A week into this new parenting thing and I'm a little tired, a little hungry, a little shy on my previous grooming standards (note to self – replace all dress shirts with stain-resistant ones) and a little short on patience.  So, my focus this week has been on articles that help me experience lasting (a relative term) peace in my life. 

Arvind Devalia wrote a nice piece for Peace One Day (did I use the correct forms of piece and peace?  peas?).  There are some very helpful tips in the article, particularly the process of focusing on giving, not getting and the Gratitude journal.  Check out Find Peace Today rather than One Day, Some Day!

I'm a big Steve Jobs fan as I think the man is completely Brilliant.  This is despite the fact that I've never owned a Mac computer.  I'm completely sold on my cheap, no frills Netbook.  The guy has a simple, minimal wardrobe of jeans, a turtle neck, and a sport coat.  Who couldn't appreciate the type of character one must have to simply not care what others think.  I learned something new about him today, thanks to the Everyday Minimalist, check out: Steve Jobs' Minimalist Office in 1982.  Perfect peace, no distractions.

Leo Babauta often writes about the process of doing less, and concentrating on the essential.  This article fleshes out a key component of that which I firmly support, concentrating on quality not quantity.  It's something I wrestle with as I contemplate a less stringent posting schedule on this blog.  8 Ways Doing Less Can Transform Your Work & Life.

As I contemplate simplifying my bookshelf (my book fetish has brought me as much misery as joy) I enjoyed seeing a timely recap by Trent Hamm who, on a semi-regular basis, gives updates on his essential library.  Quote: "A great library isn’t full of books you’ve already read and know – it’s full of books you haven’t mastered and haven’t yet read. These are the ones that continually challenge me and push me to grow."  The Essential Bookshelf 2009: The Eleven Books that Rise Above the Rest.

My schedule doesn't allow me alot of time to write.  When I sit down to write a post, I have to be on my game each time.  As I am writing this, my "desk" is currently a leather recliner and a netbook, listening to music that's meant to calm babies (It's not working!).  Sometimes I will write at the dining room table or breakfast nook.  Sometimes it's by pen and paper in the cafeteria at work.  I've never truly realized why I change my writing medium and my "office" frequently, but this article gives me justification for doing what I do.  Using Different Parts of Your Brain.

As I wrote yesterday, several dates have passed where we were told we could bring our son home.  Today marks another date passed.  That's neither here nor there.  Many of my thoughts are on parenting lately, and of getting this small but beautiful home ready for them. 

My interest in articles this encompasses anything to do with finance, inspiration and minimalism. 

Space is a concern here and not being one to will my ways on anyone else, I take it upon myself to try to move towards a more minimalist lifestyle, trading my space consumption for the babies. 

I also work to master my finances because formula alone looks to run us over $500 a month for the three of them and that's just based on their consumption when they first come home.

Diapers, we haven't even priced yet, but we are still wrestling with the cloth versus huggies debate.  Every parent that we've spoken to has kind of dissuaded us from the cloth diapers due to having three babies. 

In any event, here's a small list of several great articles I've read this week that I would like to share with you readers.

Looking down the road a bit, I often wonder how parents handle the subject of Allowance.  I know that I got one as a child and was allowed to decide what to do with it as I wish.  This is one way to do things.  Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar has outlined his own plan for his soon-to-be four year old.  And thanks to the wonderful discussion in the comments, you have a few dozen parents' own perspective on it.  Check out The Beginning of the Allowance.

New blogger, the Everyday Mininalist, has written some nice articles on minimalism from a different perspective.  I quite like her definition of it and this one may make it more palatable to the general public.  She has a nice story too, so please check it out.  What does Minimalism really mean?

Anastasiya wrote a beautiful article about her mountain cabin vacation and how the trip gave her perspective and balanced her life.  This article shows how the power of mother nature in helping center us.  Our trend towards technology and away from nature is unnatural.  Balance Your Life in Two Days.

In How to be Childlike, Leo Babauta talks about how to retain that child-like curiousity and presence that is the core of creativity.  This is a beautiful article for me to hold onto as my babies grow. 

And finally, JD over at Get Rich Slowly has out together a nice article about what to save for retirement.  I think a lot of parents, including myself fall into the trap of sacrificing dollars for our own retirement to help pay for our children's schooling.  This is a reminder to me, about how it's a better gift to my children to make sure that my wife and I are set in retirement and do not become a burden to them, then it is for me to pay their way through college.  How Much Should you Save for Retirement?

