Welcome to the Handbook of Awesome!
Much has already been written about the topics of productivity, health and happiness; hell, they pretty much cover the entire spectrum of human ambition. But unlike much of the gunk out there, the Handbook of Awesome won’t quote platitudes and regurgitate 80s self-help mush, but rather takes the best parts of the existing knowledge out there and distills it into simple, impactful advice you can implement today.
The backbone of the handbook is made up of so-called habit or self-actualization posts. Each of these is a specific guide on how to pick up a habit or make an incremental change in your routines which will significantly improve your life. Implementing any one of these will require at least 30 days on your part, and you should never ever try to do more than one at a time. Since different readers have different priorities, we will endeavor to post once a week, so that after succesfully acquiring a habit in 30 days you will have four new ones to choose from. In addition to habit posts, we also reserve the right to post something interesting, touching, inspirational, thought-provoking or funny in itself, basically whatever the hell we feel like!
Childish drawings add value. One of the first things you will notice about our posts is that they are littered with simplistic drawings of stick figures and random charts. Although it might seem like these are pointless, our rationale is simple enough: There are entertaining blogs out there with about as much information content as a Jersey Shore episode, and there are informative blogs that are about as fun to read as chewing on drywall. Since our goal is to both inform and entertain, we want to visualize our messages in pictures as well as text. We are reluctant, however, to go the path most-trodden by bloggers, where they simply put up a stock photo of something remotely related to the topic. Being former consultants we felt much more at home with simple sketches in notebooks, on the backs of napkins, envelopes, beer coasters etc. Just so you get an idea of our maturity and artistic ability, below is how we would draw an asshole. (Yes, this is from Vonnegut).
Use your handbook as a reference guide. You know how usually a blog post stays relevant for about two seconds before disappearing into the digital graveyard called “archives”? Well, since we are compiling a handbook of everything that can make your life more awesome, we obviously don’t want to lose a single post to obscurity. This is why in addition to a traditional chronological blog, we also integrate our posts into a static handbook format, allowing new readers to get up to speed and old veterans to brush up on the basics. This way we combine stability and fluidity into one beautiful package (much like the T-X in Terminator 3).
Time to get started! Since the backbone of the Handbook is made up of habits to be incorporated into your life, it is vital you understand how this should happen. Therefore you should start by reading this article on forming habits. Consider this like sharpening your scalpel before brain surgery.
Now that you have the tools necessary, we suggest you start by implementing the core habits listed below, as we have found them to be particularly powerful. As always, this is only a suggestion and you are of course free to implement any habits you wish. Just don’t come crying to us if it all goes to hell in a handcart! Good luck and stay awesome!
Some of the best posts to start with:
