Wednesday. 5:12am
It’s dark in the bedroom.

After rummaging around some more, they guy picks up a pair of socks and quietly leaves the room.

I’ve been running for a three weeks again, training to finish half a marathon in the autumn this year. Last Wednesday during my run I learned a couple of things. One of them is that improper socks increase the chance of blisters (ouch).

Over the past four runs I have increased both my distance and speed on every run:

1. 3.5 km | 21:19 | 9.8 km/h
2. 4.2 km | 25:30 | 9.9 km/h
3. 5.0 km | 29:55 | 10.0 km/h
4. 6.1 km | 35:28 | 10.3 km/h

That’s really encouraging, but I should look out for getting overly confident. As you can see in the increase in distance, well even that increasing. First 0.7 km more, then 0.8 km and even 1.1 km on the last run. At this pace, I’ll be running marathons in a matter of weeks! (yes, that’s overconfident)

During that run though, my body was giving me signals. My stamina was not a problem, but my right knee was protesting a little. I noticed a faint irritation, a muscle maybe. Somewhat later, I began to realize that I was developing a blister on one of my toes on my right foot. Hmm, the right side again.

This week I began reading a new book Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and Rich: Spike’s Guide to Success, and while running I was going through the “8 to be great”. Push and Persist are two of them. So I pushed myself and persisted.

Later that day, my ankle started sending me messages as well. The right ankle. Right again…

Stop right there, Lodewijk! Your body is sending messages, stop and listen, it usually has something meaningful to tell you.

The knee and the ankle.
They show faint feelings of irritation. Nothing serious, will cure with some rest. The solution is to ease the schedule a bit. Don’t overdue it, is what they try to teach me.

All irritations on the right side.
This is a sign of improper technique I guess. I’m not dividing the strain evenly over all parts of my body. Something to focus on in the next run, maybe even find someone who can train me proper technique.

Blisters.
They tell me to use proper equipment. Not regular socks, but socks made for running. Not tennis shoes, but running shoes. Yeah, I knew this but ignored it anyway. Not smart…thank you blisters.

The messages are only warnings, no injuries…yet.

Warning that I may be pushing too hard. So besides getting the right attitude and right equipment, it’s also time to learn some more about training schedules for marathons. After all, I don’t want to get injured by ignorance.

Time to learn something from the people who did this before. Successfully.

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I’m a day late with my weekly review, but that’s no excuse not to do it. I will focus on the past week and not include today (because I did a good run today, but you’ll read about that next week).

Blog performance

The post on Monday was short. I think some of you may even have thought that I published that post by accident. I didn’t, but I intended to write a post at first. I had found the poem and the picture to go along with the message I was trying to get across, but I couldn’t get it on paper the way I wanted it.

So I decided to do something I normally don’t do, and that was to just hit publish with only the poem and the picture. They carried the message I wanted to say anyway, and I thought it might break the pattern I was in. And it did. It took away the pressure of having a post on Monday, and gave room to find other quotes and put the message across. It turned out to be my post on Passionate People.

With that post I also redefined my blog. I will change some stuff around the blog, but it will still be my voice (even more so) and the topics that I have on my mind. I will change the categories though, so they fit the new blog definition better. I’m also going to introduce tags, to better identify the topics that a post is about. You’ll notice the difference in the coming weeks.

The stats.
Quelle surprise! Last week I really stopped caring about Technorati, and now my Authority is up. On a closer look though, it’s mostly because of sploggers so they’re not even “real” links. I’m going to drop this statistic from my weekly reports.

Feedburner was not doing a great job reporting the correct number of subscribers this week, leaving out several sources. So I had to do a little intrapolation to get to the correct stats for the subscriber numbers. And they’re moving in the right direction.

Visitors are stable, again without any stumbleupon traffic. I noticed that the time spent on the blog increased a lot in the past couple of weeks. Hmm, that might be a good statistic to start reporting.

Progress towards goals

One major change here this week. I’m dropping the subscriber goal, and for now I’m not going to replace it with something else for this blog. I’m working on launching two other blogs:

• WordPress DIY, a blog primarily about making themes in WordPress. I will cover other topics around blogging and WordPress too, but themes will be the main focus. I announced this blog a while back already, but I had to change the URL. It’s located at wpdiy.net now.
• Scraping Pennies, a blog about making money online. Well it’s an experiment really. I start with a $200 budget and aim to make a four figure monthly income from it. All the while I will give full transparency, money spent and earned, hours invested and so on. I discuss the strategies I use, my expectations, my experiences and so on.

