On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my productivity habits?

I just noticed that I totally missed last week’s update. That was unintentional, but most likely a side effect of working hard on achieving goals. And there’s big news today!

Blog performance

Average daily subscribers:	1075	( 3)
Average daily visitors:	394	( 207)

I’ve moved hosts this week. The process was pretty smooth, although there were some setbacks. I expected setbacks, but there’s no way to tell which will occur Turned out to be that my old host has quite a few procedures in place that make it pretty tiresome to move hosts. I don’t like such a policy, and I persisted. I asked this already in my announcement, but should you notice any glitches in the blog: please let me know!

Subscriber numbers are steady, although I’ve seen a sharp decline in the last two days. That may have to do with moving hosts, I’ll have to check on that one. Visitors increased by over 100%, mainly due to StumbleUpon success of Productivity Secrets.

Progress towards goals

This is where the big news is…wait, let me format this appropriately:

The Renovation Project is done!

Over with, schluss, finito! I’m writing this blog post from the same desk, the same computer, but in a new office. Yihaa! It was truly a victorious moment, and my wife, my son and me celebrated it by dancing and acting crazy last Friday evening, just after the carpet was on the floor. It was a lot of fun! I seriously think my not-even-two-year-old has a liking for Pearl Jam, Nirvana and the likes. He was rocking like a biker

Of course there are the odd little jobs to do, but my goal was to have it renovated and operational as an office. And that my friends, has been achieved.

Renovation Project
Status:
Overdue, since 02/2008 FINISHED!
Progress this week:
I didn’t even have to do anything to get it done. The carpeting was done by someone else. And after that it was only moving in stuff (which I’m still doing by the way).
Planning next week:
Nothing. Whahahahaha.

Semi Marathon training
Status:
No longer on schedule, but active. Deadline is October 12, 2008.
Progress this week:
After a long time of no running, I ran one 4.25 kilometer run this week. It was a good run, better than I had expected actually.
Planning next week:
At least three runs. I’m going to follow the myASICS.com training schedule as close as I can. At least, if I understand what they mean! Some of those training runs are complicated!

Productivity Habits - weekly review

I’m still loving my Todoodlists. They’re supposed to last two weeks, but I finished the first set in 10 days and the second in just a week. They’re a lot of fun to make and very intuitive to use. I think I’ll be using this for a long time!

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my productivity habits?

A couple of days late, but here’s last Sunday’s weekly review.

Blog performance

Average daily subscribers:	1072	( 11)
Average daily visitors:	187	( 3)

Not a lot of changes in these numbers. In the past I often heard that getting subscribers and visitors will grow steadily over time. And I share that observation, but if you really want to grow faster you need to put in a lot of work. Sure there are some bloggers that work to grow readership, and suddenly find themselves “discovered” and get massive attention. I’m not waiting around for that to happen, I’ll just start working again to increase these numbers.

One of the things I did was buy Naomi’s book SEO School (I’ll be a ninja soon!). SEO means Search Engine Optimization, and currently I’m halfway through the book. I’m going to change some things on my blog (mostly in the background) and that should result in an increased growth in visitors from search engines (read Google).

Progress towards goals

I’ve worked my ass off in the past week to get the renovation project towards completion, and it’s really almost done. I have about 2 hours of painting to do, which will be done this week. And then it’s waiting for the carpeting to be done (August 22nd). Then I can move stuff in, and the project is done!

Sure there are the odd jobs to do to get it to 100% completion, but when the furniture is in the office is ready for use and that was the way I described the goal. And it sure feels great to be so close! Can’t wait to be done and strike it off the list!

Renovation Project
Status:
Overdue, since 02/2008.
Progress this week:
Very strong progress again. The central heating was a hell of a job, and gladly my dad helped my out. It sure is a job for two men, way too big to be done alone.
Planning next week:
Paint for two hours. Clean up the room.

Semi Marathon training
Status:
On hold, no longer on schedule. Deadline is October 12, 2008.
Progress this week:
Nothing.
Planning next week:
One 3km run. And finally buy the right shoes.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

You’ve read about my new system with Todoodlist and Zen to Done. It’s a lot of fun working with that system, but ultimately the best productivity habit is to finish stuff. And I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my productivity habits?

Six Weeks. I told you last week it would be six weeks between my last and next weekly review. So here it is:

Blog performance

Average daily subscribers:	1061	( 13)
Average daily visitors:	190	( 31)

These stats are compared to the stats from six weeks ago. And for six weeks of virtually no new content, that’s not too bad in my opinion. Thanks for sticking around people! New free content is coming. It may still be not as much as you were used to, because I’m still working on finishing the renovation project. But that’s really coming to a successful finish this month, after which I have seriously simplified my life. The amount of topics in need of my attention will have dropped tremendously by then.

Progress towards goals

Interestingly, there was no goal for writing an e-book. Yet I finished that in the past six weeks. I guess some things are hard to plan. I did not plan to write an e-book, yet the time to write it was right. And it was too powerful a feeling to let it pass unfulfilled.

I had major progress on the renovation project. But as I already told you last week, I cut down on all other activitities that weren’t contributing to either the renovation or the e-book. So there’s no progress on the marathon goal, which makes it increasingly challenging (but not impossible!).

