Chopping wood, carrying water, and practicing meditation and kung fu by sunlight in the day, memorizing CSS standards by monitor-glow at night, the young monk studies design, color, and usability statistics for years, honing his skills with weapons and Wordpress both, all in service to the greater good.

What greater good? The good of his future patrons, who would one day be spared the humiliation of dealing with elitist web designers, only interested in padding their own portfolios, and rendering massive, Flash-laden, user- and owner-unfriendly websites that become the bane of the web.

The young monk’s mission: to provide clean, beautiful, engaging websites that are as enjoyable to own and maintain as they are to browse.

Monk at Work Webdesign is Born

For those of you who have enjoyed the Monk at Work articles and posts in the past, have no fear — they are still here.

Monk at Work is going through an extensive redesign right now… to rise from the ashes of its former self very soon. Stay tuned. And, thank you for your patience (it’s a virtue, after all).

What is now known is that the Monk has left his remote cave in the mountains in favor of a high-speed connection, and is currently creating websites for patrons who wish to experience the bliss that comes from having a business-savvy, hand-crafted website.

To find out more about how you can work with the Monk, you can contact me here.

Image by babasteve on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

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Ah, the sakura (cherry) blossoms… so beautiful, so fragile, so… fleeting.

Okay, I’ve left you faithful readers in suspense for long enough. Time to spill the beans.

If you’ve been reading Monk at Work for any length of time, you know I’ve been going through a soul-search for the past few months, evaluating my direction, my values, my passions, etc. And the long and short of it is that Monk at Work is over.

I know, I know…

I know that many of you love the Monk. And some of you have just subscribed. But as Seth Godin says,

Ignore people like me who scream and yell about how much they love it and how much potential there is. If you’re not improving, if the yield is negative… kill it.

To tell you the truth, I dig the Monk at Work message. I think it’s relevant and useful and needed by more people than I can ever reach. At the same time, I have passions and interests that fall far outside the scope of what Monk at Work can deliver, and as anyone who knows me knows, I’m not good at living with any kind of split. I’m an all-or-nothing guy, to the core.

And the truth of it is, Monk at Work hasn’t been solvent, plain and simple. I’ve been studying, though; asking, learning, watching, and growing, and my hope is that my new direction (which will encompass Monk at Work’s message, and more), will become something that provides much more value to you, and allows me to serve in much greater ways.

So here’s where we go from here:

While Monk at Work is over, the spirit will live on. I’ve created a new venue for my voice, one that I believe has the room to grow with my evolving nature. I’ll continue to talk about matters of the spirit and how they apply to work and life. I’ll also continue to develop and evolve my ideas around intuition, healing, and productivity (in fact, I’ve started a series there that will help you with managing all the bits and bytes of your life, called "Surfing the Digital Tidal Wave"), and all the things that made Monk at Work special.

And, at the same time, I’ll also speak about other subjects that fascinate, thrill, educate, and enlighten, all for the purpose of living the most exceptional, "literate" life possible. In fact, the new site is called, "Viverati"; meant to call forth the idea of "literacy in that which is vital in life."

So if you like what you’ve been getting from me as "the Monk", you’re going to love what you’ll get from me "uncensored."

If you’re a Monk at Work subscriber…

If you subscribe to the weekly newsletter, you don’t have to do a thing: you’ll continue to get weekly updates about new articles, as always (and even more consistently).

If you subscribe via RSS (via a reader or email), it’s simple: click here. For the next 30 days, the m@w feed will be transferred to Viverati, and after that, it’ll disappear. The last thing I want to do is lose anyone, so please click the new feed address to sign up there.

Bigger, better, and brighter

That’s the idea with Viverati. It’s what made Monk at Work special, and then some. It’s the flowering evolution of my own personal sakura, and I hope that, as I do, you will find more joy, expansiveness, and value there as it grows.

Above all, I hope you become a part of it; a part of the community of people who want to live life to its fullest, and realize that many times, you have to shed the status quo to get there.

Thank you all, and I’ll see you at Viverati!

Image by Noël Zia Lee on Flickr, via Creative Commons License.

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• Did I fall off the face of the planet?
• Did I create the Inner Peace Audio, strike it rich, and take una vacanza? I wish.
• Have I been working hard behind the scenes, hardly taking time to breathe, much less post? Bingo!

If you take a gander through recent posts, you’ll see that I’ve been talking about what makes you happy, delving into tough inner questions, and Intention Chickens.

If you were to read between the lines a little… you may start to think that a change is afoot. You know what? You’d be right.

