When I was working a regular day job, some years ago now, I read a book by Steven Covey called “First Things First”. I really enjoyed the book and totally agree with the principle that in order to be successful, you have to continue to make the most important things a priority. Angela Stevens recently wrote on her site about “Blog Snobs“. There were several definitions of “blog snob” offered, but the one that hit home with me was the tendency of some bloggers to stop interacting on other blogs in the way they did when they were working hard to build up their sites in the beginning. Once they reach a certain plateau, such as page rank or traffic levels, they have little motivation to participate in the discussions going on elsewhere.
This got me thinking about the last several months, and how little I’ve been commenting on other sites recently. Is it because I think I don’t need to anymore? Is it because I’ve become a blog snob? Hardly… there are so many people who do a much better job at this blogging business than I do. I have no illusions about my place in the blogosphere. I’m happy to get a decent post up once a week these days, and grateful that you take the time to read and comment.
What’s the reason for my slacking off in such an important area then? It’s because blogging has been such an effective tool for networking and building my business that I’m simply overwhelmed. Things I enjoyed and had time for a year ago, or even 6 months ago, have fallen by the wayside as I’ve become busier and busier. It’s a circular problem: the more work I do to build my blog, the more design work it creates, the less time I have to continue to work to my blog. I suspect this is the case with at least some who are perceived to be blog snobs.
The thing is, some things are just too important to let slide. The excuse of “I’m too busy” isn’t really good enough, and I resolve to do a better job of putting aside time to enjoy participating on other sites like I did when I had more time.
What about you? Are there things you used to do when you started out blogging that have slipped as time has gone by and the busyness of life has sucked away your time? Do you think it’s okay to let some things slip as we take advantage of opportunities that come our way? How do you keep the right balance?
I feel your pain. As you start to make your own blogs the time constraint it takes to go back and keep commenting on other blogs becomes harder and harder. I had to narrow down my favorite top 10 so that I wasn’t neglecting my family but still was able to make my comments.
Well this is the same case with me when I used to initially spend my good time on useless blogs. But now I realised how important it is to prioratize on communicating with other bloggers and put first things first. Thanks for your help.
Sounds like you are a victim of your own success. I tried blogging as a hobby. I got some regular visitors, about 100 – 150 uniques per day until the Google Sandbox kicked in and my site no longer ranked. Then I only got about 10 – 20 visitors per day. It is not easy to justify spending an hour writing a blog post when only 10 – 20 people are going to read it.
It’s incredibly important to always do the little things that are easy to forget but mean a lot.But I should never be too busy to interact with the people.
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Hi Randa,
Keep first thing first. Let me list them to you if you would. First thing is God, Second thing is Family, last thing is business. If you fail to get these things confused, and do not do them in order, you are doomed to failure.
I talk from experience. Every time I do put business in front of family, bad energy gets radiated, “Karma” if you have heard of it. Do not mean to bore you with it but it is true. Kneel down in the morning look up and pray, ” God please make this day a special day, and allow me to live it to the fullest.
Consistency is always the problem. I try to blog consistently (every day on 2 or 3 different blogs), but time gets away from you. When you start out, you have the excitement and determination, but then it starts to fade, new things become exciting, and what was once fun seems like work. But then, a little later on, you “rediscover” it and it gets exciting again. And then it fades…I guess that’s just the way life is. Sort of like attention-deficit over long spans of time instead of short, if that makes sense.
put time asside for the things that you love! It is worth it in the end… wouldn’t want to end up having regrets
College! OMG, I had no time to do anything I liked, a very miserable person who kept failing classes because he put on way too much responsiblity. So…yeah…I think that’s a pretty non-snobbish excuse too. That, and I have terrible focus.
Stupid fly…
Freaking flies are everywhere – got in through the window cuz I left some meat out.
Anyway…
I’m a distracted person. I’ve got excuses up the ying yang.
If you really think about it, your blog is a design blog so naturally your interest remains first and foremost in design and to your clients, as it should be.
I agree with you on that front you must prioritize things according to their significance and your blogging business working extremely well you must surely concentrate on it first but at the same time one must see that atleast 1 hr a day is given to oneself also because that will make you more active and happy making your blogging business thus completed before an hr than normal time.