Stephen Guise's Blog, page 26

The 7 Day Stairs Challenge

Challenge: For 7days, takethe stairs whenever possible.

Why 7 days? Why not a 30 daychallenge?

It does not take 30 days to form a habit—there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to support that claim. People create30 day challenges because everyone else does. Otherwise, 30 days is an arbitrary amount of time. It’s better for you psychologically to overachieve your goals than to fall short of them.

Aftera 7 day challenge, you’re more likely to think, “I can do more than that!” I’m on day 4...

You Don’t Have To Fill Every Second

Do you ever find yourself mindlessly checking things like websites, book sales, social media, and website traffic? When I do this, it’s because I feel as if I need to fill every second with an activity. I will even cycle back to websites I just visited in order to be “doing something.”

Take a Moment

If you don’t grantyourself a spare moment to stop and consider your next move, you’re going to go through the motions and burn time.

Soif you find yourself procrastinating and wasting time, give y...

You’ve Got to See This!

I’m aiming to create the world’s first interactive story in which you can switch the genre midstory.

Check it out here on Kickstarter!

The Tomorrow Delusion: A Procrastination Story

“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

Thenature of tomorrow creates a game out of life.

A while back, I wrote about tomorrow. It was not a love note. It was more of a grab-the-pitchfork-and-let’s-take-this-beast-down kind of note.

Tomorrow is the day of promises. It’s tied to hope in a delightful sick way. When you’re hopeful forsomething, you’re looking tothe future to provide it. Tomorrow is exciting because, in theory, it could provide all that you h...

Sports Videos: Never Give Up

“Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality in your own mind.” ~ Bruce Lee

“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

If life is tough and you have problems, you are a human being. Nice job. If these struggles bring you down emotionally and sap your motivation, there’s a small, but powerfulphrase that can pull you out of the doldrums.

Never give up.

In every person’s life, and in every path to success, there areone or more peri...

Don’t Be Efficient, Be Effective

Efficiency is meaningless on its own. Literally meaningless.

What if I told you that Iamthe most efficient rice organizeryou’ve ever seen? Oh yeah. Give mea full bag of rice, and I’ll line upthegrains in four hundred symmetrical rows. I can organize the full bag like this in only threeminutes because I know how to efficiently distributethe rice without wasting any time or movement.

But wait…

After suchmasterful efficiency, all I have istable covered in rice.

That’s not very useful to me or...

The Chase

Required caption: Who let the dogs out? (photoby Mamboman1)

Peoplechase rabbits.

Not real, fluffy rabbits. Metaphorical rabbits.

One of my favorite metaphors for life is a greyhound dog race: the dogs run at 39 MPHtrying to catchamechanical rabbit that is always just ahead of them. Thinkabout this as a metaphor forour lives and the goals we set: it’s an interesting, slightly depressing, and eerilyaccurate depiction of what we do.

We strive to reach goals, but even as we reach one, there’s alw...

New Book: How to Be an Imperfectionist

Pre-order How to Be an Imperfectionistnow and save 33%! (Release: 5/22/15)

Imagine that there is a 10,000 pound elephant in the road blocking traffic and you’re tasked to clear the road. The driver behind you yells out the solution: “Push the elephantout of the way!”

Pushing the elephant away would certainlyclearthe road; the solution makes sense.Butcan youactuallypush a10,000 poundelephantout of the way? Probably not, and you might get stomped. That leads us to an important insight.

Solutio...

From Survival to Significance: How to Transform Your Toughest Challenges into Enduring Strengths

When disaster strikes, how will you respond? (Photoby USFWS)

This guest post is by Sandra Miller.

It always starts with a catastrophe.

Maybe somethingbig,so big it makes the news. An act of war or terrorism, anatural disaster.

Or maybe something more personal, yet every bit as devastating.Aterrible accident, a financial setback, a serious injury or diagnosis, a death in the family.

The list goes on and on.Life throws a million challenges at us.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could transform ou...

Readers Beware: The New Wave Of Amazon Review Fraud Is “Within Posted Guidelines”

It’s tough to make a living writing books. For some of us, itmeans we do our bestto get noticed. For others, well, they cheat.

The problem with cheating is that it’s not done in a vacuum. It hurts consumers, authors, and generally, the entire industry loses trust because of a few bad apples. Fortunately for me, my first published book, Mini Habits, has been very successful. Unfortunately, itmade me a target.

I thought that if I were a target, I would receive some malicious 1-star review from...