It’s still a bit too early to let the cat out of the bag (how do all those cats wind up in bags, anyhow?), but suffice it to say that when its time to spill the beans (next week, most likely), I’ll be doing it right here, first.

Nothing like a little anticipation, huh?

Image by surekat on Flickr via Creative Commons license.

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One of those was in "bone setting", which is where I learned some very handy tricks, including how to set my (and other people’s) joints that have gotten out of whack (ankles, shoulders, wrists, fingers, etc.). Very handy to know in a pinch. Another was meditation.

Here (unlike bone setting), the instruction wasn’t all that detailed. Basically, I was told to sit, focus on a certain point in my body, and breathe. And, as best I could, empty myself of thought.

But, as anyone knows who has tried to meditate, it’s much easier said than done. I futzed through a few months of trying, but gave up not long afterward. Not surprisingly, most people I talk to about meditation have found themselves in the same boat.

Fast-forwarding a couple years, I got involved in energy healing and spiritual development, and in the school I went to, we meditated together every morning for about 45 minutes. Some were silent, and in others, we were guided through a process. And all of it was fantastic.

Having my teacher up in front of us all made it so easy to connect, to quieten, and to relax into the process.

But then, I went back home…

And again, I floundered.

Whenever we were at school, meditating became simple. On my own, though, it was a supreme challenge to stay with it for more than ten minutes.

Luckily for me, I wasn’t the only student in this situation, and we asked our teacher if we could record him leading us through a meditation session, so we could listen at home. He agreed, and the resulting tape became a well-worn favorite of mine for years. It helped me get and stay focused when I was on my own, and it made a world of difference in the depth of my meditation, and in the progress I made in developing my self-awareness.

Since that time, I’ve seen a number of "meditation aids" out there, and sampled a few myself. Once you get used to a particular audio recording, it can be a huge boon to your individual practice.

The moral of the story, of course, is to seek help when you need it. Also easier said than done at times, I realize, but consider the alternative.

Question for you: When have you tried something and floundered, and then found help from an unexpected hack? Leave a comment and share it with us.

(for those of you not-so-internet-lingo-savvy folks, a "hack" is a way of doing something that’s not typically known, or thought of, but saves your bacon big time once you’re shown what it is.)

Brand Spanking New:

I’ve just completed a set of helpful audio resources myself — but not just meditation-centered. Because there are times when meditation doesn’t float your boat, or scratch your itch; sometimes, your soul is needing a different kind of soothing. For example, you might be needing:

• a deeper sense of connection, of spiritual intimacy, of nurturing
• to clear an issue that has come up and is keeping you from feeling peaceful
• clarity about a decision you need to make, but can’t decide which path to take
• awareness about the kinds of signals you’re sending "under the radar" — but are dramatically affecting your life, your work, etc.
• to stop procrastinating and get back to productive work
• to relax, unwind, and let go of stress at the end of the day

Rather than turn to outside help, or pay for a healing/therapy session, you may want a solution that allows you to get through it on your own (and, for a lot cheaper, I might add).

Enter: Inner Peace Audio!

Inner Peace Audio is a set of seven recordings that can help you in a variety of situations… for more details about what’s included in Inner Peace Audio, click here to be taken to the just-unveiled website.

UPDATE: I’ve added (by popular request) an affiliate program to Inner Peace Audio, so if that’s your cup of tea, you’re on. The link to sign up is at the bottom of any page of the site. 

[audio:Getting%20Help%20Where%20You%20Need%20It _ Meditation.mp3]

Want a podcast of this? Press play, or click here to download.

Image by 顔なし on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

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So, I’ve accepted Alex’s proposition, and here are my answers.

1. How do you define happiness?

I’d say happiness is a feeling of elation, of positivity… the feeling you get when you’re seeing the world as a benevolent place, and that things are going your way.

2. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your happiness now, versus when you were a child?

Oh, an 8 at least… I had some rough spots as a kid, from being overweight, and from not having the tools to cope with what was going on in my family. Having tools is such a huge part of the equation; we all hit rough patches in life, but if you don’t know what to do with them, or how to get through them, it’s easy to feel that life has you in a hole.

With what I’ve learned over the past decade-plus, about how to heal myself, clear issues, make decisions, live intuitively, etc., I feel like I’m a completely different person than I was (and to all the girlfriends I had before the age of 25 - sorry!).

3. What do you do on a daily basis that brings you happiness? (and how consistent is the feeling of happiness throughout your day)

I think it’s less about the things, and more about how we go about the things. For example, what brings me happiness is knowing that I’m championing my own destiny, not sitting back and waiting for life to happen to me.

