bytheriverIt seems this is the weekend for wakeup calls. I’m two weeks into my “End the Year as a Success” plan, and while I’m pretty pleased that I’ve got this far, I’m still not getting the results I want. I’m taking full responsibility for it too, and working at tweaking the schedule in order to ensure my success as best I possibly can.

So yesterday as I was procrastinating at writing my daily PLR Giveaway post and playing on twitter I came across a new blog post by Tiffany Dow. Tiffany really inspires me and I’ve been following her ever since I played in her very first squidoo lens building challenge oh so many years ago. She’s inspired me more than once to move beyond my comfort zone and while I haven’t reached her level of success yet, I have confidence in my ability to get there eventually. (If only I could learn to stop procrastinating!)

Anyways, in this blog post on Online Writing Obstacles, Tiffany mentioned two things that really hit me where I live…

First, she mentioned that she “cranks out 5 pages an hour for 8 hours” a day. For me keeping the butt in the chair long enough to crank out 1 page an hour is a stretch lately. But I’ve been working with a timer doing 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off this week and it seems to be helping. So I’m thinking that if I start slow and work up to a goal of 5 pages an hour for even 2 hours or 4 hours a day, I’m going to be a heckuva lot more productive than I am right now. And considering the pile of writing projects on my list, I really need to find a way to up that productivity.

The second thing in that blog post that really thunked me in the chest was “Don’t be an online hermit.” That is so me I’m thinkin’ that I need to change my brand from “The Introverted Marketer” to the “Hermit Marketer.” Except that, as Tiffany pointed out, being a hermit online doesn’t get you where you want to be. I am making more of an effort to be more visible and more engaging, both in email and on twitter, but I know I still have a lot more work to do in this area as well. It’s still way too easy for me to shut down and go into hermit mode when the going gets a little tough.

You’d think that two wake up calls from one blog post would be enough to do the trick wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong. The Universe wasn’t done with me yet.

My third wakeup call came, again on twitter, from a Mashable post warning that wordpress users needed to upgrade to the latest version in order to protect against a security threat. I’ve been procrastinating on that task for awhile too (are ya seeing the theme here?) so yesterday afternoon I pushed aside my wonderful to-do list and made a list of all my wordpress blogs and set out to get them all upgraded. Seventeen blogs (yes, I really said 17) later and I was pretty much in shock and disgusted with myself for the run-down condition my websites are in. Coming hard on the heels of Friday’s realization that I’ve also let my Squidoo lenses get totally out of date (which is what I had intended to spend yesterday afternoon fixing), it was a real wakeup call for me to get my act together again and make time to take care of what’s already out there even as I’m working on putting all my wonderful new ideas into action.

As a result of all that today’s major task is to get a schedule figured out that will take into account the need to update all my existing properties, add to the newest ones, get enough writing and promotion time in every day, and feed my need to be outside as much as possible before the snow starts to fall.

I’ve learned over the years that when the Universe sends a wakeup call, that it’s really in my best interests to pay attention. When I get three in one day it’s hard not to get frustrated and just yell “I’m awake already!”

Have a great day!

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Filed under: Goals and Challenges

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