I get asked a lot of questions, many of them repeatedly, and I figured instead of answering them all over and over, I’d compile my answers for everyone here.

Of course, there’s a lot more about me and this site on the About page, and I’d always love it if you checked out the Books page.

I hope you find this useful!

1. Why did you turn off comments on Zen Habits?
This has been the most difficult decision I’ve made since starting Zen Habits, as I truly loved comments here. I love hearing from readers, and it was my opinion that the comments often held better tips than the posts themselves. I learned (and still learn) a lot from my readers.

So why did I turn off comments? There was too much comment spam, resulting in huge headaches for me. Seriously, it took up a lot of my time — time I wanted to spend creating, or with my family. And the tiny minority of legitimate comments were mostly bloggers trying to get noticed — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just don’t want to spend my life moderating spam for this reason alone.

Edit: Yes, I’ve tried several different software solutions for comment spam, and they don’t really solve the problem of humans leaving comment spam. Even things like Askimet (and numerous other such filters) and CAPTCHA let a lot of spam through. Trust me, I’ve done a lot of research, and when spammers are motivated, they’ll find a way through for a site with this kind of traffic.

People can still give me feedback via Twitter, and if I don’t always respond I do listen. Getting rid of comments has been regrettable, but they don’t scale, and it has brought peace to my life.

2. When and why are you moving to San Francisco?
We’re moving to San Francisco this summer – in late June 2010.

And we’re super excited.

We’ve bought our plane tickets but haven’t reserved a house or apartment yet. We’ll be living in the city, going carless.

We’re selling all our stuff but a handful of clothes and my laptop, and a few pieces of artwork. Read more about selling all our stuff on our “yardsale” site (if you don’t live on Guam, you can’t buy anything).

I know the burning question is why. The reasons are manifold, but here are a few:

• Guam will always be home, but we’d like to experience more of the world, and we’d love our kids to see more than this tiny little slice of life, however wonderful it is.
• San Francisco is one of my favorite places in the world – I lived there as a teen-ager, and I fell in love with it. It’s beautiful, the people are diverse and crazy and awesome, there’s no shortage of things for kids and teens and adults to do, the food is great, the weather is superb, and the areas around it are varied and gorgeous, from the California coastline to the mountains to the redwoods to wine country to Oregon to the north to Disneyland to the south (I know, but we have six kids, so.).
• As a blogger, I can work anywhere in the world, and I’d love to meet online blogging friends and readers in real life from time to time.
• As homeschooling parents, my wife and I want to expose our children to more opportunities to learn from the world around them. Guam is a great place for that, but San Francisco offers more. It’ll be an incredible learning experience for our kids.
• We hope to go carless, and San Francisco is a good place to do that, with muni and BART and a cycling friendly city and the ability to walk and things like Zipcar and City CarShare if we need them. Guam is a very bad place to go carless if you have kids.
• I’m vegan, and Guam is also a bad place for that. There’s exactly two vegan/vegetarian restaurants on Guam, and great as they are, I’d love to be in a place with more options. I can’t wait to try veggie restaurants in S.F., or at least restaurants with more veggie options than, you know, salad. Farmers markets and natural food co-ops and leftist bookshops and such are also attractive to a person like me. We also considered Portland and Eugene, OR as options, for these same reasons, but for complicated reasons S.F. is our choice.
• We have awesome family in the Bay Area, and I can’t wait to spend time with them. Seriously, other than the family I have here on Guam, the ones in S.F. are among the rockingest I have (well, there’s also the ones in Eugene and Austin and Vegas and Scottsdale and Chicago and a couple other places, but I digress).
• My oldest daughter will be a senior in high school next school year, and being in California will help her visit and apply to colleges and even establish residency should she decide to go to college in CA.
• I try to buy as little as possible, but when I do need to buy something, I prefer to buy used. Guam’s options for thrift and second-hand shops are, shall we say, limited.

Again, these are just a few. I could go on all day.

I love Guam, but it’s time for a change. We’ll always come back to Guam. We just want some new experiences, and we can’t wait.

I hope to see some of you there!

3. What’s your current workout/running routine?
At the moment, I run 3-4 times a week (training for a half marathon), and I go to the gym 3 times a week, and bike a couple times a week. You can see my training plan on this spreadsheet, but be aware that it changes from month to month, depending on my goals.

I like to mix things up. I don’t often train for races anymore, but I still love running. I’m trying to build a little muscle, which is why I’m lifting weights right now, but in a few months I’ll probably stick to bodyweight exercises and the like.

I’m riding my bike right now to get in better bike shape — I hope to make it my main form of transportation when I move to San Francisco.

I also eat fairly clean, about 90% of the time. You can take a look at my Daytum to see how often I’ve been eating clean this week. Diet has been the biggest part of my weight loss, actually — I’ve lost 30 lbs. in the last year on my Bellyfat Challenge.

