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The Zen Habits Sea Change Program

Leo — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:02:55 +0000

Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange …
~ from Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Last month, I launched the Zen Habits Premium Membership with a mini-course on creating the habit of meditation. It went swimmingly, with many members creating a new lovely habit.

This month, I’m changing the program’s name: it’s now the Zen Habits Sea Change Program.

Unfortunately, registration has closed for March.

Why the name change? I wanted to more clearly communicate that the program isn’t just signing up for additional content, but is a tool for making small changes that can transform your life, as they have mine.

What’s in the Sea Change Program?

Mini-courses (every 2-4 months) on user-chosen topics. Last month was the Meditation Habit (content still available), and April’s mini-course will be Healthy Eating.
Articles & videos addressing topics and questions submitted by users. Topics include simplicity, clutter, habits, frugality, happiness, creativity, passion, relationships, family and more.
Live video webinars with presentations from me and guest experts, and the ability to ask us questions. In March, we have happiness expert Gretchen Rubin (author of the NYT best-selling book The Happiness Project) and creativity expert Jonathan Fields (author of Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance).
A forum where users can help each other create change.

It’s a monthly subscription, though registration is now closed. You can read more about it here.

Create the Habit of Meditation, & the Zen Habits Premium Membership

Leo — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:03:12 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta.

It’s something I should have created a long time ago: the Zen Habits Premium Membership, and a mini-course that’s included with it called Create the Habit of Meditation.

The membership is a monthly subscription of $19.99, but really it’s a commitment to changing your life, and the tools needed to do that.

If you’ve been looking to simplify, get healthy & fit, become more effective, do work you’re passionate about, eliminate debt, find contentment, declutter, create new habits … this new program is meant to show you how to do that.

I’ll be sharing the simple methods that have worked for me in hundreds of my experiments, have helped thousands in classes I’ve taught, and have been perfected through trial and error.

While the regular articles on Zen Habits will always be free, with this membership you’ll have bonus articles and videos, along with contributions and interviews from guest experts, live monthly webinars where you can ask questions, regular mini-courses on these topics, the ability to submit questions that I’ll answer in articles/videos, and more.

The membership is $19.99 a month, and for this first month, includes the Create the Habit of Meditation Mini-Course (more below).

The first round of registration for the Premium Membership is now closed, and will be closed for the rest of February.

The Essential Zen Habits of 2011

Leo — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:57:15 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta.

It has been a year of contentment for me, and Zen Habits.

Zen Habits has just finished its 5th year of existence, and every year has been better than the last. This year has been no exception.

Zen Habits grew from 200,000 to more than 230,000 subscribers, had more than 12 million unique visitors, and was named by TIME magazine as one of the Top 50 websites in the world.

But beyond those numbers, it was an amazing year for me, personally and professionally:

I publicly wrote, and then published, my new book The Effortless Life.
I also wrote and published The Little Guide to Un-Procrastination.
I co-created, along with Katie Tallo and Barrie Davenport, The Habit Course.
I co-created, along with Courtney Carver, the Clutterfree ebook and course.
I became fitter than ever in my life, with a simple vegan diet and the habit of daily exercise.
I completed a half marathon, won my age division in a 6.7-mile race, completed the Urbanathlon, and finished the Goruck Challenge.
I traveled to London & Paris for the first time with my wife Eva, spent a month on the beautiful island of Guam, spent 10 days in New York City for the first time with my daughter Chloe, spoke at the World Domination Summit in beautiful Portland.
Moved to a sunnier part of San Francisco, while exploring the city by foot and fork.
Continued to enjoy a car-free life.
My other blog, mnmlist, grew to 15,000 readers.
I created an entirely new design for Zen Habits by hand, stripping away all but the essentials.

I did this mostly without goals, without copyright, and with contentment.

Most of all, I have to thank you, my dear readers. You have made my job fun, my work rewarding, and my life full of joy. Thank you for everything.

The Best Zen Habits Posts of 2011

Without further ado, these were the best posts from Zen Habits in 2011, as judged by me:

And more

For more best of Zen Habits:

The Essential Zen Habits of 2010

Leo — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:44:56 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I am overjoyed.

Zen Habits has just finished its 4th year of existence and every year has been better than the last. This year has been no exception.

How great a year has it been? Zen Habits grew from 150,000 subscribers to well over 200,000 and topped TIME magazine’s Top 25 blogs for 2010 (after also making it in 2009).

