Happiness really IS contagious! And to make a difference, all we need to do is share it, ’spread it around’….

Seeing this video not only made me laugh, the affect lasted for a long time.  It also reminded me of a post I had recently read at Seth Godin about leaders who start a movement that people feel compelled to join!

He’s referring to the Guy #3 in the following video:

I have a feeling we’ll see this trend in more and more weddings :)

Happiness is Contagious is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

As many of you have often mentioned I should get back to posting regularly, and have inquired how I spend my time now that I am not blogging regularly, I want to share that I try to stay in touch with the online world doing things that do not require a lot of concentration or time.   I am very much present in the social media scene and often vote your articles up and am always there to help you out in any way I can.   Occasionally, I have also participated in the small group writing projects/contests, especially when the rules to enter were not very difficult.  A lot of things have changed after my father’s passing as now I go to see my mother (after work in the evening) more often than before and that takes away from my time but even when I am at home doing nothing and am not busy, it’s been difficult dealing with all that has happened in the last year but I promise to do better on this blog.

Now this:

Just a few days ago, I received an email from Luciano Passuello of Litemind that he was running a project/contest for his readers to submit their best personal excellence tips.  This did not require a blog post as you would just need to send in a tip to Luciano’s email.

As I am still in need of some good ideas on how to get over my depression, I thought of sending in a few lines that may not be the best advice out there but they have become my mantra to get through my sadness, check out #28 in the list.  Luciano has published ALL personal excellence tips submitted to him, 66 tips so far. Great ideas given by Litemind readers and great blogs to discover.

The best part.

Since there are prizes worth some $800,  Luciano has asked his participants to vote by commenting on this post listing at least their favorite 5 tips/entries,  and as many as they like (no voting for their own entry of course).   This part is going to take some time for me to choose as I am in a position where I could use most of these tips to improve my life.   If you didn’t get a chance to participate,  you are not eligible to vote but I’d still encourage you to head over to Litemind and share your own very best personal excellence tips.

And I’d be delighted to hear your comments here too on what gets you through depression and sadness.

Personal Excellence Tips at Litemind is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

As I contemplated on what I was going to write and how I was going to participate in a Blog Action Day 2008 in which thousands of bloggers all over the world are thinking and writing about the same issue that transcends color, creed, race and or country,  I was taken over by a lot of emotions.   I thought about the lady we often see walking in the downtown area asking people for quarters.  Over the years it has become a joke amongst most people who work in that area, whenever someone sees her or comes across, they’d laugh and say there goes the quarter lady!   People laugh at her because she has a one liner ‘got a quarter?’  for everyone.   You can find her eating a subway sandwich every day at the train station.   I’ve never laughed at her but I’d admit (and I am ashamed of this) that I have ignored her many times and turned my face away thinking I can’t give her a quarter every day?

How selfish I was.  With blog action day theme, as I was reading more and more on poverty, I couldn’t believe I had done that to her.   It is so easy to act like I did and ignore this problem but just imagine if we had to beg someone for every meal, day after day!    I know my heart is at the right place but on this day, I pledge to make conscious efforts to make a difference in whatever small ways I can.

We humans are so strange in that when in United States someone talks about poverty,  they mostly refer to it or think about it as a condition that exists only in some remote 3rd world, under-developed section of the society.  So not true.  America has it’s share of poverty as detailed in this website.    Imagine this for a second, according to the GlobalIssues, almost half the world population – that is over three billion people – live on less than $2.50 a day!

If these numbers on the chart above don’t really do anything for you, I am sure the following video certainly will move you.

As for me, I went over the list of 88 ways to take action against poverty now that Easton Ellsworth made on Blog Action Day blog yesterday, from people’s contributions.   I am going to try to do as many of those things as possible – some I already do, like eating vegetarian meals twice – I’ve been a vegetarian for a couple of years (well I do eat fish, but just that, no mammals and/or even chicken), signed up with kiva to make loans, clicked on the hunger site to give free food to the poor.  I can’t say I am ready to go homeless for a day and night yet but that would be quite a lesson.

But I want to get started today, NOW, with this post.  So, I pledge to donate $1.00 to Kiva.org for each comment on this post.

There are tons of websites to get inspiration from and get involved.   I have met a lot of great people via blogs, who are spending a whole lot of time to make a difference.  Head over to Train for Humanity and see how you can get involved while getting healthy yourself.

Think of Poverty on Blog Action Day 2008 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

This is the second part in a two part guest post by Matt of “The Fantastic Site of Lord Matt“.  Read How I Manage Multiple Blogs – Part 1

photo: Nathan Borror

About email

The one thing I do not do is check my email. I loath email and find it irritating to use. One day I’m going to find the time to write a gateway program that will convert email to something using XML… When I do check my email it can kill half a day. Often there will be people that I should reply to and sometimes a spark for a post idea but mostly there will be sixty million system messages, along with the spam, marketing junk and general **** that email is full of. I maintain a lot of in-boxes which helps to segregate the mail and some boxes have a higher priority than others. For example the mailing lists box is just archived via POP3 into thunderbird unless I need to ask a question and then I’ll check the box for a few days before ignoring it again. Email is your worst enemy. You can spend hours corresponding with people and writing short post length replies when the same basic information can be contained in a PM, tweet, Stumble or wall note. IM is sometimes useful although I am rarely on-line these days because I love to gossip and get no work done if I do not watch it. As I said my wife chuckled when I told her I was writing about productivity and time management. (As I said I start at the top and stop at the bottom and I’d got this far before she asked me what I was doing).

The trick behind the trick

I am not very organised and probably will never be. However, I apply patterns of behaviour that are productive along with systematised methods that provide short cuts to getting things made or done quickly. I also stack up my resources ready to use and make sure I have a rich collection of “things to use later maybe”. The result is that when I combine this with social media and interaction with other people is that I make for myself an unending and unstoppable avalanche of ideas and potential. Each morning I step into this fast moving current and “go with the flow”. This works because I find every last part of it interesting and I love to write. In this way I do not manage my time so much as set my surroundings up to rush me from one task to the next in a constant run of enjoyable and interesting things to do. The blogs simply act as strategic placed landing pads for the results. If I do not find the topic interesting enough it dies away and “lesson learned” I move on (the current buzz42 is an example of this). In all that I have big projects on the “slow burner” that I go back to time and again. Eventually they get completed but along the way I produce interesting code or learn new geeky things and this again pushes me back to blogging. It might even be true to say that blogging is a way of not killing myself with an utter overload of interesting things to react to.

Segmenting the day

More by necessity than by intention my day is segmented into parts. 7am until 9am is the morning shift where I try to remember to eat breakfast. At 9am the boys go to nursery (pre-school) and some days I have to take them and some days my wife takes them. So I may or may not work until 10am when the rest of the day is often mine. This does not always work and I have commitments to the local Community Mutual that bite into my afternoons and sometimes the entire daytime period. This acts as a good forced time away from the computer even if I am often thinking about some computer related project. These things called clients also happen to need attention and in solving their problems I often find inspiration for geeky blog posts too. This also pays the bills more efficiently than blogging does. The final phase is the evening which starts around 5pm and although I sometimes work during tea, story time and getting changed time I am working in the same room and the activities and can stop to join in. Once the kiddies are in bed I will often try to bring the day’s activities to an end. However, it is not unusual to see 12 notepad2 files and a firefox with 10 or more tabs open (I had 55 open one time) but this acts as a to-do list for the next day.

A free-form “to do list”

By the end of the week I will have a to-do list that is too long and I start the culling process. Closing tabs, bookmarking pages and saving notes. Often this leads to more ideas and more posts (mostly of the quick type). Recently I wrote a post asking “Does Rich Schefren eat his own dog food?” I had been meaning to write that for almost two weeks before I got around to it. It lead, as I thought it would, to interesting conversation with the likes of Andy Beard and will probably draw a little traffic for a long time to come. Maybe even Rich Schefren will pop by and say something – stranger things have happened. Likewise, I have interviews and reviews that I still mean to get done and will get to one day. This list is always there at the back of my mind and is supplemented by the tabs I leave open for myself and the notes I have yet to do something with. I can do this easily as I have plenty of system resources to waste on browser tabs but it is not something that will work for everyone.

Getting more done

However, not everything I do is an end result. Much of what I do is about automating and simplifying my tasks so that I can do more with the same amount of time. This can mean taking the time to write code libraries that I can reuse or systematically cleaning up my bookmarks. The one thing that is not used are lists. If I made lists of things “to do” I would spend hours making them but start with one item on the list and then free fall from there. This does not work for me so I create a matrix of “stuff” and place myself in the centre. That does not mean I am disorganised but it is just the way that works well for me. What makes me more productive today than yesterday is (a) experience and (b) better tools. Some of these tools I made but others I have found (open source projects are great). For example, I use an ad server to manage my on site adverts and this allows me to see what works and where so that affiliate banner ads that are getting low clicks can be deactivated in favour of more productive stuff. It is a tool that allows me to do more with less time. I use what used to be called phpAdsNew but was renamed to OpenAds and then to OpenX. It’s free to use (Open Source) and for any blogger with more than one blog and some reasonable hosting (or a server) it is worth thinking about.

photo: motumboe

Other tricks are things like getting a bottle of tap water and putting it in the freezer over night. In the morning you take your frozen bottle and put it on your desk. It will defrost over the day so that you have cold water with a big ice cube in it to keep it cold and it is available all day. For php I have the Orbit42 Base Class which was written for a project that was never made. However, it does a few neat things not least of which is that it stops me needing to write safe SQL by stopping me needing to write SQL at all. I hand the function an array and table name and it figures the rest out for me. That alone can save me up to an hour a day in code I never have to write. It also contains an extensive debug system and a plugin system that allows me to create generic plugins that work on most things I create. All that by default – doing more with less time.

Conclusions and thoughts

I work full-time and own my own business. Not everyone has that freedom but everyone does have an optimal way of working. My trick has always been to make sure that what I do I enjoy totally so it’s not so much a case of trying to get motivated as finding a point where I’m willing to stop and remember to eat. My system is not perfect. For example, I have been meaning to re-do my main blog’s theme to a design that I completed almost 7 months ago and upgrade the code base that runs it. The problem is that there are so many interesting things to be doing that I don’t find the time. I may be the only person for whom writing so many blogs is a time saving device (or I may be mad). Who knows.

That’s my fresh perspective on productivity and time management – what’s yours?

Matt has been running many blogs very successfully and has written great content that we can all learn from.  You can follow Matt on some of the popular social media sites: twitter.com/lordmatt, lordmatt.stumbleupon.com and a number of forums, blogs and communities.

How I Manage Multiple Blogs – Part 2 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

This is a guest post that Matt had written for me in early May but I was not in the right state of mind to post.  At the time Matt was running a project to help bloggers and had asked what he could do for them. 

Hi, my name is "Lord" Matt – some of you might know me from the oddly named "The Fantastic Site of Lord Matt" or any number of other blogs that I maintain. Pearl has challenged me to write about time and productivity and how I manage all those blogs. The fact that I am doing so will give my wife quite a good chuckle when I tell her. While I do manage to keep a lot of blogs afloat some of my other work can occasionally suffer a little – even I could be more efficient. What I am going to do, then, is break down my practices and comment on how strong or weak I think they are with examples.

My back story

My first blogs where experiments on blogspot that I long ago abandoned but they proved to be a great learning tool but useless blogs. For example I discovered that without some form of networking location (facebook, MyBlogLog, Stumble Upon, etc.) you can easily spend the entire day drifting around blogs on the same platform as yourself wondering why there were rarely any suitable ones worth even commenting on. I would spend two days a week not coding and just using the blogger bar to jump to the next blog. Most blogs were inane, empty or just outright odd. I had a readership of about 5 and frankly no advert clicks, no affiliate conversions (I was just getting into that area back then) and rarely any comments.