4. Cool. But can’t you give us a sample of what you typically eat during a day?
Um, sure. But before I do that, a couple of caveats:

1. Obviously I don’t eat exactly the same thing every day. It varies.
2. I usually have a “cheat meal” each week, and sometimes two.
3. I don’t recommend my diet for everyone — pick the eating style that works for you, your goals, your health situation, etc.

That said, here’s a typical day (lately):

• 7 a.m. 1/2 cup cooked rolled organic oats w/ berries, raw almonds, cinnamon, raisins, ground flaxseed.
• 10 a.m. Unsweetened coconut flakes w/ berries, almonds, soymilk.
• 1 p.m. Quinoa, steamed veggies, and some kind of protein — usually black bean chili or lentil curry or a veggie burger.
• 4 p.m. Soy yogurt w/ almonds, berries, some other fruit, ground flaxseed.
• 7 p.m. Quinoa, steamed veggies, and some kind of protein — usually black bean chili or lentil curry or a veggie burger.

I don’t eat many grains other than the rolled oats (quinoa isn’t a grain). I am vegan. I get more than enough protein. This diet is about 400 cals per meal, or 2,000 cals daily — which will net me a 500-1000 cal deficit depending on exercise and activity during the day.

5. What time do you go to sleep/wake up?
This question arises as I’ve written in the past about waking up early and becoming an early riser. One thing to realize is that those posts were written in 2007, so things have changed in the last few years.

At various times in 2007, I was waking at 5:30 a.m., 5 a.m., 4:30 a.m., and 4 a.m. Part of that depended on where I was in my marathon training — when I was doing long runs, I’d wake up at 4 a.m. so that I could leave by 4:30 or 4:45 for a 2 or 2.5 hour run. On days when I wasn’t doing the long run, I’d use the extra time early in the morning to write my blog before I had to go to work.

Or sometimes I’d sleep in. And these days, I sleep in half the time, as I don’t have a day job so I can blog any time in the morning. I still get up early many days — 4:30 or 4:45 usually — but on other days I’ll sleep in until 6 or even 7 a.m. and let my body recover from the previous day’s workout.

When do I go to sleep? I prefer to go to sleep by 9:30 or 10 p.m., but my wife likes to watch a little late-night TV (not cable TV but one of our favorite shows on the Apple TV), and I stay up with her, usually until 10:30 p.m.

6. Can you provide a sample “schedule” of your day?
Hoo boy. That’s a bit difficult, as I don’t follow a set schedule anymore. I prefer to live moment by moment and go with the flow of life. That’s a bit vague for most of you, so here’s an attempt:

1. 4:45 to 6 a.m.: Wake up, have coffee, read. The time I wake depends on whether I’m going for a morning run.
2. 6 a.m.: Run (Mon, Wed, Fri and sometimes Saturday)
3. 7-9 or 10 a.m.: Write, do other most important tasks.
4. 10 a.m. to mid-afternoon: Smaller tasks, catch up on RSS feed reading, research various things I’m interested in (and will often blog about later). This really varies.
5. Late afternoon – evening: Spend time with kids. Sometimes get a gym workout in. Or read. Also varies from day to day.
6. Evening until 10 or 10:30 p.m.: Eat dinner, spend some time with wife and kids. Watch one of our favorite TV shows (The Office, Community, How I Met Your Mother, Mad Men, Lost, 30 Rock, not in that order). Once a week Eva and I will go on a date.

Again, this is a rough sketch, but in general:

• I go for runs early and do other exercise later in the afternoon.
• I write and do other important tasks next.
• I do less important stuff later.
• Always try to find time for Eva and the kids.

7. What happened to the Search function on Zen Habits?
I took it off as part of my simplification of this site’s design.

Update: I’ve now added an Archives page with a search function, so you can not only look through every old post easily, but search through all the Zen Habits articles using Google.

8. What theme are you using on Zen Habits? Is it available for download?
Zen Habits is running a modified version of Frugal theme for Wordpress. I’m working with Eric Hamm, the developer, to make a Zen Habits skin available for anyone who buys the theme.

9. What’s your story, buddy?
Hey there, friend! You can read my story here.

10. Can I use a post you’ve written here for my blog, my book, my magazine, etc.?
Yes, please do! Read my Uncopyright.

There is no need to email me for permission. You already have my blessing.

11. I’d like to do a guest post. What’s the deal there, buddy?
I don’t take guest posts. I run about a guest post a week, by invitation only, and at the moment I have enough for the next couple of months.

12. Why does Zen Habits have the word “Zen” in its title? Are you a Zen Master or Zen Buddhist?
No, I’m not. Read more about all of that here: Why Zen Habits.

