especially for you!

I’d like to thank all of our loyal readers and writers for sticking with us as the site has gone through a slightly inactive period. Being an avid reader of PTB for some time, when the opportunity arose to revitalize the blog, it was with great pleasure that I accepted the position of Editorial Director. PickTheBrain.com is one of the highest quality, most respected Self-Improvement sites on the web, due in equal parts to it’s valuable, practical and inspiring content and the incredible community of users that continue to support it so enthusiastically!

Now more than ever, in these chaotic, uncertain and challenging times, it is both difficult and important to stay focused and motivated. There definitely are opportunities out there to turn the corner and reignite your path to success (yes, I’m a glass half-full girl!); they’re just a little harder to find. My commitment to you is to continue to make Pick The Brain a trusted resource to help you discover the best ways to lead an ever-more productive, fulfilled and motivated life!

Starting NOW, I will be publishing new articles from some of your favorite, as well as new writers on an almost daily basis, and we’ll soon be reaching out to our readers on Twitter, Facebook and in other outlets (you can start following us on twitter.com/pickthebrain). Your comments and suggestions are always welcome and encouraged. Please feel free to email me directly at erin@pickthebrain.com with topics you would like to see covered…or anything else on your mind.

Be well and happy achieving!

Erin

Eric Hamm (Motivate Thyself) and Sean Platt (Writer Dad) have teamed up to launch Blogopolis Blueprint, a blog dedicated to helping bloggers find their online voice and remain one step ahead of the curve.

Eric and Sean have been busy in recent months with guest posts on Zen Habits, ProBlogger and Pick The Brain (here and here). If you have come across these posts, or are familiar with their own personal blogs, you will know both men are great writers and have a lot of insightful knowledge to share.

Eric and Sean tell me Blogopolic Blueprint will highlight a specific blogging theme each week, and in addition to their own articles the blog will feature a rotating cast of guest authors and interviews.

But that’s enough out of me…. go check out Blogopolis Blueprint (or subscribe via RSS and email).

Peter writes about how to change your life at The Change Blog. He is also the author of Starting a Blog and Audio Book Downloads.

Photo by L*u*z*a

According to Technorati, it is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs, and estimates that there are over 175,000 new blogs created every day. What is it, then, that takes a blog from obscurity to a place where thousands of people read it each and every day? There are, of course, many different reasons but in this article I want to turn the spotlight on one reason that I consider to be absolutely essential: belief.

Why is belief so important? After all, can’t any fool believe their blog is destined for greatness? And belief is worthless unless it translates into action, right? Well these things are true. Anyone can believe, but the truth is many people don’t (even when they think they actually do!). There is a big difference between hoping your blog will become popular and truly believing it will. And this brings me to the key point in this article: what you believe determines how you act. When you truly believe you are destined for success, you do the things that successful bloggers do.

If you are sick of simply hoping your blog will become popular, the following are some specific ways in which you can take it to the next level by being a true believer.

Invest Time

Be prepared to invest time writing articles and maintaining your blog. Recently, Tina from Think Simple Now said she spent 3 weeks completing a particular article. What would drive a person to make such a large investment of time in one article? Well, as she says in the article she was testing and refining a simple 6 step process that she could use in dealing with her own personal feelings. But I think belief also played a major part in her decision. This is a belief that her own personal experience could help a number of people (note: this article hit the front page of Digg) and a belief that she was investing her time wisely. When you think about it, an article has the potential to help both others and yourself (by generating income) for years to come. I’m not suggesting you spend 3 weeks on an article, but it does go to show the amount of time and effort that goes into some articles.

Make Blogging a Priority

When you believe in the value of blogging, you make it a priority in your life. I don’t suggest putting it above your family or health, but you may need to make some small sacrifices (eg in your social life). Why would you do this? Well, if you are like me, you believe there are many potential benefits to blogging. And these don’t just relate to money. Blogging can open the door to a number of unique and exciting opportunities that you otherwise never would have had. Stephen Hopson from Adversity University credits a guest post he wrote on PickTheBrain for leading to a major speaking engagement in Orlando, Florida. And as John recently wrote about in A Guide to Quitting Your Miserable Job, blogging may help you find your ideal career. Heck, it may even be your ideal career!

