Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

One of the best things about blogs is that they evolve through time. One of the worst things about blogs is that they evolve through time.

That said, I’ve added some pages that I hope add value to you and make this site more interactive. I wanted to take a second and highlight these changes, as it may not be apparent for those of you who have been reading the RSS Feed but not visiting the site.

I also wanted to highlight this to explain my slower rate of creation and completion of some of the series and planners I’m working on. Rather than trying to do everything at once, I put those projects on pause and finished the makeover of this site.

Here’s the new stuff, handily linked in case you’d like to check it out from your reader. I hope you take a few minutes to stop by:

• A revised “About” page

I never really liked my old about page, so this one’s been reworked. For once, a quick and clear statement of what this blog is about! I hope you like it.

• A “Free Planners” page

Rather than having to jump through posts, or keep track of what post is related to which download, I’ve added this page to keep track of all things having to do with the planners. If I change or create anything planner- or tool-wise, it’ll all be changed here at the top so you can grab it quickly.

(Shameless appeal for help: Please “like” the free planner page on StumbleUpon and “tag” it on Del.icio.us. I’d like to continue to work on these projects and provide them to everyone freely, and the additional traffic from these sources helps me gauge interest and motivates me to work on them a bit more. Thanks a ton!)

• A Most Popular Post Page

I’ll go through every couple of weeks and add/arrange the most popular post on PF here. The value-added feature here is that each post will have a quick excerpt to let you know what it’s about.

• A Friend Me Page

I use a few of the social media services pretty regularly and would love to see what you’re liking, digging, tagging, reading, and tweeting. I’ve added the services I use and my username in case you’d like to share with me. Friend Me!

• A Skribit Widget (in the sidebar)

The skribit widget allows you to post and vote on things you’d like me to write about or work on. I currently have a list of five questions, but I really encourage you to use this widget to help motivate me to work on the things you’re interested in. I’d much rather be part of a dialog, and I appreciate you all guiding me and expressing your preferences.

So, with those projects completed, I can begin anew on some other fallow projects. The highest priority for working projects will be the Productivity Planners, especially the recreation of the Weekly Productivity Planner and the Monthly Productivity Planner. I’ll also be picking up the Practicing the Virtues series. If you’d like to see anything else or are just really interested to see anything in particular, drop a comment and let me know.

As always, I appreciate your support. Thanks for helping me add value to the world in my own way.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…

Spring is in the air, and it seems as if the blogosphere has been a bit more quiet than normal. While the quantity of writing is down, the quality seems to be better. Enjoy the roundup!

• Why Your Loved Ones Want You To Fail - IttyBiz

Why do your loved ones want you to fail? Shouldn’t they be rooting for your success? Naomi gives a lot of reasons why they want you to fail, with some tips on what to do about it.

• Ten Top Tops to Overcome Obstacles to Success - My Super-Charged Life

In my experience, people who are unsuccessful tend to think that those who are successful have had it easier than they have. The fact is that the successful people have just learned to overcome obstacles. Jeff gives ten tips to overcome obstacles to success.

• What Do You Do if You’re Satisfied? - Bloggrrl

I’ve been reading Michelle’s blog for a long time, and there’s a new wind in the air over there. At one point in time, she was writing to quit a job she hated. She no longer hates that job - so the question is what to do now. Why I find this interesting is that people on change in the face of two things: 1) discomfort, and 2) the desire to become better. But, the desire to become better, for a lot of people, doesn’t have a lot of motivational force. Or maybe people who have the desire to become better are not comfortable being less than they could be, so it’s still discomfort doing the work. Definitely something to think about.

• Your Mid-Life Crisis: The Rules - Dumb Little Man

Lori, who, as far as I can tell, is neither dumb nor a man (I haven’t ruled out little, yet) gives rules for managing the ole’ Mid-Life Crisis. I think it’s good information for managing radical change and aging, in general.

