It’s Sunday, 6:17 AM. I’m running my first run in a long time, loving the freshness and quietness of early morning. After 5 minutes of relentless protest, my legs accepted that I’m not going to stop and have started cooperating.

Holding Myself Back

I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging the past few days, and it’s been on my mind for several weeks now. I’m not really satisfied with how thing are going, and that’s not due to circumstances. It’s because of me.

I came to realize that I’m holding myself back. I’ve been trying to define my blog, to define “How to be an Original”. But I kept bumping into a barrier, something that stopped me from being satisfied with whatever definition I came up with. Until it hit me last Sunday (bear with me on this one).

I realize now that I started with the definition process months back already. The topics I blogged about were as the things on my mind, very diverse. And at the same time I was reading blogs about blogging, like ProBlogger, to learn more about blogging. One of the things I learned was that it’s best to choose a (niche) topic or a (niche) demographic and write specifically for them. Especially if you want to earn a buck from them.

I also received some feedback that it wasn’t all that clear what the blog was about. With this and the advice on blogging, I took a good look at my blog. And I limited the subjects somewhat, so it would fit more closely to productivity or self improvement.

Fast forward a little and I’m coming up with all kinds of topics that I’m interested in. I want to write about them and often even draft a post already. Only to decide later on that they don’t fit my blog. And I put them in storage, with a saddened heart.

Personal Blogs…Yuck (No More)

You know, I looked down upon personal blogs before last Sunday. There are a gazillion of them out there, with people writing about their <insert pet here> puking over the carpet, the recent visit a restaurant (and the <insert bad habit here> waitress) and their annoyance over <insert name of retail chain here>’s lack of customer service. B-O-R-I-N-G.

For years I thought about blogs as just that, boring accounts of empty lives. I couldn’t see the point of having one, let alone reading them. Until I discovered some niche blogs, wow! Okay, so blogging is great if you just ignore the personal blogs. Or so I thought.

Click to continue »

If you don’t crack the shell, you can’t eat the nut. - Persian Proverb

Cracking the shell is a necessary activity to find the nut and eat it. The same goes for theories and concepts. Applying it to a real life situation is like cracking the shell of that theory. And the lessons you learn are the golden nut of insight you find inside that shell.

Cracking the shell is exactly what this post is about, and the nut we’re cracking is the theory of the Time Leadership matrix (or Eisenhower matrix). In this article, I’m going to present a case study on how to use this technique. I took my own blogging activities as the subject.

Time Leadership - a short recap

Time Leadership is a term coined by Stephen Covey and it’s about taking control of your activities by determining their relative importance and urgency. I’ve written about this concept before when I discussed Covey’s habits and I even made a sketchcast about it.

For a quick recap: The Eisenhower Matrix has two axes:

• Importance
  Do you regard the activities as important? This is defined by you: What’s important with respect to your values, ambitions and goals?
• Urgency
  Is there time pressure to do the activities? Time pressure is often applied by others, or by circumstances.

Combined, these two axes create a matrix with four quadrants:

• I: Quadrant of Stress
  Activities are both important and urgent.
• II: Quadrant of Value
  Activities are important but not urgent.
• III: Quadrant of Deception
  Activities are not important, yet they are urgent.
• IV: Quadrant of Regret
  Activities are neither important nor urgent.

The Time Leadership Matrix for my Blogging Activities 

I’m going to discuss all the topics in the matrix briefly, but for your overview I present the entire matrix beforehand (click for a larger version).

Click to continue »

I participated in Litemind’s group writing project last week. My entry to the project, which dealt about writing lists, was the article 5 reasons (not) to drink coffee.

In total there are 67 entries, and I listed them below. There’s a lot of variety between the topics, because the only thing that qualified you was the list format. So there are tech related lists, pain related, self-improvement, blogging and so on.

My favorites are (in no particular order):

• 12 Wordpress Editors you can choose by Karthik
• To Do To Make Tomorrow Better by Bob
• 7 Powerful Tips to Overcome Failure by Donald Latumahina
• 7 Tricks You Need to Fight Procrastination by Samir Bharadwaj

But there’s definitely more to find. So if you’re in need of browsing away some time, check out the list. Click to continue »

It’s already a month ago since I organized the cross-blog series on Mastering Productivity. And since this was a new concept (as far as I can tell), I’m going into detail when looking back at the results.