That's all for today.  I'll have new articles available on Monday.

I'm in the middle of some pretty significant life changes at the moment.  Sometimes the old is tough to push your way through, but I know I will be better for it.  I am coming to peace with stuff (I hope) and am hopefully opening myself up to some big gains in actualizing the important and essential things in my life.  Alot of this is cryptic-speak I know, but if you're following along lately, you'll understand…just try to clear out the unessential so that I can fully appreciate the essential.

This week brings another terrific list of articles that are helping me on my path.

One of my favorite blogs is Think Simple Now by Tina Su. Unfortunately for us thirsty readers, she's been incommunicado for three months while visiting an Ashram in India.  She's come back with a new level of enlightenment and has shared her experience in this article, Living Enlightenment – A Personal Report.

Part of my process of Minimizing and getting down to the essential means that I also have to control my commitments.  Learning the art of saying No is critical to that.  Patrick has a nice piece at Unwrap Your Mind regarding this, called No Fu – The Warriors Way to Say No.

I am always interested in articles about reducing stress.  We live in a bigger, better, faster world and it's very difficult to unplug from all that.  I like this article by Ali over at Dumb Little Man called, Kill Your Stress – 8 Stress Busting Techniques.

And back to the minimlism topic.  I liked Patrick's comment on my peace called Mnmlsm from Wednesday of this week, where he mentioned that the real key is to come to piece with stuff.  This, I whole-heartedly agree with.  Leo Babuata's article on How to Let Go of Possessions speaks well to this.

And a new free eBook for everyone, thanks to Jonathan Mead over at Illuminated Mind who has written about escaping from the Rat Race with, The Zero Hour Workweek.  And a blogging friend of mine, JS Dixon, has just gotten one of his articles published there.  Check out, Triple Your Rate of Failure and You Might Succeed.

I've come across alot of very inspiring articles this week that I thought might be helpful to those of you who may be unhappy with your job or current circumstances.  I think all of us have something we'd like to improve in our life, or maybe even some dreams that we may have forgotten, that we deserve to re-kindle. 

My new friend, Arvind, has a great new post out this week with some inspirational advice about approaching every day as if it were a carnival.  This is authentic living, with optimism and staying away from folks that will keep you down.  8 Simple Tips to Have a Carnival in Your Everyday Life.

I love this next article.  Particularly the part about how children don't over analyze their life choices.  If they want to do something, they just go out and do it.   Us adults, we analyze all the really bad things that could happen and then judge whether the thing we want to do is really worth it in light of that.  Sometimes, we talk ourselves out of a totally awesome, life-changing experience  Moving to Paris Without Quitting My Day Job – A Lesson in Becoming a Non-Conformist.

From the above guest article, I linked over to the author's blog and found a really great audio interview with Author Pam Slim, who's book, Escape from Cubicle Nation I am six chapters into and thoroughly enjoying.  Pam talks about going after her own dreams and how she escaped her own cubicle-hell.  How Best-Selling Author Pam Slim Started Her Blog to Balance Her Life and Dreams.

Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love writer, Jonathan Fields has a terrific inspirational article from earlier this week about the lessons learned while surfing and observing other surfers out on the open waters.  The Surfer's Guide to Entrepreneurial Bliss.

I'm new to the Dumb Little Man blog.  I guess that's like saying I'm new to sliced bread, but hey, better late than never, right?  The Art of Changing Easily and Gracefully is a terrific article about focusing on the change you want, and not on the results you don't want.  The scary but exciting truth is that the World seems to change faster and faster, and the true successes are those who can adapt quickly and not get all flustered when the rug gets pulled out from underneath you.

Jeffrey Tang also wrote a great article this week on entrepreneurship and the approach one needs to take to develop the proper mindset.  When I write, I try to always ask myself, what can I do to be most helpful to my readers.  Jeffrey takes it a step further by teaching us to take a bolder approach.  The Number One Question Entrepreneurs Forget to Ask.

For the US readers, enjoy your Labor Day weekend.  I'll be returning with more articles on Monday.

We've been getting some indication that one of the babies may come home from the hospital in the next few weeks.  So, I'm nine parts ecstatic, one part scared shytless.  I wonder at times how we'll make it work.  That's partly why I took up blogging, in an effort to search out the best productivity tips; not for the sake of simply getting more done in less time.  I'm also trying to boil down life to its essence, remove the non-essential, which is why I am fascinated with simple living and minimalism lately.

In any event, one of my favorite parenting articles that I've seen lately comes from a mother of twins named Anastasiya.  Her article, 10 Practical Productivity Tips for Parents is indispensable advice.