13. How do I contact you via email?
I’m a bit of an email recluse, sorry. Here’s why I ditched my email inbox. You can always contact me via Twitter, though I don’t guarantee a response.

My focus is on creating, and spending time doing the things I love most. Email gets in the way of that.

14. But … I’d like to share my new book/blog post/product/seminar with you!
Thanks, but no. Please don’t ask me to promote your product, book, website, service, or blog post, or I will karate chop you to death.

15. Do you still wear Asics? Also, have you tried barefoot running?
Yep, still use Asics. Love em.

I’ve been trying barefoot running lately, a little at a time, at the recommendation of several readers. In fact, I ordered a pair of Vibram Fivefingers KSO and will be giving these a try. Basically, there have been a few studies done on barefoot running (including a couple of recent ones), but even those acknowledge that there are many questions and lots of other research needs to be done.

16. How can I follow Zen Habits? How can I thank you with a donation? Where else can I read your brilliant stuff?
OK, I’ll admit these aren’t really common questions, but hey, any opportunity for a shameless plug (or three), right?

I’d love it if you subscribed to Zen Habits via email or RSS subscription. It’s completely free (and always will be), and you get about three posts a week, all quality posts without the fat.

If you’d like to support Zen Habits, I’d love it if you bought my print book, The Power of Less, or one of my ebooks. Or you can make a donation if you have some extra cash lying around, Mr. Moneybags.

Other than my books, you can read more of my writing at my other blog, mnmlist, or little tips & brilliant insights on Twitter, or occasional thoughts on Zen Habits Offloaded, or links that I like to share on the Zen Habits tumblr. I also co-own and often contribute to Write To Done (for writers & bloggers) and Zen Family Habits. And then there’s my new site on changing habits: 6 Changes.

Other questions that I should add to this list? Ask via Twitter, & I’ll do my best to answer the most common ones. And feel free to share this post via Twitter.

OK, you’re going to want to take a deep breath before reading this post, but please, do read it.

Deep breath taken? OK, let’s get started!

First, Zen Habits has been nominated for the 2010 Bloggie Awards … which is a huge honor. I’m humbled.

I’m nominated in the “Best Topical Weblog” category, which as far as I can tell means, “We don’t know where else to put you.” It includes other great blogs, including Post Secret, which is kinda unfair as Post Secret rules. But just to be up for the same category as them is really flattering.

So, if you’re so inclined, I’d appreciate it if you went over to the site and voted … please vote for your other favorite blogs as there are a crapload of awesome ones.

Zen Habits Ebook Profits will Go to Haiti Relief
Next up, I’m a bit late in announcing this, simply because things are a little busy for me, but I’ve been wanting to do something to help with the ongoing tragedy in Haiti. So many people have contributed to the relief efforts that I can’t possibly measure up to what’s been done already … but I figure every little bit counts.

So, this is an announcement that for the next 30 days, every penny of sales of Zen Habits ebooks will go to Doctors Without Borders. I spent some time trying to pick the right organization to donate the money to, but there are so many good ones … I decided to just pick one semi-randomly.

So here are the ebooks:

1. Zen To Done.
2. The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life.
3. The Zen Habits Handbook for Life.

If you haven’t bought any of these, this is a good chance to get a moderately priced ebook that I believe will be of value to you … and to help out a good cause at the same time. If you have bought them, they also make good gifts! :)

I’d also be happy to do a 60-90 minute (or so) webinar on changing habits, for a donation of $25 per attendee, with all donations going to Haiti relief, if people are interested. It would basically be me on streaming live video, answering questions on changing habits that you could ask by text chat. If you’re interested in this, let me know via Twitter. If I get 30 or more people say they’d pay $25 for this webinar, I’ll do it, and announce it later.

Leo’s Big Book Giveaway
So I’ve been meaning to give away a bunch of my used books for awhile now, and I figured I’ll just do it now.

These are books on my cherished bookshelf that I decided I love, but no longer want to keep. See my post on a minimalist approach to books for more.

These are mostly books on simplifying, living frugally, self-improvement, veganism and fitness (marathons, triathlons, etc.) that I’ve read and kept for reference. I’m giving them away, for free.

UPDATE: This book giveaway is now closed! Please don’t follow the instructions below.

If you’re interested in getting a free book from my shelf (you freeloader!), do one of the following:

1. Vote in the Bloggies.
2. Buy one of the ebooks mentioned above.
3. Tell friends about Zen Habits or The Power of Less – via email, Twitter, your blog, Facebook, or however you like.

Once you’ve done that, send me a tweet. The tweet should include the following info:

1. @zen_habits #bookgiveaway
2. What you did to enter (i.e. “voted” or “bought ebook” or “told friends” or “blogged”)
3. What books you’d like, ideally – although I don’t guarantee you’ll get them.