The concept
A cross-blog series is a combination of two concepts:

• Guest posts
  These are articles written by someone else than the blog owner. The benefit for the blog owner is that he gets an article to publish for free (with no or low effort). The benefit for the author is exposure and traffic from to his own site or blog.
• Series of posts
  These are articles that are sequels to each other and posted on different dates. The benefit for the author is that people who like the series will come back to read the sequels.

The concept of the cross-blog series combines these two concepts. Basically a cross-blog series is a series of posts, but published on the same day and time, but each article on a different blog. The benefits are (based on a four-article series):

• A lot of exposure for the author
  This is like having three guest posts on the same day.
• Organic flow of traffic between blogs
  Regular guest posts drive traffic to your site from people that take initiative to visit the author’s blog, because they are curious to see more. CBS has organic traffic from people that want to read the rest of the series as an added benefit
• Inbound traffic for all participants
  The traffic flows between all blogs, not just to and from the author’s blog. Readers will visit each article and by doing so they will visit every blog.

So this is a win-win-win solution. A win for the author, for the blogger’s hosting the series and for the readers as they don’t have to wait for the rest. Click to continue »

How to be an Original is 6 months old. I think it’s amazing that six months have passed already since I decided to start blogging, and acted upon that decision within days. I’m still proud about that decision, because it was a conscious decision to not procrastinate. And I was a master in procrastinating, especially on the area of following my own path. But six months ago I decided to just do it!

I did do a little preparation. I decided that I wanted my own domain, I looked at Guy Kawasaki’s blog to see what kind of blogging platform he was using (Typepad). Signed up and started blogging. I’m loving blogging ever since (but I’ve changed to Wordpress as a platform).

I started blogging to accelerate my path towards a productive and authentic life. And I started blogging as a way to do some personal branding. But in the mean time it has brought me much much more:

• Explaining provokes deeper understanding. When you learn about a topic, you will deepen your understanding by applying it. But explaining it to others needs even another level of understanding. On my blog I explain different concepts and ideas, and by doing so I’m deepening my own knowledge of the specific topic. I blog a lot about finding your values, and pursuing your goals. And by doing so I’m learning a lot about the subject in the mean time (and I apply it in between…).
• Personal branding. I want to start as an entrepreneur in training and coaching, but I have no formal education or professional background in that field. And as a trainer or coach you need personal branding to sell your services. People need to want YOU to deliver the service of training or coaching.So how do you brand yourself in an area where you’re not currently working in and have no formal education in? Well blogging of course! A blog has several advantages ranging from a big resource for potential customers to dive into and to get to “know me” through my writing and my ideas. And building a readership and an active community is also a way of building authority in the field I want to be working in.
• Writing forces structure in reasoning. Writing is essentially a monologue. I’m speaking (silently) and you’re listening by reading. Only after I’ve written something, and after you’ve read it, the interaction begins. I speak, you listen, then we discuss. This is totally different from ‘real life’ situations where you explain something. In that case the interaction starts the moment you start explaining. You continuously look for verbal and non-verbal signals to check whether your audience is still connected and you act upon that information by repeating stuff or by picking up pace for instance.Writing does not give you that advantage. It requires more thought to get a message across and keep readers connected. This process is great for structuring my reasoning about a topic. And it gives me a lot of written material that might be very useful in the future.
• Comments help me develop further. When you reflect upon my ideas and ask questions, or add context and information to what I write about, you give me the opportunity to develop further. I love that aspect of blogging! Interacting about ideas in the comments gives a lot of insight, both for the readers and for me. This is really a win-win situation.
• Passive income. After a month or two of blogging, I discovered Problogger and Genius Types. Both blogs are great resources that help you build your blog and discuss options of monetizing it. The fact that you could make money from blogging was appealing. This aspect is a nice addition to this activity that already brings me a lot. And it helps me a step forward to financial freedom, not bad
• Getting to know interesting people. Last but, definitely not least! There are a lot of interesting people that I’ve met through blogging. I enjoy interacting with you and I learn so much from you, about blogging, about my quest, about the importance of co-creation, about the power of collaboration. I love how the blogosphere is growing at astounding rates and essentially is a non-competitive environment.