Legacy blogging

When we can be honest about who we are and what we want, there is no need to demand, be rude or aggressive, or manipulate others that are involved in helping us get what we want. Instead, we know that we are transmitting a signal on the right frequency to bring all that we desire into our experience. 

-Madisyn Taylor

I realized after reading yesterday's post that the idea of legacy blogging can mean many things. From my perspective, it means not only charting my growth, but meeting other like-minded individuals.

Legacies aren't built single-handedly. They are an outcome of growth with a curated community. I have worked hard to consciously curate both my personal and professional networks as I've discovered new ideas and grown to understand more deeply what I care about. Now I want to share that understanding and find others who reflect on a similar level.

I have made the mistake in the past of thinking that my interests, whether in health, food, politics or some other field, are echoed in occasional posts that fit into these buckets. The posts I wrote or linked to were important enough to my thinking at the time to share with others. For example, I would be interested in the construct of language, read books and articles about it, have in depth conversations with friends and colleagues and share my findings in a couple of posts I thought best reflect the subject.

I shared the outcome but not the process.

Without a context behind why I was writing about the construct of language or where my interest came from or how I discovered material on the subject, these posts would seem to come out of nowhere. Even now, when I look back on these posts, I remember my personal journey through the subject which has repeated itself many times since. But my posts weren't additive. They didn't build to anything but a memory of my interest.

I hope to change my approach even as I write this post. I could have let my thoughts about legacy blogging simmer over the next few weeks, found others who had written on the subject and curated my findings here. Instead, I'd like to share what I bring to the art of learning.

We all have a unique process of getting from point A to point B. Many people have been at each of these metaphoric points before. They've struggled through the same things we struggle through now. It's not about being at point A or getting to point B, it's about how you evolve from one to the other that weaves an interesting story. Your story. 

If we don't provide a glimpse into how we change, we're just planting flags for markers in our development. Our story deserves more than that.

Starting Anew

"But my vision of success is my own to nurture. It’s not for anyone else to decide. I intend to grow in the ways that matter most to me, not the ways that society tells me I’m supposed to care about."

- Steve Pavlina

I've often started writing in my blog and stopped. I write in a private journal and occasionally in 750words, both of which are very cathartic as well as milestone-capturing experiences for me. The feeling of writing for an audience, even a small one, is quite a different experience.

The problem is that you feel like you are writing for them. It's different from being up on stage giving a lecture, where the metric of success is very likely how well your message is received. In the blogosphere, it's more like writing for an empty auditorium in the hopes of filling it. There's nothing truly to grasp.

Another problem is trying to effective. As they say in journalism, don't "bury the lead". You worry about this. Titling your post with a "How to" or "5 reasons why" is another strategy that increases page hits, and you spend more time thinking about this than you ever care to. You think about your "voice", the consistency of your writing, whether you can keep up a routine.

You think about all this before you even start your post, which of course hinders starting your post.

Blogging serves a different purpose for everyone, but it should be fun. It takes valuable, personal time, at least an hour per post writing, editing and reviewing. There's nothing wrong with having goals for your writing, but it helps if they're sustainable.

My goal is to build a legacy through my blog. I see the evolution of my personality in some of the articles I've written over the years, but overall it's a series of interrupted writing held back by the belief that I need to perform for an audience that may not be there.

In some ways, this is a fresh start in a new year. I didn't make a new year's resolution to do this and I hesitate even now simply because it may be viewed as such. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing and I see 2012 as a year of pacing ourselves. Taking a second to think if we're on the right track as revolutions, both personal and worldly, continue to trail us.

I hope my writing reflects that decision to take stock before moving forward. I have many projects underway and I'm trying to better judge success from a personal vantage point, not one that is handed down to me. This can only come from a deeper understanding of past experiences, observing others and being part of a community and culture I care about.

Blogging Continues!

I now blog at Just Be And You Are.

I also publish a newsletter specific to health care at Pulse of Care.

Will the financial crisis make you more or less healthy?

Almost every issue has two sides to it. Its enlightening when you see both at the same time and get to figure out which side you fall on. For example, you would assume that the financial crisis is negatively affecting our health. Jane Sarasohn-Kahn agrees and just yesterday posted stats on the key sources of stress and how to manage them.