• 70 Simple Power Tao Secret Hacks to Writing the Perfect Productivity Article, Plus a Guide and System for Doing It - The Growing Life

I can’t write 90% of my posts now without thinking about Clay’s parody post. Parody is so effective when it’s so true. Thanks, Clay, for completely ruining my Friday Meditations, Planner Series, Virtue Series, and just about anything else I was going to write- oh, and ruining the chance to use a picture of me jumping…

• No One Is Good at Multitasking - Productivity Planner

Before my productivity engine came to a bloody, screeching halt, I used to believe that I needed to become better at multitasking. If I could do more tasks in the same amount of time, I thought, I could get more done in less time. Rubbish, lies, and deceptions. Chris’s post comes to the same conclusion, but his is backed by research.

• 16 Ways to Keep a Razor-Sharp Focus at Work - Zen Habits

Now you know that I think multitasking is bunk, and the opposite of multitasking is focusing on one task at a time. Glen’s great guest post on Zen Habits hits the spot on how to stay focused while you work.

• Offline Reading - Productivity 501

Part of my growing and learning process is to continually read offline material. Don’t get me wrong - I love a lot of the material written online, but Mark gives four downsides to online material that I find true. Of course, the hard part is finding time to get good reading time in for both mediums.

• How to Avoid Making Stupid Mistakes - Scott H Young

Part of life is knowing how to recover from stupid mistakes, but another, even more important part, is figuring out how to avoid them in the first place. Scott’s insightful post helps with the latter aspect. My favorite: “Metaphors are your intellectual weapons to prevent mistakes.” And I’ve made it known how I feel about metaphors.

• 5 Signs You’ve Married Your Problems (and how to divorce them) - Jonathan Mead

Having problems is bad enough. Being married to them is worse. Jonathan’s excellent post gives the five signs that you’ve married your problems - and ways to file for divorce. And these divorces won’t be so damned expensive.

• 10 Reasons to Use an Exercise Ball as Your Chair - GearFire

Our physical condition is an important aspect of our productivity, and I’m always looking for easy ways to exercise or condition my body, especially if I can do that while doing something else. I like sitting on my exercise ball instead of other chairs for many of the reasons Geoff lists. It’s a great way to exercise your core without actively thinking about it or trying to.

• Word Porn: Reader Challenge

Every Friday, Amy has a post on Word Pr0n, where she introduces cool words to use instead of our more mundane and hackneyed mutterings. I challenged her to find words to replace the overused “sweet” and “awesome.” She accepts the challenge and delivers with some august pickings with resplendent uses.

• Why Does the Thunder Hide The Rain - The Next 45 Years

I love personal development posts that come from deep within people. Alex’s post had me from hello with the quote from Socrates - but it went much further to talk about his relationship with his mother. Great honesty and sincerity in this one - thanks for sharing, Alex, and I hope you find peace through breaking the cycle.

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I’m going to jump on the meme suggested by Chris Brogan and take it one step further. I’m an active commenter, but I haven’t done as many link travologues as I’d like to, so I’ll make up some ground today.

• 8 Ways to Be Ruthless With Your Time - Lifehack

Thursday Bram, who I have no reason to suspect is otherwise ruthless, gives sound tips for getting your time back.

• Mama’s Girls - SHE-POWER

Another installation of the fiction series that Kelly is running. She’s great at giving you enough information for the story to evolve while having that same bit of information prompt more questions. Her non-fictions is just as good.

• Madonna and Freelancing: An “Ah-Ha” Marketing Moment - Quiet Rebel Writer

Amy deftly moves from a mini-rant on the “madonna versus whore dichotomy” to “you’re either valued and attractive, or you’re not (as a freelancer).” It’s not what Amy says, but how she says it, that has me return to her blog everyday.

• Is Alltop.com Jumping The Shark Already? - MonkMojo’s 1000 Cuts

MonkMojo and I go back a long ways, and I’m really proud that he, too, has been added to Alltop. Have I mentioned how much I love Alltop? Great job, MonkMojo - and keep the infotainment going!