For both blogs the designs are not ready yet. I am preparing some content already, and on Scraping Pennies I’m also publishing some. If When the blog is successful you’ll share in the success, subscribe to the feed to find out how.

Those blogs will have goals, they’re going to be more business blogs anyway. I will probably define an overall goal that I will be reporting on here.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

I’m still working with Remember The Milk in combination with Twitter and my Moleskines and Evernote. I think I’m on to my new system with those four tools. I need to sort things out some more, but I think things are moving in the right direction.

I’m lagging behind on my email though. My inbox is NOT empty, and that’s for the first time in a long while. I will get that done today!

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Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark.
~Zen Proverb

Limitations that are set onto you by others, invoke rebellion. In me it does anyway. Who do they think they are to restrict my freedom? To restrict my ability to choose what to do and what not? If you want to see me getting all wound up, you should do just that.

Now I may react a lot stronger than most people, because freedom is right up there on top of my list of most important personal core values. Don’t touch my freedom! There’s only one person who really is able to limit me in my freedom, without invoking massive rebellious action.

Me.

That’s right. Only me.

Self-Imposed Restraints

It’s me who is my enemy
Me who beats me up
Me who makes the monsters
Me who strips my confidence.
~Paula Cole 

I’ve found that the strongest chains are the ones you use to restrain yourself. It’s unbelievable how creative I can get in restraining myself and limiting my freedom to express myself, to do what I want to do and to be who I want to be. Worst of all, I do it without my own consent and often even not conscious at all. Where’s that inner rebel when you need him?

But I know the answer to that question already: The inner rebel is hurting when I choose to rob myself from my freedom. He’s there inside of me standing by to support me and encourage me every time I need to defend my valued freedom. And then all of a sudden I, the one he tries to defend, turn around and stab him in the back by doing it to myself.

He shuts up, puzzled and hurting.

I know, I can feel his pain. It’s down there in my stomach.

I don’t always recognize it, but sure enough it’s a signal. And one I’m learning to recognize earlier than before, now I came to realize that I truly am my greatest enemy. About as much as I am my greatest asset.

Hidden Powers

I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.
~Buckminster Fuller

Inside of me is a big set of hidden powers, a box of assets, waiting to be tapped into. This belief is relevant to dealing with my self-imposed restraints, because it’s telling me that there’s a hidden power in that behavior as well. I just need to learn to recognize it and to harness its power in a constructive way.

You see, the self-limiting behavior is not bad in itself. I realize it has a positive intention for me too, it’s trying to protect me. It does so by limiting the chance of me getting hurt or feeling bad, because it prevents me from entering into situation that might result in that. And I think that strategy sucks. It’s hardly empowering, and in the end it doesn’t get me anywhere.

Four Steps To New Behavior

The question is how to unleash the power of me, empowered by harnessing that limiting power in a positive way, while being encouraged by my inner rebel. That would result in super powers! (Don’t worry, I’m not going to levitate away right now).

1. First is to acknowledge that my habit of limiting myself is not bad. It’s just a not-so-smart-way of expressing a positive intention. It’s an asset when used in the right way.
2. Second is to understand the benefits you get from that behavior. In my case the intention was to ease my self doubts. By learning the lessons of others and applying them to myself, I got a feeling of certainty. It didn’t last though, but that’s usually the case with bad strategies in behavior.
3. Third is to find a solution that will satisfy both conflicting parts in me. The part that rebels on one hand and the part that restricts on the other hand. Look for alternative behavior or an alternative belief that might satisfy both of them.
4. Fourth is to apply that behavior. It’ll be easier than you think it will be, although it might feel awkward at first. But because both forces are aligned now, there’s less chance of falling back in “bad” behavior.

It’s a simple four step process, that might take a while to really get into my system. Finding new behavior that satisfies both parts however, is more powerful than the old behavior and gives more results. Of course things will happen that will throw me back into old behavior, it’s what I’m accustomed to do after all. But I’ll be quicker at recognizing it, and at adapting my behavior to the most empowering form again.

The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.
~Sonya Friedman

Think about this. Others will notice it when you allow yourself to bully yourself around. And if you allow yourself to do that, what would keep others from doing the same? After all you just set the standard…

Photo by myself 

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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.