From that place, all the things like spending time with my two girls, my wife, exercising, learning, talking with people… all of these things bring me a much deeper sense of joy. And yes, it’s pretty consistent throughout the day.

4. What things take away from your happiness? What can be done to lessen their impact or remove them from your life?

Falling into negative thought patterns is the biggie. When I start spiraling down a negative, pessimistic path, it’s just a world of hurt that I’m swimming in.

What works best for me is to put on the brakes, and reconnect to my heart, and my connection to (insert name for Divine Oneness here). Then, using various tools like EFT, for example, to clear the beliefs that I’m stuck in… that does the trick pretty well.

Surrounding myself with positive inspirations is also a great thing; I try to pay attention to thought leaders in fields like the Law of Attraction, for example, and see if I can get into their mental slipstream.

5. What do you plan on doing in the future that will bring you even more happiness?

You mean, aside from world domination?

To run the risk of sounding like a groupie, I’m in the process of re-ordering my life around the kinds of principles that Tim Ferriss writes about in "Four Hour Workweek." Mainly, examining the assumptions I’ve made about how life is to be lived, and choosing to live the kind of life that inspires me. And that includes everything from income-generation to spiritual growth to family and social time.

I’m rethinking just about every assumption that has been handed to me (and the ones that popular people keep on espousing), to see what really makes sense for me in my life. It’s the pursuit of happiness on every level, really.

Thanks Alex! Good luck with the project!

And here’s that TED video of Dan Gilbert’s - he’s a fantastic and entertaining speaker. This is one of my favorites of all the TED presentations I’ve seen (and I watch a lot of them!). And in case the video doesn’t load, you can click here to see it on the TED site.

Image by a4gpa on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

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If you want to try it yourself, you can get it here (and please vote for me, too, while you’re there – what a blast it would be to win!).

Update: I won! The Spongefish team made my pancakes at their cocktail party, and my recipe got judged as the winner. How cool is that? Thanks to everyone that went to see my recipe and voted on it… I got over five times as many views as any other recipe, and I had to think you all were a part of that. Thanks again!

Image by digiyesica on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

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Ever have a time in your life that looked something like this?

Back in college, Trina got so busy with her academic schedule, she found that she wasn’t reading the notes she scribbled furiously in lecture. And when she did, she realized she just needed a quick point or two, and all the material would come back to her. So, instead of writing sentence after sentence of notes, she started drawing pictures and diagrams that represented the core ideas of the lecture. Then, two years later, she saw a book on MindMapping — and it was exactly what she’d figured out on her own so long before.

Doesn’t it just rock your world when it hits you that there are entire movements out there, based on things that you’ve just been doing naturally, and you’ve been completely oblivious to it?

Well, according to Seth Godin (and I agree with him), "three things are true":

1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity.
2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals.
3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money.

Does this mean people are lame? Of course not; as Holly Buchanan of GrokDotCom says, it’s a matter of priority. Some people would rather focus on other aspects of their work, rather than spend time debugging the processes involved in how they do it.

Well, sometimes.

Sometimes it’s a matter of custom (as in, Joe isn’t accustomed to doing the dishes by hand), and, sometimes it’s a matter of fear.

People are afraid of their computers?

Not really (well, not most of the time…). They are afraid, though, of what they think might happen if they mess them up.

When I was a teenager, my mom always had me to set the clocks on the VCR and in our cars. She never asked me to change the analog clock on the wall, though… because she had no fear of messing up the analog clock. Turn the dial too far? Just turn it back. But because she didn’t grow up with digital, she didn’t know what she’d do if those little buttons acted up and got out of line (to this day, I bet their clocks are off six months out of the year…).

Now, my mom is brilliant. She’s an accomplished artist, a college grad, a stunning soprano, can turn out a perfect pie crust without thinking twice, and grasps what people aren’t saying quicker than they do. But for whatever reason, the advent of digital technology threw her for a loop.

Flaw?

Hardly. Natural human response to the unknown? Totally.

I, on the other hand, grew up with computers and technology. I started tweaking electronic stuff before the idea of ever being afraid of it entered my mind. And, thanks to my Virgo nature, making rational sense of all those 0’s and 1’s just came naturally.
I’ve been intuiting solutions for organizing digital assets (because really, that’s what all these bits become) for years, long before Seth gave it a name.

Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 an hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place.

Well, he’s finding them now… and we are finding ourselves.