Opening up my RSS reader this morning, one of the the first articles I saw was by Jason Shafrin talking about how the bad economy may be good for our health. This is mainly because people eat out less, drink less and go to the doctor more. There are more interesting details in the post.

Overall, I believe what the source of the financial crisis argues for is more real value. Building on equity not debt, growing our savings acccounts, holding others more accountable for their actions. Just as there was a free-riding debt-laden groupthink surrounding the nation prior to the crisis, now there's more agreement around growing a solid foundation for the country.

Bottomline: Recognizing we're stressed and why lets us handle it better. Realizing the benefits of stepping back from the rat race and taking time out for ourselves and our families is equally as beneficial. Perspective will make all the difference in the coming years.

A Ubiquitously Useful App

Scobleizer recommends a lot of apps. Recently, Robert's had somewhat of an epiphany on why he started blogging and what PR really means to him. I love his passionates v. non-passionates debate. He drives home some really great points about the influence of early adopters on advancing new technology.

His most recent recommendation, a Firefox add-on called Ubiquity, is universally useful and deserves mention. Check out the video below.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Is Blogging becoming a crutch?

I’m amazed by bloggers who can post 3 times a day (Tyler Cowen) with relevant content but find it pretty unrealistic unless there's some major incentive involved; money, larger audience, branding, etc. Done pro-bono, blogging still serves a personal purpose but at what point does it take away from spending an hour doing something else? What’s the opportunity cost? When does it start becoming a conversational crutch?

Its happened a lot that I preface what I’ve blogged in conversation, and that’s a huge pro to blogging; it organizes my thoughts around a specific topic really well. Sometimes though, I have a great conversation with someone that provides a similar organizational benefit and I end up taking hours blogging about it.

For the average blogger with a friend/family/coworker audience, it might be more beneficial to just keep sharing the learning points at a company picnic, family get-together, or house party. Blogging may just be getting in the way of something that’s already become clear to the blogger and probably will not reach a larger audience outside their personal scope anyway.

Even if you’re journalizing your thoughts, the cumulative hours spent typing away may not be worth the effort. To avoid letting the process of blogging get in the way of life experience, a friend of mine uses a private twitter account to document momentary occurrences. A quick 140 word text gets the job done 90% of the time. The rest is blogged. Brilliant!

Bottomline: A journal can be a blog, but a blog is not necessarily a journal. Some conversations are just more worthwhile having in real life with people you know. If you have enough of an audience to test out your new ideas before exploring them in conversation, then go for it. I don’t believe this represents the majority of bloggers though. As a litmus test, ask yourself this; “if my computer (and blog server) crashed right now and I lost what I was writing, would it really be worth writing again?”

As the Wordle Churns

If you haven't already, check out Wordle! Basically, you type in a few words in a text box and it generates a cloud image of those words. You can wordle any website or del.icio.us feed as well. My clouds are below.

This blog:

My del.icio.us tags:

Words I used to create a collage for a friend's wedding:

Produce what you Consume

"The world brought me to my knees
What have you brung you?
Did you improve on the design?
Did you do something new?"

--Lupe Fiasco, ala "Superstar"

The "you attract what you think" principle has been proving itself quite well in the last few weeks. My recent interest in America's high consumer-to-producer ratio and how the web is contributing to lower it has led me into some very enlightening conversations off-line.

The real-time nature of the web makes you shift your thinking from "What am I contributing?" to "What am I contributing NOW?" (totally Tim Ferriss). The latter used to be too resource-intensive a question for any one individual to ask until the internet came along. Take Yoani Sanchez for example. Her blog helps to make the rest of the world aware of the way the Cuban government controls its citizens. Even though it is only one person speaking out, the validity of the outcry can be judged by the response. And this entire discussion occurs on a market-governed online forum.

Whereas the ability to vote used to be the single source of contributing one's personal voice to the global agenda, now one's online persona, free of anonymity, fuels the underlying free-market democracy developing exponentially online. This is incentive enough to become a member.

Bottomline: Turn off the TV, get off your butt, and do something. You never know who you'll meet, help, or learn from.

Tim Ferriss - Lessons Learned

After reading the 4HWW, watching Tim Ferriss interviews and reading his blog, these are the action items I've implemented. The goal: a simple focused day with (very) few distractions.