Blogging Became Personal (Again?)

The insight crept up to me when I was thinking about the other blogs I want to start: a blog about WordPress and a blog about making money online. Both highly competitive markets, yet I feel I can add to them or at least have a fun time taking part.

“Both of them are niche blogs, rather tightly defined, and”, I thought: “a lot less about me…”

Personal blogs aren’t bad or boring. After all Liz’s blog is personal too, as is the conversation that’s going on there. Brett’s blog is definitely personal. Come to think of it, so is Christine’s. Personal and entrepreneurial, but they are intertwined in the blog as much as in her I guess. Naomi’s blog is definitely personal, with a clear message and lessons, but she breathes those too! And Men with Pens write about writing, but is in essence a personal blog too! Sjeez, how could I not have seen this before?

Passionate People Make Passionate Blogs

People documenting the emptiness of their existence, that was my definition of a personal blog. I suspected that they hoped that blogging about their life would make a difference (probably not gonna happen), or would make it more relevant somehow (definitely not gonna happen). I realize that may sound harsh, but that’s genuinely how I felt.

But passionate people on the other hand make passionate blogs. They don’t just document their existence, they want to spread a message, they want to genuinely improve themselves, inspire and help others, in life, relationships or business, or whatever topic their passionate about. Maybe I should call them Passionate Blogs instead of personal blogs… 

The New (And Original) Approach

Back home after the run, I sat down behind the computer and read the posts from the early days of How to be an Original. I read and I learned. I saw that I improved immensely on a lot of accounts since then, but I really learned from my early posts. I learned that I never started as a niche blog, I started with writing sidenotes to my quest for authenticity. I reread my post Not a copy or forgery and Martin Heidegger’s words resonated with me. Again.

How to be an Original is not a productivity blog, or a self improvement blog or a <insert topic here> blog. It’s a personal blog written by a passionate guy with original thoughts. I have an authentic desire to learn and share and am certainly not afraid to show my vulnerable side. My questions, my worries, my desires and my dreams probably aren’t unique. More people have them, yet I choose to write about them.

How to be an Original is a passionate personal blog. It is defined by who I am. And who I am is in turn defined by my thoughts and actions. When I grow it will reflect on the blog, when I change it will reflect on the blog. And that’s exactly what I want to blog about on How to be an Original. It’s a companion the my journey through life, why define it otherwise?

Photos by audreyjm529 and kees@eindhoven

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To be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight,
and never stop fighting.

~ E.E. Cummings

Photo courtesy of geeknerd99

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BREAKING NEWS!
Today, a Dutch bloke that goes by hard to pronounce name of Lodewijk, supposedly broke a chain of over 100 days of not running. Today at about 6:07am he tweeted ” off for a morning run“.

So he said it, but did he also do it? Stay with us to find out, after the break.

Blog performance

I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging the past few days. I already wrote about my feelings in Birth of a Blogger, and my decision there is right, but incomplete. Even after deciding to start another blog, I’ve been not so satisfied with myself. I’ve got the feeling that I’m holding myself back by the way I defined this blog. Anyway, I’ll post about it this week. I started to write here, but it was getting too much to fit into a weekly review.

The stats are looking good. Subscribers up again (when will I break through the glass ceiling of 1000 subscribers?). The daily visitors are nice, especially when you know that there is NO stumbleupon traffic there this week. They used to be my biggest source of visitors, but what you see here is search engine traffic and referral traffic from other blogs. Technorati is still on a downward slope. Oh well, it’s great skiing on slopes.

Progress towards goals

BREAKING NEWS
Thanks for staying with us.

So did Lodewijk really go out for this morning run? The amazing answer is yes! In fact he ran for 3.5 kilometers in a decent time of 21:19. That would make his speed about..ehm… 9 kilometers an hour?

That’s sounds about right. It seems he’s training for half a marathon, so all he needs to do is this run seven times over. Ah, he’ll be allright.

Today in other news: Was James Chartrand revealing his true identity when he typed Niebu last Friday? Do Brett Legree’s feet tell us that he in fact is an Alien?

*click*

Yes, it’s true. I finally started on that goal again. The weather is nice now and it’s not so dark outside anymore. And the time to the marathon is getting shorter too!

I worked on the renovation project this week, but unfortunately the plasterer came by to postpone the work he has to do here. Only by a week, so not that much delay. Not much I can do on the project in the meantime though, so it’s going to be a renovation free week I guess.