I continually have patrons—people who come to me for healing, for intuitive needs, for my Inspired Productivity workshop, for all the Monkish stuff I do—who say,

• how is it you are able to keep your desktop (both my actual desk and my computer desktop) totally clear?
• how do you manage to keep your email inbox at zero?
• how do you organize your stuff so you can find what you already have?
• how do you handle the flood of it all?

Until now, I’ve mumbled a response like, "I dunno… it just comes naturally to me…". But now, I can confidently say, "It’s what I do."

Does this sound like something you need help with?

My long-time compadre Dawud Miracle has been urging me to "plant my flag" so to speak, and let people know how I can help them. So, here it is: If you feel stymied by your systems (or lack of them!), or know that if you just had a better way of doing things "digital", you’d jump on them like white on rice… then I’m your man.

I can fill Seth’s bill.

I can listen to what you do and how you do it (I’m an intuitive healer, y’know?), and I can show you how to do it better (and even though I grew up on Macs, I’ve owned PC’s, too; and most of the things you’ll probably need aren’t "platform-dependent", anyhow… systems are systems no matter what kind of box, desk, or environment you’re running them in).

If you’re looking for…

A freelancer (individual) who usually works with entrepreneurs, small groups or companies to teach them how to dramatically improve productivity or market presence using technology.
For example, a digital coach might hook up your cell phone to be more powerful or teach you how to use blogs and Facebook to connect to your audience.

… then put my three-planets-in-Virgo to work, and let me help you get more productive and peaceful while you do it.

Want a podcast of this? Click here.

Image by benjieordonez on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

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The good news is, the question in question is resolving nicely. I shouldn’t be surprised, of course, because I’ve been around long enough to see that the Universe/Divine/Orchestrating-force-of-creation (or whatever you want to call it) has a way of sending the solutions along with the challenges, and is always more than responsive to our requests.

Not our spoken requests, of course…

… but our unspoken requests always seem to be received loud and clear, don’t they?

As the New Year approached, I made a deeply conscious decision/intention/request to face whatever I needed to face, in order to become the person I truly am. (get this: I even specifically requested to come face-to-face with whatever I need to in order to achieve my goals, to challenge assumptions and let go of conventions in the name of growth and success… talk about asking for it, eh?)

Have you noticed your Intention Chickens coming home to roost?

What I mean is, the past month, with the advent of the New Year and all the resolutions for change that we optimists tend to make, sets the stage for some big change, assuming we’re committed to changing and taking steps to make things different. I’m positive that many of the whirlwinds I’ve been experiencing lately have been due to those intentions, those “Yes, hit me with your best shot!” prayers that I put out to make big changes in my work and my life.

So, my question is, how’s it going for you? Are you seeing the return of your decisions and intentions, either as change-inducing turmoil, as jackpot payoffs, or both? If you pull your perspective back a bit, and look from a higher vantage point on your life, are you seeing the results of your intentions coming back around to you?

Image by Mr. Happy on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

Special Offer:

I realized yesterday that I broke with tradition this New Year’s a bit—although unintentionally—and I’d like to rectify that.

Every New Year (or at least somewhere in the holiday season) I like to offer a special deal for my readers; a chance for a few people to work closely with me to make their intentions and resolutions come to light.

One of my favorites from times past (and a fav of those who regularly take me up on my special offers) was called the “7654321″, and it gives you a blend of individual sessions and group work, with a specific focus, a good sense of humor, and a huge savings. This year’s 7654321 has a theme of “intuition”…

To see what “7654321″ stands for, and to see what’s included in the 7654321, click here for details.

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Today, however, you’ll get none of that (or, very little). Instead, today is about questions. My questions.

Because yes, I still have them. I have questions all the time, about how to do things, what to say, what to create… I have way more questions than I’ll ever have time to find solutions to, no matter how intuitive I am.

Bulldozer Questions.

Some questions are small, some are large. And some, like the one I’m dealing with right now, is huge. Gorilla-huge. Boulder-huge. Construction-equipment-huge. And as much as I don’t want to admit this to the question… I don’t have an answer for it.

But here’s the rub: When I get a question stuck in my mind that I can’t answer, it sits front and center in my consciousness, like a splinter under a toenail, unable to be ignored.

It’s rough; I can’t focus on any other work when a question sits in my mind like this. It’s like an insistent three-year-old, who just can’t understand, "not right now; can you see that Daddy’s trying to focus?" The question just keeps saying, "look, man… look at me. Look. Now. Hey, I’m talking to you. Pay attention to me. Hey. Look. Look at me, man, because I’m not going away until you do."