OK, if that’s not too complicated, let’s get to the list of books in the giveaway:

1. Simple Taoism – A Guide To Living In Balance, by C. Alexander Simpkins PH.D. & Annellen Simpkins PH.D.
2. The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff (awesome)
3. Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
4. George Sheehan on Running To Win (awesome)
5. Marathon – The Ultimate Training Guide, by Hal Higdon
6. The Competitive Runner’s Handbook, by Bob Glover and Shelly-lynn Florence Glover
7. Advanced Marathoning, by Pete Pfitzinger & Scott Douglas
8. Simplify Your Life with Kids, by Elaine St. James
9. Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff … and it’s all small stuff, by Richard Carlson PH.D.
10. Your Money Or Your Life, by Joe Domiguez and Vicki Robin (an all-time great)
11. Ready For Anything – 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done, by David Allen
12. Getting Things Done – The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen
13. Simply Organized, by Connie Cox and Cris Evatt
14. The Te of Piglet, by Benjamin Hoff
15. Simple Living for Busy People
16. Keep Life Simple, by Karen Levine
17. The Simplicity Reader, by Elaine St. James (awesome)
18. Career Renegade, by Jonathan Fields
19. Time Management In An Instant, by Karen Leland & Keith Bailey
20. 30 Days To A Simpler Life, by Connie Cox and Cris Evatt
21. Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey (one of my favorites!)
22. Vegan Freak – Being Vegan In A Non-Vegan World, by Bob Torres and Jenna Torres
23. Author 101 Bestselling Book Publicity – The Insider’s Guide to Promoting Your Book — and Yourself, by Rick Frishman and Robyn Spizman
24. 10,001 Ways To Live Large On A Small Budget, by Wisebread
25. Vegan With A Vengeance, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (excellent cookbook)
26. Training Plans For Multisport Athletes, by Gale Bernhardt
27. The Triathlete’s Training Bible, by Joe Friel
28. Design Your Best Year Ever A Proven Formula for Achieving BIG GOALS, by Darren Hardy

After 4 days, I’ll randomly pick winners from everyone who entered, and then do another post on the winners and how to claim your book. UPDATE: The book giveaway is now closed!

Thanks everyone for your help, support, and encouragement! It means the world to me.

At the end of every year here at Zen Habits (this is the third year), I write that I’ve had the best year of my life.

This year has been no exception.

I’d like to take a moment to reflect on this year, and to share the best posts of 2009.

Zen Habits has continued its amazing growth, going from 80,000 subscribers last year to about 150,000 this year. It was named one of the Top 25 Blogs of 2009 by TIME magazine. And it was just a really phenomenal outlet for me, personally.

At the same time, my book The Power of Less came out at the very end of 2008 (Dec. 30), and in 2009 became an international best-seller, helping me to reach readers in all corners of the globe.

But I did more than that:

1. Created a new blog, mnmlist. Now has more than 4,600 subscribers and more importantly, is a fun outlet for my writings on minimalism. I created the Wordpress theme for this blog and released it for free, uncopyrighted.
2. Wrote a new ebook, The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life.
3. Started on my next print book, focus. Have released the first draft of the book online, for free, and will continue to update it online, based on feedback until it’s ready to be published.
4. Created a new site, 6Changes.com, to help people create and stick to 6 new habits for 2010.
5. Helped start a sister site, Zen Family Habits, with fellow blogger Sherri Kruger. It now has over 4,000 subscribers and is a great resources for families.
6. Revamped the Zen Habits design to reflect the simplicity philosophy of the site. This evolution in design has included getting rid of most of my ads, getting rid of a lot of links in the sidebar and footer, and more recently and controversially, getting rid of comments. This last move deserves a full post, but in brief: there was too much comment spam, resulting in huge headaches for me, and the tiny minority of legitimate comments were mostly bloggers trying to get noticed — not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just don’t want to spend my life moderating spam for this reason alone. People can still give me feedback via Twitter, and if I don’t always respond I do listen. Getting rid of comments has been regrettable, but they don’t scale, and it has brought peace to my life.
7. Collaborated on another ebook, The Essential Motivation Handbook, with co-author Eric Hamm.
8. Decided to move from Guam to San Francisco. We won’t actually be moving until June 2010, but we’re excited.
9. Lost more than 20 lbs. as part of my Bellyfat Challenge (still ongoing but doing well).
10. Continued running (in fact, just recently set a new PR for my 10K time) and working out (currently doing Men’s Health Homegrown Muscle series, finishing up Phase 4).
11. Took a great family trip to Tokyo (read our travel blog and see the pics). Also: Why You (Almost) Never See a Fat Japanese (or, How I Lost 5 lbs. in Tokyo).
12. Participated in NaNoWriMo and wrote 108,000 words for my novel.
13. Helped Guampedia raise funds, developed its new site for Wordpress, and helped it successfully relaunch using the new platform.
14. Created (with Mary Jaksch) the A-List Blogging Bootcamps and successfully held the first bootcamp with over 100 awesome bloggers.

It’s been a great year. And for that, I thank all of you, my wonderful readers. You’ve given me more than you know, and I’m extremely humbled and grateful.

The 30 Best Posts of 2009
And so, without further ado, here are the best Zen Habits posts of 2009:

1. Breathe. Breathing can transform your life. One of my favorite all-time posts.
2. The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior. The best Zen Habits habit change tips all together in one cheatsheet, for those new to the blog and for those who could use the reminders.
3. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (or, the Privatization of the English Language). My most controversial post ever — it kicked off a firestorm of comments and posts and debate. Fun stuff.
4. Do Interesting Things. Another of my favorite posts.
5. The Get-Started-Now Guide to Becoming Self-Employed. While being your own boss can be scary and a little risky, it’s not as difficult as people think. You do have to be someone who loves his freedom, likes to be able to set his own schedule, likes to work on things he’s excited about.
6. The Little But Really Useful Guide to Creativity. While there are millions of creativity tips on the Internet, in this post I share the ones I’ve found most useful — the ones that I’ve tried and tested and found to be right.
7. Love Life, Not Stuff. The how and the why.
8. The Simple Fitness Rules. Fortunately, fitness doesn’t have to be that complex.
9. The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less. Then, Do Even Less. “Simple Productivity” has been the motto of Zen Habits from its early days … and in this post I set out the reasons “Do Less” is one of my Four Commandments, and why it’s the ultimate extension of Simple Productivity.
10. The Short but Powerful Guide to Finding Your Passion. Title says it all.
11. The Simple, Ridiculously Useful Guide to Earning a Living from Your Passion. Title says it all.
12. Your Life, Simplified. A 6-step method you can do today to simplify your life, without being overwhelmed.
13. A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back. Having the fear is natural. Letting it stop you from going after your dreams is a tragedy.
14. Ultra-Simple 3-Step Productivity System for Getting Amazing Things Done. I guarantee you — if you follow these three steps, you’ll be productive, and you’ll accomplish great things.
15. Minimalist Gmail: How to Get Rid of the Non-Essentials. Here’s how I’ve made Gmail into a minimalist inbox.
16. The Single Secret to Making 2009 Your Best Year Ever. Still applies to 2010.
17. A Simple Guide to Keeping Your Counters Clutter-free. Keeping counters (and other flat surfaces) clear, clean and clutter-free doesn’t have to be difficult.
18. The 10 Essential Rules for Slowing Down and Enjoying Life More. Slowing down is a conscious choice, and not always an easy one, but it leads to a greater appreciation for life and a greater level of happiness. Here’s how to do it.
19. How to Create a Minimalist Computer Experience. I love a clean desktop, a friction-free interface, and simple tools that help me focus on what I really need to get done: to create, without distractions.
20. The Little Rules of Action. And while I’m no proponent of a whirling buzz of activity, I also believe people get lost in the distractions of the world and lose sight of what’s important, and how to actually accomplish their Something Amazing.
21. 8 Ways Doing Less Can Transform Your Work & Life. Doing less is not about being lazy (though being lazy is a good start) — it’s about focusing on quality rather than quantity. It’s about getting off the hamster wheel of productivity, so that you can create something great rather than just being busy.
22. The Mindfulness Guide for the Super Busy: How to Live Life to the Fullest. It seems contradictory to those who are used to sacrificing living for pursuing their goals … but cultivating mindfulness will help you achieve your goals and enjoy life more.
23. The Minimalist Principle: Omit Needless Things. What’s important is not that you have as little as humanly possible, but that every thing you do have counts.
24. Get Less Done: Stop Being Productive and Enjoy Yourself. People are working longer hours, constantly checking their inboxes, constantly focused on Getting More Done. But to what end?
25. 10 Essential Money Skills for a Bad Economy. The best way to avoid fallout from the national economy is to take control of your personal economy. From guest writer J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly.
26. Dead Simple Guide to Beating Procrastination. For those of you who want to beat procrastination, here are 10 simple steps.
27. How to Live a Better Life with Less. The beautiful thing is that you don’t need to earn more money or buy a bigger house or car or have a bigger company in order to have this better life — you need less of all of that. It’s attainable simply by cutting back.
28. The Only Way to Become Amazingly Great at Something. There’s only one way to become good at something.
29. 55 Ways to Get More Energy. You won’t be able to do everything on this list all the time — you’d tire yourself out trying to get more energy — but do try them all to see which ones work for you and your schedule. From guest writer Gregory Go of Wisebread.
30. 20 Key Questions on Motivation and Habits, Answered. It’s that time of year — the end part — when people start thinking about their lives, their goals, their habits, and how to change everything for the better.

