If you aren’t doing this already, you ought to be monitoring the Del.icio.us bookmarks of the preeminent web leaders. For instance, Steve Rubel’s feed is a good place to catch web news the day before it breaks. Normally, he’s tagging articles that will likely make the rounds in the next few hours–plus you get a glimpse into the media he’s consuming. I make this suggestion reluctantly, however, after being take aback a bit after I discovered a few people doing that to my feed.

In the spirit of the pot calling the kettle black, I stole this from Tucker’s. He’ll probably write more about it later, but in the meantime, enjoy.

Calacanis has been “Fatblogging” excessively and I wish I could say I relate. I’m shedding so much weight on such a regular basis that I think I might have cancer.

I’ve gone through my 3rd wardrobe overhaul since Thanksgiving. I’m down to a 30 waist. And let’s not pretend I eat healthily. Yesterday, I had Oreos for breakfast. You can find me in Carl’s Jr at least 4 times a week. My favorite foods ranked, in order, go as follows:

1) Chicken Fried Steak

2) Movie Popcorn

3) Nachos

None of this is to brag. It’s just the truth. There’s this part of The Secret–and yes, the majority of the book is just retarded–where they talk about the dichotomy between the attitudes of fat people and those of fit people. You hear “I try and eat healthy all the time and just keep putting on weight” and “I do whatever I want and I haven’t gained a pound” respectively. At some point you have to consider that attitude is a factor–that it influences reality. But what The Secret doesn’t understand, which is why it resonates with lazy people so much, is that there is a second step. You can do whatever you want when you put in the work that justifies it.

I don’t want to call out Calacanis because all I have is respect for the guy, in all likelihood I wouldn’t be blogging without him. At the same time, why even bother walking for 30 minutes on the treadmill? Let’s just save society the electricity and not bother. I have Oreos for breakfast because I promised myself that I’d be running 4-5 miles within the next few hours. I know that like clockwork, at least 5 days a week, I’ll be running and finishing with situps until I can’t even bend over. So that 24/7, I can eat as I please. It’s a simple as that: Do the work, reap the benefits.

School works the same way. You can sit in lecture and ask annoying questions until the crowd threatens to kill you, or you can hone your mind to a point where a cursory read is all that is required. Yes, you can analyze the etymology of each word in the study guide, or if you’d laid the foundations for college properly, you’d have already read and owned the texts before you’d even considered taking the course.

Like Tim Ferriss says, there’s working and there is being busy. There’s exercise and then there is physical exertion. The marginal return on eating a salad and counting calories is well…marginal. Understand that if you suck it up and pour some true energy into it, you’ll be able to move on. I’m not sure if he wants to be outed, but someone ridiculously important in Hollywood gave me this advice last week: “Set goals, listen and learn, but understand the concept of The Commander’s Intent and the fluidity of randomness in the real world. Adjust and get it done and off your list.“

When you focus on the chickenshit details you’re going to end up with chickenshit results. Of course, that’s not always true, but as far as self-improvement goes, it is. It must become “This is my new lifestyle, this is how I am.” Embody that ethic and it will become reality. This is what I was trying to say before, envision how you want to be, insert it into your consciousness and then you won’t have to worry about it. And with that freedom you can move on to the next thing.

Sidenote: There are some downsides. Like the fact that I am increasingly looking like a little kid and that I’m tired of going shopping.

This is not a shill, I promise.

One of my favorite sites out there right now is CopyBlogger–both for the quality of the content and the mindset it embodies. For the last few months I have literally scoured the internet in search of every site related to blogging, web 2.0, technology, marketing, citizen journalism etc, and came across a sad truth.

NO ONE CARES ABOUT CONTENT.

Except for Brian Clark at CopyBlogger. Of course, only in Tech could everyone’s focus be so misguided, but it’s true. You could drown in all the PR, link dumps, social networks, SEO, advertising optimization, even grammar blogs, without ever seeing someone go more in depth then “Oh, don’t forget to have great content.”

The name CopyBlogger should be redundant. Blogs ought to imply copy, but they don’t. The internet is thriving because people are hungry for great writing (+ video and audio) but hardly anyone is willing to do the work required to provide it. Instead, we’re all so focused on tricking people into liking what we already have. That’s how old media works–we’re supposed to be different. We’re supposed to cater to the audience, not cascade them into consuming.

This is why Brian’s site is so great. He doesn’t update a ton, but when he does, it’s awesome stuff. Last week’s post was straight out of the 48 Laws of Power, with him advising that you create an enemy as fall-back inspiration for writing. Earlier in the month he advised on how to avoid burying the lead, and captivating the audience with a killer opening. And he’s done a great series on headlines, which have really helped me on sites like Digg and Reddit.

Seriously, if you’re a writer on the internet (or a writer anywhere) you need to be reading his site. It’s worth 5 TechCrunchs or ValleyWags, because without content, none of this is sustainable. It’s about time the rest of the internet woke up and starting looking at the creative process as the engine instead of an afterthought.