Genius Types » Link Soup http://geniustypes.com Creative Life & Entrepreneurship Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:41:17 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Genius Wire http://geniustypes.com/the_genius_wire_26_october_2007/ http://geniustypes.com/the_genius_wire_26_october_2007/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:11:13 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/the_genius_wire_26_october_2007/

24 October 2007

23 October 2007

19 October 2007

18 October 2007

17 October 2007

16 October 2007

15 October 2007

12 October 2007

11 October 2007

10 October 2007

9 October 2007

8 October 2007

7 October 2007

Related Content on Genius Types

6 October 2007

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5 October 2007

4 October 2007

]]> http://geniustypes.com/the_genius_wire_26_october_2007/feed/ 6 Top Stumbles :: Car Pinball http://geniustypes.com/top_stumbles_car_pinball/ http://geniustypes.com/top_stumbles_car_pinball/#comments Fri, 04 May 2007 12:38:31 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/top_stumbles_car_pinball/

Here are my favorite stumbles over the last few weeks. I like to stumble sites reccommended by my network of friends, so be sure to add me to your friend network.

Car Pinball in Portland :: This is an insane video of a bunch of cars bouncing off of each other on the icy roads of Portland. Is this for real? It sort of looks like the drivers are intentionally hitting each other.

The Art of Kevin Chin -Conceptual Illustrator :: Kevin’s work is amazing. It transports you to another world.

Richard St. John: Secrets of Success in 8 Words, 3 Minutes :: A great little 3 minute video with timeless wisdom. Straight-shooting advice about how to be successful. I liked his story about the woman who loved her work so much, she would pay to do it.

Anamorphic Drawings by Julian Beaver :: I’m totally fascinated by Julian’s street art. If you look at it from the right angle, it becomes three dimensional. He must be a total genius to be able to calculate all of those angles in his head. Plus, he’s Belgian, and I used to spend a lot of time in Brussels when I was a French interpreter.

7 Ways to Move Beyond Procrastination :: A great article from Henrik Edberg of The Positivity Blog. As a creative type, procrastination has been a life-long battle for me! My best defense against it is to do things the minute I realize they need to be done. If I procrastinate a minute, I’ll procrastinate forever!

]]> http://geniustypes.com/top_stumbles_car_pinball/feed/ 2 Link Soup :: I Love StumbleUpon http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_i_love_stumbleupon/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_i_love_stumbleupon/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:00:21 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_i_love_stumbleupon/

The more I know about StumbleUpon, the more there is to love. I first discovered it on February 15th, 2006, when I got a sudden spike of 250 visits to an article I had written a month before, What Europeans and Americans Can Learn From Each Other

When I checked Google Analytics, I realized that most of the traffic was from StumbleUpon. At the time, this was the biggest traffic spike I had seen on Genius Types.

I immediately went to StumbleUpon.com, downloaded the plugin for Firefox, and started stumbling.

Problem Solved

Have you ever been on the internet trying to kill some mindless time, but didn’t know what to click next? I hate when that happens.

In those moments, I just want to be entertained and enlightened, but all my regular sites are starting to bore me. Sometimes I just need something new to work with.

Lately, I’ve been solving this problem by stumbling pages recommended by my network of friends on StumbleUpon. Now, I have an endless source of entertainment and enlightenment to feed my brain whenever I need it.

Building My Network

To build my network, I look for people with similar interests. The first people I add to my friends list are people who discover and stumble one of my pages. I used to stumble my own posts, but now I prefer to let them be discovered naturally.

There is a little button on my stumble bar with an icon of two people. When I click that button, it pulls up a page that one of my stumble friends has recommended. About every other page is something interesting to me and worth my time.

Please add me to your list of stumble friends so that you can keep up with my top recommendations.

A More Democratic Way

I’m a huge advocate for the little guy, which is another reason I love StumbleUpon. It levels the playing field for smaller website owners. Once your page has been discovered by someone, it’s automatically sent out to a certain number of people. If enough of those people like it, it continues to get traffic.

