You Are Not Responsible for Your Laziness

Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 10:45 am. 4 comments

I’ve always enjoyed reading about and absorbing other people’s views that starkly contrast my own. I think it has something to do with being a curious person - I love to stay up-to-date with new information and trends, and share what I learn with other people. (That’s the primary reason for this blog!) This post is about a viewpoint I’ve thought about that contrasts with the very core of personal development.

The basic assumption of the self-help literature is that you are the molder, the designer, the master of your life. You assume 100% responsibility for all that happens. If something - anything! - goes awry, you take the blame so you can fix what went wrong.

But is that necessarily true? Does responsibility for your life always lie with you? And are you truly responsible for personality traits like being lazy?

The basis of personal development? It’s always about you!

Survey of personal development literature says… yes! It’s always about you.

For example, what’s the first thing people do when they can’t master a personal development skill, such as the basics of time management? They blame themselves. It’s always their fault! I don’t know why this profound level of self-acceptance is so popular, but people love to blame themselves when they can’t figure out how to schedule their day.

You see this so clearly when you read what people post on self-help forums:

• “What’s wrong with me?”
• “I can’t seem to do anything right!”
• “Why am I so unmotivated and lazy?”

And other people reinforce the belief that you are in control of your life, by blaming you for your errors:

• “They are so irresponsible!”
• “Why can’t he take the time to learn the new skills to make his career even better?”
• “She’ll never amount to anything, she’s out of touch with the ‘real world’.”

Need further evidence? Look at what we call resources like this blog: personal development, self-help, self improvement. We expect you to take those first steps to master a life skill or change careers. If you don’t arrive at where you want to go, it’s obviously something innately wrong with you, right? You took the wrong steps because you didn’t do your research. You’re just lazy, you’re not working hard enough, you’re just not “up there” with the rest of us. Stop blaming everybody else for your problems when the answer clearly lies within yourself! If you can’t learn how to schedule correctly it’s obviously because you’re a lazy person who can’t figure it out on your own. Who cares about if you claim you’re “lazy”, that’s just a cop-out mindset! What is wrong with you?!

(Actually, I’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong with you. At all. You’re just like everybody other member of the human race!)

After seeing so much of this “take responsibility” ethic everywhere, it started to make me think. How come some people just naturally have a gift of self-discipline and others don’t? (Self-discipline doesn’t appear to be a natural skill, after all.) How come some children end up being overachievers in high school and college, while others fail even though they appear very gifted and talented? Why do some people succeed in a world of blinding, horrific setbacks and others fail with enough money, time, talent, and gifts for 10 lifetimes? What gives?

Personal development constantly claims people have free will, the power to chose what actions they want to take. And it’s a consistent claim, in all of the literature. But… what if you took away the choice of free will, and pretend it doesn’t exist?

Suppose that the skills you learn in personal development are not inborn (but can be developed on your own), and you have absolutely no free will whatsoever. What would determine your actions at that point? What would possess you to do things like quit a job you hate, start a family, go on a cruise, or sit around and watch TV all day?

No free will: Your context determines your outcomes.

If you have no free will, something from outside of you has to determine your actions. And that… is your context!

Your context is your environment, your life. It’s who you hang out with. It’s what places you go to on a daily basis. It’s what your house or apartment looks like. It’s what you do in your free time. It’s your entire life. Everything in your life contributes to your context.

It’s not your fault that you’re lazy. Or de-motivated. Or feel like sleeping all the time. Or unsatisfied with the choices you’ve made in life. None whatsoever. Those circumstances are caused by everything around you, not anything from inside of you.

Let’s put this into a clear example. When people get trapped in a boring job they hate, do they really have the “free will” to quit that job? Pretend that there’s a man who’s trying to feed his family of four and pay off rent, bills, and credit card loans. He has a decent paying job, but it’s work he loathes, and he knows in his heart he’d rather be doing something else. Also pretend that he’s never heard of personal development before and has no idea about that realm of thinking. Based on context, what are some of the reasons he’d stay in that job?

