Stephan Miller

06 Feb, 2008

The Best Laid Plans

Posted by: Stephan Miller In: Blogging| Journal| Writing| ZTD

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The Plans

Plans_for_Abdulhamit_Bridge_in_Istanbul-Turkey_Publications I plan to write good posts. Once, I thought blogging was just internet writing and I just spit out a few words here and left for weeks at a time. I am trying to change that, but that doesn’t mean it will always happen, for now.

I always plan to add images to every post. I think they look better. I think it breaks up the whiteness of my theme. I created this theme to look very clean so that I could emphasize what I want. It makes the feed icon and banners stand out. It also makes it easier to read the posts. I choose this after looking at a lot of blogs and getting lost or distracted on their pages. But that doesn’t always happen either.

I always plan to write a post that has a beginning, middle, and end. The whole "grab the reader" thing. But most of the time I start typing and tell myself that I can cut and paste things in the right order before I post. I tell myself that knowing that I won’t.

I am now planning to add headings and break up my posts more to make them more readable. It also doesn’t hurt with ye olde search engines to have a few more headings in there. But I forget sometimes.

I plan to get back to all the people leaving me messages on social networks and on my contact form, but sometimes the day goes by in such a caffeinized blur that I only remember as I take a shower, drive home from work, or brush my teeth.

I always plan not to freak out when sales take a dip, but I do anyway. The whole "sky is falling" routine. Blogging is a waste of time. Google is about to ban this or that site. It takes my wife to turn me in the right direction again. I am the third kid.

This doesn’t even get to plans stored away in notebooks. Plans that make things easier, make more more money, give me more time with my family. Awe, but those are written down, so at least they won’t get away. I have four. I also plan to outsource when it comes to these.

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Habits

Habits take a while. I have to remind myself over and over to do want I set out to do. I often have trouble with time and trying to fit everything in, but what I really have is a problem with realizing how much time I actually have and only adding things that I absolutely need to do to my list of things to do.

But soon, down the road, I will forget you ever had issues with doing things right. I know that from experience. I have learned the difference between laziness and adjustment. Misdiagnosing either one of these ailments with have the same effect, dead in the water.

So, as I beat myself up for not doing things the right way, I remember the hardest thing I ever did. If I licked that, I can lick this. I just have to keep pushing myself without yelling.

When it is finally a habit, I won’t remember any of this. And before long it will be a rut that I will have to get out of.

Trust Yourself

The mind is as amazing thing. Those notebooks I was talking about. I have gone back to them and every once and a while I find something I wrote down that I forgot about. But I didn’t. Plans I don’t remember somehow fell into place without me consciously pushing them.

Something they used to call magick, which later became visualization, which Anthony Robbins threw in a blender with a few other new age concepts to write a few books. I call it trust. If I have done my research and have written the details down, things will fall into place if I just let my subconscious do a little of the work and get the hell out of the way.

And the notebook. I found it in a local closeout store and tracked the website down here.

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7 Responses to "The Best Laid Plans"

1 | Marcus Hochstadt (13 comments.)

February 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am

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Yeah, I find it a great idea to use a notebook and one that has a personal or unique touch (not one of those you get in supermarkets). Actually writing things down does help also me from time to time.

And when creating an outline plan or a blueprint of any kind I usually create the drafts using MindMaps. Not only on the computer but on pager, too!

~Marcus

Marcus Hochstadt’s last blog post..Make Money Online - Top 100 Blogs

2 | Stephan Miller

February 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am

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I have used the supermarket notebooks before, but I do like the nice ones.

3 | MarketingDeviant (16 comments.)

February 6th, 2008 at 11:07 am

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Nice game plan. The hardest part is sticking to it. I keep straying from my plans >_<.

MarketingDeviant’s last blog post..Rumors and Gossips

4 | Stephan Miller

February 6th, 2008 at 11:17 am

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My plans always change also. I also tend to get sidetracked.

5 | Mirjam (27 comments.)

February 23rd, 2008 at 7:31 am

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Comforting to see we all go through the same things at some point in our lives … even more of an impact it has, when it comes from somebody who is already at a point I once want to reach.

Stephan, thanks for sharing this!

Mirjam’s last blog post..One Post at a Time, Please!

6 | Stephan Miller

February 23rd, 2008 at 11:10 am

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I figured as a “Make Money Online” blog, I don’t really speak much about the making of the money, but you can find out plenty about that elsewhere and I do hit on it here and there and link out to others who are better at writing about it. But the type of stuff I write about is what would have helped me catch on quicker as a newbie.

And the persona, if you haven’t noticed, has it’s purpose too. It doesn’t go smoothly all the time and the net is full of overblown B.S. Making it seem so by taking a textbook tone won’t cut it.

Plus I have read my whole life. It seems that the current style of many bloggers online has already been done by print literature. I see both the internet and print having parallels. Content is cheap online because of the mass of it. Not as much crap makes it to a printing press. But quality and style apply to both. With one, there is just much more to wade through because the bar is so low.

Writers like Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson have already put more spark into nonfiction writing years ago. And then I had the luck to run into Christopher Locke through The Bombast Transcripts in a used book store.

After that I knew I couldn’t just be low key and textbook. I had to push the envelope a little.

And I realized why I want to quit my day job in the first place. To do things my way.

7 | Stephan Miller

February 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 am

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Just a note: not that I am saying I have that quality and style. Just that that is what I am moving towards. It gives me something to reach for. And it’s high enough that I will probably never reach it and therefore I will never stop reaching.

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