18 Months in, a First 5 Recommendations List

A Dream Inspired

Back in early 2014, hearing James Altucher speak and listening to his podcast started me on a journey of getting serious about pursuing the "someday" goals that had always been in my mind but had never really come to much more than daydreams in the past.

From the podcast I began making notes when I would hear authors interviewed whose books on lifestyle creation and breaking out of the conventional rat race resonated with me. I've mentioned previously in the blog that the very first one of these was The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. The book is absolutely inspiring in terms of thinking about possibilities for how you could live your life differently and examples pulled from the author and from many others who have successfully said, "No, thanks!" to tradition and have pursued life a little differently.

A Gap Defined

The one thing that became utterly apparent from the start with Ferriss's book is that the author is a super A-type personality. He is hard-wired to achieve and investigate and experiment and life hack to find the unconventional. But as of 18 months ago, that is a skill I had not yet acquired. A lot of the ideas that the author presents in the book are incredibly seductive, but the rule-constrained, order-following, permission-seeking side that dominates my personality was highly resistant to doing more than dreaming about how I could somehow bring those things to pass in my life.

The one thing that did stick with me from The 4-Hour Workweek is opening my eyes to the possibility that there is something better, different, new, and achievable if I will but reach out and grasp it. It made me hungry to find the pathway to get there from where I was, but I was going to need a few more breadcrumbs to find my way to that trail. So I kept listening to James and I kept making notes and I kept adding books to my collection--and consuming them! The books do no good collecting dust, so I would immediately start on them as soon as I purchased them. In addition to the Tim Ferriss title, I soon had books by James Altucher, Ramit Sethi, Charles D. Ellis and Burton G. Malkiel, Joel Greenblatt, Howard Marks, Matthew Capala, Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, Brian Tracy, Chris Gillebeau, and David Bach.

A Library in Construction

My collection grew slowly at first, because I was using my two credits per month from Audible to buy a book from the Altucher podcasts and a book from my Sci-Fi and Fantasy book club as well. yes--I was buying these titles all as audio books. The reason is simple: I've kept myself incredibly busy for the past few years, and the main time I have for myself is my lunch hour, when I have been in the habit (since I started with my present employer in 2005) of taking a 3.5-mile walk around the perimeter of our office park. I found The Sword and Laser online book club not long after it was launched, and I began using Audible credits to download the audio books of the monthly selections and then listening to them during my lunchtime walk each day.

So for the first nine months or so of 2014, I was alternating a book I heard on Altucher's podcast and a book from my book club. All the titles were fascinating and inspiring, but almost all of them seemed to want to speak to an audience of already A-type readers that had already been trying to find the right life hack and simply needed guidance on a system.

But several of them actually gave me something I could use right away, and I did gain something from them. I'll tell you which ones they were in a moment, but it wasn't until July of 2015 that I stumbled onto two books that I think lay the foundation and are helping to point me in a direction to make all the wisdom from the other books that much more effective. After thinking about which books had the most immediate impact, and which ones build upon the principles taught in others, I've put together a personal "first five" list of book I would recommend. These are the ones that have helped me the most, in the order that I think their messages would be the most useful. This order may work for others also; all I can do is share what has seemed to work well for me.

My Personal First Five Recommendations

Book One: The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod



Earlier this month when I heard James Altucher interview Hal Elrod about his book, The Miracle Morning. During the interview, Hal mentioned a quote by the late Jim Rohn that he said had struck him powerfully, and it was like a thunderbolt to me when I heard it. Rohn once said, "Your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development." It sounds a lot like things we've all heard said a thousand times before by everyone from parents, counselors, motivational authors and speakers, and even spiritual texts. But that quote immediately resonated as something I needed to hear, and even as I continued listening to the interview, I immediately went to Audible's order page and used a credit to get Hal Elrod's book. It was around 10:00 am, and I decided I would start listening to it during my lunch break that very day.

Indeed, Hal Elrod's book outlines a morning daily practice that fundamentally promotes personal development through a ritual of daily disciplines. In other books in the library I had built up, I had heard many times discussions of the importance of daily exercises for the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the body. And The Miracle Morning's ritual of daily "Life Savers" hits all of those first thing out of bed and jump-starts your mindset for the day.

Book Two: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo



You may wonder what this has to do with personal development, but there's that old saying about a cluttered space reflecting a cluttered mind, and I really think that's true. In 2014, two elderly relatives passed away, so that left me with three households worth of stuff crammed into my small house, even after all the rest of the family members came and took away what they wanted. The piles and boxes and bags and clutter had just become overwhelming, and another common thread echoed in many of the books I had read was the concept of "elimination" to get rid of the need to worry about keeping track of so much stuff. I heard James Altucher first mention this book in late June or early July of 2015.

I have to admit there's a certain lazy streak in my personality has always made it difficult for me to keep a tidy house anyway, and this book has been an incredible revelation on how to actually tackle the overwhelming amount of stuff that is confronting me in my home. I have to be honest I just finished this book today and I spent a few hours starting on the author's method when I got home today. Mind absolutely blown. A process for tackling one task that I thought might take months was finished in a matter of a few hours. Granted, this was just the first step of many steps I need to take as I start decluttering my physical living space, but the confidence boost and the sense of accomplishment from seeing this first step completed is motivating me to really dive deeply into this process to get it completed throughout my house.