• His family’s physical well being. No food, they all starve. Don’t pay the bills? No house or apartment to live in. No gas to put in the car. Maybe not even transportation.
• His family and friend’s mental well being. What is his wife going to say if he even thinks about quitting? “Why on earth would you do a stupid move like that?! We need food! You can’t just quit your job! You make good money, and right now we’re in a tight spot.” What would his kids think if he quit? That daddy can’t hold down a job. What about his friends, what would they think of him? “Wow, that guy has a family to support, and he just quit his job! What a loser!”
• His environment at home. He comes home at night, and sees the kind of place he lives in: old furniture, the carpet is worn down, the kids are wearing hand-me-down clothes, there’s no computer because he can’t afford one, the TV is 10 years old. What goes through his mind when he sees these things? “I have to keep my job. I want to create a better life for my family, and while I might hate this job, making money is the only way I can move up in the world.”
• His environment at work. What will the people at work think when he quits? “Why’d he quit, this position pays so well! And what are we supposed to do without him here, that would throw off the whole team! Ugh!”

So tell me; in his mind, does he have free will?

I know what you’re thinking: “Of course he has free will! He can go against the grain, quit his job, and follow his passion! He’s in total control of his life, no matter what.”

I wholeheartedly disagree. He’s in constant ambush of these forces dictating at him what to do. These forces literally keep him in his place, preventing him from doing anything else. Does anybody remember the Milgram experiment? It overwhelmingly shows people don’t have much free will when thrown into a context of “You must do this.” And that’s exactly what that guy is in. “You can’t quit!” screams his family, friends, and environment. His context locks him in place.

Right now, there is nobody telling him “You know, you can save up a bit of money, then change careers to something you enjoy,” or “Honestly, follow your heart. You’ll be happier, make more money in the long run, and lead a totally fulfilling life - one that’s perfect for you.” How can he possibly entertain those viewpoints if nobody is influencing him to think that way? And even if one person tells him those things and supports him, he still has an overwhelmingly negative environment that reinforces the “keep job or else” mentality.

Better yet, let’s take it a step further. What if he joined Steve Pavlina’s forums, got massive support from the online community, and Steve himself posted an uplifting message of hope and encouragement? What would our guy do now - continue on the same path, or switch routes to something better for himself? It very well might be the latter. A new variable was added into the context - a group of folks who support him quitting the lowly job he hates - and it’s influencing his behavior.

You see, your context teaches you what moves are acceptable or not. Then you go out and you perform what you’re taught. If lots of people teach you that “Staying in a job you hate is respectable if you need to make money to feed your starving family,” then that’s what you’re going to do. But if some other people say… “Staying in a job you hate is not what’s best for you - go and find a job you love and perform that!” then you might take a different set of actions. Context determines outcomes.

Are you responsible for your laziness?

Deep down, are you actually responsible for your lazy feelings? Or are you just a product of your complete environment, and really have no choice in the matter?

I like to think it’s a bit of both. Your environment creates who you are, but you actually do have some way in the realm of free will and thinking. For example… you have your imagination. And you have role models you can look up to and emulate, even if they aren’t in your immediate environment.

So are you responsible for your laziness? You decide.

How to Successfully Advertise Your Blog

Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 11:00 am. 26 comments

I’m going to go out on the metaphoric limb and take a wild guess that if you’re a blogger, you’re often concerned with the traffic you’re getting. (Duh, Adrian!) What blogger *isn’t* concerned if he or she is getting traffic or not? You can produce the most fabulous content in the world, but without traffic those blog posts are literally worthless.