Oops, I said I’d drop the blog goal in last week’s review. Did a lot of thinking about blogging, but did not do that. But I am reminded again, love these weekly reviews.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

Still checking things of of lists. But started something new too this week, which will call for a better focus on managing the projects list. Paper or online is the big question. No electronic gadgets, that’s for sure.

I’ve been experimenting with Remember the Milk to manage the projects. It has twitter integration, I love that. Not enough experience to write about it elaborately though.

I also started exploring Evernote. Interesting concept, not sure if it’ll fit me though. It looks useful for storing research for articles. It’s invitation only, and I’ve got 10 invites left. Want one?

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Yet another original post by How to be an Original.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility. - Albert Einstein

Everyday people from all layers of society are using a variety of techniques to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. These techniques can be classified as evasion, avoidance, denial or even obstruction of responsibility. They might seem to accomplish this, but they don’t help you forward in any way. And…c’mon, if you’re doing it, it doesn’t feel all that good, now does it?

In this post we’re going behind the scenes to take a look at the dynamics of why people shy away from responsibility. We’re also taking a look at what reality looks like as a result. And there’s also a sneak preview of what that reality would look like if you change the meaning of reponsibility.

Not all responsibilities are created equal

Everybody is responsible for something. A lot of the responsibilities are acquired, but the responsibility for your own life is definitely yours to take. Yet even though it’s the core responsibility, a lot of people shy away from that one too. To understand why people do this we need to understand the underlying thought processes.

Responsibility is a concept, it’s not tangible and as such we cannot see, hear or touch it. The meaning of these conceptual words (meta model words in NLP) is learned by experience, usually early in life during childhood. At one time a situation happened and you learned the meaning of that word “responsibility”. That very situation is now attached as a subconscious “video”, whenever you hear that word. New situations get added to that meaning as you progress through life, but you mainly build upon that first experience.

Unfortunately that first experience is usually a negative one. Something went wrong and someone was held responsible for it. Or maybe worse…you were held responsible for it. And you learned something: responsibility is no fun!

If you’re lucky, you learned the meaning of responsibility while you were receiving praise. Someone praised you for a good result and told you you were responsible for that wonderful result. It happens, but it’s rare. But it results in a totally different notion of responsibility and a very different attitude towards it.

The dynamics of avoiding responsibility

So it’s not a very pleasant word for most of us. It gets worse though, as we grow older we learn that being responsible for something also means that we are supposed to take control. And when we take control, we will be held accountable by someone else if it’s an acquired responsibility (e.g. your job). And we learn that being held accountable is no fun either. Painful at times even.

Chain of associations

1. Responsibility = being in control
2. Being in control = being held accountable
3. Being held accountable = painful
4. Pain = no good

The resulting chain of association gets stronger, and is reinforced by an instinctive mechanism: Pain avoidance. People are natural pain avoiders, it’s even genetically programmed into our system:

Pain is part of the body’s defense system, triggering a reflex reaction to retract from the painful stimuli, and helps adjust behaviour to increase avoidance of that particular harmful situation in the future.
- excerpt from Pain @ Wikipedia

So it’s not really the responsibility we’re avoiding, but the pain we have associated with it.

Changing the paradigm

Avoiding the pain might work on a short term. Yet at the same time we also know when we should’ve taken responsibility and didn’t, and that resulted in another not-so-nice feeling. And you’re not getting anywhere too.

It’s better to change the paradigm, to lose the association between responsibility and pain. We saw earlier on that it’s possible to have a positive meaning or association with the word responsibility. So we’re going to work on getting more of the positive associations and less of the negative. Easier said than done, right? It’s not really that hard, trust me. We’re just going to stop using the word ‘responsibility’.

The negative assocations we have with that word are too strong to ignore. We can’t just lose them, since we spent so many years training and reinforcing them. And ‘responsibility’ is a nasty word anyway, it’s so passive. It’s derived from ‘to respond’ and you can’t respond unless there’s an outside trigger. We need to find an active synonym.

Taking credit for results is an active formulation. “I take credit!” is something you can say proactively, you don’t have to respond, you can take the initiative. Good? Not yet, better but not good enough. Because ‘credit’ is a nasty word as well, with way too many unpleasant associations. Let’s replace it with ‘merit’, that’s a pleasant and positive word.

