Intuition, connection, and holistic productivity. Add fluency with your website to the mix, and you're poised for greatness... all based on an integrated understanding of how you do your best work.

Vanlal.

Long time, no write, eh? The Monk has been busy!

In fact, that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. No, not the “busy” part, the “Monk” part.

You see, I got out of spiritual healing work for a number of reasons, one of the biggies being that I didn’t like the feeling of charging for spiritually specific work (intuitive work, healing work, business work… sure. No problem. But teaching it? Just didn’t feel right.).

But even though I transitioned to full-time web design, I was still running everything out of MonkAtWork.com, and that just kinda bugged me. I would’ve preferred to have a different home for the web work, and leave the spiritual stuff here.

At the same time, as I worked with a number of clients, I began to realize a few things about the way my clients and I were approaching the design process, including what made a big difference in people’s success levels with their new sites (and, of course, what didn’t). I wanted to rectify those pitfalls, make it better/cheaper/faster/easier for folks, and do it in a way that really played to my strengths, and the strengths of WordPress (my platform of choice).

Long story short: I have a new home for my “web design” services, and it’s going to blow your doors off. Enter: Bright Coconut.

What’s the big diff?

Well, I’m great with WordPress, great with teaching WordPress and webstuff to people (hence, WebFit), but compared to some of the geniuses out there, I’m no graphics pro (that’s what happens when you major in Literature instead of Design…). And I believe that if you’re doing a bunch of custom design work, you should be a designer.

As much as I know solid design, I don’t do design in that create-unique-artwork-from-scratch way… and I didn’t want to let my lack of graphics cred keep my clients—who’ve appreciated my educational/teaching background—from having beautiful sites. I mean, I’m a form-follows-function guy when it comes down to it, but if you don’t have to choose, why should you?

So, at Bright Coconut, I’m thinking of myself more as a “web educator” than a “web designer”, if you get my drift. When you see what I’ve got going on over there, you’ll see what I mean.

The evolution of WebFit

WebFit has been received really well, and still, there were elements about it I knew I wanted to shift. I wanted to make room for different people’s learning speeds, and not have to make people wait months for the next round of classes to begin.

I did a LOT of brainstorming, a LOT of strategic planning, and a LOT of looking at all of this from multiple angles (yes, three planets in Virgo and a double Grand Trine in Air come in handy from time to time), and came up with what I think is going to be a slam dunk. I ran the idea past a few folks, and they all loved it, too.

In a nutshell, I’ve made WebFit into a video-tutorial-based course, along with personal support and exclusive resources, and I even did something unheard of in business these days: I made it less expensive, and gave you more. True!

So, when you check out Bright Coconut, be sure to check out The Solution as well, and you’ll see how WebFit has evolved.

Where does that leave the Monk?

The Monk, and all of his posts and comments and such, will remain here. I honestly can’t say how much I’ll be posting here, since a focus on personal development is honestly no longer much a part of my life.

I still use my tools, and I still believe in the value of living “monkishly”, especially when it comes to one’s work life… and yet it’s much like when people get really interested in a new hobby: they devour every book, turn over every rock they can, looking for more juicy stuff… because that’s what they’re into. It’s their thing.

And yet, if they truly grow, there comes a point where their passion mellows. It’s not as all-consuming anymore, because the new hobby isn’t new anymore; it has integrated itself into their lives.

True, some passions never fade, and they become (a)vocations. PD was mine for a good 15 years or more. But, it’s not anymore, and I want to be fully up-front about that. I’ll still leave these posts here, though, since I still get notes from time-to-time from people who stumble upon them and get value from them. Just don’t expect much new stuff unless I get inspired, ‘kay?

Where does that leave you?

Feel free to take advantage of the posts I have here; there’s some good stuff you can benefit from, if I say so myself.

And if you need a website, or want to get “WebFit” and learn all about how to master your own WordPress-based site, then come join me at Bright Coconut! (And if you’re a Twitter nut, I’ve got both my personal twitter account and a Bright-Coconut-specific twitter account as well.)

lonushi

When it comes to making change in your life, your health, or the health of your business, the #1 item on every “Law of Attraction”-based, personal growth-oriented list is always gratitude.

Why? Because, the logic goes, when you are feeling grateful for something, you’re in a state of appreciation and happiness, which begets a greater state of happiness. The more you get accustomed to feeling good about what you have, the more you get to feel good about, and the more good you feel about what you have, and so on… it’s an ever-growing spiral.

But what if gratitude brings you down?

I have to admit, I used to resist gratitude in a huge way. Not because I have anything against showing appreciation, but because whenever I’d do a practice involving gratitude, I ended up feeling small and unhappy, which is the opposite of what it was supposed to do for me.

Not cool, I thought. Not cool.

Continue reading…

Rickydavid

Focus is perhaps one of the most crucial qualities to develop when it comes to bringing your best to work. When you’re focused, you can get incredible amounts of work done in short periods of time. Focus makes staying on task easy. And there’s one question in particular you can ask yourself that’s supposed to inspire herculean amounts of focus.

