Kent Griswold

Guest Post by Leo

Most of us are pretty busy, just about every day.

Some like it that way — being busy is almost a status symbol, as it shows you’re important and productive and a go-getter and achiever. If you’re in a power meeting and sending emails on your Blackberry and making calls, you must be important, right?

Photo courtesy of James Jordan.

I say we should reject that little game of who’s busier than whom. We should opt out. We should say, “I’d rather find peace of mind, and be able to relax, and really enjoy life, than allow it to pass me by just so I can be ‘productive’ and show everyone how important I am.”

OK, maybe say something shorter instead. Like, “No thanks.”

Why busy is a fool’s trap

Thing with busy is, it never ends. You’ll never get out of it (unless you make a very conscious effort), because there is no end to the to-do list, the emails, the IMs and phone calls, the meetings and meetings and yes, more meetings. We’re hamsters on a treadmill, running for no real purpose, except to make a boss happy, to make money for someone else, or perhaps to make money for ourselves … but to what end?

The treadmill will never end. There is never an end, because there is no destination.

But guess what? The journey is the destination. We are already there — what we do today is what our life is, what it’s all about. Is being this busy really the meaning of life? Or is there something more? Is there a better life?

I believe we should eschew busy-ness for things with more value. Eschew the urgent for the important. And even then, if we’re doing important things, we should not fill every minute with important things. We need to learn to relax, and be happy, and enjoy life. Otherwise, it’s not worth living.

We need to rediscover what it’s like to do nothing, to sit still, to enjoy silence. We need to put more space in between things, instead of cramming them together all the time. Let’s stop being busy, and start being happy.

How to be less busy

It starts with a decision: I want to be less busy. I don’t want to do this anymore.

What follows really depends on how much control you have over your day.

If you have at least some control: Make two lists: your ideal day, and all the things that fill up your day (all your commitments). Start by eliminating commitments that are not essential, that don’t make up your ideal day — call or email people and tell them you can no longer commit to the commitment, that you don’t have the time. People will be disappointed but will live.

Then start following your ideal schedule. Be sure there’s spaces between things, so you’re not rushed. Leave large blocks of time wide open, so you can focus on creating or doing what makes you happy. Leave at least one big block for doing non-work stuff, whether that’s spending time with family, or exercising, or doing a hobby, or just relaxing.

Look at your to-do list and see what you can eliminate or delegate or postpone until later. Each day, just choose one or three things to focus on. Have a block of time designated for doing emails and phone calls and smaller tasks, so they don’t interrupt you throughout the day.

Disconnect from the Internet for large chunks of time. When you go places, turn your mobile device off, or leave it behind, so you can be disconnected from the online world and interruptions, and connected to the real world and real people. Clear away distractions and interruptions so you’re not always switching your attention between things.

Avoid meetings. Seriously. They fill up our days without being productive.

Single-task instead of multi-task. Focus on important things rather than a bunch of little things. If you get caught up opening new tabs to read, bookmark them later with delicious or instapaper or some other service.

And enjoy the peacefulness. Relax, take naps, breathe.

If you have little control: See how much of the above you can already implement — you might get further than you think. Mapping out an ideal day, eliminating commitments, simplifying your to-do list, single-tasking, clearing away distractions and interruptions … most people can do most of these things, or if not most things then at least a few.

Also, talk to your boss. Tell your boss that you’d like to be more “productive” and that the interruptions and meetings are getting in the way of accomplishing more important things. Tell your boss what you’d like to accomplish, and what you’d like to change about your schedule. Work out a compromise.

Also, think about changing jobs, if you really have no control. This is a longer-term change, obviously, but it’s possible, and maybe even desirable. Something to consider, at least.

In the end, whatever changes you make, you can be less busy simply by changing your mindset, to one where you live in the present rather than always thinking about other things. Slow down, breathe, enjoy every moment. Learn to focus on what’s in front of you, and find peace in whatever you do.

Then raise your fist against the world in victory and laugh quietly, having beaten this busy busy world.

I am a big fan of John Chow who I have learned a lot about blogging and am trying to implement in my own blogging world. In this video he covers an area I have been real weak in and plan to change real soon.

This video is one hour long and is based on John’s presentation at Vancouver’s Business, Marketing and Entrepreneur meetup. John’s topic is how he make $40,000 a month from a blog and he had a sold out house.

I recommend you grab a drink, a bite to eat and pull up a chair because you’re going to want to watch this from beginning to end.

My Blog Business Model from John Chow on Vimeo.

In the last two months, I have moved to become a full time internet publisher and this means writing on a daily basis. Writing does not come natural for me and is work, yet I do enjoy it and am constantly looking for ways to make it easier.