So along those lines, we will replace ‘responsible‘ with ‘meritable‘.

Now change your vocabulary!

Feels like playing with words? True, but we’re really going to replace it in our language. Whenever you hear responsible, replace it with meritable when you listen. Whenever you want to say responsibility, say meritability instead. It will feel awkward at first, but you’ll notice the impact instantly.

Suddenly things that you associated with pain, become areas where you can deserve praise for. It’s an opportunity to create, to do something good, to score. It’s fun again! And if you keep it up long enough, you will end up reinforcing positive associations that will even replace the negative associations of ‘responsible’. In time even that word will be safe to use again.

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Blog performance

I hope you enjoyed the post about passwords. I had that post in draft for a while before I decided to finally finish it and publish it. I have more posts like that…draft status, needing more time to really finish them. This week I probably won’t be publishing a lot too, because the renovation project (see next section) needs a lot of attention this week also.

Here are the stats: subscribers up, the rest stable.

Progress towards goals

Renovation project
This week I worked on four five days (today too) on the renovation project. Not full days, because I have a day job too. But all in all, I think I managed to get 24 hours of work done after today.

Next week I have to put in some hours too, because the project needs to be ready for the plasterer. He starts on Thursday. When he’s done the progress will look enormous (the walls look horrendous right now). Can’t wait to see that! Hopefully I can post a picture of that result next week.

Blog goal
I will be changing the blogging goal coming week. Some of you have suggested me to drop it (or let it go), because it doesn’t really serve a purpose. It’s been on my mind for a while now, and last week I read about the 8 addictive habits of bloggers at Daily Blog Tips. Number 1: Obsessing over subscribers. In it Daniel Scocco points out that subscriber numbers, although important are not the sole measuring stick for blog success.

Marathon goal
One of my co-workers asked whether I ran this week (Thanks Wilfred!). Now that was an unexpected turn of support and accountability, what I blog about permeates into daily life through different channels. The answer unfortunately still was: No. But I will run at least once next week.

I also noticed that Brett Legree started to train for the marathon, along with some other people I semi-regularly talk with on twitter. He has funny shoes Do check his blog, it’s called 6 weeks and has a very Fight Club look and feel to it, intentionally.

Material State
2nd floor renovated by 02-2007	Overdue! Good progress, I’m proud of myself
Active State
2500 subscribers by 12-2007	Overdue! Up a notch to 37%
Social State
Be in contact with friends and family 4 days a week	ACCOMPLISHED
Emotional State
No goal at this time
Physical State
Run half a marathon in 10-2008	No progress, I’ll do better next week.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

I was thinking I might be needing to rename this section to Simplifying habits. I’ve been deliberately working on finishing projects (amongst the ones you know, there are some websites I promised to make, a video I still need to finish editing, tons of small chores of unfinished projects in the house), preventing myself (and others) from loading new ones onto me (that’s an ongoing challenge) and eliminating and cancelling stuff that was not helping me go forward in any way (subscriptions and the likes).

I like it when I can cross the time consumers from the list. I love it even more when the list shortens, and it does at the moment. The moment that I’m mainly working on projects and activities, that are aligned to my goals is getting nearer. And when I’m there, I need to shift focus and get busy to really propel me forward.

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I was listing the passwords I use online, and it was plain scary. The list is enormous, and I haven’t even finished it yet (scroll down for the list). Argh!

A lot of them share passwords, because my brain capacity is limited (or I’m just too lazy to have different ones for each site). Most of them I use only once in a while, but some of them I use daily. And these are where you can put your passwords to work for you. You can turn them into a fun and productive event, rather than an annoying but necessary event.

Passwords you use frequently, should change frequently as well (how annoying is that!?). And they should be strong passwords too, if you care about the content they are protecting (or to satisfy the IT guidelines). This can sometimes be a real challenge, but with these simple tips you can turn them into assets, instead of a nuisance.

List your goals

This is something I’ve used a lot. Whatever goals you have, use them for your passwords. I’ve used passwords like:

• Finish2ndFloor!
• GrowBlogNow
• Get2500RSS

They’re pretty strong passwords, and when you’re typing them you get reminded instantly of what you want to achieve.

