Steve Pavlina releases 1000+ personal development articles into public domain | Hacker News Reader

Steve Pavlina releases 1000+ personal development articles into public domain

stevepavlina.com

61 pointsximeng24 comments

I was one of his early readers, and used to love his stuff on productivity and personal development. I even tolerated his articles about astral world, lightworkers, law of attraction, etc. But when he posted a glowing "review" of a scam like Site Build-it, complete with an affiliate link, I've decided I've had enough and hit "Unsubscribe".

Lesson to be learned: never trust someone who became successful by telling others how to become successful.

I learned a different lesson, which is that you can win big by being willing to get your hands dirty. After all, Steve Pavlina's site is like a burlap bag filled with a mixture of turds and diamonds. I'd get over my disgust for fecal matter pretty fast if I found such an object.

(For example, his advice regarding waking up to an alarm was invaluable to me.)

You don't have to trust somebody to learn from them.

I found the key with his waking up early system was that you only fix your waking time, and you stay up (ideally doing something without stimulation close to when you need to sleep) until you're ready to fall asleep within 5 minutes.

I got extra waking time because my body was regulating how much I slept. If I stayed up too late I'd get tired earlier the next day, but in general I dropped my sleeping hours by about 1.

"a burlap bag filled with a mixture of turds and diamonds"

nailed it

Site Build-it, while I DON'T recommend it, is not a "scam." What they do and how they support delivers the service and product they promise. The problem is that they (1) overcharge compared to a more DIY approach, and they (2) overpromise the likelihood of success. Also known as (1) packaging and (2) marketing. (I've never used them, but I know someone who does.)

I liked a lot of Steve's early stuff, but when he went all esoteric and pseudo-scientific (referencing his wife's "intuitive readings" and psychic stuff, etc) he totally lost me.

Maybe I'll have to re-read some of his early stuff someday...

I was turned off by the self-help guruism but he has one article (theoretically about shareware, but widely applicable) which was extraordinarily helpful to me several years ago. One particular insight, that improvements are multiplicatively effective, essentially transformed the way I do business.

Sadly it has fallen off the Internets, but Google still has a cache.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YKYYOPx...

Here are his early awesome articles about shareware/indie game development: http://web.archive.org/web/20030207132433/www.dexterity.com/...

You can get all his old articles from Dexterity software on the wayback machine.

This is actually great news, because it means that stuff like that can be brought back and polished.

There was a phase when most of his articles started talking about his experiments with open marriages, giving out intimate details about the sexual and psychological effects.

I was an avid reader before that. Since I was never considering open marriages for myself, I just stopped reading when that phase hit.

I remember someone recommending Steve to me a few years ago, and I found most of his early writing very inspirational and grounded in reality.

However, at some point something changed in his writing. I started seeing some "glitches in the matrix" Steve was projecting and soon the esoteric articles overtook the normal, logical ones and I could bear to read no more.

Notice, that the main reason he is releasing copyrights is because he feels, we are all the same (that is you are Steve, I am Steve, we are all Steve...no joke) and he has created content by channelling some cosmic energy..

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/08/moving-beyond-copyr...

On one hand it could be it is a highly advanced form of pantheism, on the other hand it just sounds crazy to me.

Yeah I didn't like a lot of his more out there stuff but I just ignore it. He still has some excellent insights on productivity and has some new ways of thinking about common, tired problems that have helped me.

I was really overjoyed when I found out about this and actually started a site based around it. I'd been listening to positive / educational audio every morning on a walk / run and found it to have massive improvements in my productivity and happiness.

I also read a lot of Steve's stuff so I wanted to be able to listen to his stuff while on my morning walk and while doing errands but he only had a few podcasts.

Thus, (shameless plug) www.empoweraudio.com was born. I got some top audio talent to partner with me to do audio versions of Steve's content - if anyone is interested.

Pretty shameless, but not a plug (as HN is clearly not the target market). Here's something I did the day after he public domained his articles: http://alfredpang.com/steve-pavlina-blog-collection/

how many have you sold?

I have sold 6 so far. I don't have any tracking but I believe they all came from my postings in Steve Pavlina's forums.

Somebody else did an iPhone app - which I am guessing is doing way better: http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/technology-technical-skil...

It's really sad, but all I can think of is how it will be adorned with ads and become spamcontent. Hopefully it doesn't make 'BigResource' "even bigger."

Thanks for posting this. Hadn't come across Mr. Pavlina before but just from a quick scan it seems there's some real nuggets in there.

I wonder if the pavstevelina.com domain is available

Great way to build some links!

He must have missed how that all worked out for Stack Overflow.

He actually posted on his forum that Google makes up a minority of his traffic now, so it's not a huge worry for him.

Care to explain? What happened to Stack Overflow? I've not found any reference. Thanks.

Try the article and comments here: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=2062855

Reply on news.ycombinator.com