But the joy has gone beyond numbers — for me both professionally and personally:

I finished and self-published my new book focus and it has done exceedingly well.
I moved my family from Guam to San Francisco and have been loving it here in this beautiful city.
We gave up our automobile completely for the first time and truly love the car-free life.
I lost more weight at the beginning of the year and am fitter slimmer and healthier than ever. By far.
I completely eliminated ads here on Zen Habits and rely entirely on my lovely readers and on selling my own stuff.
I also removed photos from Zen Habits. Some of you have expressed regret that the photos are gone and I understand this feeling. But it was an important change for me: it put the focus on the content and not on a superficial image. I enjoy posting more now that I don’t have to choose some image that’s only slightly related to the content.
My other blog mnmlist.com has grown to 11,000 readers and (quietly) celebrated its one-year anniversary in September. More importantly: it has helped the minimalist movement grow by leaps and bounds this year.

The Essential Posts of 2010

Each year I choose the top posts from Zen Habits for the year but this year I decided to let you guys do the choosing. I don’t keep track of stats anymore so I don’t know which posts you guys liked best. It was interesting to see the results.

Here are the Top 20 posts as chosen by all of you:

A few other posts I’d recommend:

And more

For more best of Zen Habits:

The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits – A Guided Tour

Leo — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:23:55 +0000

‘Smile, breathe and go slowly.’ ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

While some of you have been following Zen Habits since its early days (beginning of 2007), many of you are fairly new readers.

To help you through the fairly overwhelming archives, I’ve compiled a beginner’s guide. Kind of a Quick Start guide.

First, a note: Please don’t try to go through this all at once. There are days and days worth of reading here. I’ve just organized that so that you can go to the stuff you want to learn about first.

Take it in small chunks.

Where do you start when you have a thousand posts to read through? You start with the best, or at least the most popular.

So here they are:

Browse the Archives

But those are just the stars of the All-Star team. You can actually scroll through the entire list of posts (warning:it’s long), in the Archives.

Next you’ll want to delve into some of your favorite topics. You can go through the main categories:

Or you can go through a few compiled guides I’ve hand picked for some of the more popular categories:

And if that’s not enough for you, here’s are some Best of Zen Habits collections (I stopped doing this a little while ago, but they’re still useful):

About Leo

By now, you might want to know more about Leo, the guy who writes this blog … well, I’ll give you more than you’ll ever want to know.

Short version: I’m married with six kids, recently moved to San Francisco, started Zen Habits in January 2007, love to write, run, and read, live a simple life. I also started mnmlist, wrote The Power of Less, and am now self-publishing a book called focus.

Long version: If that wasn’t enough, here’s more than you ever wanted to know:

My Story
The Zen Habits FAQ
Uncopyright (I’ve made all the articles on this blog in the public domain)
Experiments in Blogging (results of the Uncopyright and more)
Notes on Fatherhood
Celebrating Zen Habits’ first birthday
Notes on Life, and more Notes on Life
How I Work
10 Books that Shaped My Life
10 Biggest Influences on Zen Habits
6 Annoying Fetishes I Talk Too Much About
Ask Me Anything – 100 Question Extravaganza
My blog about writing and blogging: Write To Done
My ebook publishing site: Web Warrior Tools
And lots of interviews with Leo: Art of Wise Living, Escaping the 9 to 5, Shawn Blanc, Today’s Leader Online, Inspirational Minimalist, Live Bold & Bloom, Running Somewhere, Blogcast FM, Dreamin’ the Life, Productivity Magazine, Motivate Thyself, Great Work, GTD Virtual Study Group, Far Beyond the Stars, Dancing Deer, Duct Tape Marketing, Hungry People, BFM radio, ProBlogger, Happiness Project, Personal Finances, Leo’s “Crib”, Effing the Dog, Parenting, My Tropical Escape, My Digital Setup, Balanced Life Center, On Open-Source Blogging, On Freelancing, On Work-Life Balance, Slacker Manager, Veg Blog, Frugal Living, Systems Overload, Online Entrepreurship, On Blogging, Success Soul, More on Happiness.

Books

Whew! That was a lot of reading. There’s more, if you’d like, though. I’ve written a number of books:

Or my print book, The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential, in Business and in Life. Buy it here: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Borders, or IndieBound. I’d love it if you also bought copies for friends, relatives, co-workers, all the people in your company! And of course, recommend it to everyone. :)

A couple reviews of The Power of Less: Technotip, Financial Methods.

For other books that I recommend, see the Zen Habits bookstore on Amazon. I get a small cut from each sale made there.

Your generosity has kept this site alive! Thank you, all of you.

