A man, obviously a traveller, slows down his walking pace as he gazes over the beauty of the land unfolding before his eyes. A beam of sunlight breaks through the clouds. Like a spotlight on a stage it highlights only subtle parts, but by doing so they appear extraordinary. Magical at times.

The man decides to stop and puts his backpack on the ground. As he sits down in the grass besides the path he is travelling, he unpacks his lunch. After soaking up the spectacular scenery pointed out by the randomness of sunlight and clouds, he takes the first bite. The richness of the flavours spreads through his mouth and add another dimension to the moment.

He notices that his legs particularly enjoy the rest. It was a long walk since they paused for the last time this morning when he had a lovely conversation with that eager young lady in the forest. He really enjoyed it, and learned something too.

Curious about that conversation? Head over to Jeniffer’s blog The Thirty Day Year and read my contribution to The Achievers series she’s hosting: Getting Started and Learning As You Go. Don’t forget to stumble or bookmark it, if you like it.

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.

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This month How to be an Original turned one year old. A year ago on my birthday I decided to start this blog and hardly a week later I published the first post. Little did I know what I had gotten myself into…

Conception

After a year of trying to earn a buck by playing poker online, I decided to try something else. Playing poker was usually break-even or slightly better, but I lost the fun and it consumed massive amounts of time. It was time for something more constructive, something that delivered more value both to me and to others.

I have always had the feeling that I should start my own business, but apart from a small ‘business’ I had when I was a student I had never really taken steps to make it a reality. On that birthday I decided it was time to actually do something about it.

Next question: How to start your own business in spare time? I needed the income from my day job, so quitting wasn’t an option. I wanted to start a (freelancing) business in training and coaching, but I lacked both the training and experience in doing so (the passion is there though!). And I knew that I needed to put in a LOT of work in developing my ideas.

At the time I had just discovered Guy Kawasaki’s blog only weeks before, and the idea of starting a blog popped in my head. It was perfect for developing my ideas by writing them out, discussing them with readers and for some personal branding as well.
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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).

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Finally after two weeks of coding and designing, debugging and re-bugging (to get it to work in IE), I’m proud to say the new design is live! And I’m kind of proud of it, so if you’re reading this in a RSS-reader, come on over and take a look.

Changes

This was a complete overhaul, and almost everything changed. To name them all would be too much, so here are the most notable changes:

• The design went from 3 columns to 2 columns
• The header image changed completely and takes up less space above the fold
• The comments show alternating colors and have gravatars enabled
• The archives now give a good overview of all the posts by showing only the title
• The sidebar contains an ad-section for the popular 125×125 ads
• I have added a section for the most visited posts and the most active readers
• The site looks good in all major browsers
• The design is much cleaner, both in coding and layout!

Of course there’s still some work to do, so there will be minor changes over the coming days to tweak the design and coding. If you see any glitches, please let me know! Any feedback is appreciated by the way!

The old look

For those of you who don’t remember the old layout, I added a screenshot for your reference.