Book Three: Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy



Brian Tracy's book is a very practical guide to tackling those things in life that are really important but are quite unpleasant. These things differ from person to person, but the effect is always the same: these are the chores, assignments, presentations, projects, or other things that seem so daunting and so stressful that inevitably you simply wind up avoiding them.

I came across Brian Tracy from some of my other reading. It occurred to me that his name was one that had come up several times in multiple books I had read. It was finally while I was reading another book on this list, The Success Principles, that I stopped and took time to look up what he had written and select the best one that seemed most helpful to me. I came across this book in May of 2015.

I really like the book because it teaches concrete processes, systems, and strategies for dealing with things. I've been implementing Tracy's systems at work for the past couple of months and I'm already noticing better results. Now that I've started implementing Hal Elrod's Miracle Morning ritual, I've seen another quantum leap in the effectiveness of these processes, which is why I would recommend tackling Hal's book first.

Book Four: I Will Teach You To Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi



While Sethi's book has a pretentious title, it's more of a practical guide to making conscious decisions to control your money so that your financial situation doesn't wind up controlling you. If you have dreams of radically shifting your lifestyle, understanding and controlling your income is something that's going to be incredibly critical to sustaining that, so it's better to get a handle on it now and start mastering it. Once again, the foundational disciplines established in the first three books are something that will make implementing Sethi's teaching about handling your personal finances a lot easier than if you come to it before having the other disciplines already established (as was the case for me).

Ramit Sethi was interviewed on James Altucher's show in the first half of 2014, thus it was one of the first books I began working through in this list. It was a bit of a confidence booster because I found I was doing several things the way he recommended--or close to the way he recommended. He did offer me some suggestions for tweaking and improving my methods, which I found quite helpful.

Book Five: The Success Principles, by Jack Canfield



Jack Canfield is probably best known as the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. He's also a motivational speaker and a great collector of practical wisdom. His Success Principles book goes into great detail about many of the different techniques and practices that you find discussed in the first four books on my list, as well as many other of the books in the personal development library I've been building.

Jack was interviewed on James Altucher's show in early 2015, talking about the 10th anniversary edition of this book. It's a very detailed, broad-spectrum book on many principles employed by a number of the most successful people around.

I include this one in my First Five list because I think it reinforces and ties together a lot of what the first four books have to offer, and it also acts as a catalyst or springboard to lead into a deeper study of whatever area of self-development you want to pursue next. For those with the lifestyle design itch, understanding the content of The Success Principles will make reading The 4-Hour Workweek that much more powerful and immediately useful. If you have dreams of entrepreneurship, then it would make books like Chris Gillebeau's The $100 Startup, or Peter Thiel's Zero to One that much more easy to implement immediately.

The other thing about Canfield's book is that moreso than any of the others it is filled with the powerful example of personal stories. For every one of the principles Canfield describes (and there are over sixty), there are stories of people who have achieved remarkable results through the use of each one.

If you are like me and have been motivated by some inspiring personal development or entrepreneurial or lifestyle design books but have been struggling to find a place to start, I hope this list will help. On the other hand, I have to say that these books in this order are the ones that seem to make the most sense to me and have been most helpful. I cannot say that you would find them the most helpful in this order. In fact, if you have suggestions or ideas of your own about the best order to start on your journey, I'd love it if you share that in the comments below.

Starting at Square One

I think all of us have experienced the momentary or passing thought about starting a business or building a brand or living a lifestyle independent of a "day job" where we have to report to a boss and punch a time clock (physically or otherwise).

Some people have done more than think about it and have registered small business names. I know I've done that in the past. Others still have actually made sales and enjoyed some limited success. My father did that for a brief time, running his own small business back in the 1970s and early 80s for a few brief years.

But it's rarer still to find people that have actually built companies that become household names. And it's more rare that you actually hear about it as it's happening. Usually they build huge companies, become celebrated entrepreneurs, and then sit around on their beach cabanas or custom yachts and reminisce to some author or reporter that tells a condensed and shortened story of how they went from zero to hero without really being able to capture or show the hard work along the way.

I'm optimistic, so I tend to think that my efforts will one day generate a comfortable stream of income for myself and my family, and I may stumble across an idea that turns my brand into a company that rivals Apple or Google or Coca-Cola for global recognition. However unlikely that may be, I want to capture (even if nobody else cares right now) the steps and starts and stumbles and challenges along the way. Then when someone wants to know the real story, I can give them the Cliff's Notes version and point them here for full details.

Telling Stories

I've always been a natural story-teller. My mom used to tell me that when I was in pre-K, my teachers would tell her that during free time I would entertain the other kids telling them stories, usually about some random toy or object that was in our play area. As I got older, I channeled this ability into a lot of what seemed like frivolous and fanciful efforts, such as making up backgrounds for characters of table-top RPGs (like Dungeons & Dragons) or creating alternate mythologies to explain the world of computer games I played because I didn't want to take time to read the lore of the game developers (such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft).

