Month: July 2007

Categories
Main Work

Oneness

Oneness with work is “flow”.

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. (source)

The act of creating something, whether it be an article, a poem, a website, a computer program, or some other creative human expression, is one of my most cherished activities. … It usually takes a while for me to fully enter the highly creative flow state, but once I’m there I lose awareness of everything but the present moment and the ideas flowing through me. (source)

Oneness with surroundings is a principle of Eastern thought.

…practitioners of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism have honed the discipline of overcoming the duality of self and object as a central feature of spiritual development. (source)

The idea of overcoming duality of self and object is a key theme of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig (1974). “When you’re not dominated by feelings of separateness from what you’re working on, then you can be said to ‘care’ about what you’re doing. That is what caring really is: ‘a feeling of identification with what one’s doing.’ (ibid.)

Oneness with people is a Christian virtue.

…be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. (source)

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind… (source)

Oneness with God comes through the Atonement of Jesus

The word [Atonement] describes the setting “at one” of those who have been estranged, and denotes the reconciliation of man to God. (source)

And now Father, I pray unto thee for them … that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one. (source)

Categories
Character Main

Lesser Things

I recently read similar passages from two very different books.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, chapter 5, “The End of Time Management”:

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

Men of Valor by Robert L. Millet, chapter 2, “Have Done with Lesser Things”:

…drawing closer to my Heavenly Father, serving the people about me, and growing in gospel scholarship — along with devoting as much time as I could to my wife, children, and extended family — were the actions that had long-term, even eternal implications. Yet in reality I had spent the bulk of my time the previous week shuffling from one … activity to another.

More than once my friend and mentor, Robert J. Matthews, said to me, “Robert L., be careful not to spend your life laboring in secondary causes.”

…”have done with lesser things.” Lesser things do not satisfy. They do not fill the hunger of the human soul. They do not bring peace and rest. Lesser things do not build the family unit, bring harmony into the home, or fortify relationships that are intended to be everlasting.

Until yesterday, I thought the phrase “have done with lesser things” referred to frugality or resourcefulness, like “make due with less.” But these five words, in a bit of antiquated style, mean “be done with lesser things.”

Categories
Blogging Main WordPress

Market segmentation on your blog

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Seth Godin has suggested that you treat new visitors to your blog differently from returning users. New users should be given context and background about you, and perhaps be invited to become permanent subscribers to your blog. Returning users should have quick access to your new material.

You could also consider turning off ads for your longtime subscribers. On one hand, you’ll forego ad revenue from a large group of people and prevent your advertisers from targeting a known group, but on the other hand, it might deepen the loyalty and increase the satisfaction of your biggest fans. Or you could do the opposite. Personally, I like the first more than the second.

For WordPress users, I wrote a WordPress plugin to do simple market segmentation. It was already the most visited page on my blog but traffic recently jumped with a link from the namesake last week. One blogger even created a graphic for it. Thanks.

Do you do any market segmentation on your blog or website? Where do you make the split, and how is the experience different?