The first success I had was a blog whose whole existence was to say nice things about other blogs. It did very well and I was still running it 4 or 5 years ago. Then my daughter was born. It is all well and good blogging all day when all you want to do is learn to blog, write code and work on a novel while your partner is at work. With a little one and a partner at home and the endless hours dried up. As did the blog. A while later I purchased the lordmatt.co.uk domain name (looking back I should have grabbed the dot com because "lord matt" is now a big brand for me and the guy with the dot come even has the same first and last name as me).

I had originally thought of getting "kingmatt" or "godmatt" which fitted the running joke better but I was talked down by friends and wife. (Just as well realy). At first this blog was directionless – if you go back to the beginning you will find that the posts were poor quality, patchy, uneven, and fully of spelling errors. They also draw no-hits-at-all, ever. I learned what I was doing quite quickly and soon started to draw a readership and I also made some mistakes (never get involved in some-one else’s argument, for example). Mistakes are expensive and set you back in terms of readers and general traction. That’s the back story now for the hints and tips.

Launching a blog

Over time I seem to have developed a working technique that relied more on my daily habits than on any system. That all changed when I launched Thanet Star which was aimed at my locality within Kent, UK (it’s near London). I suddenly had to put all my theory into organised practice. I posted something every day for the first few months and although I did not run the smoothest blog launch the blog has gradually picked up readership and local links. The truth of the mater is that I "cheated".

I always do – and here is how I "cheat". It is a method that I am still developing but one that has worked well everytime since I started using it. I write down one way or another exactly (or approximately) what I want to do and then start designing a theme that will do what I have specified. Along with that I compose an introductory post outlining what I intend to do, an about me and a few other house keeping articles (like "what is a feed"). Next I create any pages that I will need. On my chosen bloging platform (NucleusCMS) these are called "Custom Skins" and can carry any of the "skinvars" (mark up for skins). So I can show listings for secondary blogs (nucleusCMS supports multiple blogs and authors from the outset) or anything special from a plugin that might produce a lot of output. Then I customise templates.

On my favourite blog platform (NucleusCMS) templates are the, well, template for posts. I could go into details on it but this post is going to be long enough as it is. Prior to the launch of the Thanet Star I wrote about 12 good quality posts and saved them in text files on my laptop. Then when I had a theme that I was happy met the needs that I had specified earlier I start posting with the house keeping posts. I back-date the "About this blog", "about me" and so forth so that they appear to have been published in the weeks before I started.

Then I post each of my articles one for the day and then future posted so that the next three weeks are covered if I get no further. Future posted items do not publish until the time is reached. I then sit back and pay attention to any blogs that have suffered a lack of posts recently. I will do a round of each blog and check comments, remove spam and then try to think of something to say. Sometimes I have a long list of things I want to talk about but sometimes I am at a loss.

Minimum Blogging

I try to make sure that no blog goes more than seven days without a post. Ideally they should go no more than three days and to increase subscription they should post every day. This does not always happen – for example Buzz 42 has gone dead and will need an epic working on to get it going again. That’s a ball I have dropped and this is something that can happen when you work the ay I do. The trick is to actually have an interest in what you write about so that when you think "what shall I do today?" you want to go and blog about whatever it is you blog about.

What I do when I have no idea what to do

When I have no idea what to blog I use my next "cheat". I use firefox and use the links bar to the max. It’s full of folders with short names (to make room for more). Each niche I write for or think I might like to write for has a folder. Into that go all the best links that I find as I surf and generally read things on-line. On that topic I have another "cheat" where I try to make sure there is some cross over between my niches. Often this is the "geeky perspective" sometimes (like on Thanet Star) this is subtle but other times (like on my diet and fitness blog Lord Matt’s Girth Watch it is dead obvious).

Now my links that I have been compiling allow me to do one of a few things. The big link dump "What is Matt bookmarking" requires that the exported HTML be decrufted to remove the extra mark-up that Firefox uses. However, this is not so very interesting for readers (although the site owners love it) and should only be done every few months and then only if you intend to change your bookmarks regularly.

The second easy "cheat" post is "n Links About x" where n is the number and x is the specific topic. For example I might consider writing "5 essential links for php coders" for my main geeky blog or "8 political links around Thanet" for Thanet Star. This gives me a get out of jail free for the next seven days while I find my muse again. There is a third easy "cheat". I have a news (feeds) folder and I keep lots of live bookmarks (headlines from feed) on each topic I want to blog about. Some mornings I don’t feel up to blogging so I read other blogs. So long as I do this three times a week I usually don’t miss much of interest. When stuck, sometimes, I simply find a topic that two or three blogs in the same niche are talking about and I write about it too linking to them and quoting them.

All I need are enough words to not have the post dominated by quotes. 50:50 is fine but 80:20 in favour of my own words is better. Due to the sometimes crossover between blogs there is often grounds for creating a short post pointing readers to a post on another blog. This is, of course, "cheating" but it is also good for cross pollination of the blogs. You can add value by talking about the post on your other blog but adding a new spin or viewpoint suited to the blog where you will put the post. If all that fails I check the industry news and Google alerts for keywords I have been watching.

Sometimes this gives me a story that my niche is not very aware of and I can break the news. "Intro, quote (with link), comment and conclusion" – that’s the pattern here. Quick and easy but enough content and comment to make it my own and draw comments. Using a linklet I can open a pop-up with my highlighted text already in a blockquote and the link in place (a bit like a poor man’s Stumble Upon window) and I can write the post without leaving the news source. My final "cheat" is to think up a hard question and ask it in a small post. In Green Moral I actually made a feature of this – I list the questions in the right hand sidebar. So that is how I cope when an emergency need for a post arises but how do I keep going day-to-day?

Day to day blogging tricks

Okay so what is the average day for me like? There is no average day and what exactly I get to do depends on a large number of factors. Most commonly this is what happens. I get up – this happens between 6am (rare) and 7am (more common) and have a cup of tea (typical Bitish person me).

Normally I will flip open the laptop and browse other blogs, check comments and stumbles and read the news. (Sometimes I do something I left hanging or work on an idea I had during the night.) Almost always this will lead to me writing a post before 9am. Sometimes more than one post. Some of these will be of the "cheat" type, short sweat and to the point.

Other times they will be a little more epic. In any 14 day period I will write at least one huge and and in depth post (such as this one). To write such big posts I take the topic and start at the top of the page and keep talking until I feel I have it covered. In my head there is a short list of things that need to be said.

If I cover these then I am done and I move on to a conclusion. Sometimes the epic post will be all I do all day. I will usually follow it up be being active on social networks. Twitter, Facebook and Stumble Upon are where you will find me most of the time if you find me at all. Although if the topic is geeky enough there are forums that I also use. I hope you found this interesting if so check back soon because there is a part two! Untill then do you have some "cheats" to share?

How I Manage Multiple Blogs – Part 1 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

You know that the success of your online business is based on how much volume of targeted traffic you attract to your website, blog or online e-commerce store. One of the easier ways to do that is to master a few of the social media sites available, since social Media sites have exploded all across the web over the last year or so. With literally millions of websites and thousands of them probably selling almost similar products and services as yours, it's difficult to use traditional means to promote your products and even your website.

Attracting customers to your home based business by using social media sites sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? It is easy once you learn the how these networks work but many people running home based small businesses are still completely unaware of this method of reaching out to the world.

Social Media Marketing is the fastest growing phenomenon on the internet today, for its unique advantage of being able to tap into the latest and greatest user generated content such as blogs and bookmarking sites. So, every business, big or small, home based or not, should definitely utilize any of the hundreds of social networking sites to attract customers to their business and increase sales.

Here are some of the steps they can take to get started and benefit.

1. Create a Blog

Blogs are highly interactive, with ongoing conversations amongst like minded people, and can be easily controlled and shaped by the blog author.  This is in contrast to static web-sites that just sit there conveying one-way information to the visitors. As a blogger, you can write about anything and everything and if you are writing useful articles, solving people's problems or providing value with your content, you'll easily develop a faithful audience. By sharing your thoughts and ideas with you website visitors, you establish trust and build a relationship with them, instead of coming off as some marketing robots. Do not just start a blog and then hope someone would be buying your services or products. Get involved in the community because that is what blogging is all about. Visit other blogs in your industry and participate in the ongoing discussions, leaving a link to your website. If you are leaving meaningful comments, people will want to look at what your site is all about.

2. Create Videos

Low-cost high speed internet connections everywhere, low cost portable devices, phones and laptops with wireless connections capable of streaming video content combined with YouTube, EyeSpot, Google Videos, Revver, JumpCut, Grouper and vSocial to name just a few, make it extremely easy to spread your content to wider audience. If nothing else, converting your text content to short infomercials is a must in your efforts of marketing. YouTube allows you to add friends, leave comments on other people's videos. These video sites are used by millions, so using the comment systems judiciously, in an attempt to attract the right kind of population is a must.

3. Join a Networking Site

By joining many social networking sites, it'll be easier for you to find new customers for your business. By actively participating and sharing useful informative content with other members, you'll develop a stronger voice and in time will gain recognition of other high profiled members. Making your connections with these other powerful and known members will make you more visible and once you are visible, you'll gain trust of many, which will make selling your services or products easier.

4. Join Online Groups

Google Groups and Yahoo Groups, LinkedIn and other forums, that allow people with similar interests to have discussions are places for any small business owner to be able to find the right customers. On these sites, you should also be able to have a sense of locations and demographics from people's profiles. Don't forget to use your own same powerful profile that you built is recognizable on other networking sites.

5. Get Involved in Local Business Networks

Besides interacting with the virtual communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and MySpace, do not shy away from taking active role in the offline gatherings, face-to-face real-life conferences and social meet ups to connect with other professionals and learn about your local communities and its needs.

Home business can benefit and thrive from socializing actively with the online as well as off line communities. Every social networking scenario will have different rules to participate, get ahead and be visible. So, learn the rules and follow them properly.

Do not spam the system and do not start asking other members to vote your content up or buy your services the first day of joining (or even the first week of joining). Get to know people. Help them in their endeavors first before trying to gain something. I've had people send me shouts on Digg the first day of them joining the network and befriending me. Or on StumbleUpon, there are people who will tell you to vote their content without giving any introduction first. That's a strict no no.

Regardless of what you are selling and how you attract traffic to your home business, there is one way that works all the time, and that is the quality of your content. Continuing to add fresh content to your website will be searchable on the search engines as well as be appreciated by your likely customers.

Where to find Social Networking Sites

There are many places you can find these sites and join them, learn them and start participating. Here are some of the resources that I know of:

Social Networking God: 350+ Social Networking Sites @ Mashable

Social Media Sites @ Traffikd

List of Social Networking Sites @ Wikipedia

Note: I don't run a home business, but I have been using many social media sites and networks for some time now and feel that the above points should work for any type of small business in achieving it's goal of finding new customers. Feel free to add to these points and let us know how you have used networking for your business.

This post is submitted to Don's Group Writing Project on Home Based Businesses

Networking – Necessary Investment for Small Businesses is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Today when I was logged in this blog, I noticed that I have written 186 posts which generated 2676 comments. I was surprised at how much I had written especially when at the time I started this blog, I had no intention of keeping it up. It was fun to write and it was fun to see comments on what I had written. It still is fun to see comments. But now I am much more self-conscious for some reason. This is also becoming one the reasons for the decline in my posting frequency.

Oh, writing that word, self-conscious reminds me of a brief conversation I had with Liz Strauss once and I had said I couldn’t write anything (apparently, this has been the case for some time now) and do you want to know what she said? Her answer was “Pearl, There’s no pressure. Doc Searls says “A blog is just an email to the world.” :) ” And that gave me a much needed push and I was fine for some time. Isn’t that so profound? Liz always writes such beautiful and inspirational words. Today while I was browsing StumbleUpon, I came across her article Let Yourself Join the Human Race that describes so much of what I’ve been feeling lately.

