by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 15, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto studied patterns of wealth and income in the late 19th century. The Pareto Principle shows that “a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead[s] to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards.” Later known as...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 14, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
One of the first concepts I learned in business school was “opportunity cost.” Opportunity Cost = The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. In other words, the opportunity cost of the dollar I spend on a candy bar...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 13, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
Every few months I teach a workshop titled How to Make Money With Your Blog. It’s a two-hour, intensive how-to course followed by a one hour of question and answer session. I limit attendance to 30 potential bloggers, so that they get personal attention. One of...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 12, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
Since the 1980s, the market has been flooded with “time management” books and products. While many of these have valuable insights, none of them can actually manage time. Time is a constant. It moves on at the same pace regardless of what we do (or...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 11, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
I’ve often heard people say, “Live as if it were your last day on earth!” But that’s not a motivating phrase to me because it’s entirely impractical. If today were my last day, I would not work on corporate taxes, do laundry, or pay...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 10, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
I have great intentions. And I’m even pretty good at getting a lot of things done. My “resume” reads nicely on paper. But what’s difficult is motivating myself to do the those things that aren’t really urgent and aren’t really...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 9, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
In junior high track, our coach, Miss Gleason, taught us about the Fosbury Flop. I still remember (and it’s been a really long time) how impressed I was by this story. It wasn’t so much the innovation that affected me, it was the fact that Dick Fosbury was...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 8, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
There is probably no other lesson in the 100 Day Challenge that I’m more enthusiastic about than this. It is a concept our culture seems to completely disregard, even though it’s central to success and fulfillment. Our leaders today seem to stress the...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 7, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
People do what they want to do. Period. End of story. You are where you are today largely because you wanted to be there and made choices that got you there. Your life is the collective result of your past behavior. Whenever I say that in a goal setting workshop, I...
by Alison Moore Smith | Jan 6, 2013 | 100 Day Challenge, Lifestyle Design
I’ve heard parents, in a kind of pot-induced haze, exclaim the superiority of letting your children choose what they believe. “Don’t indoctrinate your children!” they shout. As if this ultimate freedom is somehow enlightened and open-minded....
