Bush Mackel

In Part 2 of Cut the Fat, I said that the next installment would deal with Action Plans.

But now after taking a bit of time away from my blog, I don’t feel that a section about Action Plans should necessarily be in the Cut the Fat series.

So instead of that, we’re going to skip ahead for now to what you’re probably more interested in, Shaping Up Your Blogging!

Where You Could Use a Shape Up
If you remember back from Cut the Fat (Part 1), I talked a lot about how once I stopped doing all the things I didn’t look forward to I (shockingly) became a lot happier. Blogging like anything else, is the same sort of beast. I mean think about it. In a given week, list all the stuff you do that’s a part of your blogging efforts. Here are some examples :

• Writing random posts.
• Writing topical posts.
• Writing sponsored posts.
• Updating your sitemap.
• Checking your analytical stats.
• Improving your technorati stats.
• Improving your Alexa and Page rank.
• Getting sponsors.

The list goes on and on. Now take those things and figure out what you like and what you don’t. Now the trick to this cutting the fat thing is eliminating what we don’t like without negatively effecting our goals. Make sense? Let’s take the general topic of posting for example.

• Somewhere along the way you started caring more about your bottom line every month and so you’re writing way too many sponsored posts.
• You’re writing about things in your blog’s so called niche, but stuff that you personally can’t and don’t want to write about everyday.

And here’s the problem :

• If you stop writing your sponsored posts, you WILL HURT your bottom line.
• If you stop writing about things in your blog’s niche, your loyal readers who have been drawn to the topic you write about will stop coming. And of course, there’s nothing worse for a blogger than talking to her/himself.

So What’s a Desperate Blogger To Do?
Sticking with the “posting problem”, you should first realize that if you’re not enjoying it, you either have problems now or will surely face problems later. And you’ll know the problems when you can’t think of anything to write, you don’t want to write, or your posts become of such low quality that you can’t stand to even publish them. But have no fear, there are solutions to these problems, you just have to bold enough to take them…

• Sponsored posts – If you can’t stand writing sponsored posts, DON’T WRITE THEM. There are other ways to monetize your blog including direct advertising. Sure it may take a little extra work to get your blog to where it is attractive enough for others to want to buy advertising on it, but it’s worth it if it will stop you from hating to write.
• Writing posts you don’t care about – This is an easy one too. Can you guess the answer? DON’T WRITE THEM. If the problem is that you have found out that you’re not as passionate about your blog’s topic as you used to, pick a new one. Better to write about something you love, than something you don’t. And you’d probably be surprised at how many of your readers will stick around once you’ve made the switch. I mean hey, no matter how many stick around, it’s better than starting from scratch right?

I THINK Opal tagged me on this one sometime back in the late eighties. But a lot has happened since then!

There was Milli Vanilli, Bill Clinton, and of course something that would come to be known as the world wide web.

In any event, sorry for the delay Opal, Brown and Forest (amongst others). I’m sure by this time you all have cursed my name for many days but I beg you… FORGIVENESS! PLEASE!

My Desktop

• The first column of icons in the top is what I consider my most important… Flash, Paint Shop Pro, Firefox, My Computer and the Recycling Bin.
• The next two columns are a few utilities that I use to clean up my computer, (like Ad Aware and Crap Cleaner) as well as some other apps that I use for overclocking purposes.
• The last columns up there are generally games including just about every game in the Command & Conquer series.
• At the bottom of the screen you’ll see random stuff that for the most part allows me to connect to my computer at work. (And iTunes which somehow made its way down there…)

Yesterday in Cut the Fat (Part 1) I talked at great length about how I have personally come to a much better place in my life (both professionally and personally) by cutting out all the stuff in my life that I absolutely couldn’t stand.

I’m obviusly not talking about dentist appointments and eating healthy, but all the things that made me lose sleep at night and had me wearing a frown when I got up in the mornings.

Realizing What You Hate
This may sound like an easy question to answer, but there are some who are no longer really bothered by their current fat filled life. They’ve endured it for X amount of years, they’ve learned how to deal with it, how to get through it, and changing it requires a lot of work compared to not doing anything at all. So if this is you, how do you get through the forest and see the trees?

• Listen to What You Have to Say – When we’re with friends and family, (those we’re comfortable with), we often say how we really feel about things. If you’re complaining about something, you’re probably going to say or have probably said it before. Listen up!
• Go Back to Happier Times – Think about when you’ve been the most happiest in your life. Were you happy because of what you were doing or maybe it was because of who you were with. In any event, take these things and compare them with your present days. Is their absence in your life sucking the life out of you?
• Take a Vacation – Take a day off or away from whatever it is that makes up your current day to day life. And have a great day! Figure out what has made that day so good relative to your usual fare and then consequently take notice of the fat in your present life.

And there you have it. At this point you should have a good idea of what you like, and more importantly what you don’t. Of course knowing it and doing something about it are two different things so tomorrow we’ll take a look at Action Plans, a great way to cut the fat.

For some reason last night, I was thinking to myself about how much my life has changed in the last 5 years.

Of course there are the “big” things like getting married and having a kid, but there are also the “smaller” things like changing professions and starting this blog.

And I know for a fact that by “cutting the fat”, I’m the happiest now that I have been in quite sometime.

“If it hurts when you do that, don’t do that.”
You know that old thing right? Where the person goes into the doctor’s office and says it hurts everytime they lift their arm. The doctor then replies, “Well if hurts when you do that, don’t do that.” Simple advice that I think personally I wasn’t following for a long time.

When I look back over the past couple of years, I realize now that I used to do a bunch of stuff that I really hated. Stuff that I did because I thought that I had to.

• Stuff like working at a job I absolutely couldn’t tolerate.
• Stuff like pursuing academic goals that didn’t mean much to me, goals I didn’t need for my profession anyway and in the end would’ve lead me somewhere I didn’t want to go.
• Stuff that basically got me away from where I ultimately wanted to be and clouded things up so badly that I forgot where I truthfully wanted to be.

What Changed?
Personally for myself, I stand back and take a good look at “how things are” every 2 and a half years. I don’t know why I use that time frame, but it works for me. The last time I did that, I took a good look at myself and what I was doing and just concluded that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. So I did what I think anybody should do. I cut the fat.

“Cut That Meat!”
What exactly did I do? I basically changed everything I didn’t like.

• Academically – I’m always a student. I think everyone in the computer/internet medium is I mean, the industry changes too fast to not be. For me, I was killing myself burning too many late hours writing essays and studying Chem formulas… But the bigger thing was, I had finally concluded that I didn’t want to go where a degree would end up taking me. I believe for a large part degrees serve to show that you’re qualified to be hired to work for someone else. I didn’t want to work for someone else though and I already had the computer skills employer wanted. Thus the school fat was cut.
• Professionally – I was working at Best Buy, a retail giant in the US. It sucked. I love helping people, but unfortunately the policies of that job prevented me from doing that. In end, I hated going to work, and wasn’t making nearly enough money to justify me going anymore so I stopped. A week later after I polished up my résumé on Monster I had a cushy office job.
• Personally – I have so many passions that are important to me, and it used to be that I wasn’t spending anytime developing them. No more. I got back to what was important to me and it made all the difference in the world.

Conclusion
I’m not yet where I want to be, but I’m a whole lot closer than where I was and consequently a whole lot happier. Don’t spend too long doing things you don’t like, it’s really not worth it.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how you figure out WHAT fat you need to cut!