And so I look. And I listen. And I ask it what it wants, what the real question is. But the problem is, even when I hear the question, I have no answer for it. It’s not a question that can be answered right now, at least not with a meaningful answer.

But it doesn’t like that.

No answer is not an answer.

And so it waits, with all the patience of that three-year-old. Look. Look. Look. Look at me.

(How can I not look at you, you mean? How can I deny you, the spike in my forehead, the salt-and-lemon-juice-cocktail in the wound of my uncertainty?)

All normal thoughts of productivity go out the window in times like these. I’m forced to attempt patience, to pull all the stops out of my repertoire of self-healing techniques, and deny all my self-protective impulses that tell me to ignore it, cover it over, distract myself, and maybe, just maybe, it’ll go away on its own.

(Heck, why do you think I’m writing this — for glory? Goodness, no; hoping that writing would provide catharsis was my latest, best idea to bleed the pressure out of my mind, after a day spent tapping, talking, praying, pacing around my office, and soul-searching to the best of my ability…)

My last question — and this one’s for you:

What do you do in times like these? When you’re faced with a question, a decision, even one that isn’t formed enough that it has words yet, but you just know you have to change something… what do you do?

UPDATE: I just had to add this… my muse-of-writing, the Communicatrix, recently posted about her own travels into what I call "The Pit" — she calls it "The Black Hole." And her post also mentioned another by An Amateur’s Manifesto… both are outstanding. Highly recommended.  

Want a podcast of this? Click here.

Image by scottfeldstein on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous posts so far: Matthew, Tom Volkar, Dylan

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Well, David has done it again. Pure brilliance.

How do you manage all the ways you could be spending your interacting-with-others-online time? You know; social media, email, blogging, posting photos of your family online, all that digital jazz. You’ve probably got lots of “channels” for interacting with the world, and if you’re like most people I’ve been in touch with lately (and tons of others), there are some channels that you subscribe to wholeheartedly, and others that may have once been important, but now are fading away.

Enter: The Social System.

Doesn’t that just make perfect sense? On his post about it, DA explains the whole thing, but I think the picture does a pretty good job on its own.

As I’ve spent more time in social media circles, and tried balancing the time that sites like Facebook require with all the other responsibilities of life, work, etc., I’m coming to see that I want a lot fewer planets in my social system than before.

Now, the time may (will) come when I need to expand this; there are strategies that require more of a presence on some planets than others, and there are some planets I’ve yet to set foot on that I know will move very close to the middle of my system, when the time is right.

My social system could go from “Me -> blog -> mastermind -> email -> Facebook -> LinkedIn” to, “Me -> blog -> StumbleUpon -> email -> mastermind -> YouTube -> VideoSticky -> Facebook”, or something like that, all depending on what’s necessary and important to my strategy.

In the meantime, though, it sure is liberating to realize that I don’t need as much interplanetary travel as I once thought… after all, it can be tiring to spend so much time on (and traveling to) all those distant planets! And that’s why I got lit up about this topic enough to write a post about it: finding the balance—in every aspect of our lives—is living “monkishly” (hey, it’s my site; I can invent a word if I like, right?). Because are we going to make the kind of impact/live the life we want if we’re spread too thin, or exhausted from doing so?

Now, two steps for you:

1) What’s your social system look like?

Don’t worry about creating a graphic (although don’t let me stop you from it, either); if it’s easier, just use the “one -> two -> three” diagram, and plot out your social system. Share it in the comments, too.

How’s it look? Is it serving you? Is it giving you enough contact with others, or too much? Or, not enough of the right kind? Make adjustments as needed; after all, you’re the creator of this universe, so make it right for you.

2) Apply the analogy elsewhere.

Where else could this kind of system-thinking help you in your life? Work projects? Family responsibilities? Home maintenance? Personal development “practices” (meditating, praying, reading/learning, service, healing)? Fitness/health?

For example, you could come up with all kinds of systems for keeping you on top of your goals, in the right proportions:

• eating healthy -> exercise 4x/week -> supplements -> bodywork
• do the dishes -> laundry -> sweep/vacuum -> mow the lawn -> clean out the gutters
• play with my kids -> read to them -> build stuff together -> take mini-vacations
• write articles -> networking -> work with clients -> write book -> joint ventures

Sky’s the limit. So, what’s in your universe(s)?

Want a podcast of this? Click here.

Image by pingnews.com on Flickr, via Creative Commons license.

And thanks to all those who commented on the previous posts so far: Karl Staib, Tshombe, Judy Murdoch, Nathan Ketsdever, MichelleVan

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