I had a conversation today that caused me to spend some time thinking about failure, success, and starting over. In the course of that contemplation, some things became clear to me that, at least to me, seem pretty profound and I wanted to share them with you.

The dictionary defines success as

An event that accomplishes its intended purpose

It doesn’t say anything about cars, houses or money. It doesn’t speak to your level of education, your earnings potential, or your family genealogy. It simply and succinctly states how we can achieve success… by accomplishing our intended purpose!

That gives rise to the next logical question… Read the rest of this entry

One of the most searched for topics on the Internet is how to make money online. All kinds of people from all walks of life, from all over the world are motivated each day to turn to their keyboard in hopes of finding the answer. In preparing for this series about How to Make Work Optional, I did a totally unscientific survey and a lot of reading research. When asked the question, “Why do you want to make money on-line?” the most frequent responses included…

The truth is, what ever reason people give ( to get ahead on bills, to save for a rainy day, to get rich! ), we are not necessarily looking for a way to just make money on-line. We ARE looking for: Read the rest of this entry

In my working life, I’ve been pretty fortunate. In most cases, I’ve really enjoyed, maybe even loved, the work. This always made the notion of retirement kind of difficult for me. Why would I choose to stop doing something I really enjoy? So I modified my definition of retirement. Now, I’m looking forward to making work optional.

In this week’s episode of the Life in the Internet podcast, we ( actually “I” since @VickieRigsby was off this week ) devoted some time to defining a Definite Major Purpose a la Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Coming up with my Definite Major Purpose, DMP for short, has now given me the opportunity to solidify and commit to making work optional… because that is now my DMP!

So I can hear the chuckles and the questions now. What makes me think we can make work optional and how do I plan on accomplishing such a thing? Well… I’m glad you asked.

This is a pretty big (read: lengthy) plan, way too long for a single post. And frankly, its not all done yet. There are parts I’m stuck on. But maybe by sharing the plan with you over time and letting you watch as we roll it out, you can help work out some of the shortcomings and maybe, hopefully, see a plan developing for yourself as well. So here goes…

Part One – Why Am I Working Anyway?

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