This is a guest post by Slava Vishnyakov. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
They were so excited about starting in blogging. They tuned their themes and placed RSS buttons, they wrote their posts and submitted guest posts. They’ve done everything themselves to make their guests feel at home.
The only thing that didn’t do right was outsourcing the reason to blog to the Goal.
Now nobody knows their names and their blogs are sitting quietly waiting for time to take their domain names back to bits they’ve arrived from.
It wasn’t just any goal that destroyed them, but a particularly appealing Goal. The Goal of “writing a blog post every day for 30 days”.
At first it seems like it’s inncuous. I mean “write a blog post” – that seems fair, “every day” – that’s about right, “for 30 days” – I can do it.
But there’s a great evil lurking underneath this niceness that leads to wasted effort and exhaustion.
The first part of evil is that if you’ve set this goal – you obviously chose a wrong topic for your blog. Nobody that chosen the right topic had to setup a goal to write on it.
Most of successful blogger had chosen the topic so important to them that their friends actually have a goal “Make John shut up about [that topic]” in their New Year Resolutions. That’s the topic John should’ve chosen.
Admit it – you would feel stupid setting up a goal to “watch my favorite TV show a day for 30 days”? You are probably starting to feel the first part of “why”.
The Internet gets more and more new blood every day. Some of those guys actually write about topics they love and enjoy. If that’s the topic you are writing about and you don’t enjoy it – you can’t compete with them. They’ll kick your virtual butt with hardly any effort.
Imagine yourself in Cairo, near Sphinx and Egyptian Pyramids. Now imagine a huge glowing title over the desert: “The Internet”.
The web right now is a endless field with pyramids. Each of those is a topic. At the very top of it stand A-bloggers. Those are the people that know that theme in-and-out and they have a great way to shout around (from the top), so that almost everyone below hears them.
You are at the bottom of the pyramid, trying to step up. If you aren’t equally as good as the next guy – you won’t make that step. If you don’t know the topic at hand – you’re going to be walking around the bottom of the pyramid.
But that’s not even the worst thing yet with that goal. Remember it? “Write a blog post a day for 30 days”
The “for 30 days” part might be even worse (or at least on par). You’ve set yourself a deadline when your struggle to write about a topic you don’t know ends.
You are going to force yourself through these 30 days and then finally relax. Ending this awful journey would feel so good that you will never want to return to blogging again.
You’ll be scared of blogging when in reality blogging is really fun. You get to talk to people about interesting things, you get to hear people talking back to you, sometimes very smart people. You’ll get into some fights that won’t end up in emergency and you’ll learn a lot in the process and may even make money.
Don’t outsource your desires to “Goals” – it’s sure way to “Broken Dreams” book. Don’t assume that your “Goals” are actually your desires.
Throw away the goal of “blog a day for 30 days” and replace it with desire to write on the topic you love.
If you want something more physical – open up Google Calendar and setup a daily reminder with an SMS at some time (how’s 8pm for you?) to write a blog post.
Then, when alarm goes off – open up your favorite blogs, read something, write down some ideas while reading, then fire up WordPress and do it! Excite your readers! Burn through their imagination with the images of Great Pyramids and domains blowing back to bits of information the consist of!
About the Author: Slava is the author of TripIdeas.org, where he blogs about the most beautiful destinations around the world.
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