During the first few weeks and months into blogging, I remember I used to feel ‘free’ and would write as if I was talking to a close friend. But lately I’ve been feeling some sort of pressure to do well. The expectation. And when we start build expectations and start worrying about the results, it becomes that much harder to start. After reading that article from Liz, I felt as if she wrote that piece just for me. (I’ve had this feeling numerous times when I read Liz’s blog). Why am I so self conscious now? I know, once upon a time, these words didn’t exist. So, why now? I’m not sure why, but today I decided to join Liz and decided to drop this ’self-destructive’ word – self and decided to just start writing, whatever came to my mind.

So, while I am talking about writing, something else comes to mind. One of my job functions is to grade essays written by grown ups for employment. I can’t begin to tell you how horrendous some of these essays sometimes are. People just do not pay attention to their writing. I am far from writing perfectly, but I hope whatever point I am trying to convey, it does make sense to you.

So, when I recently graded some of these essays, I jotted down some of the problems I came across again and again. Based on my observations, I think if we kept following in mind, may be the articles or essays or whatever it is we are writing, would come out a bit better.

1. Use plain, conversational language.
2. Write to express, not to impress.
3. Use plain and familiar words.
4. Never use a long word when a short one will do.
5. Keep sentence structure simple.
6. Use the active voice.
7. Keep your paragraphs short.
8. Omit needless words.
9. Revise and rewrite. Improvement is always possible.
10. Write in a natural style.
11. Pay closer attention to spellings and grammar
12. Edit and proofread and weed out errors and clutter

In writing tips for writing, I couldn’t leave out the literary legend, George Orwell, who wrote an essay in 1946 called Politics and English Language, in which he provides the following rules for good writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Anything else to keep in mind when writing a good piece? Also, I would love to know how long it takes you to write and publish a post.

Technorati Tags: Writing, Tips

On Writing and Getting Un-Stuck is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Can you read these right the first time?

The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it, English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital, ship by truck and send cargo by ship, have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. – Why doesn't Buick rhyme with quick?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this:

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is UP.

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or toward the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. We use something to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, warm UP the leftovers, and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

We could go on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP; so: Time to shut UP!

Oh… one more thing: What are the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night? U-P

PS: BTW I found this message in my inbox this morning and it gave me a chuckle, thought I'd share it with you. hope it brought smiles to you too..

Did you think English was an easy language? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Are you a fan of any particular social media site for networking or bookmarking? If yes, then this is the project you want to pay close attention to for the next month.

Vivien of InspirationBit has organized a Mega Social Media Project that is being hosted by multiple bloggers for multiple social media sites.

As you can tell from the post title, I will be hosting this project for Mixx, Propeller (formerly Netscape) AND Squidoo.

Here are the rules to participate in this project:

• Write a post on your blog and share with us how do you integrate this social media site (Mixx or Propeller or Squidoo) into your blogging or work and tell us about your good or bad experience(s), how would you compare this social networking site with others, what do you like or don’t like about it, how did you benefit from becoming a frequent user of this site, what secrets have you learned about it, what tips or warnings would you like to inform others about?
• Contact me with your name, email and a permalink to your post. If you don’t have your own blog, you can always write a guest post on my blog, or simply send me your thoughts by contacting me in person.
• Once I collect the links from all participants and publish them on my blog, you can write another post and link to either all or only your favourite articles by other bloggers.
• You are allowed to contribute only one article per project/site. You are more than welcome to visit other participating blogs that host projects dedicated to the different social media sites and take part in those projects by submitting your articles about other social networking sites.

Remember, this project is spread over several blogs and there are other social media sites that are hosted at the following blogs.

• del.icio.us. Host: Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success
• Facebook. Host: Ina from Inspiring Wear
• Flickr & Zooomr. Host: Brian Auer from Epic Edits
• Twitter, LinkedIn. Host: Isabella Mori from Change Therapy and Alphablogs
• StumbleUpon, YouTube, MySpace. Host: Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun
• Sphinn. Host Simonne from All Tips And Tricks
• Second Life. Host Dandellion from Metaverse
• Mixx, Netscape, Squidoo. Host: Pearl from Fresh Perspectives
• Sk*rt, Blogging Zoom, Bvibes. Host: JHS from Colloquium
• Digg and Reddit. Host: Vivien from InspirationBit

Here are the deadlines for this project:

• Start Date: Monday, January 21st
• End Date: Friday, February 22nd
• Results Publication Date: Monday, February 25th
• Final Collaborative Results will be published on Inspiration Bit on Friday, February 29th

I invite all of my readers to participate and write about any of the sites being covered in this project. Even if you are not a very big social media site user, you have one month to try any one of the sites and jot down your observations, tips and tricks for using them efficiently etc.

Vivien is also giving away the cash prize of $125 she won at Daily Blog Tips and All Tips and Tricks, to five project organizers whose projects turn out to be the most successful in terms of number and quality of entries.

Now, I want to say that its not the monetary value of the prize that motivated me to host this project on fresh perspectives, rather, I always wanted to host a group writing project here and Vivien’s ongoing encouragement and support has made it easier. I hope you all participate in the project and learn from tons of articles on various social media sites.

Technorati Tags: group writing Project, social Media, Mixx, Squidoo, Propeller

Mixx, Propeller or Squidoo? Social Media Mega Project is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Okay, that was the first for me too… I mean, I had never heard the word Blogapalooza before either… but this has been a very popular term in the past few weeks at MiddleZoneMusings where Robert held another Group Writing Project called What I Learned from 2007 and you had to pick the posts that taught you something.

I am glad I was able to make the deadline as the project ended last night.  Today all the entries are up at Robert's Blog – Middle Zone Musings. There are some fantastic entries if you are looking for some inspiration.

PS:  you are welcome to check out the most commented list to see the included posts as one of the links is messing up and Robert will be fixing it later tonite.

Blogapalooza – What I Learned from 2007 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I always say that Group Writing Projects are an easy way to blog. Someone else has already done the thinking and picked a topic for you to write your experience or opinions on.

And “Spread the Love NOW” couldn’t have come at a better time for me. There are a lots of the things in this project that resonate with me now. One, that the project is to write something about Compassion, a character trait that I saw a lot of recently when my very close friend passed away. Second, because compassion is a trait that I am very passionate about and I feel we can’t have enough of. Third, the project is organized by the three monks, Albert of Urban Monk, Kenton of Zen Inspired Self Development and Wade of The Middle Way, who so passionately write on all of the subjects that are very dear to me such as meditation, Buddhism, consciousness, spirituality, philosophy and self improvement.

As I understand compassion, it is what we feel when we see someone else in pain and we automatically are compelled to do something to relieve them of that pain. Feelings of selfless caring and kindness accompanied by love, regard and patience.

It is easy to find perfect examples of compassion all around us. I’ve been overwhelmed with so much care and kindness in the hospitals, where so many people are suffering and the nurses are helping the patients and their families with those tasks that sometimes even the closest family members avoid doing.

Doctors had told my friend’s family that there was nothing more they could do to save her. The nurses, the physicians, other staff members and just about everyone who had been taking care of her for months or had come in contact with her, as if turned into some sort of a saint, bending over backwards to help us with whatever we needed. It was overwhelming to see so much kindness and so much love and caring. These people would hug us when we were down in the dumps, they would cry with us and listen to us, talk to us about their own sad times.

And it did not matter what color, creed, race or religion someone belonged to in that setting of the hospital. This was in the cancer care institute and majority of the patients were with advanced stages. Its a setting where every one, regardless of their cultural background, becomes aware in a strange manner that we are all connected with each other via some strange common source and that we all have the same destiny in the end. Perhaps, that is the reason you can find everyone helping each other out in a most peaceful manner, trying to do whatever it takes to comfort each other. A true sense of altruism prevailed there. Amidst all the grief, their kindness made it easier for us to go through the ordeal.

As Dalai Lama said, “we do not need to become religious, or believe in any ideology, we just need to develop good human qualities to be happy.”

I think if we all exercised similar caring, compassion, kindness and love under normal circumstances, in our daily lives, we could be a much happier society. Happier societies would raise happier and more confident children. And when a person’s self esteem is healthier, he is more successful in life and does not feel the need to ‘attack’ any other and ’snatch’ from others.

==========================

I am so glad Isabella from Change Therapy tagged me for this project. Thanks Isabella.

The Rules of the Game
This is a joint effort by the Three Monks – Wade of The Middle Way, Kenton of Zen-Inspired Self Development, and Albert of Urban Monk.Net. The watches are kindly provided by the coolest timepiece company ever – The Now Watch.
To participate –
1) Write a post as described above. You’re encouraged, although not required, to link to all three of the judges.
2) Contact any one of us, either by emailing, or leaving a comment in one of the judge’s posts.
3) You’re encouraged also to spread the word, tag your friends, and ask them to participate.
4) On 5 January 2008, the three judges will look at all the entries, pick the winners, and publish a list, so we can all share the links and traffic.
5) The results will be posted on 10 January 2008 on all three judge’s blogs. Winners will be contacted for mailing address details so we can send them to you!

UPDATE: I completely forgot I was supposed to tag some, so here it goes.. I’d love to hear what you have to say on compassion…

RennyBA,  Kaylee , David, Pelf, Aruni, Ad Tracker, Kim, Sueblimely, Mig

Technorati Tags: compassion, personal development, blog, Group Writing Project

Spreading the Love via Compassion is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

As the year comes to an end, its time to reflect upon our accomplishments and a time to revisit some goals, offline as well as online.

I started this blog in April of this year, and at that time I had no idea about how long I would be blogging and didn’t have a clue if anyone would read it let alone become a subscriber of the blog.

I loved making connections with people all over the globe and learning about different aspects people shared about their lives, difficulties and successes.

But then somewhere along the line, I started thinking about monetizing this blog. Since everyone in the blogosphere is talking about different ways you can make money, I confess I was swayed in that direction and started putting those banners in the sidebar. Without even realizing, I got too hung up on signing up for different affiliate programs and trying different banners, all of which weren’t making any money, zero, nil! Well, because this is not a product blog, this is about interesting observations. And Some of you even asked me to clean up the sidebars but I just never took the time to do anything about it, or to confess, I found it hard to let go of those dangling carrots!

Until just a couple of days ago, when I came across a Group Writing Project about your Blogging Goals for 2008 at Daily Blog Tips via a most generous and lovely soul Karen Zara, who I recently met via Luciano’s Lists Project

So, in order for me to think of my blogging goals for 2008, I started reviewing what I was able to accomplish since I started this blog. Read on:

• Currently the Page Rank is at 4 – would like to take it to a 5 although I keep hearing that is difficult
• Alexa Rank is <70,000 – would like to bring it <40,000
• Technorati Rank broke the top 10k and even though technorati keeps fluctuating, I am sure the blog will continue to do better – my goal would be to bring it in the top 5k
• I never thought I would have even a single subscriber and was thrilled when the first time I logged in the FeedBurner and found there were 11 subscribers, now that number sits at 180 – I would love to bring it to 500 ( and if you like reading this blog, please subscribe via RSS feed or via email and help me get to my goals sooner than the next Christmas ) :)
• This blog was linked to by problogger in one of his speedlinking posts, by emoms and by ZenHabits and together these sites brought me a lot of traffic, great new bloggers and a good feeling of getting a bit known out there. So, for the new year, is it too unrealistic to want to be linked to by some of the other famous bloggers like copyblogger, successful-blog, Maki and such?

I’d also like to achieve something much more than the numbers

• get into a regular posting schedule
• clearly define the areas I want to blog about
• get better with writing
• get in the habit of participating more in the social networking
• write more guest posts
• get over my shyness – a huge hurdle in accomplishing just about everything
• learn about affiliate marketing
• learn php and CSS
• start a couple of niche sites

Some of these might be too unrealistic as I work full time and cannot devote as much time to blogging as I would really like, but it sure feels good to just have some concrete goals laid out here and have a clear vision.

I will sound contradictory to my own goals above in saying that one of my goals will be to not really get hung over the numbers as it has affected my writing and posting frequency. And the only way to do that is to not check the stats that often. As a matter of fact, I plan to not display the RSS subscriber numbers to avoid getting depressed when suddenly these numbers drop.

Have you thought of what you want to accomplish with your blog next year?

