If you did not come here through Zen Habits: I have a guest post there today, go check it out!

• How Productivity Habits Reduced the Impact of Theft … Twice

If you did come from Zen Habits: Welcome to How to be an Original! My name is Lodewijk van den Broek and I’m the blogger of this place. In this short post I want to show you what you can find around here, just to get you started.

To describe How to be an Original in a nutshell: it’s about discovering who you are, deciding what you want from life and about learning how to get it. Now I don’t know all the answers to those questions as well, but I have quite some ideas and I’m experimenting with a lot of concepts. So this blog is as much about teaching and sharing as it is about learning. One of the features for instance is a weekly review post, in which I review my goals (among other things). If you check those reviews you will find that I learned a lot, because I made quite some mistakes. 

For a tour of popular posts, you can check the popular posts section in the sidebar, or scroll all the way down and look through the popular posts menu there. In case you want to learn more about me (where my name comes from for instance), check the About page or leave me a message through the Contact page.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the feed if you like what you see!

Have fun!

Yesterday this domain has been abused by a spammer. Last evening my email box filled with over 3500 “Returned mail” messages for addresses that do not exist. This morning the count is at >7500 messages. I can’t even begin to imagine how many were delivered.

I don’t know if they abused the mailserver at my provider, or that they just used my domain as the (fake) return-address. I’ve submitted a support ticket at my provider, but I have to wait until the workday starts (in 3 hours) to get a response. I’ll update this message when I have more news.

For anyone visiting this site to check who sent them the junk email: I apologize for the inconvenience! I have nothing to do with those mails, please delete them at once! I sincerely regret that you were bothered by that email, as much as I regret that my domain was abused for this.

I’ll keep you posted.

[Update]
The servers at my provider Argeweb were not abused. The spammer only used my domain as a fictitious domain where the spam was coming from. Argeweb was so kind as to remove the catch all function from my account, so the remainder of the mail will bounce, instead of flooding my inbox (counter stopped at 8000 undeliverable mails). Not a lot more I can do but to delete all the messages.

2007 was the first year of How to be an Original. Also the first year for me as a blogger. It’s been a great year and I learned a lot!

I learned a lot about blogging. In the first two months already, I learned that I wanted to switch from a hosted site (Typepad) to a self-hosted site on Wordpress. But I learned a lot about social media and internet marketing as well. I learned about the dynamics of the blogosphere and the people in it and what a nice bunch of people they are!

On a technical level, I learned a lot too. I learned html, php, css to build my theme. I learned how to manage and upgrade Wordpress and the plugins. I learned how to change DNS-records to redirect certain addresses to other sites or services (like Feedburner).

And last, but not least, I learned a lot about goal setting and personal development. I have also learned Neuro Linguistic Programming and how to use language and specific questions to solve problems and find resources within. I have learned about living my own legend and what it is that makes me happy and passionate. And most of all, I learned how writing about it accelerates the learning process.

And I would also like to thank you! I’m thrilled that there are so many readers, over 500 already and the number is growing. I love your feedback and I’m very happy with the new people I have met through blogging and through you.

Click to continue »

Yes, it’s that time of year again. New Year’s Resolutions!

Essentially new year’s resolutions are simply goals or habit changes, but they are used by more people because they are somewhat of a tradition. The problem with new year’s resolutions is that they fail so often. The intention is right, but most people fail to adopt the right strategies. All in all, you do want them to work all year long (and preferably after that too!).

Steve calls on us to start planning ahead, instead of waiting for the last minute. Over at Change Your Thoughts, you can download a guide to make your New Year’s Revolutions, and a 21 minute talk about it too. Need more inspiration?

One of the popular resolutions is to lose weight. It made it to the top 5 list of WebMD, both for men and women. Aaron over at Today is that day, points out very well that you may need to shed some (mental) baggage, before you can make it work this time.

For business you can check IttyBiz for a series of marketing tips for small companies, to get more business (Naomi did some mind reading for you there). And how to make your business resolutions stick is another great article, that happens to be very applicable for personal goals also.

Bloggers (or writers actually) can find inspiration for resolutions at the Publishing Spot. And if you happen to be in personal development, Ian stated his resolutions on his blog as well, although there are a lot of self-sabotaging words in that list.

And finally, you can check 7 highly effective resolutions at the Ririan Project. Still not enough, check out the ToDoList-blog for tips to find resolutions. List parties! Yeah

This month I learned some goal setting lessons…the hard way! I’ve been working with setting goals and blogging about it for a couple of months now. And I made some mistakes. Preventable mistakes? Maybe, but honest mistakes anyway. This is a series of posts about those mistakes.

Mistake 4: Moving Targets

After all the earlier mistakes there’s the pitfall of the moving target. This happens when you set a goal to achieve something, but the end result isn’t entirely clear.

You start working on them enthusiastically, and while you work you get new insight and ideas. And they end up in the desired end result, consciously or subconsciously. There nothing really wrong with adjusting the desired goal as you go along, as long as you don’t lose sight of your original objective.

The phenomenon can be very demotivating. It’s like running a 5k race, only to find out that with every two steps you take, the finish line moves a step away. While you’re running this is not a big issue, but as soon as that finish line comes in sight (after running 7k!) … it’s not funny anymore.

Here’s the phenomenon in a first hand example.

Example: Get that garden done
The goal:

1. By December 2007 the garden in the front and back have been redone and are safe for children

The problem:
When I initially set this goal, I wanted to redo the garden for two reasons. It wasn’t safe for children and it wasn’t any fun for children.

The deadline was set for the end of the year, because I wanted to get it done before winter. Or rather, I wanted it to be ready for use in spring, because that would be the time that Jesse would walk and starts playing outside in the garden.

To have it ready by spring, the garden needs to be done before winter. During the winter you can’t really work in the garden anyway, and I wanted the new lawn to have strong roots before it gets abused in spring.

No problem so far actually. The goal is quantified, albeit a bit digital: it’s either done or not.

But while I was working on the garden, all kinds of ideas popped up in my mind. And I ended up adding them to the desired end result subconsciously. Which isn’t a bad thing necessarily, I know I want to have those features in the garden. But they weren’t part of the goal!

Two of these items, and they happen to be the ones that have yet to be conducted are:

• Planting two trees in the back of the garden.
• Moving the door in the fence to the other side of the garden

The trees need to come purely for cosmetic reasons, they need to block the view we have on an ugly building. And the door needs to move, so I can enter and leave the garden easily with my motorcycle. Two great ideas! But what do they have to do with making the garden safe for kids?

The solution:
In retrospect I can say that this goals has been completed for quite some weeks already. I still have little projects to do, but they weren’t part of the goal and I will do them anyway. The goal has been accomplished.

I could have prevented this if I would have lined out what the checkpoints were for the accomplishment of this goal. This could have been a list like this:

• Remove toxic plants from garden
• Remove big level differences, where kids can fall from heights to a hard floor
• Remove sharp objects, like nails and bushes with thorns
• Add a lawn where kids can play
• Add a sandbox with sand that’s safe for kids (and remains so by using a lid to prevent cats from ‘using’ it)

These would have been the “must-do’s” to accomplish this goal. Painting the fence wasn’t part of that list, it got done, but wasn’t necessary for accomplishing this goal. As are planting trees for cosmetic reasons and moving doors for transportation reasons.

Goal Setting Rules

So what are the lessons here?

1. Make a list of must-do’s for goals where the end-result is an idea or concept
2. It’s OK to do more than planned, as long as you at least do what you planned

This was the last article in the series. Well, for now anyway