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Top Picks for the Lists Group Writing Project

Posted by John on Monday, December 3rd 2007   

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Last month I competed in the Lists Groups Writing Project for a chance at $100. I submitted my blog post 5 Crash Course Tips in Viral Marketing and have gotten a pretty nice response.

Since I was 1 of 67 bloggers who entered into the Lists Groups Writing Project for a chance at $100, I figured I should also compete in posting up my top 3 articles that I find very important.

50 ways to start a conversation by dee

Her blog title should say it all, don’t be shy. I know for myself, starting a conversation with a stranger takes me out of my comfort zone, but most people are shy like this. Dee posted up some great questions as well as ideas to help me(and my readers) step up to the plate and meet new people. I will be blogging about your comfort zone in the upcoming weeks, but be sure to check out her blog and post about 50 ways to start a conversation.

I also enjoyed how she broke down the 50 ways into various categories or topics such as, First date conversation breakers, and finding common ground conversation starters. I also started to read through some of her blog entries and found that my role model, Tim Ferris is also mentioned on her blog about challenging your comfort zone.

Great work on all these lines that I will probably use in my upcoming networking events as well as trying to get a phone number of a lucky lady.

7 tricks you need to fight procrastination by Samir Bharadwaj

When it comes to procrastination, I am pretty much a winner. I find that I push off a lot of things due to some of the smallest challenges. This has been something that I have been trying to fight and redo some of my daily routine because of it. I will be writing about this in the upcoming weeks too, but one book that I just have to mention is Crazy Busy by Edward M. Hallowell. I recently got the chance to meet him and listen to all his various incite into how to couple in this busy world. Dr. Hallowell specializes in ADD and ADHA, something I know I have a little of. Anyway, it’s a great book, and I will be doing a complete review for the Geek Guru Book Club soon enough.

Anyway, Samir breaks down each of the 7 tricks into easy digestible ways to fight procrastination. One of my favorite of these tricks is Fight distractions. I am constantly jumping around from task to task and have trouble focusing 100% of my energy towards a task. I have been trying to change this as well as only focus on 1 or 2 specific tasks a day, as if my life depends on it. This way you DO get these task done and by putting so much value on it, that you don’t get distracted as well as keep your focus small and limit it to a couple of tasks. Its interesting that Samir posted how one should do something active as soon as I think about slipping and procrastinate. Something active may include doing laundry, feeding the dog, or maybe even a blog post. This way if you do get sidetracked, something that you NEED to do still gets done, while giving your mind a break. I also know for myself that sometimes I just need to think about it in the back of my head while I am driving or eating. Thanks Samir for the great post and incite into fighting procrastination.

18 tips to become a productive blogger by Monika Mundell

Being a productive blogger is something that I have been trying to do, but have been getting sidetracked. I know sticking to one blog post a day is hard for me when I get a ton of work dropped on me at once. Setting a side the 20 or 30 minutes to write can be hard. I also know that good quality content is better then quantity, to a degree.

Monika posts some great tips that I plan to use to help grow my own blog. Her 2nd tip for productive blogging is, “Think ahead: plan monthly, weekly and daily”. This is something that I NEED to focus on. I was recently reading what does your drafts folder look like? on shoemoney and noticed that mine is almost always empty. Seriously I get posts in my head, write them down and post them. Recently I tried to write them down each night and post them each morning, but if I have an event or get home late, I normally crawl into bed forgetting to post a new entry on my blog. So taking this idea of thinking ahead is something I need to take to the next level, I am going to try and post up 7 to 10 entries which I can always post if something came up, but focus on writing my weekly entries on the weekends. This way I know that I have 5 to 7 articles to post next week and have already committed the time to them.

Number 12 on her list of productive blogging also hit me like a rock, “If you want to make money, you will need to start each day by focusing on your income producing tasks first.” Last month I posted how I was planning to make $100 a day in passive income in the next 3 months. Well I need to focus and work at this money maker each day and be sure to stick to the plan. I think I enjoyed Thanksgiving a bit more then I expected and chilled in NYC for almost 5 days straight. I thought I was going to be sitting at home, board writing blog posts, but instead I was out finding cool places to eat, meeting up with some friends, and checking out the coworking scene. If I am serious about making all this passive income, I need to stick to it and focus on grown my blog as well as FINALLY LAUNCHING A WEBSITE.

As for her post of number 18, I just had to talk about it, “Have fun: take fun out of the equation and you might as well pack your bags!

Please understand that things don’t just improve overnight. Implement what works for you and see, where this will take you.”

I know for myself I am always thinking, hey if I do this, I should be able to bring in $x in a short period of time. Well most of the time, $x is more like $1 or $5 and not $50 or $1000. Having fun is also something to think about, I know I have changed my life dramatically in the past 6 months due to the fact that I wanted more by doing less. Also opportunity presents itself daily, but the implementation can take time, so knowing that I will NOT be an overnight success sucks, but if I keep at it, something is bound to happen.

So these are my 3 Top Posts for the Lists Groups Writing Project and are in no particular order. I figured I should also give some link love and post up the other 64 entries below (including my own). Please take the time to read some of them, I know I have read all of them and enjoyed each one. I know I have gotten at least 1 vote and hope that maybe I can win the $100, but even if I don’t this has been a great experience and hope to do more blog contests just like this one.

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3 Comments   

3 Comments Already

commenter
Monika @ The Writers Manifesto Said,
December 3rd, 2007 @5:34 pm  

Hi John,

Thank you for giving me your vote. :-) Also I noticed you mention the struggle at times to being side tracked and missing to post your blog posts.

I’m not sure whether you know about windows live writer, but this tool is great to blog with as you can write your posts ahead of time and then set the timer to post them ahead. (Only downfall is that you cannot set a specific time, so if you blog your early post say on Monday evening at 6 PM and set them to go live on Wednesday, they will go live at 6 PM too).

Since I have used live writer I have saved so much time by not having to play around with coding and stuff.

Good luck with your entry as well.

commenter
Samir Said,
December 9th, 2007 @5:27 pm  

Thanks for the vote John, and for your commentary. It’s always good to know what parts of a piece people liked, and what parts they particularly reacted to.

There actually seems to be a term for this phenomenon of doing other tasks when you are distracted from your main one. It appears to be called active procrastination, only some people seem to look at it as just another way in which people procrastinate on their main task(s). I guess that could be true if you got carried away, but being human, distraction is an inevitability at some point, so I figure you might as well make the best of it.

Once again, thanks for the vote.

commenter
Prince John Said,
December 17th, 2007 @6:59 pm  

Hi John,

Thanks for the link and you have been automatically entered to my contest I was conducting till today.

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