Before StumbleUpon, you might’ve had a blog with the most amazing, life-changing posts in the world, but no one would have known about it if you hadn’t already built up an audience. Now, great content rises to the top, regardless of the size of the blog.

It’s So Easy

Another reason I love StumbleUpon is that they make it so easy. It’s hard to get people to submit your site to Digg, Reddit, or Del.icio.us, because it takes three or four clicks, a few decisions, and some typing; and that’s if you have a button waiting for them to click.

I’m like everyone else when I’m surfing the net: lazy. I like to give people recognition, but not if it’s a hassle. With StumbleUpon, all it takes is one little click in the stumble bar… done.

Top Stumbles for 20 April 2007

Here are some great sites I recently discovered on StumbleUpon. Check them out and make sure that you join my stumble network.

:: Blogging is Harder Than You Think ::

Dan at The Wrong Advices writes an honest article about the difficulties of blogging and what makes a successful blogger. My favorite line:

Learn from successful bloggers, but try not to mimic them. I don’t want to read another John Chow or Darren Rowse clone. I want to hear what you have to say whether I agree or not. And for that matter don’t be afraid to disagree with people. I don’t see the point of having all these personal blogs around if everyone’s just going to nod their heads and walk in a straight line.

My sentiments exactly. I really like Dan’s writing style. It’s succinct, honest, and from his heart. You have to check out his about page. It’s hilarious! Plus, I really like his site layout. Very clean.

:: Bodies in the Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter ::

As an astronomy geek, I can’t resist an enormous, graphic depiction of the heavenly bodies in our solar system.

:: Neave Planetarium ::

More awesome astronomy. Just put in your latitude, longitude, date, and time, and voila: instant navigable sky with descriptions of stars and constellations on mouseover.

:: InternetFrog.com Connection Speed Test ::

I love stats. This site gives you the speed of your internet connection. Mine is 5.09 mps download and 639 kbps upload. Yours?

:: Speed Reading Test ::

More stats. This time it’s how fast you can read. I’ve always been fascinated with speed-reading. Is it real, or do you just scan the page and not retain anything? I would sure save a lot of time if I could speed-read all of these blogs.

]]> http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_i_love_stumbleupon/feed/ 8 Link Soup :: Help Steven Aitchison Become a Pro-Blogger http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_help_steven_aitchison_become_a_pro-blogger/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_help_steven_aitchison_become_a_pro-blogger/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:00:38 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_help_steven_aitchison_become_a_pro-blogger/

Link Soup is your rundown of what’s hot in the blogosphere. This week’s theme is bloggers shooting for the stars.

Steven’s Going For It!

Steven Aitchison of Change Your Thoughts has written an e-book with the goal of selling 20,000 copies at £4.99 a piece in order to pay off his mortgage. If he does so, his wife will let him quit his job and become a pro-blogger!

Change Your Thoughts was one of the very first blogs I subscribed to when I decided to get involved in the blogosphere, and I was fortunate enough to get to know Steven when he and I were two of the founding members of the Positive Blog Network.

Not only is Steven an insightful and intelligent writer, but he’s an genuinely great guy! His sincerity resonates throughout everything he touches.

Steven’s e-book is a compilation of 39 of the best posts from Change Your Thoughts. At only £4.99 (roughly $10), he is practically giving it away. Most e-books are at least $20 and some are much more. Considering the amount of benefit I have already received by visiting Steven’s blog, I was happy to pay him the money.

My favorite articles are:

-Clear Your House to Clear Your Mind,
-Letting Go to Get What You Want,
-Attracting Money Into Your Life,
and of course,
-50 Best Personal Development Blogs, (because Genius Types made the list!)

If you have a blog or website, Steven is offering a 30% commission on any affiliate sales. Click here to check it out or sign up for the affiliate program.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About StumbleUpon

Maki at Dosh Dosh wrote a fantastic article called A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon.

I was absolutely blown away by the amount of detail put into this article. It’s loaded with pictures, suggestions, lists, and everything you could possibly want to know about StumbleUpon. I can’t imagine how long it took to put together.

