OK, so it’s a bit cliché to fall back on Shakespeare in my first blog post but it is relevant to my ambivalence about blogging. To blog or not to blog has been a question I’ve been wrestling with for some time. You already know my answer – you’re reading it – but what went in to the final decision? Why was it such a difficult decision?
I had to decide to let go of something. I teach my clients that life is a pie chart, not a to-do list. The difference is critical. A to do list is endless and you can add forever. A pie chart shows you that all your time is already allocated to something. You can’t add anything. You can only substitute – give up something you are currently doing in order to take on the new activity. I had to decide what I am doing now that is less important than adding blogging to my marketing mix and let that activity go.
I had to make the choice to blog for my own reasons. Lots of people are telling me I need one – the guy who wrote the book, the woman offering classes on how easy it is, the marketing guru who tells me it is no-cost marketing. Not anyone I know personally or who knows me or my business, just people who are telling everyone – hoping enough someone’s will buy in so they can make living. Since I want to make a living too, I can’t begrudge them that but, without a connection to my mission, my purpose, my reason for doing what I do, I won’t be able to sustain my own interest much less yours. There’s probably a reason 60%-80% of blogs are sitting untouched – yikes!
I had to learn the technology. I am a speaker and a writer so at least have that much going for me but this is a new tool and more importantly a structure I had to learn. As the universe does, just as I was revisiting the to blog or not to blog issue again, an opportunity to attend a class by Sean Harry and Eric Mann on how to set up a blog that offered an appealing build-it-on-your-laptop-while-you-are-in-class format came along. I learned all the basics….yesterday.
I had to reconcile my own ambivalence about contributing to information overload – something else I help my clients with. There is already so much information out there – a cacophony of words – that most us are overwhelmed. I needed one really good reason why I should add to the clamor. Even sitting in Sean Harry’s class, learning how to set up a blog, I was torn on this one. Enough so that I spoke up about it at the end of class. The answer came on the drive home when I started thinking about how many people I have never met, have impacted my life because they told someone, who told someone else, who told me a story, or shared a piece of advice, or passed on a snippet of wisdom.
Here’s my blog.
I decided to give up the late news watching habit (I can check it on line much faster) and go to bed 30 minutes earlier to rise 30 minutes earlier to write this blog. It really means I have consciously, knowingly, swapped 30 minutes of personal time to add 30 minutes of work time. I am hoping the value return will make it worthwhile. It shouldn’t be too hard given how I was using the personal time and maybe I’ll make some new friends which means I am leveraging by blending business and personal time in the same 30 minutes.
I choose to share the stories of my journey in the hope, the wish, the belief that some of what I have learned about how to use focus and simple processes to keep a healthy life-work balance, how to innovate and renew enthusiasm for owning my business and how to keep ‘swinging the bat’ – trying something new when times are hard, will help others – maybe you on your journey as a solo-preneuer. Happy Trails!
So how did you make the decision to blog? Has it been a good decision?