When a new, inspired thought comes into your mind on how to achieve something you want, what is your next thought? Is it, “Wow! That’s fantastic! I’m on it!”? Or is it something like this, with a dejected look, “That’ll never work. I’m too [ugly/short/fat/stupid/lazy/broke/tall/skinny]. That’s just not me.”

Don’t answer. I know what you’ll probably say, if you’re being truthful.

Don’t you think it’s time to get past that?

My challenge to you: when a new idea pops in, immediately write down 10 ways that you can get it done, or reasons why you can do it. Brainstorm a little. Give yourself a little credit, eh? You’re resourceful. Use your resourcefulness to come up with a bunch of reasons. Then write them down. That’s important.

Your knight in tarnished armor

There’s always going to be the little guy on your shoulder telling you all the reasons why you shouldn’t try something. That’s ok. He’s there to protect you. He just doesn’t know that while he may be protecting your ego, he’s hurting you in ways he doesn’t know. So–tell him to be quiet. Say, “Thanks for your concern, but it’s time to go back to your hole now.”

One more word of advice on the little guy: don’t hold conversations with him. Tell him to go away, then give no more attention to him, at all. Giving him attention makes him stronger. Withhold your attention, and his voice will diminish. It will get so soft and squeaky that when you hear it, you’ll laugh. You can thank him for his efforts, and put him back in the closet.

Give your attention to what you want

Back to the positive. When you’ve finished writing your list of reasons, don’t throw them away! Keep them in front of you, and add to them. Give attention to this list of why you can. Concentrate your thinking there. Write more reasons down when you think of them–and think of them you will, when your attention is on why you can.

I ran across the AGLOCO promotion some weeks ago, and didn’t really do much with it. Oh, I sent out an email or two to friends and family, but the response was…underwhelming, to say the least.

The more I look at it, though, the more viable it appears. When bloggers like John Chow and Darren Rowse climb on board, it lends a certain credibility to the business model. Even Robert Scoble has talked about it. AGLOCO has been written about in major online and offline publications, and the consensus is that if it is managed right this time, as seems to be happening, this could turn into a major deal for a lot of people.

My philosophy? It’s free, I’m not spending any money on promotion or buying names, so why not?

There will be (and is) a lot of negative remarks about the company, the business model, the colors of the website, hassle of the viewbar, etc. As far as I’m concerned, though–it’s just noise.

Check it out for yourself–it could be that some serious income will be made from this. I think it’s worth a few minutes of time to sign up and see what happens.

If you do decide to sign up, please use my affiliate number if you haven’t clicked on one of the above links: BBBB0699

One of the things that’s always bothered me about reading PDFs online is that they always seem to be formatted for 8-1/2 x 11 paper, in portrait mode (up and down). By the time I increase the document magnification enough to comfortably read it, I can’t fit the whole page on the monitor. So I have to scroll, and I lose all sense of where I am on the page.

So I’m conducting an experiment. I’m redesigning Napoleon Hill’s classic, Think and Grow Rich, to be more readable onscreen, and enhancing it in areas with pullquotes of passages I find important. This book is in the public domain, and you can find it all over the Internet, but not in any easily readable format.

It is designed to be read in full-screen mode, but can also be easily read with the window at less than full-screen size. In the Adobe Acrobat Reader, ctrl-L (on PCs) or cmd-L (for Macs) toggles between full-screen modes. In full-screen, click anywhere on the page to advance, shift-click to go to the previous page. There are also icons at the bottom to change pages. In the final edition, I will include other functionality such as printing without background colors, bookmarks, highlighting, and possibly indexing.
What I am asking of whoever comes across this post is that you download Chapter 1, evaluate it, and share your thoughts with me. Download the file by right-clicking and choosing “Save As” or “Save Target As” in order to save it to your machine instead of reading inside your browser window.

A few things that you might consider:

• Are the colors and overall ‘feel’ good for screen reading?
• Is the type size and style easily readable?
• Do the pullquotes add to or detract from the overall reading experience?
• What do you think might improve the reading experience?
• Would it irritate you if I forced full-screen mode upon initial opening?
• And finally, if I decide to put the complete book out for public consumption, would you pay a small amount for the complete book (say, in the $5 - $10 neighborhood)?

Thanks in advance to all who take the time to look at this!