Technorati Tags: Goals, Self-improvement, Blogging, GroupWritingProject

Have you thought of your blogging goals for 2008? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Simonne asks ‘What is your best blogging achievement?” in the writing project she is hosting! How can I call any one of the milestones as my best blogging achievement ever? Each of the events has stood out bigger and better than the ones before and left me completely in awe! There were times when I was not getting a single comment on my posts and was overjoyed at getting my first comment from Grace of NeonScent! Since then, I have been showered with so many friendships, so many comments and so much support that I can’t even begin to count!

Looking back at some of the events, I wonder, could my first guest post at freshblogger, when I was still a “new kid on the block”, be counted as my biggest achievement? Or was it when I got tagged with my first meme? I was really happy to be tagged by Kim and it meant I had gained someone’s attention and they thought my blog worthy of including. Then I got showered with tons of awards which put me on cloud nine! All of this encouraged me to gather some courage and even participate in a contest (albeit at the last minute, because being that I am a bit reserved and shy, almost to the point of being called an introvert and I think like a million times before participating) in which I ended up as one of the runners-up and also won me a text-link at the contest site!

It was during one of these days that I had commented on a post when Darren told me he had subscribed to my RSS feed… Now that was a huge thing for me if you remember and I couldn’t contain my happiness. Could that be considered my biggest achievement? Or when Andy Beard dugg my article on male-female ratios of 50 most influential blogs ? and Darren stumbled it?

OR should I consider my latest post on Best 101 Lists as one of my best achievements when it got popular on StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious as well as Mixx – all at the same time, bringing me tons of backlinks, more than 12,000 visitors all in a short amount of time and the technorati rank in the top 10K?

So, I don’t think I can call any one of these as my best blogging achievement! Each one of the above listed events was an achievement in itself and brought immense satisfaction and joy. But all of these achievements had one and only one aspect in common, and that is the people, who either came to comment on this blog, or subscribed, and slowly became cherished friends!

And, even though it is becoming more and more difficult to keep up with writing every day during holidays, shorter days of winter and amidst other life obligations, I am having the best of time doing it. I love the fact that I can talk to people with different backgrounds and cultures all over the world. And THAT I think is my best blogging achievement.

My Best Blogging Achievement is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Group Writing Projects are always fun to participate in that they not only make for a nice linkbait, they also spark new discussions with new bloggers. Building Lists as part of the group project becomes even more enjoyable and useful because they offer how-to’s and best-of’s.

But if you were to pick top 3 from a huge list of participants, what are the things you look for?

That’s the dilemma going on this week at Luciano’s Lists Group Writing Project that I also participated in with my Best 101 Lists. The task is humongous for Luciano and I have no idea how he is going to handle it.

So, first, here are some of the things that come to my mind when picking the best: (although I may not be able to apply these for my selection)

• List should be fun for all readers. Many times lists are made with each point not clearly different than the one before, which can easily become boring;
• To avoid the above, Inject a little humor;
• Leaving a list incomplete can sometimes be a good idea so others can suggest and add to it, a way of encouraging participation;
• Inject controversy, as it more often than not sparks discussions, which always helps to build community

So, there, with some of these pointers, I hope the task to pick the top three would become a bit easier for you all.

Although I am still finding it very difficult to do but nevertheless, I will list some of my favorites, in no particular order.

After all, its Luciano who gets to decide, right? :)

UPDATE 1: I stand corrected! No Luciano will not be ‘voting’ for any lists as he reiterated in the comments here…

1. 5 surefire ways of increasing comments on your blog
2. 12 WordPress Editors You Can Choose
3. 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscribers
4. 7 Tricks You Need To Fight Procrastination
5. 26 Ways to Change the World
6. 10 Life lessons Learned While Camping
7. Six Savvy Reasons Why You Should Travel Light
8. Escape The Rut
9. 5 Blogging Ups, 5 Blogging Downs and 10 Blogging Tips
10. No Cost Business Tools: 37 Free Applications that Make Your Life Easier

Okay I am done for the moment because there a too many of great lists submitted in that project…67 to be exact. Do check them out, there is something for everyone to enjoy!

UPDATE 2: Sunday, Dec. 2nd, 2007!

Seems like blogging is all I do these days! Here is another group of lists that I enjoyed

100 Ways To Promote A Startup by Jason Drohn
17 POWER Tips For StumbleUpon Beginners by Dr. Mani
18 Tips to Become a Productive Blogger by Monika Mundell
21 Punching Tips On Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization by Etienne Teo
8 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople by Daniel Sitter
7 Powerful Tips to Overcome Failure by Donald Latumahina
10 Ways To Work Through Your Workout by Gal Josefsberg
ten things i didn’t know until last week by Blaiq
100 Resources To Improve Your Career, Relationships And Money by Lawrence Cheok
3 Things I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now by Stephen Hopson
5 reasons (not) to drink coffee by Lodewijkvdb

Rest of the lists that I just couldn’t leave out and I am sure I will be coming back to:

5 Ways To Win A Blog Contest by Erz
5 Reasons Why I Bought a Domain by WishBoNe
5 Ways to Become the Perfect Idiot by Lori
15 Tips to Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by CSS
100 Motivators for Informal Learning by Marcel Ackermann
10 Ways to Survive the Writers’ Strike by Cynthia Boris
100List – 100 Things I can do to make more money. by Dj Wright
Your Top 10 Inspirational Quotes by Sparky
My Top-10 Personal Development Blogs by Marco
The Quitter’s Checklist by Em Dy
Thirteen Reasons Why WordPress is Superior To Blogger by JHS
Get out of debt Quick: 7 Tips by Tejvan
Six Simple Steps to Remembering and Living the Abundant Life You are Meant to Live by Anita Pathik Law
To Do To Make Tomorrow Better by Bob
Top 7 Paid Review Writing Mistakes You Can Avoid by Prince John
9 Ways To Achieve Success in Life by Adebola Oni
40 ways to make your mind your playground by Fier
5 Crash Course Tips in Viral Marketing by John Murch
100 Sites I Seek Inspiration From by Iain Hamp
5 Things That I Believe To Be Lies by Krizza
List of Classes by Priscilla Palmer
Top 23 Motivation Tips, Tricks and Tactics from the Blogosphere by Mike Ambrose
Twelve Days of Classic Country Christmas by Scott
5 ways to crack or reset a forgotten Windows XP administrator password by Aseem Kishore
10 Things To Consider Before Acting As Your Own Contractor by Shawn Van Dyke
A Tester’s Dream – 5 steps to revive a Rejected Bug! by Debasis Pradhan
My Five Wish-list Classes I Would Enroll In by Al
10 Ways To Improve Your Personality by Z Hereford
The Top Ten Internet Business Ideas by John
3 Ways to Bring Back the Joy to the Holidays by Karen Lynch
Best 101 Lists by Pearl
13 encouraging questions by Isabella Mori
100 Things To Write A List Of 100 About by Kotsengkuba
Lovecraft & Cthulhu Christmas List by Cullen Bunn
List Of Why Blogs Are A Female Gender by Domtan
100 Things to do Before I Die by Joseph Gibbs
150 Funniest Resume Mistakes, Bloopers and Blunders Ever by Jacob Share
10 Productive Ways for Moms to “Relax” by Neena
10 Tips on How to Watch a Horror Movie When You are a Scaredy Cat by Migraine Chick
100 Ways to Personally Conquer Chaos at Work by Judy Martin
50 Ways to Start a Conversation by Dee
How to prepare for Christmas by Ajay
7 Seven tips for students to success by Xoel Cardigan
6 Steps to Take Writing Ideas From WordPress Themes by Karen Zara
What you think is what you see: 4 Ways to stop negativity by Holli Jo

Phew!!! Make sure to read ALL of the lists at your leisure! there is wealth of information in them!

What To Look For In List Posts is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Coming up with “Interesting” or “Best Of” lists seem to have become a trend these days!  I’ve been saving these lists from the blogosphere in my delicious account and elsewhere but thought I’d share them with you all in case you haven’t seen them yet!

So, here is a Master List of the best ‘101′ lists out there!

This is an ongoing list and I plan to add to it as I find more! If you know of some good 101 list and would like me to add to it, please let me know in the comments! or via the Contact Form Enjoy!

1. 101 Self Improvement Resources @ Pick the Brain
2. 101 posting ideas that will make your blog sizzle @ I Help You Blog
3. 101 Commonsense Management Tips @ business Intelligence Lowdown
4. 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website @ SEOBook
5. 101 Amazing Earth Facts @ Space
6. 101 Real Estate Blog Topics @ Real Estate Tomato
7. 101 Uses For PLR Articles @ memwg
8. 101 Blog Posting Ideas @ SEO 2.0 Onreact
9. 101 Best Web Freebies You Probably Don’t Know @ JennyHow
10. 101 Essential Freelancing Resources @ FreeLanceSwitch
11. 101 Free Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic @ CanIMakeBigMoneyOnline
12. 101 Essential Blogging Resources @ Blogtrepreneur
13. 101 Suggestions for Squeezing More Fun Out of Life @ Pauls tips
14. 101 Ways to Monetize Your Website or Blog @ Vandelay Design
15. 101 Reasons to FreeLance @ hrworld
16. 101 Ways to make Your Blog More Popular and Successful @ SEO 2.0 Onreact
17. 101 Tools to Convert Video, Music, Images, PDF and More @ Cogniview
18. 101 Ways to Make Money off Open Source @ Manageability
19. 101 Simple Vegan Meals @ The Urban Vegan
20. 101 Resources for Self Published Writers @Self Publishing Blog
21. 101 Blog Tips I Learned in 2006 @ DailyBlogTips
22. 101 Ways to Save Money @ CreditCave
23. 101 Dumbest Moments ( biggest boors, boffoons and blunders of 2007) @CNN-Money
24. 101 Cities for Drinking @ Citytoplist – they have various lists of US cities with some fun things to check out!
25. 101 CSS Tips and Tutorials and Examples @ lxpages
26. 101 CSS Resources to add to your toolbelt of awesomeness @ jasonbartholme
27. 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot @ xulplanet
28. 101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence @ SearchEngineOptimization
29. 101 Blogging Building Tips @ DeWittsMedia
30. 100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write @ ChrisBrogan
31. 101 Ubuntu Tips Tricks and Tutorials @ lxpages
32. 101 Ways to Run Out of Things To Blog About @ ProBlogger
33. 101 FeedFlares for a Better Tomorrow @ FeedBurner
34. 101 Zen Stories @101ZenStories
35. 101 Easy Ways to Use Google Website Optimizer @ ConversionRateExperts
36. 101 Ways to Put 101 dollars in your pocket this month @ Blogging Away Debt
37. 101 Steps to becoming a better blogger @ Lifehack
38. 101 Tips For Improving Children’s Behavior @ ParentingIdeas
39. 101 Ways to Organize Your Life @ Project Management Source
40. 101 resources to help you build a better web form @ Jasonbartholme
41. 101 Web Marketing Ideas and TIps @ SEO Pedia
42. 101 New Uses for Everyday Things @ Real Simple
43. 101 Essential Blogging Skills @ Skelliewag
44. 101 Tips I learned from Blogging @ Etienneteo
45. 101 Resources on the Web for Bloggers and Writers @ JenWriter
46. 101 Top WordPress Plugins @ One Man’s Goal

As if these weren’t enough lists to read!

47. here is a very comprehensive list of 1001 Lists to Read Before Your Die @Terabell

48. Check out List of Bests for other people’s best lists where I think you can add your own list to the huge resource!

49. Finally, If YOU would like to create your own 101 list, there is a meme going around the blogoshpere about doing 101 things in 1001 days! It is hosted at triplux; The site has other people’s 101 things-to-do-lists where you can get plenty of inspiration!

