Welcome!

Welcome to the Web home of my book, The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (Lantern Books, 2006). It is based on my many years’ experience as an activist and coach: work in which I learned which personal habits, thoughts and beliefs tend to help people succeed at ambitious goals, and which don’t. The Lifelong Activist encompasses all I have learned, and recasts it for use by progressive activists, organizers, educators and others. It will thus teach you how to:

Manage Your Mission: so you can determine your authentic path and not act out of guilt, shame or obligation

Manage Your Time: so you can create a schedule that allows you to live your mission, and to achieve the most within that mission

Manage Your Fears: so you can follow the schedule without succumbing to procrastination, perfectionism or blocks

Manage Your Relationship With Self: so you can be the strongest, most empowered, and most joyful person you can be. (And why that goal is fundamentally progressive.)

Manage Your Relationship With Others: so you can leverage your energy, time, skills and other resources with those of others.

The Lifelong Activist has sold thousands of copies, with many thousands more free excerpts in circulation around the Web. (It’s also gotten some great reviews – see the rightmost column.) But not until now has the whole text been available for free to any activist who wishes it. I’m so glad you’re here: please take your time and look around, and please tell others. Also, please sign up for my mailing list for monthly articles on topics related to time management and overcoming barriers to productivity and happiness.

I hope you find the information useful, and encourage you to write if you have questions or need advice. Although I coach for a living, I will do my best to provide at least a short response to questions or concerns from any progressive. I also hold online classes which are an inexpensive way to get in-depth support, and of course I also do one-on-one coaching.

To learn more about me and my current work, including my recently published book, Productivity is Power: 5 Liberating Practices for College Students (Infinite Art, 2022), please visit www.hillaryrettig.com. At that site, you’ll also find abundant free ebooks and other downloads.

I wrote, in the introduction to The Lifelong Activist:

I believe that progressive activists are the world’s most precious resource. We tackle the most difficult and important problems— including hunger, war, disease, poverty, violence, cruelty and exploitation— and work to further humanity’s evolution in the direction of compassion and kindness. Conservatives may create more wealth, but we create more of the values, including justice, equality and freedom, that make life worth living. As history has repeatedly shown us, and as we are unfortunately witnessing in the United States today, wealth without the tempering of progressive values and mores leads inevitably to corruption and despair.

I meant it then, and I mean it even more now.

With gratitude – and in peace and solidarity,

Hillary Rettig

P.S. – Translators Needed! If you are fluent in a language other than English, please consider translating a part of The Lifelong Activist that is meaningful to you. Even a couple of pages could make a difference to another activist! When you’re done, I’ll post your translation on this site.

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