Affiliates

Would you like to become an affiliate and sell Zen Habits digital products or ebooks for a 50% commission? It’s easy. Check out my affiliate program.

Now you just need to subscribe (via RSS or email) to make sure you get the new posts as they come out.

You can also check out my tumblelog, or follow me on Twitter.
—
Read more about simple productivity, focus and getting great things done in Leo’s book, focus.

Notes from San Francisco

Leo — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:21:47 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter or identica.

So we’re off on our great adventure. My wife Eva and I sold and gave away all our stuff over the last couple of months, packed our bags and took our kids and left Guam.

We’re now in San Francisco and looking for a home.

We arrived in the Bay Area last week Tuesday, to a chilly, foggy, windy city. Pretty much what we’d expected, but the cold was a bit of a shocker to a bunch of islanders from Guam. The first day we went into the city, we were freezing, with our jeans and T-shirts and hoodies. We immediately bought slightly warmer clothes, but it wasn’t enough.

Still, we were thrilled to be in the city, and ready to start house hunting. We saw seven houses the first day, all in the Haight/Cole Valley area, and fell in love with the neighborhood. Since then we’ve looked at five other great neighborhoods (Nob Hill, Mission, Castro, Duboce Triangle, Marina), but none compare to the first.

We want something really walkable, not too spread out and residential, as we’ve given up our cars (for good, we hope). We want to be within a couple blocks of transit — preferably a train — and restaurants, parks, coffee shops, bookstores, libraries, shops and more.

Anyway, we’ve found a few places and are applying. We’ll see how it turns out — cross your fingers for us!

I thought I’d share a few notes on our visit here so far:

We watched the Gay Pride Parade (officially the San Francisco Pride Parade) and it was a blast. I lived in San Francisco as a teenager, so I’d seen it before, but it was new and very interesting to Eva and the kids. We got a bit bored when there was a long string of politicians, and left early to explore other parts of the city.
There are an amazing number of good little restaurants with charm. We’ve enjoyed a bunch, from Herbivore to Squat & Gobble to Crepes on Cole and more I can’t remember. There seem to be hundreds I still want to try out.
We’re staying with my cousin Dominic and his wife Adeline and their beautiful daughter Cordelia in Alameda, which I’ve found to be a great little town. We’re right across the street from the beach, and it’s just lovely.
I also stayed for a couple days in Walnut Creek with my Aunt Erin, Uncle Randy and two “kids”, who are actually grown human beings. Last time I saw them, they were kids. We had fun playing basketball, ping pong, foosball, Risk, and watching Giants baseball (lost to the Dodgers!) and World Cup soccer. They’re great people.
The last few days have given us just gorgeous weather. Absolutely fantastic. In Walnut Creek, it was over 100 degrees, which apparently is unusual, but in San Francisco it’s been great.
We’ve walked or taken transit everywhere. From BART to AC Transit to Muni, everything is clean, fast and on time. I don’t think we’ll have any problems going car-free. We’re learning the systems, and when we need routes or schedules, it’s all on my new Android phone.
I got the phone mostly for calls and maps, and don’t tweet or email or Facebook or text very often at all while we’re out on the town. While everyone else seems to like being always connected, I like being disconnected.
We’ll adjust to the cold days. I actually love the fog, and have since I was a teenager. It’s magical and gives the city a mystical feeling. It’s a welcome change for me from the sweltering humidity where running in the midday heat was out of the question.
Still, I miss Guam. Especially our family members. There was a heartbreaking scene at 2 a.m. in the Guam airport when we left, as dozens of family members came to see us off. I believe they were mostly there because of our kids, but they said goodbye to me too because I happened to be there. There were enough tears to grow crops. I have to admit I cried on the plane, thinking about not seeing my family every day.
We did the tourist thing and walked through Chinatown — down the main drag on Grant. It’s fun being a tourist, as much as locals all over the planet sneer at tourists. We haven’t done the Fisherman’s wharf bit yet, but you can be sure we will.
My Uncle Randy got us all Giants caps, so we’ll start to blend in with the locals. I used to wear a Giants cap every day as a teenager, imagining myself as Will Clark or Kevin Mitchell or Jose Uribe or Robby Thompson. I hated the A’s back then (especially after they beat the Giants in the ’89 World Series), but I love them now. I can’t wait to go to ballgames for both teams.
We’ve found so many little shops we love. Swankety Swank, near Haight Street, is perfect. We met Yabette, who takes well-made used furniture made of good wood, and paint beautiful things on them. She turns what some might consider junk into art. There are 20-plus other local artists and artisans represented there, from comic book art to T-shirts to hand-made furniture by a collective of craftsmen.
The Mission seems so alive. Bursting with colors from murals on nearly every street, it’s filled with energy, with great food, a little grittiness. While the Marina is pristine, the Mission has an edge. I prefer the edge, Eva prefers safety (at least for living — she wants the kids safe, for some reason).