I think that a lot of bloggers are starting to realize that StumbleUpon is a force to be reckoned with. I see it as a much more blog-friendly social site than Digg or Reddit. While other sites are dominated by social cartels, StumbleUpon seems to have a more democratic approach that allows the average blog a much greater chance of finding success.

Since StumbleUpon is built into your browser, it’s almost effortless to give a page you like a thumbs up. Many of my articles were submitted by StumbleUpon users without any promotion on my part, while trying to get people to Digg or Reddit posts is like pulling teeth.

The traffic can be huge, but there is a downside. Since StumbleUsers are “Stumbling” onto your site instead of seeking it out, they are much more likely to “bounce.”

The average number of pages visited by StumbleUpon users is usually lower than other forms of traffic, but hey, it’s a numbers game. If you get a huge amount of traffic, at least some of those people will become regular readers.

Full Disclosure

I love reading reports from bloggers about how much money they are making, and I have two great examples. Yaro Starak at Entrepreneurs-Journey broke down his earnings in his article How I Make Money Online.

He made over $6,500 online last month, and only $875 of it was from Google AdSense. Yaro seems to be the master of affiliate programs and direct ad sales.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jesper from BloggPro.com revealed all in his article titled How I made $3 From Adsense in One Month, and he did it with absolutely no apologies. I wrote a post a while ago called Don’t Apologize for Yourself, and Jesper must have been the only one that read it!

I applaud his honesty and think he will soon be making much more than 3 bucks!

That’s it for this week’s soup, have a great weekend!

]]> http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_help_steven_aitchison_become_a_pro-blogger/feed/ 6 Link Soup :: Posts About WordPress Plugins http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_posts_about_wordpress_plugins/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_posts_about_wordpress_plugins/#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:00:26 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_posts_about_wordpress_plugins/

I’ve got to admit, one of my favorite pastimes is wasting massive amounts of time tinkering with my WordPress plugins. I’m a sucker for “Top WordPress Plugins” posts on other people’s blogs.

I could browse the thousands of plugins at the WordPress Plugin Directory, but I find that it’s much easier to take recommendations from other bloggers.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out How to Blog :: The Manual.

Here are seven of my favorite lists followed by the plugins that I use on Genius Types. Remember, after you tinker with your site, make sure that it still jives on all browsers. Read Checking Browser Compatibility for more information.

Plugin Posts

Top (must have) WordPress Plugins Part I & Part II
at eJabs.com

Essential WordPress Plugins
at BloggPro.com

Five Essential Plugins You Shouldn’t WordPress Without
at AlexShalman.com

TOP 30 WordPress Plugins in Blogosphere
at Staska.net

Top WordPress Plugins
at TheBlogJoint.com

Top WordPress Plugins You Can’t Do Without
at InMyPlace.info

WordPress Plugins
at AdesBlog.com

Plugins Used on Genius Types

Aksimet -saves me hours by fending off spam comments.
AdSense-Deluxe -an easy way to organize google ads.
Bookmark Me -the del.icio.us button at the bottom of my posts.
CG-SameCat -generates a list of pages in the same category.
Dean’s Permalinks Migration -get out of jail free card for changing my mind.
Exec-PHP -lets me run PHP in posts and pages.
Feedburner Feed Replacement -directs RSS feeds to feedburner.
Get Recent Comments -generates a list of recent comments in the sidebar.
Google Sitemaps -creates a Google-friendly sitemap.
Gregarious -Digg and Reddit buttons.
Kramer -converts inbound links to pingbacks.
MyAvitars -adds MyBlogLog avatars to comments.
Popularity Contest -most popular posts.
SEO Title Tag -customizes my title tags.
Show Top Commentators -lists the top contributers to comments.
SRG Clean Archives -archives that don’t give me a headache.
Subscribe to Comments -alerts people of follow-ups to their comments.
Tags in the Head -not entirely sure what this does, but makes me feel better.
Terong Related Links -lists related links.
The Excerpt Reloaded -customizable excerpts.
Underscore Permalinks -uses _ instead of – in permalinks.
Ultimate Tag Warrior -organizes tags for each post.
Contact Form -a simple contact form.

