How can you
be your best self and master your business
while living a balanced, productive, and meaningful life?

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Hi. I’m Mike.

I'm a husband, father, fitness nut, computer scientist, organization freak, business strategist, author, and productivity junkie.

I help high-achievers find their purpose, live their vision, and achieve next-level success with systems and strategies for personal excellence and business mastery.

My Latest Articles

Read my articles on productivity, organization, strategy, leadership, team building, product development, marketing, sales, personal performance, and business mastery.

Featured
What Neuroscience Says on Why Self Improvement is So Effing Hard (and What to Do About It)
Self Improvement
What Neuroscience Says on Why Self Improvement is So Effing Hard (and What to Do About It)
Self Improvement

Everything you do, or experience, or think is affected by the expectations you already have.

Take your arms, for example.

With both arms intact, your brain works swimmingly. It sends signals to your limbs, they move, they provide feedback, and your brain breathes a sigh of relief that the cycle is complete. When you expect your arm to move and it does, your expectations are fulfilled. All is well.

But if one arm were missing, this feedback loop doesn’t close. A variety of sensations, including pain, can follow.

In a fascinating book Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran explores the world of neuroscience through people who have lost a limb. Patients experienced phantom sensations in an extremity that no longer existed; some as simple as a fleeting tickle, others as irritating as an un-itchable itch and, in the worst of cases, pain.

The patient’s brain, having sent a signal to the missing limb, would expect a response. Without receiving one, its neural pathways would get confused, causing severe phantom pain where none should be possible.

Ouch.

Or take relationships, for example.

Self Improvement
11 Ways Camping Can Help Your Productivity
Productivity
11 Ways Camping Can Help Your Productivity
Productivity

Camping can be a wonderful experience. Not only is it a great way to spend time, but it can actually make you more productive.

There are numerous great benefits to spending time outdoors. Here we look at 11 ways how camping will help your productivity in the office, at home, and in life.

Productivity
Sculpting Your Best Self: How Self-Improvement is Best Done Through Sculpting Others
Self Improvement
Sculpting Your Best Self: How Self-Improvement is Best Done Through Sculpting Others
Self Improvement

You are a block of stone.

Chipped and cracked and carved by life.

Molded since birth, you now embody a unique shape, reflecting all that you’ve become.

Your parents were the first to sculpt you. Using the only tools they knew how. Tools given to them by generations of parents before them, they whittled you into the shape they wanted, or needed, or were proud of. A sculpture of sorts.

Self Improvement
From Nice Guy to Respected Leader: 5 Tactics Nice Guys Can Use to Gain Respect and Avoid Finishing Last
Self Improvement, Leadership
From Nice Guy to Respected Leader: 5 Tactics Nice Guys Can Use to Gain Respect and Avoid Finishing Last
Self Improvement, Leadership

What he said to me was, “You’re such a nice guy, Mike. The nicest.”

What he meant was, “Everyone is trampling all over you. You’re not aggressive enough. You’re never going to get anywhere in life, and you certainly aren’t going to find success in this company.”

I’ve heard it a thousand times before.

“Mike, you’re such a nice guy.”

or

“Mike, you’re the nicest. So nice.”

Which would be great if it were a compliment. But it’s not.

Of course, there’s truth to what they say. I am nice. I do treat others with kindness. I would give you the shirt of my back if you needed it.

But their so called compliments are laced with an undercurrent of misgiving concerning my ability to get ahead in life or, at the very least, avoid the wrath of distrustful, self-interested sinners who would rob me of my possessions, my honor, and my virtue.

These stabs at my character disguised as flattery are enough to make me wonder if I should be more of an asshole.

Nice guys finish last, right

Self Improvement, Leadership
5 Mindset Hacks That Make Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson So Massively Successful
Self Improvement
5 Mindset Hacks That Make Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson So Massively Successful
Self Improvement

Sorry, this post isn’t for you.

It’s for me.

It’s for me internalize the mindset of a big-screen hero, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Someone who, though I’ve never met, I respect and admire.

It’s for me to capture the thinking of a giant who has been kicked around, ignored, laughed at, and ridiculed only to bust through to success in endeavor after endeavor.

It’s for me to embed an absolute can-do, break -through-walls, leap-over-obstacles kind of attitude into my psyche. 

This post isn’t for you. It’s for me. But you can read it anyway :-).

In fact, I’d love everyone read these ideas and watch the video at the end.

I want everyone to hear Dwayne Johnson’s heartfelt words and catch a glimpse of how this success-genius made his way through failures from poverty to continual and lasting success.

Because unlike so many other successful people who share what they’re doing today to be successful, he talks about the mindset he fostered in the past that led him to his present and will help him grow and win big in the future.

Self Improvement
A Massively Productive Day Starts with These 3 Things (the Night Before)
Productivity
A Massively Productive Day Starts with These 3 Things (the Night Before)
Productivity

It’s a fact.

Waking early is NOT correlated with success.

The proof is in the research. 

According to the Huffington Post, “nearly 50% of self-made millionaires wake up at least three hours before their workday actually begins.” [1] 

Okay, that’s not a lot of research, but read that quote again if you need to. While it suggests rising early contributes to success in a matter-of-fact tone, less than half of self-made millionaires are early birds. Which means the other half aren’t. 

This article goes on to list a dozen or so wildly successful business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs who wake up before the crack of dawn, as if this is correlated to their success.

It’s not the only one.

Self-improvement gurus publish dozens of listicles daily on the benefits of rising before dawn. Success experts scream of the benefits of an early start. We even hear of historical figures like George Washington who “the sun never caught in bed.”

All this pressure to set an early alarm, get your ass out of bed, and get moving before the rest of the world... its enough to make you want to try.

But when you do, you feel groggy, cold, and it takes you an hour to warm up for the day. Then, when afternoon arrives, sleepiness strikes, and it’s all you can do to keep from nodding off (let alone get anything done).

If the point of waking up early is to crush your day, why does getting up early suck so much life and productivity out of you?

And, if getting up early is not correlated with success, what truly makes a successful day?

I’ve got three answers to those questions, and they all start the night before.

Productivity