Pavlina was a student at University of California, Berkeley in the early nineties. He performed poorly at his studies, distracted by socializing and shoplifting. On February 4, 1991, Pavlina was arrested for grand theft in Sacramento, CA and given 60 hours of community service. He claims that this was the impetus he needed to turn his life around.

Pavlina says he then went on to earn two college degrees from California State University, Northridge in just three semesters (also incorporating advanced placement credits for courses he had taken in high school).

Prior to starting his personal development site, Pavlina was the founder and CEO of Dexterity Software as well as a software developer at that company. Dexterity published the award-winning computer game Dweep. In 2000, Dweep won the Shareware Industry Award. In 2001, the sequel Dweep Gold won the Shareware Industry Award for Best Action/Arcade Game (beating out Arkanoid for the honour).

Steve Pavlina served as Vice President of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) in 1999 and President of the ASP in 2000. By this stage, Steve's writings in the software development community were already having a significant impact. The Escapist : The Indie Guru The ASP's Hall of Fame page describes him as having had "a significant, lasting influence on others via his articles and postings".

In 2004, Steve Pavlina began a web site and blog dedicated to personal development, StevePavlina.com ("Personal Development for Smart People"). Dexterity software went dormant at this time and on October 31, 2006, Steve closed Dexterity Software in order to focus full-time on the website and blog.

On October 15, 2008, Pavlina's book, "Personal Development For Smart People," was published. The book entered Amazon.com's top 100 bestsellers list months before it was released.

Pavlina's blog covers topics such as personal development and success; consciousness and courage; productivity, motivation and goal setting; career, wealth and business; and spirituality. Personal Development Some of his most popular writing is around lifestyle and lifestyle experimentation, where he will try a different style of living and transparently blog about the day-to-day experience. Examples include raw veganism and polyamory. His most famous experiment in this regard is with polyphasic sleep, with a related article on early rising appearing in the British newspaper The Guardian.

In 2006 a forum was added to Pavlina's blog.

In October 2009 he announced his separation and plans to divorce his partner of 15 years, Erin Pavlina.