]]> http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_posts_about_wordpress_plugins/feed/ 10 One Blogger Synergizes Charity with Blog Growth http://geniustypes.com/one_blogger_synergizes_charity_with_blog_growth/ http://geniustypes.com/one_blogger_synergizes_charity_with_blog_growth/#comments Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:01:39 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/one_blogger_synergizes_charity_with_blog_growth/

Alex Shalman at Practical Personal Development (a blog about self help and personal growth) is hosting a Donation Contest in which you press a button and he donates a dollar.

He is going to donate up to $500 to the charity of the winner’s choice. What a creative way to combine the growth of his blog with service to others!

Here Comes the Nay Sayers

The interesting part is that he reported that people are already questioning his motives in his week-one update. It turns out that some people are coming down on him for using charity to gain publicity.

I don’t know why this surprised me. It never occurred to me that anyone might find anything wrong with his intentions, but I was quickly reminded that there is an existing school of thought which questions any action that is self-serving.

Money is Bad

Some people think that none of us should be making money from our blogs. In their view, even though monetizing our sites allows us to share information for free, we should not accept money, even from those who wish to give it to us.

When you think about it on a philosophical level, no action is completely safe from accusations of selfish motives. If you give to charity, people might say that you were looking to gain recognition. If you give anonymously, people might say that you did it to produce feelings of joy within yourself.

Selfish-phobia

The idea that selfishness is bad has been so ingrained in our minds that some people are phobic about it. Have you ever considered that being too unselfish might be just as bad?

The best example I can think of is in a relationship. When one person is always subverting their own needs to satisfy the needs of the other, they are teaching their partner to disrespect them. The more they allow their partner to walk all over them, the more it happens. The more they try to make their partner happy, the more unhappy their partner realizes they are.

Balance

The key is balance. It’s unhealthy to be on any extreme of the selfishness spectrum. It’s okay to take care of yourself first. Only when you have filled yourself up can you spill over onto others.

The anti-selfishness crowd is usually synonymous with the anti-capitalist crowd. They think that there should never be a profit motive in anything that we do. They often clash with the grotesquely rich.

Once again, the key is balance. If profits were never a motive, nothing would ever get done. At the same time, it’s not healthy to hoard ungodly amounts of money.

Synergy in Blogging

Blogging is a great example of the synergy that exists between a healthy balance of self-interest and service to others. If not for the money-making potential of blogging, much of the wonderful free information that is available to everyone who wants it would not exist.

If not for this system, a charity might not be getting the $500 that Alex is willing to give. You could argue that he should give it anyway, but come on… would you?

]]> http://geniustypes.com/one_blogger_synergizes_charity_with_blog_growth/feed/ 2 Link Soup Light :: SXSW in ATX http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_light_sxsw_in_atx/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_light_sxsw_in_atx/#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:00:16 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/2007/link_soup/link_soup_light_sxsw_in_atx/

I’ll be in Austin, TX during the next two weeks during the South by Southwest Film, Music, and Interactive Festival. Besides Los Angeles, Austin is our second home.

After I service my bulk candy vending machines, I will be a field producer on a movie crew that will be following some bands in a half scripted, half reality feature length movie.

I have a few light posts prepared for Genius Types while I’m busy on the shoot and I’ll resume my full post schedule on Monday, March 26th. Joey the Cat, my business partner (featured in the photo) will be watching over the computer as usual. You might remember him from his debut in A Man’s Last Refuge.

Marketleap

My friend, Steven Aitchison of Change your Thoughts alerted me to this really great site that tracks website traffic. It’s called Marketleap and has a much more useful and friendly interface than sites like Alexa.

You can use Marketleap to see how your website stacks up against other sites. You can plug in up to three other sites for comparison.

Light

Wow, this was a really light post. Much lighter than the honkers I used to write in my first few weeks of this blog:

]]> http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_light_sxsw_in_atx/feed/ 0 Link Soup :: Integrated With Integrity http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_integrated_with_integrity/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_integrated_with_integrity/#comments Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:00:30 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/2007/link_soup/link_soup_integrated_with_integrity/

Link soup is where I dig up some good material from the blogosphere and add my two cents.