Lots more I could write, but I’ll fill you in later. For now, I’m headed back out on the streets of San Francisco. If you see me, say hi.

—

In other news

Zen Habits was honored by TIME magazine this week, being named to to its new Best Blogs of 2010 list (topping the list, it seems). Obviously I’m grateful and humble for this recognition. I was on the list for 2009 as well … which kinda puts some pressures on me to keep the quality of this blog at a decent level, I guess. Good problem to have, though.

Zen Habits Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Leo — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:57:20 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta.

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.

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. (Update: We’ve already moved to S.F.)

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.

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. 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:

Obviously I don’t eat exactly the same thing every day. It varies.
I usually have a “cheat meal” each week, and sometimes two.
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.

Update: Read my latest post on my diet here.

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 fairly early many days — sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. usually — but on other days I’ll sleep in until 7 or even 8 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:

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.
6 a.m.: Run (Mon, Wed, Fri and sometimes Saturday)
7-9 or 10 a.m.: Write, do other most important tasks.
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.
Late afternoon – evening: Spend time with kids. Sometimes get a gym workout in. Or read. Also varies from day to day.
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?
The new Archives page now has 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?
I hand crafted my own theme for this site. It is available for download.

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 notice.

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?
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, and am not able to personally respond to emails. If you have a problem or suggestion, you can contact zenhabits at gmail dot com.

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?
No, I’ve ditched my Asics.

For more than a year now I’ve been doing barefoot running and I love it. Read the guide I just linked to before giving it a try though.

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.

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.

The Essential Zen Habits of 2009

Leo — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:01:57 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta.

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:

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.
Wrote a new ebook, The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life.
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.
Created a new site, 6Changes.com, to help people create and stick to 6 new habits for 2010.
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.
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.
Collaborated on another ebook, The Essential Motivation Handbook, with co-author Eric Hamm.
Decided to move from Guam to San Francisco. We won’t actually be moving until June 2010, but we’re excited.
Lost more than 20 lbs. as part of my Bellyfat Challenge (still ongoing but doing well).
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).
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).
Participated in NaNoWriMo and wrote 108,000 words for my novel.
Helped Guampedia raise funds, developed its new site for WordPress, and helped it successfully relaunch using the new platform.
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:

Breathe. Breathing can transform your life. One of my favorite all-time posts.
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.
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.
Do Interesting Things. Another of my favorite posts.
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.
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.
Love Life, Not Stuff. The how and the why.
The Simple Fitness Rules. Fortunately, fitness doesn’t have to be that complex.
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.
The Short but Powerful Guide to Finding Your Passion. Title says it all.
The Simple, Ridiculously Useful Guide to Earning a Living from Your Passion. Title says it all.
Your Life, Simplified. A 6-step method you can do today to simplify your life, without being overwhelmed.
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.
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.
Minimalist Gmail: How to Get Rid of the Non-Essentials. Here’s how I’ve made Gmail into a minimalist inbox.
The Single Secret to Making 2009 Your Best Year Ever. Still applies to 2010.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Dead Simple Guide to Beating Procrastination. For those of you who want to beat procrastination, here are 10 simple steps.
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.
The Only Way to Become Amazingly Great at Something. There’s only one way to become good at something.
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.
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:

The Zen Habits Story

Leo — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:43:15 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

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!

20 Classic Zen Habits Posts You Might Not Have Seen Yet

Leo — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:00:15 +0000

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

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. :)

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

zenhabits » About

The Zen Habits Sea Change Program

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Create the Habit of Meditation, & the Zen Habits Premium Membership

Post written by Leo Babauta.

The Essential Zen Habits of 2011

Post written by Leo Babauta.

The Best Zen Habits Posts of 2011

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The Essential Zen Habits of 2010

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The Essential Posts of 2010

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The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits – A Guided Tour

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

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Notes from San Francisco

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter or identica.

Zen Habits Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Post written by Leo Babauta.

The Essential Zen Habits of 2009

Post written by Leo Babauta.

The Zen Habits Story

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

20 Classic Zen Habits Posts You Might Not Have Seen Yet

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.