• Stopped all pop-up notifications: those annoying outlook envelopes, gmail notifiers, IM pop-ups, and twitter device updates. The moment these appear you lose focus on what you're doing. No matter how good you are at multi-tasking, when you see that message appear on the bottom right of your screen, its in your head. That takes away from what you're doing in the moment. Check these things on your own time, twice a day or more depending on what your needs are, but don't let them rule your present time.
  

• Started a notebook of ideas: during the day we all have crazy ideas that pop into our head. Time-trending these by writing them down helps to figure out when your thought process is most clear. Also, I haven't written anything in what feels like ages. Writing is the mode of learning I grew up with and my retention is far better when I jot things down.
  

• Practiced being deliberately attentive: its easy to allow yourself to get distracted because there's so many things on your computer, desk, phone that draw you away. Forcing myself to stay on course with the task/project at hand has in fact made it more enjoyable. You can't force flow, but you can make an effort to avoid what leads you away from it.
  

• Began tracking what I eat: it seems like a hassle at first, but is really easy to do. I keep a log of all my meals on Google Calendar. Since you can see the blocks for each day next to each other, its easy to spot patterns in your diet. Its really helps me see when I veer away from the norm (whatever that may be for you personally).
  

• Minimized my taskbar: the amount of time I spend on the computer completely warrants this. As I'm working on one thing, I have a a habit of taking quick glances at the various screens that accumulate on my taskbar as the day goes on; Outlook, Gmail, articles, presentations, videos, etc. Having the taskbar hidden seems like such a small thing, but it has made an enormous difference in my "in the moment" concentration level.
  

Worker, Interrupted

"Want to get something done? Turn off Twitter. Turn off Facebook. Turn off blog comments. Turn off FriendFeed. Turn off Flickr. Turn off YouTube. Turn off Dave Winer’s blog and Huffington Post. Turn off TechMeme.

Turn off the distractions."

--Robert Scoble

After reading the above from Scobleizer's productivity post, I of course looked up all the references I didn't know and lo and behold I was signing up for another Web2.0 application. Classic.

Yet this also gave me insight into my own assimilation within the grab-and-go, click-through culture that's been rapidly developing over the last decade. Procrastination-induced internet escapism is an easy habit, and at the sake of projects and work. Reading may broaden one's perspective, but it doesn't lend to daily, efficient production. What Csíkszentmihályi describes as flow.

Mastering information, i.e. diligently taking notes to be referenced later and forever committed to our personal knowledge bank, is infrequent in today's look-up-on-wikipedia, web-bite world. Rather, we take snapshots. Into fields, philosophies, lives, ideas, hobbies and even vocations. We don't really know these things, but we feel like we do. Vicarious information gathered and stored in bookmarks on del.icio.us or google notebook make up our reference libraries now. Learning doesn't happen through osmosis though. And the doing must be done (channeling some Yogi Berra here!). Keeping pace with our reading/browsing through personal accomplishments, whatever they may be, is important so that when we look back we see our own contributions among the multitude.

Bloggers Galore!

I spend a whole bunch of time reading a wide variety of blogs. So much so that (like email) I had to force myself to limit my blog reading to specific times during the day. A quick check of google reader can sometimes lead to a 2 hour wayward session out in the blogosphere. Below are a few bloggers I keep up with and mostly discovered through my random traverses.

1. My friend, Deep, started blogging around the beginning of the year. She offers a unique, personal perspective on (actually living) life as a med student. Her idea of doctors using twitter to keep in regular touch with their patients is just brilliant!

2. Cameron's commented on my blog several times. His blog is filled with pointers on relationships, fitness, and life in general. Here's one of my favorite posts.

3. If you're interested in health care IT, John Halamka's your man. He's professionally involved in an array of things, from being a CIO of a hospital system to ice climbing to playing the Japanese flute. This post gives you a humorous, insider perspective into what he's all about.

4. Jason Shafrin, the healthcare economist, is running a great segment comparing health care systems around the world. If you're interested, here's France, the first in his series.

5. If you can keep up with Tyler Cowen, then subscribe to marginal revolution. His interests are varied, but the common theme is economics. I learn something everyday from his posts!