Archive for Series
The Blogging Life – Generating Momentum
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As a blogger, everyday is a new adventure. All of yesterday’s work is just that, in the past, and today you must start anew. You’ve been busily cranking out content and building your archive of articles in hopes of generating some momentum.
With a multitude of tasks to accomplish momentum is very important to your success. The problem becomes finding that momentum in the first place.
In order to generate momentum, you must continually have accomplishments, for without them, you have a feeling of going nowhere fast. During your early days of blogging you will often feel overwhelmed as you are a one-man show.
This is where your organizational skills come in. You must keep a listing of goals and the associated tasks to reach them. Once you accomplish a string of these in the timeframe that you have established, you begin to feel a sense of momentum because you are in fact moving forward with your plan.
This sense of momentum is a direct result of your productivity and you must now build upon what you have started. There is no time to enjoy the moment, for to do so will cause you to lose the momentum that you have worked so hard to obtain.
Productivity is the key. You see, it’s the classic “catch-22″. To gain any momentum you have to be productive. To maintain any momentum gained… you get the point.
So how do you remain productive, thus gathering momentum?
As mentioned above, keep a listing of tasks.
Plan ahead of time. I’ve found this to be critical to knowing what lies ahead of you. You MUST know where you are going.
Fact: If you don’t know where you’re going, nobody’s going with you!
I layout my task listings 2 days in advance, which allows me to maintain a mindset of urgency. It also gives you at least 1 plan already developed and loaded into your queue in case one of life’s circumstances gets in the way and there is no time to layout another. Once you have developed 2, just replace the second one daily as you move forward.
Do not wait until the day that the work is to be done to develop the task list. Your productivity time has now taken a hit because you now have to use some of that time getting it together. Avoid this at all costs when possible.
My system is simple. I use a bullet list, leaving spaces for notes and comments. For clarity and increased focus, I will sometimes print this out and review the plan.
Whatever system you use, it is important to be consistent and make this a part of your daily routine. As I have said many times before, blogging is a business, whether you intend to make money or not. It must be approached with a level of seriousness.
Develop your daily routines and you’ll be well on your way to generating the momentum that is imperative to maintaining a serious blog. Your productivity level will rise without you even noticing it.
Apply this concept of momentum building now and you will be rewarded later in your blogging life.
The Blogging Life – Standing at the Crossroads
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This is the first in a series of articles on “The Blogging Life” where real world experiences will be shared giving us all something to relate to, look back upon and smile, or be reminded never to repeat.
If you’d like to share an experience you may reach me via the contact page above or leave a comment below.
A longtime friend and I had lunch recently to catch up on the times. The normal course of conversation between buds turned to the subject of the internet. I installed a couple of plugins for him some time ago, so I knew he had been blogging as a hobbyist for quite awhile. I would always ask how things were going and offer a little help, if needed.
So I asked him when he was going to stop “hobbying around” and make a run at bringing his blog up to date. He’s still on his launch version of WordPress, version number unmentioned to protect the guilty.
By the way, he knows I was going to write this article and he’s cool with that.
Anyhow, things turned a bit more serious when he confessed that he was “stuck”. Stuck? After all of this time, how can I help?
It turns out that he has become so frustrated with the effort and the lack of reward that he has all but abandoned the hobby he once enjoyed. It’s no longer fun and the love is gone and he is simply standing at the crossroads.
He doesn’t know if he will continue and has been on an extended “break”. He told me that he has taken a couple of blogging courses, purchased books, read other blogs and downloaded a large collection of ebooks.
What he didn’t say was that he was actually taking some action on what he’s been reading. Instead, he now has a serious decision to make.
To make a long story short, that is a common occurrence among many bloggers.
Reading every blog and ebook without applying anything that’s being taught is a disaster. By the time you read it all, you’ve forgotten the first action steps that will allow you a measure of accomplishment. This is information overload, pure and simple.
This will always leave you frustrated and standing at the crossroad, trying to decide whether to continue the journey, or call it off and go home.
You must take action as you advance through your learning experience. This is what really makes the information sink in. Nothing like actually gaining the experience from performing the task at hand.
It all begins with establishing a routine, a schedule or some plan that you regularly execute. Focus on what needs to be done.
Here’s a few tips for getting out of the gate;
- Treat it like a job – When you are working on your blog, rid yourself of those time-eroding distractions in your home office. Have some phone silence time and tell the family that you are unavailable for a period of time.
- Silence that HDTV - You’d best turn off the television, otherwise you will be listening with one ear and find yourself pulled away from your work.
- Forget about that email - Your inbox may be a mess but it will have to wait until another time. This is not why you have set aside “blogging time”.
- Surf with caution - If the material you need requires some research on the internet, be certain to only visit the sites necessary to obtain what you need. No drive-bys.
- Use that printer - When you locate the information you are searching for, print it (within reason). This allows you to disengage from the computer and the internet while you read through the material.
- Stay organized - Lengthy PDFs and reports should be filed electronically. Establish a filing system on your computer where you can quickly and easily locate your blog related materials.
- One thing at a time - This one’s tough, but remain on a single task when possible. Better to start and finish one task than to start and leave three incomplete.
- Set time limits - There is no need to run yourself into the ground cramming information until 1am, establish a time that you will be “off” from work. Mark you progress so that you can pick up from there tomorrow. Get your rest.
You must control your situation in order to be fresh and as productive as you can. It’s a slow process and blogging requires a good deal of commitment, but if you stay the course, you will see measurable progress in time.
This progress will serve to motivate you to continue, bringing some excitement to blogging.
Hey, if you’re not going to enjoy this profession than you may want to consider something else.
Back to my ole pal, I’m feeling good about his renewal. He has structured periods of time to perform blogging tasks and I’m happy about that. You see, he really likes working online it’s just that his overexposure to information had led him to a place where he became unsure of which direction to take.
Many bloggers have arrived at that intersection, and many have taken the exit ramp, leaving abandoned blogs and websites behind.
We bloggers have to stick together so that we all remain on-point!