So, being the curious person I am, I went off and learned all about advertising a blog… and I was somewhat amazed to discover that there isn’t one large post, article, or resource out there that takes an in-depth look at methods to advertise a blog with. Sure, there are some great resources (such as the oft looked at ProBlogger) that tell you exactly how to take advantage of resources like social bookmarking, blog commenting, and the like, but I wasn’t after that. I was after one large resource that defines what my options are, and which ones I can most wisely spend my time going after. Remember the “Pareto Principle”? It states that 80% of your results will come as a result of 20% of your effort. If you put that into blogging, 80% of your traffic will come from 20% of your efforts. I don’t know about you, but I want to identify those things that fall into the 20% category and skip the rest.

As a result of the research, I came up with this blog post. I’m tired of there not being some nice resource out there for the likeminded people such as myself who just want something as a great reference, so here it is. While this doesn’t go through everything, it goes through most. At the very least, it goes through all of the basics. As people comment on it (if they do) and I do more research, this post will be updated. I truly sympathize with the people who cannot figure out how to market their blog effectively, so this post is for all of you.

This post automatically assumes you know a little bit about how blogging works and what things like ’social bookmarking’, ‘tracebacks’, and ‘blog carnivals’ are all about, to name a few. If those terms sound like hip, young, modern slang to your ears, you may need to do a little more research before tackling this post… or you can look up the definitions as you read! In addiction, the methods I go through here are for free advertising - advertising that you don’t have to pay a dime for. (There are other ways you can achieve viewers through paying - for example, AdWords).

Before I begin, I have to say that this is not my first attempt at blogging - I have had blogs in the past that I’ve experimented with, but only just for fun! So, I’m not exactly a newbie when it comes to this. Enjoy the post!

“Social Bookmarking” Sites Method
“ARGGG! I thought for SURE my post would make it to the front page of Digg!”

Social bookmarking (or more accurately, just social sites in general) are your best bet at gaining readership in your early days - and maybe first year - of starting your blog. They can send a volume of traffic your way that would be impossible to get using other methods, such as systematically commenting on other people’s blogs.

It was brought to my attention that social bookmarking and networking websites are primarily used for just that: networking and finding people with similiar interests than you. People with similiar interests to what you talk about = new blog readers! (Networking like that generally isn’t used for SEO link-building or building up massive sales, referrals, and so on.)

• StumbleUpon - I’ve always had fantastic luck using SU, mainly because a lot of my articles tend to be things SU users like to Stumble. If you get one user to Stumble you, that can bring another person to your site, which leads to another Stumble, and so on - pretty soon, you can get a great amount of traffic. The traffic from SU is a bit more spread out that Digg’s traffic, which is also a nice bonus. ProBlogger has a post on drawing SU users to your blog, which is worth a read. My only advice is to have a pretty layout and a great post that people would be inclined to Stumble.
• Digg - While none of my posts ever got a large amount of traffic from Digg, you don’t have to have a Digg-ed post to notice what kind of effect it has on unknown blogs. For example, a highly original sites called LifeReboot (one of my favorites) got amazing traffic when one of his posts soared on Digg. However, getting a post to the front page of Digg is difficult, especially if you don’t have content prone to being Digg-ed. Well worth the effort, though, as an obscure blog can pick up a massive amount of subscribers and viewers just from one good day at Digg.
• de.licio.us - Maybe it’s just me, but I tried using de.licio.us for a few weeks and then quit. It just didn’t seem to catch my interest at all, but that’s just a personal preference. You can be successful at de.licio.us, but it might take a while for it to work. I never thought it was worth the effort, but some people luck out and can get it to work in their favor. And, of course, there are a lot of tips you can use and try out, but I say stick to SU and Digg.
• MySpace / Facebook - I never understood why you would want to build a community on MySpace or Facebook if your blog is your main purpose (other than for just sheer fun.) I think you’re better off just trying to build a community on your own blog than on some third party website. Your blog is what you want traffic for, not your MySpace.

“Using Other Blogs” Methods
“Hey! I’ve been a major reader of your blog for a long while now, and I was just wondering, would you like to [review my post / feature my post / let me guest post / guest post on my blog / link me in your sidebar / link me in a post / quote me and link me in one of your posts / run a contest in conjunction with my blog]?”