Arvind Devalia has a great article about setting boundaries for when you feel like people may be starting to take advantage of you.  How to Stop Bending over Backwards for Other People all the Time.

An interesting trend on the internet lately has been this sort of anti-productivity movement.  In some ways, I agree, productivity tips become a bit farcical when used simply to cram your day full of more to do.  For me, it's to get done what I need to get done more quickly, then get on to enjoying my life.  This, from Leo at Zen Habits, Get Less Done: Stop Being Productive and Enjoy Yourself.

My pathetic fitness levels are really stressing me out.  I've started checking out Mark's Daily Apple recently because I've always put more trust in what's worked for two thousand years over what's worked in the last five or ten.  So, even though I am not a fan of gym exercises (trust me, I used to be a gym rat for a decade in my 20's) I like alot of his other fitness concepts: Definitive Guide – The Primal Blueprint.

And finally, Vicki Robin, the co-author of the life-tranforming book, Your Money or Your Life provided a guest post over at The Simple Dollar, Having Enough For Life.

It's been an interesting week.  I've been networking with a log of different bloggers from the A-list Blogging site.  Made some friends along the way, and read some really good posts.  My own efforts to make changes in my own life via the Butterfly Effect have hit a bit of a snag thanks to throwing my back out again.  Time will heal, and I will be back.  Till then, enjoy these terrific articles that I've found this week.

Feel the Fear and Change the World anyway is a terrific article about being your best, in spite of your nagging fears.  Arvind also has a terrific new free eBook that can be downloaded from his site.

Decluttering Tips for Living The Simple Life - Sherri, over at Serene Journey offers a top notch article on clearing your life of the unimportant so that you can go focus on being awesome.

37 Ways to Communicate Better with Your Children – by Steven Aitchison.  You can be that I'm collecting all the information I can for when the tripets get older.

Why Some People Are Better Manifestors Than Others – by Steve Pavlina.  This is a terrific article.  The title speaks for itself.  Enough said.

Learn From The Past – by Gretchen Rubin – One of my favorite lessons is learning from the past, but not to dwell on it.  I find that the present is far more important.

Lies, Damn Lies and Follower Counts. What Really Matters – by renegade Jonathan Fields. I love these kind of posts that buck the trends and get to what's really important.  I wrote one myself a while back, The Great Expectations Manifesto.

Happy weekend, see you back Monday morning.

Photo from Craphound.com

 A mish-mosh today.  Now that we are settling in to live on one income, I've turned my attentions lately to Finance, Frugality, Simplicity and Productivity.  Here are some articles that I found very interesting this week. 

Buying Experiences in Your Twenties – Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar has some great advice for young folks just out of school.  This is timely for me as I try to figure out how to teach the triplets about money as they are growing up.

The Minimalist Principle – Omit Needless Things - Another terrific reminder of paring down to what's most important from Leo Babauta at Zen Habits.  Where I've never thought to apply this principle before is in my food choices, which he points out in the third bullet point.

The Source of Frugal Misery - Another great post by Trent Hamm regarding what we Value and spend our money on.

How a Haircut Lead to a Handy Acronym – JD over at Get Rich Slowly is auditioning some new guest staff writers.  This is a particularly good one on identifying the present and future costs of new purchases before you buy.

Getting Things Done Explained for Students - It's about that time when students are heading off to college.  Wish I had this when I went away to school.  Instead I read, "Getting up late for Hockey Practice," "Getting Beer Stains out of Carpet," and "Getting into Way Too Much Trouble When I Should be Studying."

That's all for today, see you Monday and have a great weekend!

Weekends are typically time for family and rest.  I collect links throughout the week for good articles that I read.  Here's five of my favorites for this week:

The Two Most Dangerous Words by Jonathan Mead.  His style is in your face, and he's always up for a good kick in the butt.  I read Jonathan when I need a jolt of inspiration without being coddled. 

Hold Fast or Let Go – 9 Lessons From the Tide by Mary Jaksch at Good Life Zen.  Love the allegorical story that goes with lesson 3.

Leo at Zen Habits always has good advice on Simplifying.  This article is a gem, Your Life Simplified.

Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar gives good, (un)common sense financial advice.  As a spiritual seeker, I enjoyed his article Faith as a Guiding Principle.

And last, but certainly not least, Steve Pavlina of Personal Development for Smart People fame just came out with a seven part series on Networking with Busy People.  Part 1 starts here.