Invest Money

Be prepared to invest money in your blog if you want to take it to the next level. I know many of us are attracted to blogging because of the low costs associated with it, but if you want to get noticed it is worth investing some money into your site. The first monetary investment many bloggers make is to pay for Web Hosting, allowing them to ditch Blogger and the like in favor of self-hosted packages from WordPress and Moveable Type.

Also, one thing that many top blogs have in common is that they have a custom made theme. In fact, I recall John Chow saying that a custom made theme was the most important thing he did for his blog in 2007. A recent example of a custom made theme that I believe has greatly enhanced a site can be seen at The Next 45 Years. So if you are a true believer, consider investing money in your blog even before it is popular.

Promote Promote Promote

If you believe you have written an interesting article, it makes sense that you will want as many people as possible to read it. So what do you do? You promote it in every way you possibly can. One habit that has worked well for me is to email friends and fellow bloggers in my niche alerting them to the article I have just published. My advice is to not be scared of emailing well known bloggers. After all, they’re only human. And yes, you will be ignored sometimes but that is the price you have to paying for putting yourself out there. Just remember, receiving a link from a well known blog will make it worth the time and effort.

Find Clever Solutions to Tricky Problems

When you believe in yourself, you find clever ways to solve what initially seem to be tricky, even impossible, problems. A few months ago when John invited me to start regularly contributing on PickTheBrain, I initially could not imagine how I would find the time. But where there is a will there is a way. Because I knew what an amazing opportunity it was, I used my brain to find a way to make things work. I started proactively approaching other bloggers to write guest posts for me. I adopted the “less is more” mantra by decreasing my weekly posts from 4-5 articles to 3. And I discovered that sometimes the posts that require the least amount of work, ie ones where I share information that is commonly available, can turn out to be the most popular (see Left or Right?, What is Success? and The Paradoxical Commandments to see exactly what I mean).

Protect Your Brand’s Value

Most bloggers who believe in the value of their blog will take steps to protect its brand. For example, while we all know that controversial or inflammatory post can bring a blog much attention, it can also damage its brand if it makes the author look irresponsible or immature. My suggestion, then, is to think very carefully before posting anything controversial as it may come back to haunt you. Another simple way to protect your brand’s value is to register the various extensions of your domain, eg register the “.com”, “.net” and “.org”.

Ignore the Doubters

You may find that other people in your life, for example your partner, consider you to be crazy for the time and effort you devote to blogging. I know my wife thinks I am a few sandwiches short of a picnic because I wake at 5am most days to blog (sometimes I think she is right). But she has slowly come around, particularly since my income from blogging has increased sharply in the past 1-2 months.

How do you ignore the doubters? Once again it comes back to belief – both in your own abilities and in the value of blogging. My advice is to be a true believer, because this will translate into you taking the necessary actions to drive your blog to success. It may not be easy and you will run into obstacles, but there are big rewards if you can break away from the blogging pack.

Peter writes about how to enjoy life at The Change Blog. If you enjoyed this article, you may wish to download his free e-book, A Year of Change.

Basically he expects people to stroke his ego a bit before bashing his usually controversial opinions. He recommends citing his past accomplishments, mentioning his bulldog, or displaying attractive pictures of him before he gained weight.

I read this post earlier and went on my merry way, but then he posted a follow up linking back to the first few people to blog about his original post. As a neophyte blogger I figure I need all the exposure I can get, so why not give Calacanis the attention he wants in return for a little exposure on his popular blog?

Anyways, this is a bit of a marketing experiment and I apologize if it isn’t relevant to you.

Calacanis, your narcissism is remarkable but it’s also the reason I read you. I gave you what you wanted so please link back to me.