Today I received an email from Alan Gardyne an affiliate marketer and he had an excellent article and ten tips for making writing easier. Following is an excerpt from his article which I plan to take to heart to improve my own writing skills.

Here are 10 things I’ve learned that will improve your writing, help you communicate more clearly…

1. Get rid of distractions. Find a quiet spot to do your writing. Turn off the radio, TV and music. You may think you can do two things at once, but what you’re actually doing is switching from one to the other.
2. Don’t stop. Bash it out, no matter how rough it is. Keep going all the way until it’s finished. Only then is it time to go back and tidy it up. Resist the urge to edit as you go. Editing as you go interrupts the creative flow. Your article is likely to take 10 times as long to do if you edit as you go.
3. Write simply. Your readers are in a hurry. They don’t want to waste time trying to figure out what you mean.
4. Tell a story. Stories get your readers involved. (For heaven’s sake, make them TRUE stories. I’m delighted to hear the FTC is cracking down on some of the fake stuff out there. If you don’t have a good story to tell, interview someone who has.)
5. See things from your reader’s point of view. Keep asking yourself, “What do they want to know?”
6. Read it aloud. This makes it easier to spot awkward patches where the words don’t flow smoothly.
7. Edit later. Put your writing aside and re-read it hours or, better still, days later. It’s amazing how you see your article with fresh eyes and spot ways to improve it.
8. Read more. To improve your writing, turn off the TV and read books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters – anything. The more you read, the more you’ll recognize good writing when you see it.
9. Practice. One of the best ways to learn to write is to WRITE. When you learn a skill, you create new neurons and new pathways in your brain. The section of your brain used for writing will expand. If you don’t believe me, read “The Brain That Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge. Good libraries should have it.
10. Write something every day.

I hope that if your interest is writing and you want to improve it, that these tips will help you along the way as well. Have a great day!

As I am getting closer to moving from a day job to blogging and internet marketing full time. I need to step back and look at how I can make a part time business into a full time business and make it a success. There are 10 basic principals that lead toward success and I have listed them below. The object is now to make this a part of my life and apply it on a daily basis.

Success

1. Be Positive: How you think is everything. Think success, not failure. Beware of a negative environment.
2. Dream: Decide upon your true dreams and goals: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.
3. Action: Take action: goals are nothing without action. Don’t be afraid to get started. Just do it.
4. Learn: Never stop learning, keep on going back to school and read books. Get training and acquire skills.
5. Persist: Be persistent and and work hard, success is a marathon, not a sprint. Never Give Up!
6. Details: Learn to analyze details, get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.
7. Focus: your time and money: Don’t let other people or things distract you.
8. Innovate: Don’t be afraid to be different: following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.
9. Communicate and deal with people effectively: no person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.
10. Be Honest & Dependable: take responsibility: otherwise, nombers 1-9 won’t matter.

If you are into blogging like I am you need to be aware what will hurt you as well as what will help your blog. Leo Babauta is one of my favorite writers on the web and he wrote a great article on his blog Write to Done that I want to share below:

Photo courtesy of Zach Klein.

I don’t know about you, but often when I begin exploring new blogs to find useful information, I get so frustrated that I give up and leave within a few minutes of finding the blog.

While many blogs might contain the useful posts I’m looking for, they often make it too difficult for new readers to find.

Sure, if you’ve been following a blog for six months or more, you know the blogger, you know the basics of the blog, you know how useful and interesting the blog is.

But if you’re new, you don’t know any of that. And first impressions mean everything when it comes to attracting — and more importantly, keeping — new readers.

If a reader hates your blog at first site, you’ve lost him. If a reader can’t find anything good on your blog within a few minutes — actually, instantly for many readers — you’ve lost him. If you annoy a reader, you’ve probably lost him.

And for each reader you’ve lost, that’s a wasted opportunity. You’ve worked hard to promote your blog, to connect with other bloggers, to do guest posts and spread the word through social media … but when the reader arrives, you fail to keep him and turn him into a regular reader or a subscriber.

Today, I’ll walk you through some common mistakes many blogs make that turn off new readers (and even regular readers oftentimes) … mistakes that could be killing your blog.

1. Less-than-useful posts. When I’m exploring new blogs, most of the time I’m looking for certain information — interesting new workouts, yummy recipes, good running advice, frugality ideas, inspiration to improve my life, and so on. You want useful posts — that’s why you’re there. Sure, some times a blogger is just such an interesting writer that you’ll read posts even if they’re not that useful. Some of my favorite bloggers are more interesting or funny than anything else. But most of the time, you’re looking for useful stuff. And when you go to a blog and scan the front page and can’t find one single useful post, you’re outta there. You want useful posts, and you want them fast. Bloggers should have lots of posts packed with useful information, and they should be on the front page so the reader doesn’t have to look for them. If your front page displays the 5 most recent posts, and they’re all updates about a competiton or a new product you’re selling or a contest on another blog … well, the reader will leave rather than having to wade through 10 non-useful posts just to find one useful post.