Integrity

Whenever I really need a kick in the ass, I tend to visit the site of self-proclaimed blunt, offensive, politically-incorrect blogger Craig Harper. This week, he really did the trick with his article The Art of Completion.

He points out the uncomfortable truth that most of us don’t do what we say we are going to do. We don’t use the gym membership that we paid for, we don’t call our friend back when we say we will, and we don’t start that business we have been talking about starting.

I learned from Stephen Covey that having integrity is just as simple as keeping your promises to yourself and others. Sounds easy, yet the quality is so rare that Craig Harper calls those who possess it gems.

Having integrity means that what you say and what you do are integrated. The thing about integrity is that it doesn’t matter how big or small your promises are; what matters is that you hold true to them. Something as simple as returning a book you borrowed without having to be asked shows integrity.

Hey, I’m not the only one who believes in integrity. True You Success agrees with me.

Laziness vs. Hard Work

Fellow paradox enthusiast Julie at The Truth Curve breaks down the duality that showed up in a post called Productivity Blog Showdown on Slack Manager. Our favorite blogger Steve Pavlina squared off with Fred Gratzon over which is a better strategy for success: hard work or laziness.

I’ve always been a big fan of hard work, having grown up with a strong work ethic; but, I have also found in my life that hard work alone is not a formula for success. You can paddle your heart out, but if you are heading up the wrong stream, you won’t get where you want to go.

To be more productive, it helps to master the art of leverage. By leveraging time, money, or a skill, you multiply the effectiveness of hard work. When you use leverage, less work gets you more results. To me, this isn’t an excuse to be lazy; it’s all the more reason to work harder.

The Secret Attracts Attention

Everyone is talking about The Secret, especially since Oprah has been featuring it this week on her show. Steve Pavlina gave it some extra attention this week in a discussions about how to make it work.

If you haven’t seen it, you should. The movie is a collection of views describing The Law of Attraction. One of the contributers who seems to be popping up everywhere is Dr. Michael Beckwith. He has been on Oprah twice and appeared on Larry King as well.

Dr. Beckwith is the leader of a spiritual center here in Los Angeles called Agape. When my girlfriend first suggested that we check it out, I have to admit that I was very suspicious.

We had been feeling the need to connect to a spiritual community for awhile, but finding a place where we felt at home was proving to be difficult. We didn’t desire to be judged in an ultra-conservative church, but at the same time we didn’t feel comfortable with ultra-liberal new-wave ideas either.

The feeling that Dr. Beckwith created in Agape is unlike that of any other place I have been to. The energy is the complete opposite of judgement. Everyone carries a smile and I always walk away energized.

I was concerned at first that it would be a weird experience, but I never feel pressured to buy into something that I was uncomfortable with. It’s not the church of Dr. Beckwith, with rules and his own brand of religion. It’s a place where people of all religions come together to find common ground.

The congregation is extremely diverse in ethnicity as well as religion. It’s really a beautiful thing to see this kind of unity. Instead of preaching his own doctrine, Dr. Beckwith draws on the wisdom of all of the major traditions. Instead of scaring people, he focuses on the positive with a large dose of the power of the human mind.

It’s the only spiritual center I know of where an atheist could sit next to a person of faith and walk away with a similar positive experience.

The place is a self-determinist’s paradise. I never thought that I would see such a place in my lifetime. It’s the type of place I talk about in Religion vs. Sciece :: Who Will Win Our Faith?.

That’s all I have for this episode, stay tuned for more nuggets of knowledge!

]]> http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_integrated_with_integrity/feed/ 1 Link Soup http://geniustypes.com/link_soup/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup/#comments Fri, 16 Feb 2007 13:00:12 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/2007/link_soup/link_soup/

Link Soup is your weekly update of what’s going on in the blogosphere. I scour the net so you genius types don’t have to!

Plugin Fun

As a self-proclaimed plugin addict, I was drawn to an article by Alex Shalman called Five Essential Plugins You Shouldn’t WordPress Without. I still can’t decide if I should go with Top Commentators or Most Recent Comments.