Calacanis readers, while you’re here, you might as well check out some of my other posts. The Popular Article list in the sidebar is a good place to start. Also, subscribing to the feed is a good idea.

In the past two days I’ve been contemplating two important ideas that make me feel very uncomfortable about what I’ve done and what I plan to do with this site.

This is a very good thing.

The first idea can be summed up in two sentences.

Make something remarkable.
Make something worth talking about.

This idea comes from Seth Godin. If you aren’t reading him you should be. Read everything he writes. Start with this free e-book.

Is Your Blog Remarkable?

Trust me, it’s not. Mine sure isn’t. Almost none are, and making a remarkable blog gets harder every day.

If your blog is just writing on a web page posted in a reverse chronological order, then the chances of it being remarkable and worth talking about are slim to none. It doesn’t matter how good the writing is or how many images and gimmicks you throw in. They’ve all been done ad nauseam.

These days, everyone and they’re mother has a plan to make money blogging. The market is saturated. Look at how many popular posts you see on the social sites about blogging, WordPress, building traffic, and making money off a blog. An entire niche (and a big one) has sprung up to cater to the masses of wannabe probloggers who think they are entrepreneurs but are actually consumers.

These days writing a blog (even a very good one) is far from remarkable. Too many people are already doing it. Readers have short attention spans and a small amount of time to read. Why should they read you? There are more established options. People want to read what other people are reading and talking about.

This is a reality check for neophyte bloggers who read an inspiring post (possibly by Steve Pavlina) and assumed starting a blog was the fast track to financial independence. All you have to do is follow the formula, stick with it for a year or two, and you’re sure to make it big.

Guess what. The rules of the game have changed since Steve and others made it big. When they started, the niche they entered was virtually empty. Right now it’s about to burst and the top positions are already taken. Even if the popularity of blogs continues to grow, the rich will keep getting richer and the late comers will still be fighting for scraps.

And who can blame us for wanting a piece of the action? There are hundreds of sites that post all the keys to blogging success. I’m not saying this information isn’t valid (I’m sure it is), but doing what everyone else is doing to build traffic and readership isn’t going to make your blog remarkable. The big blogs are leveraging their success so attract more follower blogs; little bloggers that read and link to the bigs boys but will never amount to much themselves.

Being remarkable is going to take more than just a blog, because everyone else is already blogging. This brings me to the second idea that opened my eyes.

Are You an Opportunity Seeker or an Entrepreneur?

Did you decide to start blogging after reading that it was a great way to generate income? Do you have a long term strategy to generate income from your blog other than building traffic and putting up ads? If it takes you longer than 5 seconds to answer the second question you aren’t an entrepreneur, you’re an opportunity seeker.

Opportunity seekers are people who do what everyone else is doing to make money i.e. bloggers trying to build traffic and make money from AdSense. Entrepreneurs actually have a strategy to make money that they are constantly optimizing. Opportunity seekers are doomed to fail because a) they’re doing the same thing as everyone else and b) they spend more time looking for new opportunities than they do building a business.

I have to thank Rich Schefren for making me realize that I’ve been an opportunity seeker and not an entrepreneur. His internet business manifesto opened my eyes to this critical distinction. Without realizing this I probably would’ve been doomed to failure.

But now that I know, and now that you know too, we can stop being opportunity seekers and start forming a strategy. The great thing is that we’ve figured this out now. Instead of constantly looking for the next opportunity we can start focusing our energy on making something remarkable and developing a strategy to make it pay.

Don’t Stop Blogging

If you think the point of this article is to convince you to stop blogging you are missing the point. Keep blogging, it’s a great way to build brand, have a conversation with potential customers, and promote your ideas. But don’t think that blogging alone is going to make much money. You need to build something remarkable and you need to have a strategy.

So how do you make something remarkable? Well that’s the hard part.

You can expect big changes around this site. But don’t worry, this blog isn’t going anywhere.