2. Infrequent posting. If you go to a blog and the last update was two months ago, you know the blog isn’t being updated. And while it might contain tons of useful stuff from the past, there’s no reason to subscribe or keep coming back if you don’t think new posts are coming out regularly. A good blog will have posts at least once a week — any longer than a week and it looks like cobwebs are forming on the blog. Two or three times a week is probably better, and 4-5 times a week might be best (depending on the type of blog you have — news blogs obviously are updated more than daily).

3. Writing about infrequent posting. What’s worse than noticing that the last post was two months ago? Reading the first paragraph of the post and seeing something like, “Sorry I haven’t been posting lately — things have been really busy for me. I promise to post more frequently!” That kind of post is a death knell for a blog. Don’t let that be the first impression. If you haven’t been posting recently, get on the ball and write some great posts (or ask other bloggers for guest posts). Don’t write a post about why you haven’t been posting.

4. Not displaying your best posts. Going through months of archives is too difficult for a new reader. The new reader wants to find your most essential posts right away, on the front page. Of course, your best posts might be spread out throughout the entire lifespan of your blog, so you’re not going to actually have them on the front page (which obviously just has the latest posts). But you can display them on the front page (and on every page, actually) by listing your best posts in your sidebar. A list of 10-20 essential posts for new readers is a must. Seriously, a must. Don’t make it difficult for readers to find your good stuff.

5. Flashy or annoying ads. If an ad is flashing, or popping up, or making noises, or expanding to block the text of the post, or in some other way forces the reader to click “close” … that’s just annoying. It’s happened on Zen Habits a few times when my ad networks ran annoying ads — and I wrote to them right away to ask them to remove them. Annoying your reader is a very bad strategy. Don’t do it. Seriously, stop it right now!

6. Trying to push products too often. I’ve run across some really good blogs with lots of useful information — they do everything right — except that they’re always trying to sell me stuff. I mean, like in every post, along with their sidebars and headers. It might be their own products, or the products of other websites. I’m not talking about banner ads in the sidebar. I’m talking about pushing products within the posts themselves, all the time. I do it every now and then when I think I’ve found a useful ebook my readers might enjoy, or do a book review with Amazon affiliate links. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with that from time to time. But in every post? C’mon!

7. Long posts that are hard to scan. I’ve written about making your posts scannable before, so I won’t belabor the point here, but too often in my recent explorations of a large number of blogs, I’ve found post that contain useful information, but it’s too hard to find the info you’re looking for. You shouldn’t have to read every word of every paragraph to find the tips you want — they should be listed in bullet points or a numbered list, or highlighted in bold or somehow brought to the attention to the reader. Make it easy, not hard, to find the info the reader wants!

8. Pop-up subscription boxes. A good number of very decent blogs have this gimmick, and perhaps it helps them get subscribers. I can’t say. All I know is that as a reader, when I go to a blog like this, I click “close” or “no thanks” when the pop-up subscription box appears, and then I leave the site, never to come back. It’s too annoying, and too pushy. Don’t force the subscription on the reader. Let them review your site first, and then decide for themselves if they want to subscribe. A large number of blogs also use that WordPress plugin that says something like, “It looks like you’re new to this blog. You might consider subscribing … etc.” Something like that. Well, it’s better than the pop-up subscription box, but it still annoys me … especially as I’ve often been to the blog before but perhaps my browser has cleared out the cookie the plugin uses. Why tell me I haven’t been to your blog when I’m a regular reader? Frustrating.

9. Way too much clutter on your site. This is often related to the annoying ads and the blogger trying to sell you too much, but basically when you have a ton of ads, sidebar elements, and things throughout the post and in the header and footer of the blog, it gets overwhelming. The reader really wants to focus on the post, and while he’s willing to put up with some ads and other elements, if there’s too much it makes it hard to read. And that’s gonna lose you readers. Consider eliminating as many elements as you can while still retaining your best performing ad networks and other sidebar elements. Make reading a pleasant experience.

10. Boring or uninformative headlines. Again, a new reader wants to be able to find your useful posts very quickly. Often that means that he’ll scan through the front page, looking only at the headlines. If the headline is “Tuesday workout”, that doesn’t promise anything useful. But if it’s something like “Why running the day after lifting heavy weights is a bad idea”, that might contain something the reader is looking for. You can see the difference: the second headline is much more informative (even if both posts contain the same info), and it shows the reader exactly what useful information the post will deliver. Get that information and benefit in the headline, not just buried somewhere within the post. Or else you’ll lose that reader.

To read more of Leo Babauta’s writing go to Write to Done and enjoy.