I recently watched The 11th Hour, a documentary produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio about the global environmental crisis. I've also been reading and thinking about systems, and "the ecology of mind."

The problems we are facing with global warming, peak oil, overpopulation, etc. are due to the ways we have been thinking, especially the ways we have been thinking about creating energy and making stuff. We have been thinking in abstractions and ignoring contexts.

People are starting to understand that if you make something, it's a problem if it is made with something nonrenewable (like coal) or creates "waste." In a closed system, waste is food, or else it is destructive. Economies become more productive only when they don't liquidate their "natural capital."

The ideas that there are "unlimited natural resources" and "unlimited places to store our waste "are ending as we come up against the limits and carrying capacity of our planet.

Similarly, within personal development literature there is much written about your "unlimited potential" to be, do, or have whatever you want in life. This is false. Your potential is limited, just as the Earth's supply of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels is limited.

Intense personal development workshops that promote ideas of unlimited potential can induce states of mania and psychosis. It can take days, weeks, or years to integrate the fallout from these irresponsible approaches to change.

It's time for an ecological personal development movement to emerge alongside the movement to save civilization (not the planet--the planet will survive even if human civilization does not).

We must understand that our personal development can be ecological, whole, and integrated. We do not need to have a "breakthrough"--nature will break us in it's own time anyhow. By recognizing our limitations and by understanding the limitations of the methods we use to develop ourselves we can grow and change and minimize painful side effects.

What we are learning is that limitations do not necessarily limit our thinking or limit our ability to increase our productivity personally and globally. By understanding that waste = food, by thinking in terms of contexts and systems, and by intelligently designing our solutions to problems we can continue to grow and develop in more elegant ways.

If we do not begin thinking ecologically at all levels, we may experience some very painful consequences, personally and globally. Let's promote healing that we don't have to heal from. Let's promote global solutions that increase productivity and quality of life without reducing the stability and long-term health of the planet's ecosystems. We have the knowledge and the ability to do this.

Check this out, but watch it full screen and with the music up:

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Looks like a brilliant way to get people to read your business book, from Dan Pink who used to be Al Gore's speechwriter.

Episode number one of my new podcast Precision Change went live recently. Enjoy!

Are you overwhelmed by information? Do you have 1000's of emails sitting in your inbox right now, many unread, all nagging at you to do something about them? Have you declared email bankruptcy, hoping that "if it's important, they'll write back?"

You are just minutes away from a permanent and responsible solution...and it has nothing to do with getting a Blackberry or the latest upgrade of Microsoft Outlook.

According to Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, the digital age has created both new opportunities and new problems with these things he calls "bits."

In this interview, listen to Mark teach you...

• How to "let the bits go" in a world of infinite bits, and why this is vitally important to your productivity.
  
  
• How the inbox was not designed to be a filing system and an address book and a to-do list and a calendar.
  
  
• How to get your email inbox and to-do list to zero—today and every day—even with exponentially increasing incoming messages.
  
  
• How to procrastinate more effectively by deferring things into the future as far as possible.
  
  
• Why you need a simple to-do list, and how to get it to 0 so you experience the feeling of being done.
  
  
• How mastering bits gives you time to actually do your work, and enjoy your life more when you're not working.
  
  
• Why you may have failed with David Allen's complex Getting Things Done method, and what to do instead.
  
  
• The power of bit levers, and why you are typing far more than you need to if you aren't using one.

Take responsibility for your relationship to the digital world by listening to this interview now.

From the post-modern department of Linguistic Philosophy and General Semantics, today's blog post is a commentary on a post from The Simple Dollar called "Is Success a Choice?".

In this post, Trent is writing to encourage his readers to go for their goals and to make no excuses. He is also writing in response to the criticism that he is not accounting for people in poverty or who otherwise cannot help themselves. This is his conclusion:

So, yes, I believe that for most people success is largely a choice - success can come to anyone at any time, but you steadily improve or worsen your chances with each choice you make. So go out there and start making choices to open the door a little wider - and have a little patience, too.

This softens the claim "success is a choice" to "for most people success is largely a choice." While this phrase feels better in my belly, and I find it inspirational, I have no way to evaluate this softened phrase for it's truth value because it still lacks specific content.

Who is choosing to do what instead of what else to achieve what outcome in what context?

“Success” is not a choice–it is a nominalization. So is “choice.” A nominalization is a part of speech where you take a verb like "relating" and change it to a noun like "relationship." It has the effect of making something sound pervasive and permanent that is in effect a collection of events in time.

One test of a noun to see whether it is a nominalization is to ask "can you put it in a wheelbarrow?" Test: democracy (no), bananas (yes), courage (no), success (no), choice (no), magazine (yes).

Another test is to put "an ongoing..." in front and see if it makes sense. If yes, it is a nominalization. Test: an ongoing relationship (yes), and ongoing banana (no), an ongoing choice (yes), and ongoing success (yes), an ongoing pencil (no).

The problem with nominalizations is they are not actionable. You can't do anything about "a choice," but you can choose to make a phone call. It's unclear how to get more "success," but it may be more clear how you might act if you were to successfully make a presentation at work, and what you might need to do to prepare for a successful presentation.

It's difficult to answer the question "is success a choice?" for all people in all contexts. Until we sort out the particular cases by answering the question "Who is choosing to do what instead of what else to achieve what outcome in what context?" and make generalizations based on aggregate data, we are merely spouting rhetoric.

Everyone geeky about GTD has probably already seen this video, but I just happened upon it today. Hat tip to Cody.

I'm once again opening up my life coaching practice, after a period of hibernation due to the workload involved in starting a company.

If you are looking to make a change in your life--whether changing careers, finding a perfect relationship, discovering your purpose, or increasing your productivity--and are local to Boulder, CO, I'd love to work with you! (I prefer working with clients in person when possible. I find the work to be more powerful.)

The first session is a free consultation to see if we'd be a good fit. I've just secured a beautiful space for this powerful work to take place.

Please get in touch: andrewmcduffee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Or if you know someone who'd like coaching, referrals get 10% off a session for you and 10% off a session for the person referred.

Ok, I admit it. I'm completely non-involved in American politics. I'm a bit embarrassed, honestly, but trying to give myself a little tiny education in the issues and current state of things by...*ahem*...watching YouTube videos.

Obama's video gave me goosebumps:


But then I didn't realize until about 3/4 of the way through that there isn't one bit of content in the entire video. What an excellent example of hypnosis!

This video contains exactly zero specific agendas or claims or platforms whatsoever. Just celebrities, an optimistic tone, and an upbeat pop tune in a major key. Oh, and nominalizations like "justice" and "equality"--static words devoid of any specific meaning. Is campaign finance reform "equality"? Is the war in Iraq/Afganistan/Iran "justice"? These things are left unspecified. Why? So you can fill in the blanks unconsciously and then feel like you agree with Obama, even though you know nothing about his platform at all.

This is not a critique of Barack Obama in anyway whatsoever. This is how politics (and hypnosis) works. This is merely my observation of the mass hypnosis that is political campaigning, which I find fascinating! :)

In a hypnotherapy session, the therapist might say "As you breathe out, you might imagine going to a place that is peaceful and relaxing...". This statement says nothing--on purpose--so that the therapist can fully honor the client's experience while also leading them to relax. These words make it seem like the therapist specified the location and therefore client and therapist are in agreement.

When Obama says "Yes we can heal this nation," this implies a response to someone saying "no, we cannot heal this nation," which is a fiction, but creates a "hallucination" or even a false memory of someone claiming this--especially some other political leader. It also leaves completely unspecified what "healing this nation" looks like in terms of specific political agendas, which means everyone can agree!

Wow! What fun.

If you haven't seen Flight of the Conchords, a comedy TV show about two guys from New Zealand who are in a band, then you are missing out on a hilarious meme, and some important lesson in modern marketing:


The lesson? Give your best stuff away for free...but have something else to sell too.

This video has received over 1.3 million views on YouTube. If you look at other Flight of the Conchords videos, most have received between 1-6 million views. Many, many people have sent me to watch these videos. But here's the deal: this video is an excerpt from the copy-protected episode that airs on cable television.

Many networks are shutting down "illegal" uploads of their shows to YouTube. These guys cut out the best part of their shows and uploaded them for free (or allowed them to be uploaded--I'm not sure). In my opinion, the non-singing parts of the show are pretty lame in comparison. But the point is that the popularity of this show started on YouTube, then moved to watching, renting, and purchasing the real show.

Ok, I just have to share one more video. :)

Dean Radin of the Institute of Noetic Sciences has created chocolate, blessed by monks, that has a statistically significant positive effect on mood, verified by double-blind studies. Wow!

Read more about the science here.

This makes me want to learn how to bless my own chocolate. :)

A great article was published today on LifeClever about the oft mentioned claim that mastery of something takes about 10,000 hours of practice.

From what I've seen, this is true. This means that we are unlikely to master very many things! For it would take 5 years of 5.5 hours a day of practice, or 10 years of 2.75 hours a day of practice to master something by this formula.

Great musicians practice at least this much, if not double. My friends in the conservatory of music would practice 5-10 hours a day, in addition to music theory classes and ensemble practice. The best practice more, and have natural passion and talent, and practice more intelligently too.

What one thing would you like to master? What is your life purpose and passion?

For me, I find that I want to master so many things it's hard to narrow it down. But there are ways of seeing the multiple things I am working on mastering as "one thing"--just as Ken Wilber mastered the "one thing" of integrating everything.