Butchering the English Language

Matthew Jabs of Ejabs.com wrote an article called Commonly Misspoken Words and Phrases, where he brings up those annoying missuses of words that are floating around everywhere.

As bloggers, we are also writers, so these mistakes tend to pop out even more for us. My favorite misuse of the English language is the incorrect use of their/they’re/there.

The Next Goldmine?

Travis Wright of Cultivate Greatness points out that maybe we should be buying up domain names if we want to be the Trump of the internet. In his article
Why Domain Names are the Real Estate Market of the Future, he talks about his obsession with buying domain names.

Does he have a point? Maybe. Domain names are cheap, usually less than $10, and the supply of coherent words that fit before .com is getting short. Once they are all chewed up, will this market heat up?

It makes sense, but is purely speculative at the moment. I wouldn’t go out and mortgage the house to start buying up domain names, but a handful might not be a bad idea.

To Feed or Not to Feed

Joe of Working at Home on the Internet expresses something that I have thought about a lot in his article Is RSS Hurting the Blogging Community? RSS feeds are a double-edged sword. They make life a lot easier for readers who have a lot of blogs to keep up with. The problem is that they don’t include much of what makes a blog’s user experience unique.

I would like to see RSS feeds of the future looking a lot more like the content on the publisher’s blog.

The Blogging Flu

Apparently, the flu is sweeping the blogosphere. Is it just a coincidence that Steve Olson caught the flu the same week I did, even though he is over 2000 miles away from me and I’ve never actually met the guy in person? Hmm. This could be a conspiracy.

I got knocked out on Tuesday and have been attached to my bed until today. I’ve never felt such pain from a bug before. If this thing really is contagious over the internet, you had better stop reading this post!

That’s it for today, my head is killing me.

]]> http://geniustypes.com/link_soup/feed/ 1 Link Soup :: John Chow Lets Me Down http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_john_chow_lets_me_down/ http://geniustypes.com/link_soup_john_chow_lets_me_down/#comments Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:33:35 +0000 GT http://geniustypes.com/2007/link_soup/link_soup_john_chow_lets_me_down/

Link Soup is a weekly stream-of-consciousness recap of the blogosphere. This is where you get my take on other people’s opinions. This week it isn’t all nice! There’s always room for non-snarky descent.

Bloggin’ Ain’t Easy

That being said, I’ll kick it off with an article I agree with. Yaro Starak has impressed me lately with a series of sobering articles on blogging as a business model. Instead of the usual “quick, start a blog to get rich!” articles that one finds sprinkled around the blogosphere, he has been very frank in describing the difficulties of reaching professional blogging status.

A lot of my readers are already bloggers, but if you aren’t, you should be! Blogs are extremely easy to set up and are the platform of choice for personal expression in the digital age. To find out more, read my article, How to Blog :: The Manual.

Yaro points out that blogging as a business is very similar to other kinds of entrepreneurial ventures where the cream of the crop make the majority of the money. The successful blogs just keep getting more successful while fifty five million other blogs are struggling to be seen.

In his latest article, Why a Preeminent Business is Superior to Money Making Opportunities, he points out that in this highly competitive entrepreneurial world, it is a better strategy to focus on one thing than try to be a jack-of-all-trades.

I have always believed in the power of focus (as I wrote about in one of my first articles, Three Steps to Success for Creative Geniuses). I find that it’s difficult to tap into your powers of synergy and creativity when your mental focus is spread thin. Instead, a combination of focus and persistence is the greatest indicator of success, outweighing even talent.

I read a great twist on the idea of focus from Scott Young. In his article Specializing Vs. Generalizing, he talks about using the “T” method of balancing focus and generalization.

Negotiation, Good or Evil?

Have you seen what’s happening on Steve-Olson.com? John Chow is buying AdSense ads, appearing on Steve’s blog, that say how great Steve is. That’s just cool on so many levels.

Anyway, Steve wrote an article called, How to Negotiate a Better Price. I really related to this article when Steve talked about how his perceptions of negotiation have changed.