Leveraging other high traffic blogs to get yourself some traffic is always a good idea. While it’s difficult, if you do something like guest post, it can really help you 1) establish some credibility with blog readers who wouldn’t normally touch your blog and 2) send some traffic your way.

• Linkbacks / Blogroll. Sure, they can work, especially if you can linkswap with a high profile blogger who gets a lot of traffic. But to me, they’re the epitome of tacky blogging. I just don’t see the appeal in putting a bunch of links up on my sidebar to other blogs I couldn’t care less about, just so they’d link me back and send me traffic. There are other, more effective ways of advertising.
• Tracebacks. Tracebacks work decently well. You obviously won’t get a lot of traffic, but if you traceback from a popular blog such as Steve Pavlina, you may be able to get 2~3 visitors every day. That’s not too bad for just linking to another blog post. Choose popular posts, and make your own post title clever and catchy. And there are a lot of styles of posts you can enter other people’s blog posts in: if you want to enhance a post you make (link to relevant material, please), for comedic effect, or to even full on critique their post and point of view.
• Guest Posting. If you can get a spot on a high traffic blog and guest post there, you will get some great traffic. There’s no escaping it. Even if your guest post is *so* bad that it makes everybody else cry out “That’s a terrible post, why didn’t they let ME guest post?! ($)*#$* this!“, people will come to see your blog just to know if it’s as garbage as your post you just made. The only downside to guest posting? For some people, their blogs are all about themselves, their points of view, and the products their selling; they’re very reluctant to let anybody else guest post on their own blog as it distracts from them. (I’m actually in this category!) Furthermore, any major blogs with high traffic blogs simply very difficult to secure guest postings on, and you most likely need to be “established” before they let you post on their blog. That’s the irony, though, as by the time you are established, you don’t need to be guest posting on other blogs! Moving on…

“Using Your Blog” Methods
“Must… make… blog… SEO… worthy…”

Of course, there are some ways to create traffic by solely only using your blog. The difference between these methods and the other methods is that the things you create on your own blog are on your blog and nobody else’s. If you end up relying on only these things to gain readership, you’re forced to hope word of mouth is strong enough to drive people your way.

• People guest posting on your blog. Not a bad idea. Whoever does the guest posting, you get their website traffic (’cause they’ll all want to see what he or she posted on your blog!) *and* you’ll have your own natural traffic who checks up on your blog in the first place. The problem is the same as with the “Guest Posting” bullet above - established owners of high volume traffic blogs might not give you the time of day, let alone post on your invisible, lowly blog. Worth a shot, though.
• Contests. Can be shaky. Sometimes you might get a nice turnout and some new traffic… other times, you lose out. Contests only can work effectively if word gets out about your contest, and since most contests are really lame (and ridiculously sad), you probably won’t get much traffic. Unless, of course, the prize for your contest was something worth a chunk of change. There are a lot of things you need to figure out before you run a contest - how long is it going to last? how or who is going to secure the prizes, and do they have to be mailed out? how many people can participate? how will it be set up? is it just your blog, or several blogs at once? Personally, and this is just me again, contests are to be avoided at all costs. You’re better off improving your writing skills and churning out amazing content and building traffic that way than through a strange contest. (I will say there are a lot of resources you can Google up on how to run a blog contest, so if you’re interested, try it yourself.)
• Multiple-blog series. I haven’t seen this one done very often, but it’s something to think about. Find five people (including yourself), and have them all write on 1) the same topic or 2) parts in a series. Then on a specific day, you all post up your individual parts at the same time, linking to each other’s posts. That’s four links going back to your site, driving traffic to you, with just one post on your part! Plus, it can introduce readers to a variety of different viewpoints on the same subject (and blogs, too!) It’s win-win for everybody.

Personal Commenting and Posting Methods
“Great [post / message / way of thinking / article]! It really got me [thinking about the topic / wanting to write about it myself / to change my viewpoint]!”

