This post is part of a series that highlights people who have influenced me. See the list of Influences here.
Who Steve Pavlina is to me
Steve Pavlina is a personal development blogger.
I discovered him after a Google search for “How to become an early riser,” back in 2005.
He’s pretty far on the fringes in a number of categories:
Those are probably the weirdest ones and provide some tangible example for his main philosophy on personal development. His early post called The Courage to Live Consciously sums it up pretty well.
Examples of Steve Pavlina influencing me
- Experiments: he was the first one who introduced me to the 30-day challenge: set a aggressive plan to try something for 30 days straight, knowing you’ll stop after that, and write about it on a blog along the way. I literally spent hours reading his experiments the first day I found him.
- Blogging: My blogs have full archive pages, “Related Posts” at the end of posts (currently labeled “More” here), and internal links (I don’t do this as much as I used to) because of Steve’s blog. Before I discovered his site, I didn’t get blogging. But I was hooked after I found it because it answered questions I had or exposed me to ideas I wouldn’t have even considered. I learned from it, and it brought me into a different world – that’s what attracted me to it.
- Taking a bunch of college classes: I almost forgot, but he was the one who introduced me to the concept of taking a ton of classes in college and graduating quickly. I was an underachiever, finishing my two B. A. degrees in three years total. He did his two majors in three semesters total.
- Entrepreneurship: I didn’t want to get a job for years because of this post and the rest that went with it.
Where to find Steve Pavlina
At his blog of course, Personal Development for Smart People.