I took some creative writing in college, but "common sense" got the better of me and I majored in technical communications, which is a fancy way of saying I went to college to learn how to write online help and user manuals. Yes, that's pretty dry and boring stuff, and believe me it gets a bit boring communicating those essential details to users all the time.

People have always told me I am a good writer, but frankly the thought of cranking out a book-length manuscript always seemed a bit daunting to me, and I was always good at starting stories, but had a hard time ever coming up with a satisfying ending. In fact the only short story that I ever remember thinking was good enough to submit to any kind of a contest was one that featured a knight on a quest to rescue the princess from a vile dragon. As the story went, the knight tracked the beast to its lair, fought it to defeat, rescued the princess, and was rewarded by the king with his daughter's hand in marriage. But to the knight's great horror, on his wedding night as his bride gazed at him with a victorious grin he noticed her pupils had the same vertical reptilian pupils as the dragon he had supposedly slain. The story received an honorable mention but it did not get published in the anthology for which it had been submitted.

Later when Internet newsgroups were a new and fancy thing, I actually chronicled the adventures of a weekly gaming group in which I participated. I played a bard, so I would write the story of our heroic adventures (always making the bard as much the hero as possible, of course) and re-writing lyrics to popular songs of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s to tell of our tales. One day I actually received an email from someone who had just moved into our city and he said he had been reading my posts since he learned he would be transferred and he wanted to join our group. So I guess that means Tom was my first real fan.

Blogs without a Reason

Since I first heard about blogging, I thought there might be a way to scratch the creative storytelling itch I had, but they came out at a time when I was convinced that blogs needed to have a purpose to be monetized, and while I would get occasional inspiration to write about something, I had neither the depth of knowledge nor the time to conduct research in order to make sense of anything, so my posts were like shotgun blasts in different directions, scattered and devoid of a focus and purpose. Unsurprisingly they never really gained a following and I abandoned them pretty quickly. Instead, I focused on my day job that paid the bills and those hobbies that gave me most enjoyment for the least effort.

Breakthrough Inspiration

Actually the breakthrough moment that brought me my first idea generating a body of material that was actually focused and sustained over a lengthy period was a dramatic and catastrophic health concern that hit me in December of 2010. I was diagnosed with leukemia (acute myleoid leukemia, to be more precise) and was hospitalized on death's doorstep. Within about 48 hours of being diagnosed, I was informed that the strain of AML I suffered was among the most aggressive the doctors knew, and it could literally kill within six weeks or less of initial onset.

Obviously I survived since it's nearly five years later as I write this entry, but in the first day or so of hospitalization I exceeded my data, voice, and text limits on my phone wildly by answering so many questions from friends and distant relatives. So I hit on an idea. I had a pretty good network of facebook friends, and I decided once I had my father bring my laptop to me in the hospital that I would create a facebook page dedicated to my illness and just point all my friends there to find the daily and weekly updates on what was happening. On the one hand it was an effective communication tool. On the other, it gave me something productive to do instead of sitting around all day in a hospital bed being bored to tears.

This page produced months worth of detailed descriptions, notes, and raw material. And many friends and relatives told me I should turn it into a book. But almost as soon as I returned to work and was pronounced out of the woods for my health, my elderly father began a long, slow spiral downward. He held on for about three more years, spending the final six months of his life in an assisted living facility where he could get the 24-hour care he needed. But I was also dealing with an elderly uncle who passed away during the same period, and between caretaker roles and my full-time job and managing estate paperwork I didn't have much time to do anything but dream about something different or better.

But in the final year of my father's life I finally began to realize I didn't want to reach that stage regretting all the things I'd never done. As a result I began seeking out and reading and researching how to do something on my own and how to break out of the monotony of the nine-to-five world. That's safe and traditional, but that's not what I wanted.

And So It Begins

Thus, in the late spring of 2014 I began a daily discipline of listening to James Altucher's interviews on his current and back catalog of podcasts and making notes about books that would be helpful and ideas that were inspiring. James calls inspiration "the idea muscle" and he says that like any muscle it has to be exercised to grow. I knew I needed to generate ideas and over the course of the next few months I did.

In February of 2015 I launched my first blog with a real purpose. It's called The Lion's Teeth, and it's dedicated to the local MLS franchise, Orlando City SC. I spent money to have a logo created and made up business cards and it's developed a small but steadily growing following among fans, players, front office staff, and even fans spread around the world that have only heard about the team but don't follow it regularly.

In future posts I'll detail more about that blog, and also about the next step I've taken, only yesterday. You remember that inspiration I received when I was sick and the encouragement people gave me to write about it? Well, I'm finally doing it. I've launched an online campaign to raise the money needed to turn those notes into a physical book and an e-book. And I have a second related title planned, which will focus on the remarkable story of my bone marrow donor.

I'll also talk more about that campaign and the effort to get that project created in future posts. But for now I'll close with a few of the books that I've read over the last year that have been the most inspiring to me.