For more best of Zen Habits:

• Best of Zen Habits in 2007.
• The Essential Zen Habits of 2008.
• The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits – A Guided Tour.

If you liked this guide, please bookmark it on Delicious or share on Twitter. Thanks, my friends.
—
Read more about simplifying in my book, The Power of Less.

One of the most common emails I get is asking about how I started and built Zen Habits from scratch — a story I haven’t really told, until now.

While not all of you are writers and bloggers, I thought I’d share the Zen Habits story in a free ebook called “How I Got 100,000 subscribers in Two Years: Lessons From Zen Habits” … it’s mainly aimed at bloggers, but it might be interesting even those who would just like to know the backstory of Zen Habits and how I’ve built the blog in the last couple of years.

Again, it doesn’t cost anything to download the report. In this report you’ll:

• Hear the story of what I did right — and wrong — in the early days of Zen Habits.
• Understand how I’ve grown Zen Habits from an itty bitty blog.
• Learn about how my early and enthusiastic readers shaped the blog and made it a success.
• Why having 100K subscribers is a mixed blessing (but one that I’m very grateful for).

Get the report here.

For those who sign up and get the free report, I’ll also be releasing some audio and video podcasts for bloggers, again free of charge, in the coming week or three. I hope you enjoy them!

It’s been a fantastic journey, and I hope that in sharing my story, you’ll learn something that will help you in your journey. And as always, thanks for reading!

While I enjoy the simple beauty of Japan, and all the awesomeness it contains, I thought I’d leave you guys with some of my favorite posts from the archives. Many of you haven’t dug through the massive archives (nearly 800 posts, at least half of them pretty decent), so I decided to cull through them and find a few nuggets you might have missed.

And if you’ve already read them, here’s a chance to enjoy them a second time. I’ve always believed we should get the most enjoyment out of things as possible. :)

1. How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers
2. 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It
3. The Magical Power of Focus
4. Autopilot Achievement: How to Turn Your Goals Into Habits
5. Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox
6. How to NOT do everything on your to-do list
7. Handbook for Life: 52 Tips for Happiness and Productivity
8. How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List: or, Why Writing It Down Doesn’t Actually Get It Done
9. Haiku Productivity: Limit Your Work Week
10. Unproductivity: 8 Fantabulous Ways to Make the Most of Your Laziest Days
11. 5 Amazing Mac Apps for Getting Things Done (Plus a Custom-Rigged Setup)
12. Lazy Productivity: 10 Simple Ways to Do Only Three Things Today
13. The Art of Doing Nothing
14. What is truly necessary? A guide to living frugal
15. 20 Ways to Get Free or Cheap Books, and Give Away Your Old Ones
16. How to Find Peace Living With a Packrat
17. 15 Ways to Create an Hour a Day of Extra Time … for Solitude
18. The Zen of Running, and 10 Ways to Make It Work for You
19. 21 Tips on Keeping a Simple Home with Kids
20. A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home

And more “Best of Zen Habits” posts on different topics:

1. Everything You Wanted to Know About Simplifying Your Life, and Way More
2. The Unsurpassable Productivity List: A Handy Guide to Getting Important Things Done
3. All The Best Tips on Getting In Shape, In One Handy List
4. The Golden Money List: Hundreds of Tips for Turning Your Financial Life Around
5. The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits

I’m excited to announce that I’m taking my family to Tokyo for the next couple of weeks for vacation. My wife and I and the six kids are all going together — it’s our first trip all together — so it should be a fun adventure.

But be assured, my loyal readers, that Zen Habits won’t shut down while I’m gone. I’ve set things up so that this blog will continue to run smoothly (knock on wood) while I’m enjoying sushi and sake.

Here’s the plan:

• I’ve written some posts that will run while I’m gone — I hope you’ll enjoy them!
• I have guest posts from some excellent writers and from regular contributor Jonathan Mead — I know you’ll enjoy them.
• I also have a couple of “Ask the Reader” features as well as two posts with some of the “Best of Zen Habits”.

I think the content will be as good as ever, so please stick around.

I’ll be popping my head in every now and then to read your comments, but for the most part Zen Habits will be in the trusty hands of my friend, Glen Stansberry of LifeDev. He’ll be moderating comments and generally making sure some of you behave yourselves. You know who you are. :)

Oh, and if all goes well with my Internet connection in Tokyo, we’ll be posting a blog about our trip each day (or thereabouts). Yippee!

What would happen if we started being honest with ourselves about what we really want?

