You’ll like what Ignite Living has planned for 2008

party hat I’m sure I’m supposed to whip out some fancy metaphors here about it being a new year. That’s what writers do. Unfortunately all I can think of to say is that 2007 was good and 2008 will be even more gooder.

But that doesn’t do much good for you readers does it? You probably just want to know if this site will be helpful to you over the next twelve months or if it will continue to be a complete waste of your time. It’d be easier to go with the latter. Then I could write all those fancy posts I’ve been thinking about, like my series on 1001 craft ideas for elbow macaroni.

As much fun as that might be, the one thing I’ve liked the most since starting this here blog is the people. Every new comment makes me smile; every time the RSS subscriber numbers rise I feel like I’m doing something to impact the world around me. I’ve made some great friends in the very short time Ignite Living has been breathing, and that has inspired me to make sure it breathes on.
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A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living - FREE New Ebook!

A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living - FREE ebook!

A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living is a short manifesto about staying sane, happy and productive as a freelancer.

It features tips on finding ideas, staying organized, getting clients and ultimately making money doing what you love.

A Human’s Guide to Freelance Living is simple. It was born out of my philosophy on freelancing which itself is simple:

Get clients
Do for them what they want and what you promise
Make money
Repeat if necessary

Of course, there’s a little more to it than that, but that’s what the book is for. It’s my day-to-day guide on making things happen as a freelancer. It’ll make you laugh. It’ll make you cry. It even has a few bad words in it, so it’s perfect for grandma.

Here’s what people are saying…

“This is probably the best book ever written. Ever.” – the author
“I hated it. Every single word.” – some jerk
“We haven’t even read it. Maybe we’ll get around to it.” – my parents

Get your FREE copy today.

5 Ways You Can Properly Set Attainable Goals

Attainable Goals The hit me over the head with a frying pan obvious statement of the day is:

If you want to achieve your goals you’ve got to know what they are.

Every self-help guru will tell you that, but what they don’t tell you much about is how to set goals in the first place.

Sure, it’s easy to say “I want a million dollars,” but is that really a goal? It sounds pretty loose to me. It doesn’t define any variables, include any time or give even the slightest hint of how this goal is meant to happen.

There are actually much better ways to set goals than to just write down your hopes and dreams. While that does serve a purpose, what we’re going to focus on are ways to set specific goals that you can act on immediately. With these ideas you will not only clarify what the goal is but save lost time on useless actions.
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The Number One Way to Never Achieve Your Goals

Without a doubt there are effective ways to achieve your goals. There are also plenty of organization tools to help you. Software, special calendars, PDAs and notebooks all proliferate the “get things done” market today.

By all means, use them. But you’ll find they’ll be pretty useless if you don’t know one very essential rule first:

The number one way to never achieve your goals is to not have any

Sorry if the brevity of that stroke of genius disappoints, but it’s nevertheless true. In all the consulting I’ve done, whether as a life-coach or designer or productivity expert, the problem people run into more than any other is lack of defined goals.

One stable rule I use is this:

If you can’t physically write it down, it’s not clear enough.

Set a target, write it down and go for it. And don’t worry about whether or not it is the perfect plan. If it changes, it changes. It’s better to just make the decision and get started than to wallow around wasting time with uncertainty. You can always change your mind. And if your initial idea doesn’t work, you can rule it out as an option and now you’re one step closer.