Tedious, systematic, cold, and not a whole lot of fun. I don’t know about you, but I have never met somebody who loves to comment on other people’s blogs all day long.

• Blog Comments. Truth be told, I love reading other people’s blogs. Some are absolutely amazing, and there are some terrifically talented writers on the web. But I loathe commenting on other people’s blogs. One, it sends minimal traffic. Two, if I wanted to create a “relationship” with the blog owner, I would send them a nice personalized e-mail instead. Three, nobody actually reads your comments other than the blogger whose blog you left a comment on. And four, it’s a pain to comment on 20+ blogs a day in hopes of driving 5 people to your blog. Save your time, do something else. Of course, on the flip side, there have been people who have gotten almost 700 visitors for one month from solely commenting on other blogs. (I don’t know about you, but I do not have that kind of patience. Oh well!)
• Forum Posts. Ah, while I hate commenting on blogs, I love posting on forums! Forums drive traffic to your blog better than blog comments, mainly because a lot of lurkers read forums and read all of the messages in a single post. (That means your individual posts are more likely to be seen.) While the traffic you get from forums is never anything spectacular, it does send a couple of readers per message on some forums. Goggle up your blog topic with “forums” somewhere in the search, and see where you can begin posting at. Remember to put a link in your signature and in your profile; when you can, link to one of your individual post to other people inside the forums.

Just a reminder - don’t spam! (I shouldn’t have to be telling you this, though.) And don’t needlessly comment on blogs or forums - if you’re going to give these things a shot, be insightful. Bring a different viewpoint to the table, and show that you’re an intelligent person.

Other Things Around the Web
“… what else is there to do, anyways?”

• Article databases. Article database traffic is like bobbing for apples - you never know if you’ll get something or not. I personally think they’re a waste of time, and many bloggers seem to echo my opinion; various posts I read seem to suggest that the traffic they send is negligible at best. There’s also the persistent worry about duplicate content if you submit your own blog posts to the databases. My suggestion? They don’t hurt if you want a shot at a few more visitors. Write up some new, snappy articles and submit them all around. You really have nothing to lose.
• Blog Carnivals. Ah, I love blog carnivals! You can get a decent amount of visitors and subscribers if you are consistent with your submissions. Once or twice a week, go through and submit your best articles to the relevant carnivals, and wait for the results! It doesn’t take too long at all, and you have even less to lose and more to gain than using article databases.
• SEO. To be honest, I think focusing too much on SEO is a waste of time. Yes, it’s important if you want to have good search engine traffic. But I don’t understand the bloggers who focus so much time on making their site rank higher on Google when they could be getting real traffic from the other methods listed above. But that’s just me! I would rather focus my efforts on real results than tweak what I say so I can get another Google visitor.

One reader at a time or as many as possible?

How could I leave this out! The majority of your advertising is going to lead to one thing or the other: you either are focusing on getting individual people to come to your blog, one at a time, or you are focusing on getting a mass of human beings to view your blog at once. Some people favor building their blog from the ground up, making a relationship with everybody who comes to read their blog, while others decide to bypass that method and go for the gold from the beginning.

Individual Experience - One Reader at a Time

• Why this method? By going one reader at a time, you establish a loyal following of people who genuinely like you and your blog. People who know you on a personal level are much more likely to pass along your blog, link to your blog in their own posts, and so on, to other people. However, traffic buildup can be incredibly slow. It also takes a while to build up rapport with people, and commenting on blogs can take a long time out of your day.
• Methods of advertising? Blog commenting, personal e-mails, forum posts (anything where you are individually responding to another person)
• Works best for? People with very niche-oriented blogs that do not appeal to a wide group, people who favor loyal readers, people whose blogs are not likely to be socially bookmarked and spread around