Note: This post is part of the Group Writing Project at Litemind

del.icio.us Tags: 101Lists, Interesting Lists

Technorati Tags: 101Lists, Interesting Lists

Best 101 Lists is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

When I posted Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture video back in September, I watched it again and again and was amazed at how much courage this man has, how fearless he is and how happy he was, despite the fact he knew his world was coming to end, Literally!!  Now look at another clip “The lecture revisited”:

Here is another clip that is very inspiring and makes you think a little differently about your life!

These are people who found ways to stand out from the crowd.

These are people who did not allow their lives to fall in chaos. When I watch their winning attitudes, my own problems and heartaches seem trivial.  And my thinking goes something like this:

• I am not going to obsess about what I do not have, rather I am going to concentrate on what I do have;
• I will do everything to develop resilience and not let anything break me;
• What can I do to achieve my dreams?
• What can I do to be the best?

People turn their lives around all the time, especially in the face of adversity.  We all have the power to turn negatives into positives and find contentment.  All of us face failures, setbacks and all sorts of problems in life and many times, these things show up without any warning.

Often if we try and stay focused and not let bad times take over our emotions, not lose perspective by constantly being afraid of the unknown, we can handle just about any level of distress without going insane.   Because, we don’t always get to choose what we might have to face and what will come into our lives,  but we can choose how we react to the circumstances.

Staying positive will make it easier to go through rough times, than whining about them and getting more depressed!

How do you handle adversities, failures and negative circumstances?

This post is inspired by the Think Different Challenge hosted at I will change your life! I wasn’t tagged for it, but I loved the idea. If you would like to join and write about what makes you think different, just follow the rules:

The Rules
1. Write a new blog post in which you “think different”. Interpret the challenge the way you want and include a link and/ or trackback to this post so that readers know the rules of the challenge. Feel free to use the above banner (inspired, of course, by Seth Godin).
2. Include a link and/or trackback to the blogger who tagged you.
3. At the end of your post, go ahead and tag some fellow bloggers. Don’t forget to email them to let them know they have been tagged.

Think Different and Overcome Negativity is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

The following post is written by Pelf.  Check out pelf's blog for some inspiration!

Let's face it. We all experience it once in a while, especially when we least expect it.  It doesn't matter how long we have been blogging, there are times when we just can't think of anything to blog about.

Following are some websites that help bloggers overcome blogger's block:

Lorelle's Blogging Challenge

Once in a while, Lorelle @ Lorelle On WordPress throws her readers a blogging challenge. These blogging challenges serve to challenge our thinking and efforts in blogging and blog writing.  I personally love Lorelle's Blogging Challenge not only because she always comes up with original blog topics but because after completing each challenge, Lorelle makes sure that we have learned something along the way and that we would be able to share, on our blog, what we have learned from taking up the challenge.  In other words, besides helping us overcome our blogger's block,  Lorelle is also actually helping us learn how to blog.  Some of the more recent blogging challenges are:

• Blog about something you know nothing about
• Blog about a holiday tradition
• Your favourite WordPress tip
• Blog path redirection
• Favourite or worst writing boo boos

Mindbump — Where great minds collide

Mindbump is a web-based remedy for blogger's block that also serves as a blog promotional tool. Mindbump serves up random blog writing prompts generated by bloggers. If you've decided to take up any of the writing prompts, simply copy the code which is located below the prompt, paste it on your blog, and respond to it. Don't like what you see? Hit the REFRESH button!

If your creative juice is overflowing, you could submit your blogging prompts and your suggestions will be displayed randomly, along with a link back to your blog. If a blogger picks up your writing prompt, he will write about it, copy and paste the code on his blog and link back to your site in their post.

Some examples of mindbumps:

• If there was one person who best exemplified everything that you are against, who would that person be? Who is the "anti-you"?
• Describe your most embarrassing musical purchase. What's hidden in your skeleton CD rack?
• Has the internet taken over your life? Do you think people are too reliant on technology today? Does technology really make tasks simpler, as they are supposed to do?
• If you had to select only one photograph from your photo albums to represent your life, which photograph would you choose? (this would make a very good group writing project!)
• Describe your most embarrassing moment.

Blaugh – The (Un)official comic of the Blogosphere!

I have only recently discovered Blaugh, a site that publishes a web comic every few days. The comic strips are very nice and colourful, and apply very much to the current blogging situations too.  If you wish, you could copy the code below the comic strip and use it on your blog. If you haven't noticed it, the comic strip above was taken from Blaugh.   In fact, this post was inspired by the comic strip!

Google trends

I have never tried this myself, but apparently, what you need to do is to type in a keyword or a couple of them if you'd like to compare and see which keyword is being talked about the most at the moment, and hit the SEARCH button. A graph will appear on the next screen, that shows how each keyword fared in the last few years.

But of course, there may be other sites that you find more useful and interesting than those mentioned above.

So, tell us, how do you overcome blogger's block?