I used to see all negotiation as manipulative and unfair. As I learned more about business and investing, I started to see it differently. Now I see it as sort of the art of business which takes its highest form when two good negotiators work together creatively. The result is often a win-win deal that both parties can be proud of.

At the very minimum, I think you owe it to yourself and your family to learn negotiating techniques in order to identify them when they are being used on you.

Double Link Bonus

Scott Young gets a double link bonus today with an article called, stress and recovery. He points out that goal achievement is not just about pushing yourself beyond your limits. If you don’t make time for recovery, your body will eventually reject your efforts.

Now it’s common knowledge that our muscles work this way, but I never really thought about how our minds might also. I’ve always been the the type to push, push, push. I once had a design in my T-shirt business with the title Sleep is Overrated.

John Chow Lets me Down

As of this moment, John Chow’s Blog is number one on my reading list. I find it entertaining because he covers not only just blogging, but food, life, and whatever else is on his mind. I can’t quite put a finger on why, but I seem to find something interesting just about every time I visit.

That being said, today, he let me down. He wrote an article called TD Visa Sends me Money, in which he talked about how great his credit card was. Apparently, he recently got a refund check for over $1000. Since the card gives him 1% back, that means he charged over $100,000 over the course of last year in order to get $1000 back.

As you all know, I declared credit cards the devil in my article, Rebuttals for Ten Reasons You Think You Need a Credit Card for this exact reason. I know that I am fighting an uphill battle with this one, especially since the prevailing point of view is that the credit card companies are here to save us all (as illustrated in this article on The Digerati Life called Nine Reasons Why I Love My Credit Card).

Both John Chow and Silicon Valley Writer claim to pay off their balances in full each month and therefore claim victory over the credit card companies. While this seems to be the prevailing wisdom on how to responsibly manage your money; I’m often suspicious of prevailing wisdom.

Since, according to BankRate.com, the typical American family pays about $1,200 per year in credit card interest, I’m sure Visa has no problem giving John Chow his $1000 for all the great advertising he is doing.

The credit card companies have done such an amazing sales job, that we are absolutely in love with our cards. We have our favorite logos and colors and we feel important if we have a platinum or titanium card.

The problem for creative types is that we are often too smart for our own good. We can easily come up with elaborate rationale for using credit cards. Paying off a card each month and walking away with 1% sounds perfectly logical and, in fact, very fashionable.

Since most of us are not fortunate enough to have the resources of a dot-com mogul, the majority of us are not able to pay off the balances each month. It only takes one little slip to erase all of the gains you have painfully accrued. Why even tempt yourself?

1% is such a miniscule rate of return anyway. Do you think that TD Visa would offer it to you if they didn’t think you were going to forget to pay off your balance? Plus, we tend to spend more when we aren’t using cash and just throw it on the card. The extra money spent cancels out the return.

I always take out $200 in cash every Sunday and put in in my house. I put a little in my wallet and when it runs out, I stop spending. Its so easy! I can’t imagine how stressful it would be to constantly have to check my credit card account to make sure I was still on budget.

Here’s where they get you: You planned to pay off your balance, but you didn’t account for that emergency car repair or medical bill. Now you’re stuck.

I know, I still haven’t convinced you and I probably never will. You are part of the elite percentile that is capable of perfect self-control. Here’s another angle that you probably haven’t thought of yet:

I don’t like the idea of being in a position where I have to make the money for something I already bought, even if its for a couple of weeks. What if you need to quit your job, or worse, get fired? Having freedom in your life gives you leverage and power that credit cards don’t.

I know, I know, you keep an emergency account in case you need to quit your job. You use your credit card carefully. I’m not going to win this one, so let’s move on to something else!

Don’t Panic!

Mark McGuinness over at Wishful Thinking wrote an article a few weeks ago called Seven Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure, which I thought fit in nicely with my article Whatever You Do, Don’t Panic!.

He presents some really practical ways to get rid of worry. Everyone knows that worry doesn’t serve a purpose but to diminish our abilities. Here’s the kicker: avoiding it is the hard part!

Stick it to The Man!