Now, you’ve no doubt seen this question circulating amongst the well-intentioned, self-help best-seller bookshelves’ residents for years. It’s pulled out time and again as the ultimate refiner of focus, the samurai sword of the cut-through-the-fluff-ers’ arsenal, the go-to tool of the productivity heroes’ utility belts. Ready?

If you only had six months to live, what would you do right now?

Ta da! Answer that question, and all your troubles will be solved, right?

Well…
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Malingering

As I was bouncing around on Twitter the other day, I saw someone ask the question, “What do you do for your mind, body, and spirit?” It’s easy, of course, to answer that question with three answers. “Oh, I’m cleaning up my diet, I exercise a few days a week, and I meditate.” Nothing wrong with an answer like that… it means you’re looking after yourself.

But being the between-the-lines kinda guy that I am, I wanted to answer the question not with three answers, but with one. And so naturally, my answer was “CrossFit.”

Now, I never would have answered that question with any other fitness/exercise/sport that I’ve done (except maybe Nomadics), and I’ve done tons: intercollegiate rowing, yoga (bikram’s, ashtanga, hatha), triathlons, tai chi, full-contact martial arts, bodybuilding, you name it. Why?
Continue reading…

cayusa

As you can see, things have changed a bit around here. You could call it a redesign, but I think of it more as a realign.

So, what’s new?

On the design front:

• A sidebar—of sorts—is back, making it easier to find related content. This will expand over time, I’m sure, but for now, the “meta data” of each post are there, allowing you more access to more information more easily. The addition of the sidebar also reduces the width of the general content area, making for improved readability.
• The big pre-footer area has more info. This, too, will grow with time… but for now, there are more ways to connect with me, including Facebook links and a Twitter feed.
• A shift in typography. What can I say? I’m a mac guy, through and through. I think in Lucida Grande. And for my non-mac-using brothers and sisters, you should find yourself looking at either Calibri, Lucida Sans Unicode, or Helvetica. Call it a style thing, but I like it much better this way. And since it’s my little slice of the web, I can do what I want, right?
• Improved navigation. In addition to the new nav links at the top, astute observers will also notice breadcrumb links as well. I’ve also cleaned up the archive and search pages, too, in case you use those.

And, on the content front:

• A new workshop, called “WebFit.” I’ll have a dedicated post about this soon, since I’m so excited about it, but for now, you can always check out the workshop page itself. Website fluency, with a CrossFit twist.
• The blog is front and center again. Since m@w 2.0 came along, I’ve had a static page as the home page, and the blog was relegated to a sub-page. I’ve moved the blog back to the home page, though, since what it’s really all about is you getting what you need easily. (I got tired of typing “/blog/”, anyhow.)

And there’s more cool stuff coming soon, too.

There’s a big project on the way, too, that I think will be very exciting. It’s just not quite ready to come out of the oven, yet… but it will be soon. (I have a tendency to underbake stuff, in business as well as in the kitchen, and it’s a tendency I’ve been working hard to correct.)

And although I could write and write about this—and knowing me, I most likely will—the big shift in Monk at Work 2.1 isn’t about the site’s design, or about the workshop at all. It’s about the re-realization that the inner side of how we work sets the stage for everything else. And even though my spiritual beliefs have, and probably always will, be in a state of evolution, that’s probably true for us all. And how without that conversation happening, m@w is just another web design site, or just another productivity/organizational/whatever site, and that’s, well, boring.

So, are you going to see more about web design and WordPress from me? You sure are. Am I going to keep writing about spirit, intuition, and matters of mind and heart? Absolutely. CrossFit? Yep… especially as it pertains to my unfolding journey of the well-being and development of mind, body, and spirit.

Because when it comes down to it, my journey has always been one of making the most of what’s inside me so I can make the most outside me as well. And as I see it, that’s where my place is, and where we can have the juiciest conversations.

So, as always, to be continued.

Okay, so this isn’t “standard” Monk at Work content, but I suppose I could tie it in with the whole intuition-Jedi-thing, and my love of movies… ah, forget it. Just watch this, it’s hilarious:

(and thanks to @trib of Acid Labs for the heads up…)

Recently on Smashing Magazine, there was a fantastic article by Jean-Baptiste Jung of Cats Who Code, called 10 Killer WordPress Hacks. Now, many times when you see a title like that, you probably do the same thing I do: yawn. Because you know as well as I do that out of those 10, only two or three are probably going to be any good.

Au contraire this time, my friends. Jean-Baptiste rocked the house with this one. I was already using one of his tricks, I immediately put three of them into practice while reading the article, and two more are on my to-do list (you’ll see them in effect very soon, when Monk at Work goes to 2.1…). It only took me about ten minutes, tops.

But I’m a code-happy web monk.

I realize that what I can do in three minutes might take you thirty, at least, just because you’re doing other things during your day besides coding, and I, on the other hand, do a lot of it.

So, because Twitter and blogging are getting to be so much more widespread these days, I thought I’d break down “Tip #5: Create a ‘Send to Twitter’ Button” for you, in case you’ve got a more complicated installation than just adding a link. If your theme uses images along with your links, as one of my client’s sites does, then just adding the code is going to break your visual layout, and make you look like a hack.

We can’t let that happen now, can we?
Continue reading…