• Awaken Your Inner Storyteller, Part 1 - Writing Power

Loren’s series on storytelling was really helpful and timely, as I was then considering how to spruce up my narratives. Pretty soon, I’ll have to start paying her tuition for the lessons she continually gives.

• Why You Should Roll Your Own Time Management System - LifeDev

Francis discusses something near and dear to my heart: Time Management Systems. It’s time to start rolling your own systems, and we’re here to help.

• Important vs. Urgent: 5 Ways to Focus on What Really Matters - PickTheBrain

Jonathan Mead’s at it again on Pick the Brain. Detangling the urgent from the important is hard to do, and Jonathan’s post delivers ways to split the two. Great work, as usual, Jonathan!

• On Eating Contexts for Breakfast and The Price of Radical Growth - The Growing Life

Clay Collins, my more talented alter-ego, really reached down to my core with this post, as I’ve been experiencing a lot of tension from radical growth here recently. The follow-up discussion is amazing, as well.

• The Small Business Happiness Scale: Where Are You? - IttyBiz

Jamie takes the reins (or better yet, is gracefully given them) from Naomi over at IttyBiz and writes a great post about adjusting one’s happiness scale when you’re running a small business.

• Keep a Journal to Solve Tough Problems - Scott H Young

I’m a big fan of journaling and writing to get myself out of complex problems. Scott Young has written a great post on how to do this.

• The Art of Not Finishing - David Seah

David Seah writes some of the best posts on productivity that can be found on the blogosphere, all mostly by accident and through honest introspection. His recent goodness starts with

The road to productivity is paved with clear steps leading to an act of completion; essentialy, it’s finish what you start. However, as I sit here contemplating the rather large list of difficult-to-break-down tasks I’ve given myself, I’m thinking that there might be another approach. That is to relax and not worry about finishing. Or, perhaps, restart constantly.

It’s a longish post, but it’s one of those that I will no doubt read a few times, peruse some of his other posts, and come back and read it again. Yes…I’m still his young Padawan.

On other notes, the Weekly Productivity Planner is taking shape! It will be out by Friday - unless I get bogged down in student papers for longer than I think I will. Stay tuned!

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The other day I mentioned that Clay Collins made it on Alltop’s Lifehack page. I didn’t do a great job of explaining what Alltop was then, but I wanted to take a second and do so now.

Alltop has provided such a great explanation of what they do that I’ll just give a sample from them:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

The way I’ve related to Alltop is that they’re much like the New York Times Bestseller List. They do the work to find good reads from different niches and help readers find those sites by displaying them on a single, aggregated page that lists the latest five stories on those sites. It’s a great way to check out your interests without managing a ton of blogs and sites.

What I like is that they really do help people discover new sites. Rather than just focusing on the old and known sites and blogs, they give new quality blogs a chance, since they have the expressed goals to “shake things up and urge people out of their comfort zones”, promote “sites that provide such high-quality information that we feel it’s our moral duty to tell the world about them,” and “help out underdogs and undiscovered gems.”

As a case in point, they’ve added Productive Flourishing to their Lifehacks page. They have really stuck out their collective neck for me, and I really, really appreciate it.

If you have a minute, run over and check Alltop out.

Will, Kathryn, and Guy - thanks for adding me to the Alltop family!

I just found out today that your friend and mine, Clay Collins, made it on Alltop’s Lifehack page.

I wanted to take a second to cheer him on and give him some gratz love.  For those of you who haven’t been following this blogging phenom, his first blog post on TheGrowingLife was on January 24, 2008.  That’s not a typo - 14 weeks (if I’m counting right) and the man is on Alltop.

I’ve been following him personally and professionally and can tell you that he’s been working his butt off and doing all of the right things to get visibility of his brand and his blog.

Am I envious (in the good way)?  You bet.  Am I proud? Absolutely.

I’d encourage you to cheer him on, but recognize that he may not be able to reply.  He’s currently fighting through the hellstorm of the Digg Effect.