Prevent pitfalls of bad habits

When you log into one of your biggest time wasters for instance (IM, gaming, Twitter, Facebook, whatever), remind yourself that it’s a time waster. Use a passwords like:

• OneHourIsEnough (upper and lower case, not too bad)
• RUsure? (special character added, pretty strong)
• 1h=Q2>1h=Q4 (yay, Covey in action with a very strong password)

Learn spelling

Pick a word you have trouble spelling word and use that as a password. The sheer repetition will make sure you’ll never spell it wrong again.
Examples: Definitely - Opthalmology - Massachusetts - Prolificacy

Learn (a couple of words in) a foreign language

It can be fun to add some foreign words to your vocabulary. Want to know how to say beer in 20 langauges? Just look them up and use them as passwords:

• Spanish:Cerveza
• French:Biere (okay, accents are a problem)
• Italian:Birra

Or use the real translation:

• Merde=Damn
• Giornale=Newspaper
• Freizeit=LeisureTime

Extend your vocabulary

Use a new word and it’s meaning as the password. The trick is to find synonyms here, because the dictionary meanings tend to be long.

• Prolificacy=Fruitfulness
• Defiance=Resistance
• Superfluous=Redundant

Use affirmations

Affirmations are a popular technique to get you (back) in a productive state, or a harmonious state or whatever state you want to be in. In a lot of self improvement books the use of positive affirmations is advocated, but how often are you going to sit and read them out loud to yourself?

But if you use them as your passwords, you will repeat them often. Some examples:

• I’mFinanciallyFree
• IAm@Peace
• MyBodyVibratesWithEnergy

Have fun!

Admitted, it’s only a microhack. It’s not going to massively change your world, make you more productive, increase your IQ, expand your network or whatever. But it turns passwords into fun, and you might also learn something.

The sites I need passwords for:
So far I have: StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook, Twitter, Twitterfeed (via OpenID), Reddit, Gaia (former Zaadz), MyBlogLog, WordPress.com, How to be an Original (admin interface), WordPress DIY (admin interface), Feedburner, Joe’s Goals, Flickr, iStockPhoto, several bank accounts (4), Paypal, Neteller, Dutch State Lottery, Gmail (google, thanks for sharing passwords across ALL services!!), Lotus Notes at work, Hosting at Argeweb, Hosting at GoDaddy, Cell phone account at Orange (2), Internet Provider, alumni network of former employer, bol.com, Amazon, Text Link Ads, Linkworth, YouTube, Revver, several online poker accounts (pokerstars, partypoker, and the likes) and counting…

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Blog performance

This week I’ve been writing more than I have in a long time. I did not publish a lot yet, because some posts are not finished yet and others will not appear on this blog. But the creative juices are flowing again, and that’s a great feeling!

The blog statistics are encouraging too. Visitors and subscribers are up, as is the participation level of commenters on the blog. I love that!

Technorati is down again, which means that other bloggers are not posting links on their blogs to How to be an Original. We all like the link love, but it’s not the most important thing out there. Readers come first on my list, so the drop in Technorati Authority doesn’t bother me that much.

Progress towards goals

I got quite some work done on the renovation project this week. Instead of writing about it a lot (like I’ve done in the past), I’m posting a collection of pics of the project. It’s the timeline from the original situation in 2005 all the way through to yesterday (the last pic). You’ll notice a gap of a year in there. That’s the year we became parents, and there effectively wasn’t any time or energy left to work on the project. I didn’t really start again until the 2nd half of last year. And the progress (or lack thereof) since then can be traced back in the weekly reviews :)

And the regular overview of the goals:

Material State
2nd floor renovated by 02-2007	Overdue! Good progress. Got some heavy work done
Active State
2500 subscribers by 12-2007	Overdue! Still on 36% but on the way up
Social State
Be in contact with friends and family 4 days a week	ACCOMPLISHED
Emotional State
No goal at this time
Physical State
Run half a marathon in 10-2008	No progress again. And again. Thank God it’s still 6 months away.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

Mostly I’m noticing that the reduction of projects on hand, reduces the need of a stringent productivity system. Still lots of things to do, but because the diversity of the subjects isn’t quite as big anymore, I’m not suffering from brain overload anymore. I am lagging behind on my weekly checklist. So some piles are building up, but I know they will disappear in no time if I set my mind to it.

I think that I got the most important benefit from productivity habits and systems: peace of mind.

This post was made possible by:

Affiliate program with 100% commission This short free ebook by ClickBank guru Harvey Segal is packed with great ideas and ends with a viral twist paying 100% commission. Click here to read more about it

Yet another original post by How to be an Original.