By Pelf.

~~~~~~~~~~

My thanks go to Pelf for writing this informative post with such great links!   We all know that a great deal has been written on techniques to overcome the writer's block,  and this still seems to be an ongoing problem with us all.   Here is some more great articles on this subject! 

Blogger's Block: A Growing Threat to the Blogosphere
How to survive blogger's block
How to deal with lack of motivation
Make a decision and stick with it
12 Tips for Battling Blogger's Block
How to overcome blogger's block

and then of course there is this mother of all posts (or is it father of all posts?) Battling Blogger's Block  that covers just about every idea out there to get over this problem! 

 By Pearl.

How do you overcome blogger’s block? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

When someone reads what we have written and takes the time to give their opinion on it, positive or negative, it becomes an extension of our thoughts as we think about their view, and respond with what we think and then someone else jumps in, and the conversation continues!

These online interactions can be much more enriching and rewarding if we follow basic tenets of communication, with an intent to cultivate a relationship with our visitors, because communication, as we all know, is a two way process, of giving and receiving information. Whether it is that we are speaking to someone offline or online, if we are courteous and respectful of others, the experience will be much more enjoyable for all involved.

So, what basic principles we should keep in mind to foster a good relationship with our site visitors?

Show Humility

This one I believe is the first and foremost to follow rule when interacting with anyone online. Getting more comments and more visitors can quickly start elevating the ego and its this time when we need to try our best to stay humble. If the tone on the blog is obnoxious or patronizing in any way, you can be sure to not get the visitor to attempt to contribute to whatever you want their opinion on. Don’t be preachy. Say whatever you want to say, because that is what freedom of speech is all about, BUT, say it with some modicum of thoughtfulness to your readers.

Get to know your readers

Welcome your readers to your blog. Ask them to introduce themselves. Make time to visit your reader’s blog and participate in discussion, make sure to thank them for visiting via a quick email and ask about their opinion of your blog. Some people are much more comfortable in voicing their opinions in an email if you ask, rather than talking about it on the site. Engage in conversation about their blog if they have one.

A remarkable technique for any relationship to flourish is to get to know the other’s likings and dislikings. Finding what your blog readers like or do not like, can help to give you ideas for your content, thereby making them interested in reading your site more. Join their social network communities. The basic principle is that the blogs and sites should be about your readers, not about you. Because if you want to write just about yourself, you would be writing it in a journal, wouldn’t you?

‘Listen’ to your readers

If the readers are providing some input on your blog, do not ignore that either.   Every once in a while the members of the blog reading community or new visitors offer up great advice on how certain aspects of your blog could be improved or what isn’t working. Give them feedback by thanking them and letting them know that you will consider their opinion!  This kind of interaction from the blog owner will make the reader feel valued on your site and would encourage them to come back to read your blog more.   Don’t be afraid to engage in conversation with them.

Learn to accept constructive criticism

Constructive criticism almost always results in improvements, provided we train ourselves to accept it. And an easy way to train ourselves is to accept the fact that we are not perfect and there is always room for improvement.

This goes hand in hand with developing a positive attitude. Try not to be defensive and argumentative with the commenters even if they are not praising your work or agreeing with you. Don’t take it as a personal attack, rather look at the *thing* that is being criticized! And do not forget to thank the critic for taking the time to read your article or evaluating something else that you have done or not done. After all, you want someone to visit your blog and that is exactly what they did! Handle negative comments with grace and care.

Be yourself

We all know that it is easy to get obsessed by the idea of making money via blogging and completely forget about the fact that most of us have lives away from computers. And that part of our life is still huge, for majority of bloggers anyway, so sharing a small part of that huge life with the readers will only help in building stronger connection with them. Injecting some warmth and passion in your writings can certainly enhance the blogging experience for the blogger as well as the readers.

Blogging is truly a medium that allows people to write with freedom, without having someone stand over their heads dictating what and how to write. So, write with passion. Write as if you are talking to your readers.

So, to sum up, recognizing and giving importance to the readers and making them a part of your site by talking about them in the posts while staying respectful will make the relationships last longer.

I am sure there are many other ways to build and develop relationships and I would love for you to fill in with the ones I missed.

What do you do to build and develop relationships with your blog readers?

This post is submitted to the upcoming Group Writing Project at CourtneyTuttle’s blog.

Technorati Tags: GroupWritingProject, Writing

How do you build relationships with your blog visitors? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

What is success?   Is it what I have or what has me?

Probably neither!

Perhaps it is not the concept of success that is the problem, its the way each of us defines it. Is it having lots of money or having a BMW (or two) in our garage or even reaching the top position in the organization, being recognized and getting noticed by the masses?

If we start defining success by these beliefs, they soon may become dangerous to our psyche and eventually to health.

If we define success as living each moment to its fullest, despite having money, prestige and possessions, we may even be happier. The difference is in attitude and in the beliefs behind that attitude. So, what should we do to attain a winning attitude? To achieve success? I think with some adjustments in the way we think might do the trick….

1. Knowing what you want and setting goals to achieve that is the first step. If our goals are too broad and not very clear, we are likely to forget after a while what it is that we started out to do. This one goes hand in hand with breaking bigger tasks into smaller ones. Setting short term goals and knowing exactly what it is that we want to see happen at the end of that goal is the first step in the recipe of achieving success.

2. Developing a positive attitude goes a long way in achieving goals and succeeding. Eliminate negative thoughts, feelings and emotions because they only prevent us from reaching our maximum potential and achieving success and happiness. Dwelling on things that we do not have and always thinking about things and events that did not go the way we expected them to, will only make us more miserable, leading to stress and eventually derail us from our goals. Vicious circle is it? Yes, it is, and once trapped in it, it’s hard to get out of. So pay attention to what you *think*.

3. Focusing on the goal every day will help us think of the result we want. Visualizing what we want and desire has a powerful way of bringing it to us. This is like the intention manifestation principle Steve Pavlina often talks about. The power of visualization is well documented in The Secret video and the book, with a collection of stories of how people have used expectations and visualizations to change their lives.

4. Confidence is another one of the tools that is of utmost importance to achieving success. Confidence is nothing but the way we train ourselves to think. I read somewhere these lines from Charlie Chaplin, that I had copied and kept and this is the best place to add them. When asked the secret of his success, Charlie Chaplin said, “You have to believe in yourself, that’s the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat.”

5. Taking actions is the ultimate step in the plan of achieving success at anything. Writing down clear achievable goals, developing a positive attitude and thinking good thoughts is only a small fraction of the entire process. If we keep thinking good thoughts and keep writing down our goals but never act upon them, our desired result will not be there. There will be some result, but it’s not the one we desired. So, success can only be attained by taking action until our ideas and goals becomes a reality.

It is easy to not try and accept failure, but it is even easier to be successful.

Would you like to add anything else to the above?

I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below.

It is easy to achieve success! is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Listed below are the most practical time management tips and techniques that some of our fellow bloggers use to continue to manage excellent blogs along with their usual life responsibilities. These tips were submitted to the Time Management Group Writing Project hosted by our very own, bright and talented Vivien from InspirationBit last month. For me, the real dilemma begins now ‘coz I’ve got to find time to read through these tips. If you missed participating in the project because you didn’t have the time, these tips will certainly provide some benefit.

1. All For Time and Time For All: The 10 Commandments of Time Management by Simonne
2. Lessons in Time Management by Em Dy
3. Guru Natalie weighs in on Time Management by Natalie
4. 9 Reasons to Wake Up Early by Y.Graf
5. Time Management For Bloggers and Photographers by Brian
6. Manage time by sorting your blog comments in 6 ways by Bes
7. My Troubles With Time Management by Ronald
8. It’s URGENT, Urgent I say… but is it? by Marques
9. Time Management: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Jenny Mcb
10. Time Management – Don’t put Everything off until later by TeaMouse
11. 8 Work At Home Time Management Strategies by Char
12. Time, Time, Time by WG
13. Thoughts On Managing A Precious Resource by Ajay
14. Time Management – tackling K2
15. Time Management Tips for Using Email
16. Stress Can Be Good by Lauren Mari
17. Secrets To Successful Time Management by Gleb Reys
18. 3 simple time management tips by Carey
19. How I manage time between blogging and studies by Shankar
20. Better living through sticky notes by Lisa
21. How I Manage My Time by Keith
22. 6 Essential Time Management Strategies by Randa
23. Time Management: Managing Large Multi-User Projects by Jennifer
24. A Routine Shall Set You Free by Brooke
25. Supercharge Your Job Search by Saving Time by Jacob
26. Time Makes Me Cuckoo by Shelley
27. 11 Time Management Tips – How I manage Work and Blog by Ashish
28. Simple Tips for Managing Time by Pearl
29. Strategies for Effective Time Management by Janie
30. Time management: the un-techniques by Peter
31. dIstressed or dEstressed? by Em Dy
32. Freelancing And Time Management by Tara
33. Internet Is The Devil In Disguise by Vivien

Thank you for putting these together Vivien.

Do you have time to read through these? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Ken wrote a post on e-books provided by some popular and successful bloggers where they share their secrets to blogging success.

According to Ken, he has read “100s of books on blogging and Internet Marketing and how to make money online” and as much as I have known him, he is a hard worker and has all of the things that are necessary to grow one’s blog.

I am no where close to claiming I have read that many books but below is a list of some of my favorites. I may have missed some that I have downloaded and read [or downloaded and have not read yet] and I will add them as they come to mind [or as I find them on my pc :)]

But first, here are the e-books Ken listed:

1. Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint
2. Aaron Wall’s SEObook
3. John Chow’s Make Money Online Ebook
4. Chitika’s Blog Bash -30 days 30 experts in April 2007 when 30 popular bloggers wrote on wide ranging blogging topics
5. jack Humphrey’s Authority Black Book

And here is my favorites list:

1. Seth Godin’s KnockKnock is a “take on how to use the new online marketing tools to make any website work more effectively” downloadable from a mirror site by Mr. Salt (Paul) …
2. another one of Seth’s books called whos there; In Seth’s words
   

   Who’s There is not an ebook about how to write better or how to follow the traditional conventions about formatting and building a blog. It’s not designed to sell you one service instead of another, either.

   Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas.

3. Chris Garrette’s killer flagship content, talks not only why you should have Flagship Content but also gives content creation ideas and critical success factors, and most important of all, how to promote the blog with such quality content. The ebook can be obtained by subscribing to Chris’s RSS feed – follow instructions here
4. Lorelle VanFossen’s ever popular Blogging Tips which is available from Blog Herald’s new bookshop [for a limited time, in honor of the 2007 Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference, the book is available for USD $12.95.
5. Wendy from eMoms has a 10 Days to a Better Blog FREE eCourse ranging from monetization, design to copywriting and even networking ideas and much much more.. I actually took this valuable course and every time I open one of those emails, I find something new that I can do with the blog
6. Mig wrote an SEO book for WordPress blogs that has wealth of information on how to set up your blog for search engines
7. Jane May from Daily Web Ideas – her book titled – An essential guide to building successful web sites has practical tips that are easy to read and understand

More downloadable e-books

1. Jane May also mentions a 22 page guide on increasing site traffic by John Robinson of Site Fever, which looks pretty good and I hadn’t heard of
2. I came across Anuj Seth’s blog and found this recommendation from Shane Navratil, on importance of branding and how it can make or break your business/blog.

UPDATE: Of course there are many others that you can sign up for free and I recommend Perry Marshall’s AdWords Course (aff).

If you know of any other e-books/ e-courses on blogging or Internet Marketing written by your favorite blogger, would you share them with us?

del.icio.us Tags: blogging, e-courses, e-learning, e-books

E-books / E-Courses for Achieving Success at Blogging is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

“If you were to give one last lecture before you die, what would it be?”

I am out of words for introducing this precious video. Do take 5 minutes to watch the video and listen to the touching words from Randy Pausch, Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University and then think of what you would do if you were in his shoes!

UPDATE A lot of the people were asking me if there is a full length version of this video and although the video has been going around the web for some days now, I hadn’t found it. Fortunately, I was able to find the full lecture video on Google just now and have also included it below.

Full length lecture below:

The Last Lecture is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tracks more than 100 million blogs for updates and there are tons of excellent blogs but we know that not all of these are authored by full time bloggers. People have many responsibilities, families to take care of, school, studies, jobs and other activities but they still manage to blog and fulfill other hobbies.

I have felt overwhelmed at times and constantly struggle to ‘find’ time to do everything that I want to do. Many times I am successful at completing my obligations, and others I am not. Just like Vivien who is hosting a Group Writing Project at Inspiration Bit, I have often wondered why we couldn’t have more hours in the day, to finish everything we wanted to?

But I am always experimenting different ways to come up with better means to organize my days and tasks. Even though I try my best, I know a lot of the time gets wasted with unimportant stuff that could be avoided. The chunk of my time (8 hours plus the commute time) gets spent at work and I am left with doing more in less time.

My favorite method to keep track of different tasks has always been ‘To Do’ lists. I used to make them in a simple note pad, then I moved to word and even wrote them in excel! The problem with making these types of lists was that they are on one of the computers, either at home or at work! There was no synchronization. So I would print them out and carry them with me at all times. But the printed copy of the to do list often got lost amongst other papers in the pocket books and that didn’t help a whole lot.

Then, about a year or so ago, I came across a service called Backpack by 37Signals, that lets you organize your stuff online. Backpack allows you to not only create shareable to-do lists, but also has content creation facility, calendars, lets you add pages that can also be shared with other people, have the reminders set up and even emailed or SMS to your mobile phone. I have been using the service for just about everything I need to remember and its been a life saver so far because I can access the organizer anywhere with a net connection. The basic service is free.

Another very useful application I have used to keep notes and reminders is Stickies for windows. These are small yellow sticky notes that can be put on the desktop. Stickies also supports multi-computer synchronization and I have been loving the application.

My organization, as far as keeping track of various aspects of all of my projects or tasks is concerned, has improved greatly with the use of these two applications. Here are some additional tips that have also been working for me in order to stay organized and focused:

1. Starting my day about 20 minutes earlier than usual to get a head start, even if it is checking my email or reading the news headlines on the pc
2. Doing the most important thing/task in the morning hours while the mind is still fresh
3. Processing similar tasks all at once – reading feeds twice a day, commenting on other blogs all at once,
4. Stick the printed to-do-list to the refrigerator so I can review it every morning
5. Watch less television
6. I review the priorities every few days and re-arrange them if need be
7. My most important tip has been writing and re-writing goals after breaking the bigger long term goals into smaller goals, and then focusing on just the short term goals.
8. As crazy as it may sound, I have been monitoring the time spent on various activities which I review periodically to see which activity I spend my most time on, could avoid or do differently

How do you manage to keep a balance while multi-tasking?

Technorati Tags: personal Development, Group Writing Project

