Two weeks ago I posed the question: “are you doing what you love?” Thank you for your wonderful answers. Some notable responses included:

• “Yes!!Yes!!! I love what I am doing!!! I get up everyday and say I love this day!!”
• “I’m currently doing what I like, and working towards doing what I love.”
• “I took a risk and it paid off. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”

If you would like to read more of the responses (there were over 48), here is the post: Ask the Reader: Are You Doing What You Love?

Also, we have a number of copies of Sway: The Irrestistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman to give away for our favorite responses. The recipients of the book are:

• Alex Fayle
• Mr. Smith
• Alice
• Victor Stachura
• Lee
• Sam Smith
• Jen
• Stephanie
• Simon Hill
• Ned
• Jamie

Click here to continue »

In the past couple weeks I’ve had the privilege of doing 2 very interesting interviews on developing a passionate career.

The first is with our very own Peter, over at his personal site, The Change Blog. The site recently got a new name and a brand new design. Head over and check it out.

Career Transitions: John Wesley talks about the Social Media, Taking Risks and Chasing Your Dreams

The second is with Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Nonconformity. The group interview includes several well known bloggers include Darren Rowse, J.D. Roth, and Leo Babauta.

Follow Your Passion? The Blogger Roundup 

In last weeks article The End of Wealth, we offered a small prize of a $20 Amazon gift certificate to one person who left a comment.

The winner we have chosen is Bruce from Brucisms. He said:

“I believe we are turning a corner. After two decades of working 80 hours per week to have the nicest house, car, clothes - a lot of people are just tired and empty.

It is my (possibly overly optimistic) belief that there is a true movement toward responsibility and values. I think we see this both in terms of increased interest in both spirituality and conservation. I think a lot of us have awakened after a couple of decades of materialism to a hangover, and realize that we aren’t kids anymore.”

But that wasn’t all. As a follow up, Bruce had the following book suggestion:

“As a follow up for your readers - I would highly recommend Jason Jennings’ wonderful book “Think Big, Act Small.” After researching the top public and private companies in the US, he and his team narrowed the field to 10 companies that had achieved 10% increases in profit every year for 10 or more consecutive years. The extraordinary thing is that the common factor in all these companies were exceptionally high values!

It seems that doing the right thing pays the best over the long term…”

Thank you to every one who left a comment. You had some very interesting things to say, and it certainly wasn’t easy to pick just one winner.

You’ve probably noticed some subtle improvements on PickTheBrain over the past month. Stuff like better images in posts, competitions, and book giveaways.

The explanation for this is that I’ve started doing less, and Peter from IWillChangeYourLife has come on board as the primary editor!

I’ll still be around, writing posts, taking part in discussions, and managing the site in general, but having Peter around to help out will allow me to spend time on other projects while continuing to improve the site.

If you’d like to know a bit more about Peter, check out his interview at the TheNext45Years or head over to his personal blog, which is a great read. Also, feel free to contact him at Peter@pickthebrain.com.

New EBooks from Scott and Leo

Two good friends of PickTheBrain, Scott Young and Leo Babauta, have recently published ebooks that are definitely worth checking out.

Scott’s book is about holistic learning, and provides some great tips for how to learn more while studying less. You can check out a preview copy of the book here.

Leo’s new book is called The Zen Habits Handbook for Life. It’s basically a well organized and nicely designed compilation of all the best ZenHabits posts.

I was fortunate enough to receive free review copies of each book, and both of them are well worth the investment.

Also, I’ve just launched a new blog, totally unrelated to PTB, about media and technology. If you’re interested in that type of stuff head over and check it out or just grab the RSS feed.