Blogging Challenge

100 Ways To Be More Productive

Sunday, May 6th, 2007 Productivity Challenge Do you ever wish you could be more productive? Do you find that no matter what you do, you seem to fall further and further behind schedule? If that is the case, then I am sure you would find a free e-book with 100+ tips on productivity to be very handy, so keep an eye on Ben Yoskovitz and his Instigator Blog. He is compiling a list of tips from around the Blogosphere so that he can produce a free e-book to help us all out of slacker hell. One of the contributors is Lisa Sabin-Wilson, the author of WordPress for Dummies, who has been kind enough (?) to tag me to try and provide a tip or four.
  1. Just start
  2. Get organized
  3. Prime Time/Best Time
  4. Slack off

Just Start Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy and over think things when what we really need to do is just get on and do them. Seemingly impossible tasks can seem surprisingly easy once we get into them.

Get Organized Clutter can be your worst enemy, especially if the job in hand requires a lot of information/paperwork. Try to stay on top of this, for example it is a nightmare to try and sort out all your insurance details if you have several policies on the go and have never put any of the information in one central place. It becomes even more impossibler when you can't even remember how many policies you have and which companies they are with. Yikes!

Prime Time/Best Time All of us have a natural bio-rhythm, find out what yours is. Are you at your best early morning? Lat at night? Midday? Once you know this try and optimize your efforts accordingly. Slack Off Sometimes you are beating a dead horse, it isn't the best time for you to tackle a job. When something urgent needs to be done it may be that the best course is not to do it, take some time away from the project and relax. But be on a timer. Half an hour of reading a book, TV, reading your RSS feeds, napping, sometimes these are the things you need to do to increase your productivity, get yourself back in the groove. Just make sure you don't use this tip too much. :wink: I'm sure there are plenty of other excellent tips in this series, I am now off to read some of them, which is in itself an extra bonus tip, if I had taken the time to read everyone else's ideas first I probably would never of got around to writing this article at all! So, sorry for any repetitions, and I will edit in a few links to some of my favourite tips at the bottom of this post. Then all that will remain to do will be to decide who to tag to carry this on. :twisted: Recommended links: Gia Combs-Ramirez, overcoming procrastination. Don The Idea Guy, he Ultimate Guide To Productivity. Randa Clay, Secrets To Productivity. Dave Olson, Becoming A Productivity Guru. And I tag . . . Aaron at miLienzo.com

Out With The Old, In With The New

Sunday, April 1st, 2007 So March has blown by, I cant say as my challenge for last month of a comment a day went totally according to plan, but I did post more comments than I otherwise would of done so that's not so bad. :wink: For April I have set myself the challenge of getting this blogs look more finalized, if you have visited before you will notice that I have changed themes again, this theme is based on the RockinSuckerfish by Nathan Rice of RockinThemes.com, but I have adapted it fairly extensively with my own preferred colours. I have also added "Sweet Titles" and I have moved around the RSS and changed the date/authors name layout. That was all in the CSS, I have also added a couple of extra plugins such as "smileys" for the comments and a tag cloud of my categories for my sidebar. Also as a final touch (for now) I moved Robs Translator from my Sandbox site to here, you can see it at the very top of the page on the left hand side. I hope you like the new look, please let me know what you think in the comments, also if you notice any problems that I may have overlooked. Thanks. :grin:

Challenge Completed

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 The challenge that I set myself at the beginning of February, to blog a post a day for the month, has been successfully completed. In fact, including this post I will have put 30 articles out there this month. So what have I gained by this? I have almost doubled the content of my Blog, learnt a lot about my own writing habits and have found a lot more blogs that I want to keep reading via my research. Hopefully my technique has improved, though due to time constraints on certain days I was not too happy about the quality of some of the articles I put out there. I think I have found my personal rhythm of posting, which I think will be more like two or three times a week rather than every day, allowing myself more time to put my posts together in a way that I can be happy with. My challenge to myself for March will be to try and post a comment on at least one blog per day, something that will add to the conversation rather than just "I agree". Any other challenges you would like to recommend for April?

Setting Blog Goals

Sunday, February 25th, 2007 Well I am almost done with my Blogging Challenge of a post every day for the month of February, I think I have learned and gained from the experience, and I hope my blog has too. Already I am trying to think of some new projects to set myself for the next month or so, there are some good ideas that I saw in an article posted over on Glenn Wolsey's blog that may help me set some long term goals. Of the six ideas that Glenn posted in his article I think I may concentrate on "New Relationships Made" for the immediate future, set myself a "Blogging Challenge" of leaving a comment on at least one blog per-day for the month of March. Go take a look at the article yourselves and remember to check back to see what ideas other bloggers add to the list. Thanks to Daily Blog Tips for pointing me in Glenn's direction. :-)

Blogging Challenge

Thursday, February 1st, 2007 I realized today just how much I have been neglecting my own blog. I seem to be spending most of my time using Google Reader or wading through my e-mails, most of which are Google Alerts. Now I am not saying that these aren't great tools, because they really are. I never get through a day without finding a couple of interesting items that I would like to blog about. I Fleck the articles and make a quick note of my first impressions, but then I seem to stall. So for this coming month of February I will try and blog everyday. Yes, 28 articles of my very own. Hopefully this will help me to improve my blogging habits, do a bit of analysis to try and work out where I am wasting my time and maybe even improve my typing and writing skills. It's always good to challenge yourself.