Tony at Success From the Nest gives the perspective of an independent entrepreneurial type in his article, Passing the Time Cube Farm Scavenger Hunt. He presents a way to help get through the excruciating days of working for someone else on your way to owning your own business. His answer: secret games at work!

Exciting, dangerous, mischievous… I like it.

I’m out.

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Link Soup is your weekly rundown of my little corner of the blogsphere. I scour the internet and give you the skinny so all you genius types can spend more time finding the secret to world peace, having a peanut-butter-and-jelly, or whatever you do wherever it is you are.

The Goal/Moment Conundrum

Nneka over at Balanced Life Center brings to light a fascinating dilemma in her article, Goal Achievement and the Collapse of Time. This one is especially relevant for all you goal driven creative types.

This well-written article hit home for me because I can be borderline obsessive when it comes to goal planning. There are days when I spend more time in my primitive-but-effective day planner than I do working. I’ll spend all day on a spreadsheet optimizing my driving patterns for the next six months and then lock my keys in the running car.

My girlfriend (who’s a very relaxed, enthusiastic, and aware individual) always gives me a hard time. You spend so much time in the future, you forget about the now! she tells me.

She wants me to work on living in the moment. I say that sounds great, but what about all of these goals we want to accomplish? Turns out we’re a perfect match: I spend all day planning the future and forget the moment, she spends all day in the moment and forgets to plan!

Nneka talks about a guy named Eckhart Tolle who writes about two different types of time: clock time and psychological time. I love this kind of stuff because it fits right in with my thoughts on duality, this time existing in time itself.

Turns out, we need to master both kinds of time to achieve a goal. We first need to be able to put ourselves in the future to create it. Then, when the moment of action presents itself, we need to be present to make the decision to follow through.

Social Network Overload

Ryan Mapes thinks that there is something fishy about social networks. He points out that they have millions upon millions of members, a handful of employees in someone’s apartment, but no money to show for it.

What’s up with that? Are they not optimizing their traffic to the max, or are social networks just a bad business model?

Speaking of which, I have social networks coming out my ears! I can’t keep up with them all, let alone remember their passwords. If my trusty OSX didn’t remember them all for me I guess I would be stranded.

Oh yeah… let me take this opportunity to shamelessly promote my networks on MyBlogLog, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Stumble Upon.

The Internet Money Fountain

And yet another blogger finds himself making a ridiculous amount of money overnight by typing on his keyboard. I know it’s hip in the blogosphere not to do it for the money, but I’m not gonna lie, I would just about kill for that kind of cash on this blog. I’ve read lots of articles about bloggers who sing Kumbaya in lieu of checking their adsense figures, but I’m not afraid to say that I’ve checked mine three times since starting this post.

John Chow joins Steve Pavlina and Darren Rowse in an elite I make insane cash on my computer club. These guys are like financial planets. The more money they make, the easier it is for them to make more. Everyone (including me) wants to know how they did it, gets sucked in to the gravity of their blog (like I am), and throws links at them (like I just did).

Man, I’ll tell ya, the day I make enough money on Genius Types to qualify as full time income, you guys will be the first to know. I’ll take my right of passage and write an article like those guys about how much money I just made. It’ll become my top article and earn even more money. Then I’ll sit back and write articles about how I don’t even think about the money, I just do it for the love of the blog.

Miserable… but Creative!

Douglas Eby wrote a great article today called Pain and Suffering and the Artist. He poses the question do we need to suffer to be creative?.

Suffering does seem to go hand in hand with big creative talent. Just think about all the rock star suicides. Watch VH1′s Behind the Music and after awhile you can just about predict the storyline. Rock star has everything but is tortured inside, addicted, and miserable.

Is that the tradeoff? I’ve had my share of strife trying to be creative in this world, but I sure hope that it’s all leading to a good place. I think that suffering helps people to feel something in their lives that they might decide to express, but you can also feel strongly about joy.

Douglas will sort it all out for you in his article, but for now I’m getting glossy eyed surfing the net. Maybe I should take some advice from Donald Latumahina and take some time off the internet.

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