Attaboy, Clay.  Attaboy.

Many of you have probably noticed that my pages load really, really slowly.  I’ve been doing some research on the guts of my system, and I’ve been able to determine why.  Some of it is due to my ignorance, and others go way beyond that.

While doing speed tests this morning, I came across something very interesting.  The old theme I was using was really, really heavy on file weight and server load.  When I switched away from that theme, my file size went from 60.91KB to 48.29 KB.  Yes, my file size is now 21% lighter - just from switching themes. Speed tests were comparable and between 20 and 30 percent faster.

However, after playing around with some other stuff on the blog, I broke some of my widgets and things generally went to hell.  I hadn’t completed the blog theme I wanted, but I wasn’t going back to the old theme - so I compromised and modified an old favorite…the Copyblogger theme.

It is not complete yet, but I wanted to get something workable back up.  I’m trying to balance minimalism with navigation at the moment, and the color scheme is supposed to evoke an old woodsy, earthy theme - imagine an old forest that’s thriving with old and new life. It’s a work in progress, but it at least works without bloating my file size.

Please check it out and let me know what you think.  I’m particularly concerned about ease of reading - if I’ve broken functionality for aesthetics, please let me know so I can fix it.  Also, the color scheme is meant to calm, focus, and refresh - if it depresses and frustrates, let me know.

As for the other things that cause this blog to be so slow, I’ll be fixing what I can and will document it after the fix.  I’ll quickly say this-if you’ve been looking at a good domain host for your blog, avoid Dreamhost’s shared service.  I’m in the market for a new host, though I don’t at all want to have to make yet another move.  <Sigh>

Okay, I’ve managed to move everything to the new domain name.  Everything should now be under Productive Flourishing.  It wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be.

Except for the feeds.  I think I have it set up so that the old feed still works and you shouldn’t have to switch anything up.  This message partly tests that.  However, if you would be so kind as to switch to the new feed, I’d very much appreciate it - since the old feed was acting a bit goofy anyways, and it would be far easier to track one feed than two.

To switch feeds, just click here. Your browser should do the rest of the work.  (This will be in the next few posts, so please forgive the redundancy.)

The next step: changing this template. I think I’ll save that for tomorrow.

There are some major changes that are going to happen to this blog that I’d like to announce:

1. This blog will be moving to a new domain name and renamed to “Productive Flourishing.” There will likely be some hiccups, but I hope you make the switch with me.
2. Most of the ads will come off of the blog. I instead will have a spot for products and services that I either use or think will add value to your lives.
3. I’ll probably go through two different themes - the first to transition from the one you currently see, and then the final one that I either design and create myself or design and have someone else create.

I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’d rather not have to lose what Google rank and familiarity I already have, but I think the move will make me more comfortable with the stuff I write about. The ads coming off are mainly because they slow my blog down, get in the way, and are a distraction to all of us.

I appreciate your continued support.

There’s a common knowledge story kicked around about “The Triple Filters Test.” Sometimes it involves Socrates and other times it involves an Arab scholar, but the truth of the story is the same. Here it is:

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”

Hold on a minute,” Socrates replied. “Before telling me anything, I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”

Triple filter?”

That’s right,” Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test.

The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and…”

All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”

No, on the contrary…”

So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, but you’re not certain it’s true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”

No, not really.”

Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”

Most people leave it at that and assume that the story is just about the information we spread. The real truth behind it, however, is about the information we seek and create.

Imagine how different the world would be if we only chose to seek or create information that was true, good, or useful. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a bit can probably figure out that it’s the test that I’ve been using the whole time.

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This article was featured in The Fourth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life.

Photo credit: Lauren

I’m trying to save all of my metablogging posts ’til Friday, since if I wrote about all the stuff related to blogging that I’m thinking about, I’d probably write as much about blogging as I do anything else. That said, we’re off!

Michelle at Bloggrrl wrote today about something that has been on my mind more and more recently. Basically, it’s about the use of our blogs and who should be the primary focus.
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