blog to discovery

You may not be able to tell, but I miss writing my blog. Several times a week I have ideas for posts, but they just don’t get written. About a week a go I had two revelations about why I seem to have this block and I wanted to share them.

Caught up in ‘blogging’

I started writing this blog to keep a record of things I don’t write in my journal, such as organisation techniques and working towards goals, while at the same time practising my writing skills. I also hoped that people would share ideas and comments, and I’ve been delighted that people have been so helpful as I’ve learnt a lot from comments, for instance when I was wondering what to buy for our new baby.

However 2 things happened that have slowed me down:

1. I started reading blogs about blogging and got caught up in all the things I ’should’ be doing

You may have noticed there has been a lot of spam comments on my blog recently. I’m sorry I haven’t got into action earlier to deal with it.

I have found the spam interesting for two reasons; firstly I seem to get more spam the less active I am (although that could also indicate I’m not upgrading my anti spam plugins). Secondly, reading how the style of spam comments has changed to try and get round these plugins such as Akismet. The comments containing long lists of url now go straight into my spam folder, but the new style of responding to the post topic are still getting through.

However, there are still comments that stand out as they are not related to the post. I’ve been reviewing the comments during my lunch hour and some of these random comments have broken the monotony of the task and made me smile. Here are my favourites:

Almost three weeks ago, I put out a poll asking what you wanted to read on this blog, I’m delighted that some of you spent the time to complete it. As you can see from the chart below, the results were fairly even.

Its great that you want to read more about goal identification and achievement because I am keen to write about this topic as I think it keeps me focussed on what I’m trying to achieve. I’m usually happy to talk about productivity especially as it’s what I originally started this blog for, plus I believe if I’m more productive I will achieve my goals more quickly. These are the two topics I was hoping you would want to read about

Although I only wrote posts for the first 8 months of 2008 I still thought I would benefit from undertaking a review of what I achieved, particularly in comparison to 2007.  I wrote 61, averaging about 5 a month, this is almost half the posts of 2007.   I’ve had over 19,000 visits (15,900 unique) and over 38,800 page views, all of which are double or almost double 2007).

Outside of my blog, my weight started at 67.2kg, increased to 91.8kg on the day I gave birth and was down to 78.4kg at the end of the year (about the weight I was at 5 month pregnant).

Most read posts in 2008

1. How I successfully plan my day
   
2. 15 different types of journals to keep
3. Day planner download files

The most commented posts

1. Ask advice: new baby – what do we need to buy, make or know (18)

Its been a great month for my rss subscribers as I’ve passed the next milestone and reached the 200 mark. Okay, I admit I’m currently at 188, but in the last 30 days there were 4 days over 200 reaching a high of 207. So thank you again readers.

The most read posts in the last month were:

1. 13 tips to successful hotdesking
2. 15 different types of journals to keep
3. How I successfully plan my day
4. Day planner download files
5. Developing my mission statement

The search terms used to find my site that seem the most loosely connected were

• hairdressing appointment templates
• how to organise ebay
• I got nail varnish on my laptop
• referrals old english letter nail sticker

I have posted slightly more frequently in the last month, but it isn’t up to the level I would like, but you all know my excuse now and hopefully you understand. I am getting back on track though, so hopefully the trend over the last few months will continue and you will see a few more posts. However, despite my lack of posting the number of subscribers is holding steady and I am getting close to 200 mark, which I find amazing, so thank you to everyone who reads my blog (please let me know if there are things you would like me to write about that I haven’t covered recently).

My most read posts were:

1. 13 tips to successful hotdesking
2. How I successfully plan my day
3. Day planner download files
4. Ask advice: how to label keyboard keys
5. 15 different types of journals to keep

This is a question I’ve been asking myself for the last year or so, and I’m sure I’m not the only person who has a task list that never seems to get smaller. I’ve tweaked my system, moving from digital to paper and back to digital; I’ve incoporated new ideas from Getting Things Done and Do it tomorrow, but the list keeps growing. So at the start of 2008 I decided to do some analysis so I could understand the nature of my incoming tasks and hopefully develop a system that means I can work through my task list.

If you are interested in reading my analysis you can find it over at Productivity in Context. Thank you Stephen for inviting me to write my first guest post.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Apparently the rss feed for my blog has not been working since the end of May, and despite subscribing to it twice I didn’t notice, so thank you Catherine for telling me.

I can think of a couple of reasons why it is not working; the upgrade to Wordpress 2.5 or the relevant plugin is out of date.  As I like to look for the easy solution I have upgraded the plugin and I’m hoping this will solve the problem.  If not then I may be looking for some assistance.

As it happens I have not actually posted much since the feed went down so you have not missed much, but in case you want to look back, here are the missing posts

• Making progress? May 2008
• Classes and the qualities of friends (JE 9th October 1989)
• Getting back on track using repeating tasks

Things didn’t really pick up in reference to my post writing in the last month as I had anticipated.  I wrote a grand total of 0 posts, not very impressive.  I have a long list of posts that I want to write and my organisation system is going through several changes at the moment so I have a lot to say, I just need to improve my systems so I can get them out of my head and on to the screen.

However, despite my lack of communication the number of subscribes has not varied greatly and is currently 173 (higher than my last update in February), so thank you readers for sticking with me.

In the last month the most read posts were

• Dealing with repeating tasks in a paperbased system
• How I successfully plan my day
• Ask advice: How to label keyboard keys

March has been strange a month because I’ve been on leave for two weeks and it is the last month of my company’s financial year so I’ve fluctuated between relaxation and being very busy. Plus, I think the hours I’ve been working over the last few months has finally got to me as I feel exhausted and I’m struggling to do much outside of the office, hence the lack of posts recently (I had intended do a lot of writing while I was in Japan, however their public transport system is so efficient that I did not find the time).

Goals – again, I have not progressed identifying my goals in the last month. I have a very first draft and I’m thinking of just posting it so that I start progressing this area again.