Renovation Project
Status:
Overdue, since 02/2008.
Progress this week:
Very strong progress. Currently working on the last big project: installing/modifying the central heating. That’s a job I’m quite inexperienced in, so it takes longer than the other jobs. And even though I planned and spent a whole day preparing it and getting all the material, I came short in supply after all.
Planning next week:
Finish heating system. Paint, sand, paint.

Semi Marathon training
Status:
On hold, no longer on schedule. Deadline is October 12, 2008.
Progress this week:
Nothing.
Planning next week:
Nothing.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

In my spare time I’m reading the e-book Todoodlist (will review it this week) and re-reading Zen To Done. I’m still on a paper system, and the ideas in Todoodlist are very much aligned with a paper attitude. And Zen To Done simply is a great book with many valuable ideas, many of which I haven’t adopted yet.

Six Weeks.

That’ll be the time between my last weekly review and the next one. That didn’t just happen by incident. Almost six weeks ago, I decided to focus on two things, and two things alone:

• The renovation project
• Writing an e-book

The renovation project

The renovation project is an ongoing activity for such a long time now. It’s hardly a project anymore, it’s a part-time job (or that’s how it feels at times). So I decided to focus a lot of time and attention to it to get it to the point of being done. And while I’m still not completely there, I made tremendous progress over the past few weeks.

The confidence that I’m going to finish it soon is back, and I ordered the carpeting last weekend. They’ll be laying the carpet August 22nd and I know I’ll be done by then. After that the renovation project is DONE! Sure there’s a ton of other chores to do in and around the house, but the major project is done.

Writing an e-book

I never expected it to take six weeks, but that’s the time I needed to write an e-book, make the graphics, have a cover designed, and get it proofread by native speakers. And to redesign the graphics, rewrite parts of the book, and redesign the graphics some more. It was an interesting process, I can tell you that.

But the good news is that I finished it. From start to finish, it took me six weeks, give or take a couple of days. The book will launch tomorrow (Tuesday July 29).

Confidence booster

Some of you may have read it between the lines, but as things progressed in the past few months I wasn’t quite satisfied with myself and with the progress I was making. That’s when I decided to focus my attention on a very limited set of things: my regular things (family and my day-job) and two projects. Nothing else. And that meant no blogging, no twittering, no running, no nothing.

It felt like an extreme measure, but it paid off. It was a real confidence booster for me, experiencing the progress when you focus on a very limited number of things. And to experience the fun coming back to them. Instead of grinding my thoughts over the lack of progress, I got empowered by focusing on making progress on the projects AND working on them at the same time. It was great.

I think I might even do better when I just focus on one project, beside the regular things. There have been times where the projects where biting each other, in time and mind-space.

Naming my own company

For a while now I have been walking around with the idea of starting my own company and transferring my online activities to it. It’s easier to make the income fiscally comprehensible, and it’s a platform on which I can launch other activities. I hadn’t gotten around to it yet though. And one of the things that was holding me back, was that I wanted to have a good name for it.

Almost at the end of the six weeks, in a spare moment when I was the only one awake in the house (I’m back to my night owl rhythm currently) I watched the movie Fight Club. To relax a bit, but also inspired by Brett Legree of 6weeks.ca. There is a particular scene, where six weeks is a crucial period for someone. He (a random dude called Raymond K. Hessel, who looks nothing like his Germanic sounding name) gets six weeks to change his life in such a way that he’s in pursuit of his dreams again. Or else…

Six Weeks again. 42 days. 42.

Wasn’t that THE answer? The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything? Yep, it is.

That was enough for me to decide that it should be the name of my company. Now the company name will not be very visible as I want to launch activities on their own names and brands, but nevertheless I want it to have a meaning. You never know what it might grow into (ambitious as I can be).

So Six Weeks is the name of my company. I did run it by Brett to make sure he was okay with it. After all it’s the name of his blog, but he quickly replied that I should go for it. Thanks Brett (you know I’ll be crediting you for a long time to come…).

So you may find Six Weeks as a name associated with How to be an Original, in the footer of the blog, but also in my Paypal account for instance. Don’t worry about that, it’s still me!

I loved the power of focus in the past six weeks. I will revisit that feeling often. But it’s also damn good to be blogging again!

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my productivity habits?

Blog performance

Average daily subscribers:	1074	( 3)
Average daily visitors:	221	( 13)

Still working on other stuff besides blogging. I have been writing a lot last week, because I started to write an e-book. It’s about discovering your personal core values, and it’s progressing very rapidly. I guess the time was right, because most parts of the book have already formed in my head.

My activity online reduced to virtually zero because of the other activities and the e-book. I have even taken a break from Twitter to focus on the other projects. Next week won’t be different, so this is most likely the only post I’ll write this week.

Progress towards goals

Good progress on the renovation. No progress on the marathon goal.

Renovation Project
Status:
Overdue, since 02/2008.
Progress this week:
Good progress. Windowsill is nearly ready, needs a coat of paint before I can really finish the construction. Did a lot of small jobs that made a lot of (visual) progress.
Planning next week:
Painting. Finishing windowsill and sliding doors.

Semi Marathon training
Status:
On hold, but still on schedule. Deadline is October 12, 2008.
Progress this week:
I planned to do a 4k run, but I did not run this week (again).
Planning next week:
Do at least one 4k run.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

No news.