Simple Tips for Managing Time is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I am sure many of us have fallen prey to procrastination and the reasons may not always be so clear, but one reason that probably is common to all of us is laziness and simply not wanting to do something when it is supposed to be done.  The ‘thing’ that we should be doing doesn’t get done for whatever reason and soon it becomes a problem that is out of our hands and could lead to anxiety and stress which obviously can further overwhelm us!    So, its really a vicious circle of unwanted events that we often get trapped in.  

You know how I started thinking about this?    A few days ago, Liz Strauss from Successful Blogs had posted on her blog about the Blog Day 2007 – which was supposed to be on August 31, but Liz posted it on September 3rd!  Liz was generous to include me in the list of blogs she introduced on this day and I was thinking that I knew about this event a bit in advance but kept doing other things and thinking I’ll get to it but never did,  and then I completely forgot about it.  I read it on Liz’s site and felt a bit ashamed of my neglect but then got busy in doing other things and it never got done!   So I went through those emotions I mentioned up there,  guilt, anxiety and then stress and all.   But because this is blogging, and no one is standing with a gun on my head,  I very conveniently told myself “Good things happen to those who wait and, that’s why I procrastinate” …  well,  we all know there are times when not doing some things on time could get us in serious trouble so it is important to look at how to solve this problem.

As they say, acknowledging the problem is the first step toward solving it, so then,  lets find out

Why do we procrastinate?

See, in order to make that Blog Day 2007 post,  all I needed to do was to introduce to you 5 new Blogs, preferably the ones that were different from my own culture, point of view and attitude (per the site’s instructions).   I visit many blogs all day long and many of them are very different than my own point of view and many are from different countries and cultures, so how could I not be diligent in taking notes and making links and posting a great post?     

I procrastinated because either 1) I am too lazy to do what I am supposed to do  OR   2) I would rather do that is more enjoyable at this time OR 3) I have poor decision making skills.

We don’t really need an example of number 1, as we all can be lazy at times!  But for number 2,  As I sat down to write this article, I opened my FireFox browser and voila, I have six tabs already set to open on the browser that take me to more interesting stuff to read and enjoy than what I am writing and it is easy to get distracted.    And then there is StumbleUpon.   It is too easy to get distracted on SU.  (Next post idea on what is on my home page).   The 3rd reason is all too familiar to all of us also.  Not being able to make a decision on which task to do first if we have a lot on our plate, not being able to assign priorities to projects can make some of the more important one fall through the cracks.  

Ways to overcome it

1. Once the cause of not doing something is known, it becomes easier to take some action to overcome the problem.  Interruptions such as mindless Internet browsing and television watching takes up a lot of the time and the only way to remove these is to simply shut them off and try to do something else.  
2. Keeping short term goals and to-do lists will break lengthier projects down into doable fragments that are more achievable.
3. Prioritize the to-do lists with most important tasks on top obviously but also by assigning more time for them.
4. I work better under pressure, when strict deadlines are approaching, which is usually when I wait till the last minute.  That is when I am able to focus best and I know I don’t have the time to get distracted.  And I am able to produce quite good results at this last minute, and I am sure many people do the same!  But there is one huge drawback to working at the last minute, there is no time to review the work.   So starting to tackle those to-do lists early will get you through them easier and leave plenty of time to re-visit the results, without feeling overwhelmed by them.
5. Have someone else check up on your progress.  In blogging when we are participating in group projects or carnivals, we are able to produce results on time because there is a deadline to meet and we know there are other people working on the same project and we want to be part of the community.  Once the projects or carnivals are over,  traffic reduces, and we feel like no one is reading our blog anyway, and likelihood of falling behind in posts is much more.  Peer pressure works great in blogging.  

    

So knowing what makes us want to put off important tasks and then tackling that particular aspect of our lives with a little bit of organization, time management and prioritization,  could set us on a path to producing more and probably blogging more and writing needed posts on time!   I have already missed the blog day as you know but for this particular celebration, its the the intention that I want to believe in more than just one date out of the year,  so look forward to the new blogs introduced here soon.

If you have also missed the Blog Day 2007,  go ahead and introduce 5 blogs that you have been reading.  

Is procrastination a habit? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Snoskred, from NSW invited me to guest post on her blog because she is busy moving!  But I think she is still much more organized than I could ever imagine to be.   Her blog is REALLY awesome! 

I love everything about Life in the Country but my all time favorites are the Thought for Today series! 

Look at the beautiful picture I took from Snoskred’s site:

And there are many more pictures as well as articles to enjoy!   Do leave your opinions in the comments there or here on the question I posted on her blog!

Guest Post at Life in the Country! is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

who would you dedicate it to? Have you thought about it? How would you say it?

It would be fun to read some of the sentiments here in the comments!

Another question…

Have you seen an e-book dedicated just like printed books? I might have seen it but do not recall!

If you were to write a book is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Isn’t it amazing to look back in time and read some of our writings from the past?

I blogged at MSN Spaces in 2005 and that blog is still hanging out on technorati.   Unlike in the past when I used to start a blog on blogger or WordPress.com and delete it after a few months of blogging, I never deleted this one.  And even though the blog is essentially dead for two years,  and only had one fan for most of its life,  ever since I started Interesting Observations,  more people have added it to their favorites,  and continue to do so!

So today seeing that another one of my fans had added this blog to their favorites, I thought of bringing one of the articles I wrote in August of 2005 alive on this blog!  Notice the month of August bringing on the similar disenchantment!!  That is because this month was the hardest on our family!

So, here is that article!

Reading informative sites – to get inspired, to learn what others have to say about similar issues I might be struggling with – may they be relationships, my own analyses about different life situations - puts perspectives in order (sometimes), and this morning I read an article written by Steven J. Rosen where he presents striking parallels between Bhagvad-Gita and Star-Wars ; really neat perspective he has given there..

And like so many of us struggling on a daily basis with different issues, I am struggling too!   One that’s been the most difficult for me and I continue to try to attain is the emotional detachment, a state where I am completely unaffected by ‘letting go’…..  letting go of everything I fear to lose!!

I really love this conversation between Yoda and Anakin regarding this very concept!

Yoda: Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side.

Anakin Skywalker: I won’t let these visions come true, Master Yoda.

Yoda: Death is a natural part of life.  Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not.  Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.  [very powerful]

Anakin Skywalker: What must I do, Master Yoda?

Yoda: Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

Action without expecting results – has been emphasized in Gita – the famous Hindu epic!   This is a beautiful concept but we never stop and really try to understand its meaning and contemplate what wonder it can bring to our lives if and only if we tried to live by it…..

Here are some of Yoda’s quotes that I often read to bring my ever so scattered mind to some level of restful state:

• “Do or do not… there is no try.”
• “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
• “Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is.”
• “Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”
• “You will find only what you bring in.”
• “[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.”
• “Yes. a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force.  But beware of the dark side.  Anger, fear, aggression:  the dark side of the Force are they.   Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.  If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will”
• “Size matters not.   Look at me.   Judge me by my size, do you?    Hmm?    Hmm.   And well you should not.   For my ally is the Force.  and a powerful ally it is.    Life creates it, makes it grow.  Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.  You must feel the Force around you: here.   Between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.    Even between the land and the ship.”
• “Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.”
• “The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.”
• “Happens to every guy sometimes this does”
• “Feel the force!”May the Force be with you“  

Feel the Force is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Do the ideas to write for your blog come easy to you? Sometimes there are a lot of ideas in your head but when you sit down to actually writing them down, the mind goes blank. We all know to write these ideas down as they enter our heads or imaginations, but I find it hard to carry a paper and pen with me at all times. How can you? I do not find it feasible although I have actually tried to keep a notebook with me but it looks odd and I do not want to look I am obsessed with my blog! Although sometimes I feel I am!!

So how can you remember those ideas? You can write them down if it works for you, but in my opinion, the easiest and the most interesting way to make posts is to transfer the ideas right out of your real life. The real life incidents and events can very easily give us fodder for our thoughts. For this kind of thing to work without remembering, all we need to do is to go through life with a little bit of awareness and better observation skills. I am almost certain that we can find more ideas this way than we will have time to write.

Some of the ideas can come right out of the magazines we read or the news that we feel interested in watching. As you are browsing through various magazines and reading them, think about how each news and article relates to your blog and its theme. Current News and events also reveal people’s behaviors and how they handle different situations. Staying current in your area of blogging will not only keep your blog fresh but also make you an expert in that area and more and more people would want to read you.

All bloggers surf the Internet, read numerous blogs every day. Its okay to read popular blogs but make sure you are not regurgitating the same content. Social directories and discussion forums are a good source of a lot of material. People are always asking questions in the discussion forums and one of the simplest ideas is to answer some of the questions in your post.

Pay attention to the conversations you have with your friends, family and co-workers and you’ll be surprised how many ideas can originate. Just before going to bed, a lot of us have experienced all day’s worth of events going through our heads all at once! You must have experienced it sometime? All these ideas are going to vanish by the morning but this is the time to simply jot down the idea in some shorthand to get back to it later in the morning! Of course for this to work, you don’t need to be carrying notebooks and pens around in public, and this should be the easiest of all methods to convert those ideas into great posts!

del.icio.us Tags: Content Writing, Blogging, Ideas

Technorati Tags: Content Writing, Blogging, Ideas, Blog

Creating Content from Everyday Life is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Do you ever think about any of the following questions? Say about 5 years from now,

1. would you still be blogging?
2. what would your blog have achieved?
3. would you be putting in more numbers of hours into your blog?
4. would you be reading same blogs you are reading today?
5. would you be still be using WordPress or switch to another platform? (if you answered yes to #1)

I am sure most of us would like to make a living from blogging but that just is not realistic, and there are a number of articles written by some well known bloggers on this subject which I agree with.

What are your personal goals as they relate to your blog?

As I went through Darren’s latest article on 10 blogs he reads, I thought I read 7 of the blogs he reads! and my 8th blog is his own blog of course! And I am sure blogs that are popular today will remain on top and may be become even more popular in the coming years just because of the valuable content they provide but what happens to the rest of millions of blogs like ours? The ones that are struggling to come up with good content on a daily basis?

There, a lot of questions are going through my mind! I would really like to know your thoughts along these lines.

If you decide to share your thoughts on your blog, let me know in the comments and refer to this post so I and the rest of the readers can follow your thoughts!

Announcement: I have also been thinking a lot about ways of finding out who reads my blog! So, I have added a new page ‘Who Are You’. It would be nice if you introduced yourself.

del.icio.us Tags: Blogging

Technorati Tags: blogging

5 years from now? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

One of the aspects that has been talked numerous times about guest blogging is obviously the exposure it gives your blog but I also look at this activity as one of the most important means of building a support system in the community. I have noticed majority of the times people ask for guest bloggers when they themselves are not able to post on a regular basis. Someone providing you the content and allowing you to continue to provide your readers what they expect from you, I think is the biggest support any blogger could ask for.

On the other hand, the opportunity to be able to write for someone who has proven their worth in the blogging community, is something every new blogger should actively seek out! I have been fortunate to have experienced both facets of this process and would like to share how it worked for me!

Inviting Guest Bloggers

If you look at my top posts or most recent posts at the bottom of the blog, you’d find that I have been finding it hard to focus and one of those days I asked RT Cunningham of untwistedvortex if he would agree to write for my blog and he was nice enough to agree to do so and wrote a mini tutorial Pings and Trackbacks. The article was very well written and since I submitted his article to Darren’s 31 days to building a better blog to share with others, the article got so much exposure that my Alexa rank broke the top 100k mark! Of course I had never experienced this before so it didn’t even occur to me to check my traffic rank until RT wrote to me about it and even had to tell me how to check one day’s traffic ‘cuz I was still looking at the three months’ traffic displayed on the widget…:) Thanks RT!

Writing for Other Bloggers

When in just the second month of blogging, I ventured into guest posting, I had no idea about promoting the blog. My main purpose was to get to know some people and develop some relationships in the blogging community. I had been reading Freshblogger for quite some time and when Ray announced he was looking for guest bloggers I took a chance and asked him if he would accept my article. He did and I was pleasantly surprised to get positive feedback on writing tips for good blogging. Thank you Ray!

Guest posting on Freshblogger not only gave me more confidence to do better, I was also able to make new friends like Peter who liked what I had written. Peter continued to give me support by always writing encouraging comments on this blog, introduced me to Blogging To Fame, and even famed my blog to push it ahead!

Peter was kind enough to also suggest to me that I should write for Ilker’s the thinking blog when Ilker was busy during exams!! Of course, by this time I had gotten to know a whole lot of new bloggers and became good friends with them, exchanging regular emails and chatting up via IMs! So all this time I had been wondering how meeting our virtual friends in real life would be like! The comments and reactions to that article were fantastic with everyone talking about what they thought about virtual friends vs real life friends!! Check out the article if you haven’t and voice your opinions! Thank you Peter and Ilker!!

I know some bloggers have been lucky to be meeting at blog conferences and other meet ups and I am sure the experiences are great. I hope I get to meet some of the people I’ve gotten to know via blogging some day!

So, blogging (and guest blogging in particular) is not just about building links and driving traffic, its about making friends, building associations and a huge support system that extends beyond geography and time! So, if you have not yet participated in guest blogging, go ahead and either approach someone you always wanted to write for or invite them to write for you. You have everything to gain for in both of the scenarios!!

Technorati Tags: Guest Blogging, Writing, Community

Building a Support System via Guest Blogging is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I am a morning person, at least used to be prior to blogging. But nowadays, I’ve been staying up later and later every night. So its not unusual for me to want to write the post and publish it at night. But it does not always happen after working all day, which causes huge frustration, that in turn results in writer’s block! And I am beginning to feel that its a vicious circle to fall in. Do you have a set schedule as to the time of day when you feel more motivated to post?

I talked to a few of my friends who also blog and they emphasize that mornings work best for them since the mind is fresh and there are no interruptions. As much as I would love to concentrate in the mornings, I am not able to wake up early these days. I remember writing a post about not staying up till 2am let alone past that time sometimes, which is what I am doing these days and then have to work all day but somehow I am not able to follow those ideas.

While I was thinking about this issue, a friend emailed to let me know that my Alexa rankings had shot up in the past few days. While checking my traffic patterns for Alexa, I noticed that most of my traffic was coming from the US. So, does it really affect your readership, what time of day you publish your posts? I understand this is going to be different for different people because of being in different time zones but do you look at your statistics as to where your most visitors are coming from? And at what time of the day they hit your blog?

