I was listening to Linchpin during my commute this morning.¹ With good books this is a good practice because you’ll discover things you missed on previous passes. With great books like Seth Godin’s Linchpin, it’s a must-do because there’s so much gold in there it takes many passes to pan it all. This reading was no different.

The nugget I found this time was when Seth gave a tip that’s invaluable to guys like me who are trying to reclaim their lives by rediscovering their passions and self-actualizing:

“Find a niche where money flows as a regular consequence of the success of your idea.”

I built on this by thinking about the steps to make this lesson actionable. I came up with these four steps:

1. List what you love
2. Study how money flows in each situation where what you love is present
3. Pick the part of the situation with the best ratio of money to love², then do the work
4. Pick the part of the situation with the highest love² without regard to money, then do the work

Do the work that you select in both steps 3 and 4, unless the they are the same. If so, bonus!

1. According to iTunes, this was my fifth listening; I swear it’s been more than that.
2. These two are personal, so think it through.

I’ve been listening to the Highroads Media 75th Aniversary Edition of Napoleon Hill’s, The Law of Success. I used a favorite program of mine to make an audiobook version for my iPhone, complete with chapters and cover art. Each of the 17 lessons is to be read (listened to) at intervals so I split the discs into tracks and joined the tracks into chapters to make it simple to go to specific lessons. It’s nice to have it done, but it wasn’t easy.

I wasn’t able to find, even on Highroad Media’s site, a table mapping discs and tracks to lessons. So, I built my own and share it here for others who want it.
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I’m between jobs now. The firm I was with just cut about 30 more positions and mine was among them. So, I just polished up my Manager-Tools resume and realized that I hadn’t shared the template I created for Apple Pages. Here’s the template which I make available at no cost and with no warranty (expressed nor implied, as they say).