What if we started being ruthlessly real? What if we actually said the things that we think about, but are afraid to say?

Our egos may shrink and squirm, afraid to face reality as it is; afraid to bypass all the pretense; afraid to confront the shear nakedness of authenticity.

But maybe if we could evade the grip of our ego-based fears, we could embrace unfiltered, unmediated reality.

Maybe, just then, we’d start to come alive.

When I speak of open, authentic honesty, I mean being truly connected to your higher self. Not the ego-dominated self, but your spirit, (or whatever word you’d like to use, the word is not important). When you’re tuned into this source that is bigger than your puny ego, your living from a state of unadulterated awareness.

When you’re acting from this state, you’re not thinking about whether what you’re doing is right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. You act completely naturally, unafraid to express yourself authentically and freely. You’re not afraid to tell someone how you really feel or ask for something you need. It’s from this place that you experience bliss, because there is no ego holding you back from it. There is no hesitation when the ego is not present.

So how do you get into this state of flow and uninhibited movement?

Here are the three simplest and most effective things you can to become more conscious, and in turn, more authentic.

• Practice mindfulness. This is the most important aspect of acting authentically. If you’re not being mindful, you lose awareness of your ability to determine whether you are acting reactively or if you are acting from your authentic Self. I have to admit, remaining in a position of persistent mindfulness is not an easy task. This is not something you will master in a day, a month or even a year. But you can practice, and the more you practice the more it will be easy to remain mindful. The way to practice mindfulness is to simply center your focus and attention on whatever you are presently doing or experiencing. Easy to describe, difficult to practice.
• Use reminders to help you stay mindful. There are a lot of mental triggers (or anchors, in NLP terms) you can create to prompt you to return to mindfulness. One great trigger is remembering to be mindful every time you see a red light at a stop light; or just every time you come to a stoplight, green, yellow or red. I have a bell on my bike that I ring when I’m riding to help remind me to be mindful. Another good and more permanent reminder is getting a tattoo somewhere you can easily see to make you mindful. If that’s not your thing, you could have a bracelet or ring that you’ve chosen as a sacred symbol to help remind you to be mindful.
• Practice daily meditation. There is no substitute for consistent, daily meditation in aiding your facility to remain present. The best thing about meditation is it also allows you time to actually listen to yourself. Most of the time, we’re constantly talking to ourselves and we never take the time to listen. During the practice of silent awareness, we have the opportunity to listen to our thoughts and feelings, and in doing so, we’ll be better equipped to remain mindful when we feel pulled into unconscious patterns. The most important thing to do is start small. Practice meditating for 5 or 10 minutes each day before you go to sleep or after you wake up. Don’t be hard on yourself if you feel your mind isn’t quieting fast enough, or if you think you’re not good at meditating. If you remain diligent, your mind will eventually get tired of listening to itself babble incessantly.

The more mindful we become, the more we increase our capacity for action that is stripped of pretense and duplicity.

When we’re completely authentic, we’re no longer afraid to speak and act in meaningful ways. We’re not afraid to tell someone how we truly feel. We don’t shirk when faced with the choice of either acting from integrity or slipping into cowardly ego-based decisions.

Maybe if we started saying the things we think but do not say, our lives would have more meaning.

I think then we could grasp what it means to really be free.

Maybe then we’d realize the true meaning of liberation.

This will be one of my shorter posts on Zen Habits, but it’s an important one. I need your help.

I’ve created a short survey to find out what some of the reasons are for people not being able to achieve all their goals and objectives. What are the things that hold people back? Are they mostly external or internal?

You may be hitting every pitch out of the park and if so, I’m happy that you’re accomplishing everything you set out to do. If anything you’ve read in these pages has helped, that would truly make me feel wonderful.

On the other hand, if you’re like most of us you struggle in certain areas and this survey is meant for you. I’d like to know what those issues are as the information will help me to focus my future efforts to provide solutions.

The survey is very brief, just three questions. It is also anonymous. There is no place to enter any personal information.

Thanks for your help.

Here’s the link:

The Zen Habits 3-Question Survey

Thank you, my friends!

You might or might not have noticed recently that Zen Habits has become much less cluttered, especially in the sidebar.

I decided to start practicing the minimalism I preach.

First, I dropped the Google ads, because they weren’t making much money and were serving up a lot of ads I didn’t like. I’d gotten a bunch of reader complaints, and I figured they weren’t worth it.

Second, I got out of three fairly large ad networks I’d been a part of for more than a year. They each brought in decent income, but it was just too much clutter. I’m taking a big drop in income from this, but I’m hoping it’ll help bring about a nicer reader experience for all of you.

Third, I stopped selling the 125×125 pixel ads you see in the sidebar. Right now you’ll still see a few over there (under the search box in the right sidebar), but the top two will stop running in the next week. The bottom two are for my ebooks, and I’ll probably keep them for now.

Fourth, I started selling a single 250×250 ad. Just one per month. This will be an exclusive ad — no other ads will run on Zen Habits. Right now, it’s for Frugal Site Design, and it will always be for sites or companies I feel comfortable with. I think one ad per month is much better than the dozen or two that have been running on Zen Habits for the last couple of years, don’t you agree?

Anyway, all of this means a much more ad-free reading experience for all of you. It also means, of course, a drop of several thousand dollars in revenue for me. So I’m hoping to supplement that with other forms of income.

I’d be grateful to all of you if you could help support this site. You are not obligated to do so, and I won’t be begging for money every week or month. But there are links, and here’s how you can support Zen Habits:

1. The Books link is the new Zen Habits bookstore on Amazon. I get a small cut from each sale made there. In fact, if you click through and buy other products from Amazon (not just the books I recommend), I will get a cut. So feel free to click through and buy anything you like from Amazon, if you were planning to buy it anyway. Don’t buy a bunch of useless products just for me. :)
2. You can now Hire me as a consultant. I will just take on one client a month. I do consulting for businesses and bloggers, as well as for personal development.
3. The Power of Less. My print book is still selling well, and I’d love it if you bought a copy if you haven’t yet. In fact, buy copies for friends, relatives, co-workers, all the people in your company! And of course, recommend it to everyone. :)
4. Zen Habits ebooks. My ebooks, Zen To Done and the Zen Habits Handbook for Life, have always sold fairly well, and if you haven’t bought a copy yet I think you’d enjoy them. I hope to write another or two this year, and will let you know more.
5. Donations. I’ve received many, many donations from many, many kind people. Your generosity have kept this site alive! Thank you, all of you.

There are a few other announcements that will come out in the coming months — seminars and other cool things you could buy if you like.

Again, I won’t keep bothering all of you with pleas for money. But do know that I am very grateful to all of you, for reading Zen Habits, for buying my book and ebooks, for making donations, and especially for your encouragement and comments. You make this site what it is, and I am humbled by all of you. Thank you.

Leo

Today I received an email from the lawyers of author Susan Jeffers, PhD., notifying me that I’d infringed on her trademark by inadvertently using the phrase “feel the fear and do it anyway” in my post last week, A Guide to Beating the Fears That Hold You Back.

The phrase, apparently, is the title of one of her books … a book I’d never heard of. I wasn’t referring to her book. I’m not using the phrase as a title of a book or product or to sell anything. I was just referring to something a friend said on Twitter.

Her lawyers asked me to insert the (R) symbol after the phrase, in my post, and add this sentence: “This is the registered trademark of Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. and is used with her permission.”

Yeah. I’m not gonna do that.

I find it unbelievable that a common phrase (that was used way before it was the title of any book) can be trademarked. We’re not talking about the names of products … we’re talking about the English language. You know, the words many of us use for such things as … talking, and writing, and general communication? Perhaps I’m a little behind the times, but is it really possible to claim whole chunks of the language, and force people to get permission to use the language, just in everyday speech?

What if this were taken to an extreme? What if some billionaire (say, Bill Gates) decided to start trademarking thousands and thousands of phrases, so that he could charge us for each use, or so that we’d have to link back to the Microsoft homepage with each reference? The language, in this scenario, could be entirely privatized if we allow this sort of thing.

So, while this post is probably ill-advised (and yes, I realize that I’m actually giving publicity to Ms. Jeffers), I have to object. I think we have a duty, as writers and bloggers and speakers of the English language, to defend our rights to … words. Free speech is a bit of an important concept, I think.

As an aside, I think the idea of jealously protecting copyright and trademarks, in this digital age, is outdated and ignorant. You want your ideas to spread, and you should encourage people to spread your ideas, not put up all kinds of boundaries and restrictions and obstacles to that being done. This blog, for example, is Uncopyrighted, and will always be free, because I want people to spread my posts and ideas. I think it’s actually good for me as a writer, and it’s (not insignificantly) better for the writing community in general if we can share each others’ work freely. I’m hoping that with posts like this, and the good work of thousands of other like-minded people, the old mindset of fencing off ideas and language will slowly change.

So, no, I will not be adding a Registered Trademark symbol to the previous post. And no, I won’t be adding a phrase of legalese to the post. And no, I won’t even attribute the phrase or link to her book, as I wasn’t referring to the book. And no, I won’t remove the phrase.

I’d rather be sued.

Oh, and I’m not going to change the title of this post either. You’ll have to remove it from my cold, dead iMac.

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On a side note: You may feel free to use the title of my book, The Power of Less, in any of your blog posts, on Twitter or even (gasp) everyday conversation.

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