Group Herding - Lots of People at Once

• Why this method? More people coming to your website = more traffic. While everything leads back to content, of course, if you have no traffic, who’s going to be reading your website? Bypassing individuals and going for groups of people is highly effective. Digg and StumbleUpon are notoriously known for sending high volumes of traffic to websites in just a day or two, so why spend so much time commenting on individual blogs when your effort can be placed in other areas? More people seeing your blog means more people likely to pass it along. On the contrary, hitting that one or two gold mine post(s) where you get thousands upon thousands of visitors in one day is rare. And you might be spending a lofty amount of time just trying to write that post… maybe a year.
• Methods of advertising? Digg, StumbleUpon, other social bookmarking websites, getting featured on a high traffic website, newsletters, blog carnivals, article directories (anything where you are putting your blog out there over connecting with other people)
• Works best for? People with wide appealing blogs that many people would like to read (personal development, health, blogging for money), people who are not afraid to put themselves out there

Blog Content

Let’s face it, folks. Your blog content is literally a product you make for other people. If that product is horrible, nobody will want to buy from you. Likewise, if your blog posts aren’t that fabulous, who’s going to want to read them? Some tips on writing content that will draw people to subscribe to your blog:

• Write what other people want to read. Seriously. Take that to heart! If people don’t care in the slightest about what you have to say, they will not read your blog. I notice a lot of personal development / self-help blogs miserably fail because they don’t write anything interesting to other people! Don’t fall into that trap. Write what other people want to learn more about, and you’ll automatically gain more traffic.
• Write what you would like to read yourself. This is such common sense, but people overlook it all of the time! If you wouldn’t even care to read what you wrote in your blog, why should anybody else care about what you have to say? They won’t. And they never will. Write about things you would like to read yourself.
• Be interesting and creative. What do the posts that get Digged, Stumbled, and talked about all have in common? They’re all so utterly simple. People honestly do not care to read about “Enhancing Your Life Through Daily Meditation”. (Well, I do.) But most people? Who cares! That’s too complicated. People want to read “10 Ways to Get Out of Bed” or “How To Kick Caffeine” or “How to Take a Picture”. Just go and see the most popular posts in any given site, and they will always be simple, interesting, and creative. Don’t copy what another blogger has posted, though. Be novel with how you present the material. Be controversial and add your own spices to the dish that’s already been made 1,000 times. Repackage what you have to say to a new audience. Don’t be boring.

Those are tips for posts to drive traffic to your blog. However, once you get over the river and have a decent amount of traffic, then you can start with the “Enhancing Your Life Through Daily Meditation” posts. Once you have a readership, they’re going to want to see what you have to know about the topic… in-depth stuff.

The Pre-Conclusion: What’s the best advertising method?

So what’s best? Getting the most readers you can in the shortest amount of time possible, or gaining people’s trust and building up your blog reader by reader? Social sites or blog commenting? Article databases or blog carnivals? Forum posting or being featured in a high traffic newsletter?

To me, it’s a mix of everything. I put more weight on building readers shortly, through bursts from SU and Digg, but I also think blog commenting (yuck!) and forum posting are important as well. Every small step you take takes you closer to your destination of having a high traffic website, so even the littlest things count.

After all is said and done, the bottom line is that you have to try out the methods to see what works for you. You really do! This post is obviously biased with my personal opinions, but you’ll never know if something is highly effective for your personal blog if you don’t try it out. In addition, every day new methods, Widgets, social sites, etc. are coming out to the forefront to help you draw in visitors to your blog. Keep on top of everything, and keep trying out new ideas. You never know what might work for you. Part of my morning routine is now researching how the most successful blogs “made it” so I can learn from them and make this blog “successful” too.

The Conclusion

Now it’s your turn! Take a stand. Comment on the article and share your own methods!

• What advertising methods have worked best for you? The worst?
• What’s an unusual method that’s gotten you traffic?
• What do you agree with in this post? Disagree with?
• What would you add to this post? (I’m going to be editing this post as new information arises, so if you have any useful tips, blog posts that I can link to, and so on, feel free to leave them in the comment areas.)

Happy blogging!