My most readers coming from US means that posting at late night would work for me in that most people would be able to read it in the morning while I could still be curled up in my bed with some peace and not have to worry about thinking and writing.

Another reason to post at night comes to mind and that is that every time I want to write something, I feel I need to check my feeds to see the trends, what people are writing, if there is something I need to know in news category etc, and million other things that can be very distracting. Besides, I do not like to post something that has not been carefully written and proof read and edited and in the mornings, just before work, how can you do all these things?

By now you can probably tell that as much as I would love to be able to post in the mornings, I am building a justification of why it is really better to post at night.

Obviously I have not reached the point where I have a month’s worth of posts waiting to be published. I plan on working on that schedule or having no schedule so to speak with a post bank, but until that happens, I would love to hear what you have been doing and what time of the day you feel works best for you for posting.

What time of day do you like to post? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

It is easier to talk to someone face to face, with co workers, friends, family, and even the person you meet at the library or the bar for the first time. But communicating with someone you have never met? That is exactly what we are all doing every day via blogging, aren't we? But then why are there so many blogs that we just did not want to spend time reading after that first line?

We all write for different reasons. We might want to discuss something that inspired us at work, or we may want to share a personal feeling, emotion or we might at times want to write to get other people's opinions on some specific situation that we might be facing at the time. In these circumstances, since we are the only ones who are completely familiar with what the reasons are and what we are feeling at the time of our writing, it is very easy to fall in the trap where we sort of leave out the details and assume our readers will get our point. Think about it for a second. If after reading an otherwise good article, we are left with an impression that the article was good but was really directed at someone else, we are likely to feel alienated and may not ever feel that association with it to go back to read more…..

What is it that leaves an impression on us the first time we read someone's writing? As for me, I always look for that connection in the writing, something that is invisible but felt in the words they wrote, even in the tech blogs. Yes, blogs filled with technical jargon are sometimes more appealing than some personal blogs. Why is that? What makes some online readings pleasurable than others?

I believe its all about communication. Communication is at the heart of building relationships and I believe blogging, as a means electronic communication, should be no different than face to face conversations. With every sentence we write, we are building a quiet relationship with our readers. So it is of utmost importance that each and every post is written with the purpose of engaging our readers.

We as readers don't even know at what point in time or with which post we develop that relationship with some blogs or their writers per se. We realize this only after we have gone to read those blogs more than once and then added them to our favorites, to Technorati, to delicious, joined their social network communities, and then we want to read them more and some we even add to our homepage. We all do this don't we? I keep seeing the same people/blogs over and over in many of the online communities I have joined. That is because once we find a great blog, or a blog writer who might be authoring more than one blog, we just do not want to lose them. We want to read everything they write and learn the techniques that make them unique.

As blog writers, that is exactly what our aim should be. To learn to connect with our readers, to make them want to come back to read us more. I am still at initial stages of this journey, but following are a few points that come to mind each time I sit down to make that attempt at writing articles:

• Making your point clear to the reader at the beginning of the post will avoid his confusion. If I am not sure what I want to say, then the readers are going to feel I am simply wasting their time.

• Write as if you are talking to your readers. This is the only way I feel I can write and express myself. It makes me feel much more comfortable in saying what I want to say, a process that helps me find my voice.

• I personally find it easier to write as if I am talking to just one person, one reader, not a whole group of them! Because when I start thinking of my readers as a group of people, I get nervous and the stress starts to build up. You know how when you see a huge billboard with someone's face on it, and as you are driving by, their eyes move with you? I always find that concept fascinating. If I can have that one person, one reader make some kind of connection with what I write, I would feel I have been successful at writing.

• Write what you feel most passionate about. We have heard this before, haven't we? I have to be honest and say that I have tried to write about blogging, and about the technical stuff but that is not where my heart is. I write about improving life skills, personal development and thereby explore means to make our lives better. Whatever the subject of your writing is, you've got to love it to be able to talk more about it. If you love your topic, it'll be easier to talk about it with passion and that will show through your writing.

How can I say this? Because that is exactly what brings me back to read my favorite writers.

I am sure you have something to share on what makes for great writing and why you favorite some blogs. Would you share it with us in the comments?

Tags: Writing, Blogging

Communicating with People You Haven’t Met is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Early this month when Darren announced the 31 days to building a better blog project, I decided I was going to work along with his assignments and for the first 3 or 4 days I did do the assignments. But as soon as he started talking about the dreaded About page, I gave up!! Well, I would like to report that my About page is about done and I have made it visible! I will need to change it but for now it is what it is!

I hope if any of you are doing those ‘assignments’ , you will let me know in the comments so we can join in the fun together! For today, yesterday, the assignment was to Comment on a blog that you have never commented on before! This morning, I had been reading Chris Garrett’s blog and you know I love quotations especially the ones that make us think, Chris had a post up about quotations and I gathered some courage to comment on it and voila – his first time commentator plug in sent me a short welcome script!

So, that was my first comment of the day, on a blog I had never commented before although I read it often. It’s funny I have been looking into redirecting www and non www of my domain for some days and Chris has a post on it right on the front page along with some links to other useful resources. Anyways, since this comment was not part of the assignment, I decided to comment on another blog =) and this time I decided to dive in today’s submission list at of course Problogger, and picked the blog that appeared at the end of the list, this tip was submitted by CornerScribe on Finding Blog Post Ideas! That is exactly what I need these days! Ideas for my posts. Check out this post and you are sure to come back with some good ideas. I could not comment on this blog because for some reason you have to be logged in to comment!?! I am not sure why you would do that, but I think it was a nice post so stumbled it!

I was on a comment spree so from amongst my technorati favorites, sorted by freshness, I found everybody go to and had a good laugh at Ali J’s most recent post reviewing a new web 2.0 start up called thoof. Ali’s funny twist on how this company’s name might have been founded was thoroughly enjoyable ! As a matter of fact I found Ali’s blog to be a great find for me, I subscribed because I will be going back to read more of his useful posts.

Now the importance of commenting 1) find new and useful material 2) these people might check out your blog

What do you think? Have you commented on a blog today? Do you ever comment on the blogs that you subscribe to?

Comment Away! is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

[This is a guest authored post By RT Cunningham of Untwisted Vortex. I do not think RT needs any introduction in the blogging world, that is because from May 2006 till today, he has written 769 articles that have been viewed for over 500,000 times! Look in his Top Posts. RT's topics range from Blogging Tips to Celebrities to Marketing and Promotion and he even has posts on Philippines Government since he has been living in Philippines for some time now. As a matter of fact, I believe just about everyone who goes to his site will end up spending hours and come away completely entertained as well learning something new. I am glad I found RT's site and if you haven't yet visited his site, please do. You'll be glad you did. Thanks so much for agreeing to write for this blog RT. This post will be submitted to Darren's month long project for building a better blog].

It surprises me to read items on social networks where it’s obvious the writers don’t know what “links”, “backlinks”, “pingbacks” and “trackbacks” are. I can understand it coming from non-website owners, but from people who write on blogs everyday? While researching this topic, the only thing I could come up with is that the information surrounding these terms just isn’t publicized enough. We need to change that. I’ll help with the change by explaining what they are and the “how and why” of increasing the ones that count. Below is an example of what linking and interlinking amongst various sites will look like.

Links, also called hyperlinks, are links to other blogs. Simple enough, right? Generally, links refer only to outbound links. Links from your blog to another. There’s another term for inbound links, which are different from outbound links. Links can produce pingbacks if they’re used properly.

Backlinks refer to inbound links. Some writers call them “linkbacks” but that’s incorrect. The search engines call them backlinks and so should we. If a backlink comes from another blog, chances are it will have pinged your blog. If the ping pointed to a specific article, your blog will normally have produced a pingback in the comment section.

A pingback is probably the most confusing term of all. When you post an article and there’s even one link in that article, the software will ping that link (provided you have your software properly set up). If that link happens to point to a specific page on a blog, and the blog is set up to accept pings (some aren’t), a pingback will appear in the comments section of that blog. If the link doesn’t point to a specific page, no pingback can occur. You can still see if the ping went through to the blog by looking at the “blog reactions” on Technorati. If you want to track this information for your own blog, I suggest you to become a member of Technorati and claim your blog there, if you haven’t already done so.

A trackback is almost the same as a pingback. The difference is that your blog doesn’t have to link to the other blog in the article itself. There’s usually a separate spot in the software designed specifically for sending pings to trackback URLs. If the ping goes to a specific page on the other blog, a trackback will appear in the comments section of that block.

The WordPress blog software is set up to do all these things the right way, in its default configuration. Other software and hosted blog services may not be set up properly and will require customization steps. Andy Beard has some excellent articles on how to send a trackback with Blogger.

I notice a lot of blog writers are hesitant about including links in their articles. The contrary should be true. You can’t increase pingbacks without linking out to other blogs. When you link out to other blogs, whether the links produce pingbacks or not, it gets the attention of the owners of the other blogs (and their readers if there happens to be a pingback there). The owners and the readers will sometimes pay a visit to your blog. In my experience, they visit more often than not, just to see what you’re up to. Do not use trackbacks if you can help it. While they can do some good for your blog, they do nothing for the blogs you send them to.

In case you haven’t heard of it, there is a growing movement on the Internet that includes bloggers who want to give credit to other blogs via the comments section of their blogs. They have installed special plugins to remove the “rel=nofollow” tag from comment author URLs, pingbacks and trackbacks. Once again, Andy Beard wrote a great article on the dofollow movement.

This is why linking to other blogs is important. If you link to an article (also called deep linking) on a blog that has the nofollow tag disabled, the pingback becomes a backlinks for you! Now, I’m not saying that you should target only those blogs. You should target any blog where the link is relevant to your article. However, you can create “speed link” articles to make all the links in those articles relevant. Take a look at one of my infamous blog drive-bys for an example of how it can be done. As a matter of fact, this article will produce three pingbacks as backlinks!

The purpose behind all of the terms I just went over is to increase traffic. Linking produces traffic. Linking produces backlinks and that’s how our blogs are found by non-bloggers (and even some bloggers). Linking is important!

Links, Backlinks, Pingbacks and Trackbacks – What Exactly Are They? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I have only been blogging less than 4 months – it’ll be four months on August 14th!   and I have already hit what’s known as writer’s block in blogging circles!   Some of you might be laughing but its true if you do not know what your blog is going to be about.   I am passionate about improving life skills and that’s what I like to write about.   So how can one come to a total standstill in thoughts on personal development?   There is so much I want to share on what has worked for me and what hasn’t.  And I am working on improving many areas of my life on a daily basis,  so how could I not have anything to say?  

Every time I sat down to write that post, I started staring at the blank page and although I felt like there was something I wanted to write,  I could not get started.  So you know what I did?  I browsed the Internet for good four hours.  I read a whole lot of good articles.  I also read Seth Godin….one amongst many of my favorite writers.  And in his archives, I came across the following post … 

"Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you’ve been holding back from… and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go."

And that was it.  I immediately felt I got what I needed.  Don’t think about it, just do what you are supposed to do.   Seth is usually talking about marketing, but as he mentions in his statement here,  its applicable to just about everything in life.  Its about making a decision and then sticking with it. 

And this post is the result of that one statement.  I also did some other things after reading this advice though.  Like immediately after reading it, I completely logged out of StumbleUpon,  Pownce,  and even MyBlogLog.  Then logged out of my mail, Google reader and completely closed the Internet.   Got up and went straight to my gym’s yoga class.   Yes, I do go to gym,  sporadically,  not as often as I would like to,  but enough times to feel the pain in my bones!    Not only I went to gym,  I also came back renewed to be able to write this post.  [And enough courage to reveal a secret, only if you read the entire post and write a 'meaningful' comment here].

So, if you are having a writer’s block,  then may be you can try some of the things listed here and let us know if they worked for you.   If you are one of those who has not ever experienced writer’s block or are able to tackle it before it hits you,  please share with us what works for you.  

Here are some of the ideas that seemed to have worked for me,  this time anyway….

1. Shut down your computer and walk away
2. Do not try to write all your posts on the computer,  try a new medium sometimes, like writing ideas on a paper
3. Try doing something entirely unrelated to your writing, a completely different ‘thing’ – for example, going to the gym!  or a movie
4. Listen to the music and try calming your nerves down – I usually get stressed if I know I want to write but cannot, adding to the frustration
5. Try writing whatever comes to mind,  may not be the post you want to publish, but writing just about anything that is on your mind sometimes can clear out a lot of that ’stuff’ in our brains that might be blocking the real good stuff.
6. I used to beat myself down with the title of the post, as in what is it that I want to write about.  And I still fall in that trap.  But I have noticed if I start writing my ideas down, which may or may not be the start of the actual post, I can always give it a title later depending on what my emphasis turns out to be.
7. At times though, I have made up titles that I would like to write about.  I have a list of just the titles, and sometimes even empty draft posts with different titles with no material in them!  This can be handy when the mind is going blank.
8. I even start writing different words on a piece of paper sometimes.  Just random different words.  That may sound absurd but helps me to get something out of the brain.  And the words can sometimes start giving shape to some sentences. Anything to get me to jot down.  Even as I watch TV I start writing down things that I observe.  
9. DO NOT think about the outcome.  I am guilty of this one big time.  I start thinking about how my final piece would turn out and if I am going to be able to get my point across in clear words.  Stop doing that because not all articles you will write are going to come up to your expectations.   Keep your voice and let it all out without worrying too much about the final product.   This is the only way to develop your writing skills and keep your focus on the process.
10. In addition to changing your media for writing, as in using paper and pencil,  you can also try changing your surroundings.  Going to a library or a local park may spark new ideas. 

Let us know if you find this list helpful and if you have any other ideas to destroy that writer’s block!

Okay so now that secret!!

I also started working on my much awaited About page and have gathered enough courage to put up my picture.   I hope most of you will still continue to come back and leave comments and engage in conversations.  That will be my next post of course ;)

Tags: writing, blogging, decision making

Make a Decision and Stick with it is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.