"attitude" via groundhogdad

In a fast-paced business culture of "get everything done yesterday," it's easy to admire and reward those busybusy people who always seem to be juggling 14 things at once. But business coach Dave Crenshaw argues that the most common kind of multitasking doesn't boost productivity—it slows you down. In his new book, The Myth of Multitasking: How "Doing It All" Gets Nothing Done, Crenshaw explains the difference between "background tasking"—like watching TV while exercising—and "switchtasking," juggling two tasks by refocusing your attention back and forth between them, and losing time and progress in the switch. Crenshaw's on a mission to reduce distractions, interruptions, and fire-fighting at work, and create environments that let employees see through tasks with their full attention before moving onto the next thing. Here's what Crenshaw had to say when I asked him a few questions about changing perceptions and habits around multitasking. Photo by Elsie esq..

Lifehacker: People who have done any kind of reading about personal productivity already know that there's a high cost involved in switching from task to task during your workday. But knowing something intellectually and making changes in your routine to reduce "switchtasking" are two different things. What do you think has to happen for folks used to switchtasking to actually make the changes to their regular routine?

Dave Crenshaw: Switchtasking is a largely cultural problem. I've found that most people actually still believe that multitasking is a productive activity. It is culturally acceptable to switchtask. Smoking is on the decline in the U.S. because it has become less culturally acceptable. As multitasking becomes more and more of culturally unacceptable behavior, people will makes changes.

However, I find that the best way for people to ultimately make a lasting change is through one-on-one training or therapy. It is a big part why I created the TimeGym program. The worksheets in the book are also helpful because they help readers experience the impact of their own personal switchtasking.

Lifehacker: Many mid-level employees today work in an open office layout without their own office or even cubicle—their desk is just out in the middle of the floor with everyone else's. When you work in this kind of setup, often you're expected to attend to interruptions as they happen. Co-workers stop by your desk to ask a question, you get pulled into a conversation happening two desks down, there's an culture of a quick turnaround on email messages and constant monitoring of the inbox... how can someone who's not an exec or in management reduce their switchtasking without looking like a slacker? Do you run the risk of looking less responsive?

Dave Crenshaw: The situations you are describing really are a huge drain on productivity. It is very difficult for someone in a middle-management or "front line" position to change that kind of environment. Ultimately, a business or an organization is a reflection of its leader. The leader has to make personal changes before an organization as a whole can improve productivity systems. If not, the leader will constantly undermine any systemic improvements.

I can offer a couple of suggestions. First: see if you can set up recurring meetings with the people who are interrupting you. In my experience working with people, establishing a recurring meeting at a set place and time is like magic, and it really does cut down on a huge number of interruptions very quickly.

Second: find a way the leadership of your organization to pay attention to the impact of switches in the workplace. A few people have commented that they are going to give the book as a gift to their boss because it presents the issue in a casual, non-threatening way.

Lifehacker: Do you think companies are getting better or worse at creating environments that discourage switchtasking?

Dave Crenshaw: I think we are at the beginning of a very long process of change. The large companies working on the problem are only in the very preliminary stages of attacking this issue. Most small businesses aren't even aware of the source of the problem. In general, companies recognize they have productivity issues, but are unsure as to how to proceed. Awareness is increasing, however. Over the next decade I expect we'll see a lot more attention on this issue and a great deal of improvement.

Lifehacker: You've said that technology isn't the reason why we switchtask more, it's the way we use it that's the issue. However, turning off technology (like silencing your ringer or closing down your email inbox) is one of the best ways to focus on something. What do you think about the approach taken by guys like Don Knuth, the computer science author who has eschewed email entirely in order to write books? Or folks who opt out of getting the BlackBerry or Treo because they don't want to deal with the expectations it comes with? Is purposefully refraining from using certain kind of technology extremist, or evolved?

Dave Crenshaw: This is a bit like an amateur carpenter, who, after hitting his thumb with his hammer, curses the tool and tosses it aside. Was the pain caused by the tool, or by the lack of skill of the person using the tool?

A big part of how we use technology comes down to the big WHEN. Shutting technology off completely certainly is not the answer just as it wouldn't be the answer to try to use a rock or your hands to put nails in boards. What we need is more skill training and development. For instance, I know Lifehacker advocates the principle of "firewalling" one's attention. That's a great skill. It helps minimize switches. There are many, many of these new skills that we need to acquire. They have become essential not only to our productivity but to our mental and emotional survival.

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Finally, Crenshaw offers a few tips for reducing switchtasking and making better use of your time.

 Take control over technology—Your cell phone ringer (even on vibrate) 
doesn’t need to be on all the time. You can turn off email notification on your computer as well. 
Become master over the nagging beeps and buzzes by creating  some silence. 
  
Schedule what you can schedule—Set regular times in the day and week to check your voicemail and email. Let others 
know that you will be using that schedule so they know when to expect a reply. 
  
Focus on the person—When you switchtask when dealing with a computer, you simply lose efficiency. But if you 
switchtask on a human being, you additionally damage a relationship. Be present, listen carefully, and make sure 
everything has been taken care of before moving on. 

Is your office a hotbed of switchtasking or do you have the time and space to focus on what you need to get done without an interruption in the next 10 minutes? Are you constantly scanning your inbox or handheld for new messages when you should be writing that report or crunching those numbers? Tell us what you think about multitasking in today's office in the comments.

Photo by macropolos

Creativity is something that’s not easily contained. In fact, it’s contagious. When creative people start putting their heads together, some amazing things happen. It’s a rare occasion when an incredible idea is solely created by one person.

Yet, it can be hard to let go of our ideas. Just as parents with children going away to college in the next few weeks, giving our ideas away is much like the same thing. There’s that little creativity myth that says that keeping our ideas to ourself is much better than sharing them. After all, what if someone steals them?!

Big idea man Seth Godin opened my eyes as to why “giving away” ideas is a great thing.

Padmanabhan wrote me a nice note today, asking why I so freely give away ideas. (It was nice because he thought some of the ideas were actually good ones).

I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard.

My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create, at least it does for me.

Seth made a beautiful point. 99% of the time the problem isn’t someone stealing your idea, it’s you not actually doing it. So what better way to put an idea into motion than having more people help?

There are many ideas that I’ve had that never would have come close to completing without the help of others. Sharing ideas is critical.

But you don’t have to take our word for it.

Real-world examples

Photo by DavidBole

There are plenty of real-world examples of projects who have embraced the open source approach and are, ahem, kicking the tail of other closed projects.

Firefox - Firefox is an open source browser that is creeping up on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Right now Firefox owns 42% of the browser market share, and looks to keep gaining on Redmond’s browser. Why? Because Firefox has opened up its code base. IE is limited to only what Microsoft’s programmers add to it. Firefox is improving rapidly, thanks to a giant base of programmers who develop things like themes and extensions. For free.

Wikipedia - Dictionary salesmen have long been eating the lunch of Wikipedia. Instead of relying on print reference books, people can “wikipedia” (yes, used as a verb) just about anything and have instant access to knowledge. No paper cuts, no books.

Wikipedia depends on contributors who create pages for topics. To ensure that someone isn’t putting false entries on the site, the massive number of people reading the pages act as a checks and balances. If something looks fishy, it’s flagged by other readers or users. Ultimately, the site depends on open source to power the site.

Linux - Linux is an open source operating system. Because Linux is under an open source license, anyone can download the software for free and modify it to suit their needs. Consequently, there a lot of custom “distributions” of Linux that have been tailored for specific needs.

The community keeps growing at a rapid pace, and some computers are being sold with Linux as the operating system, instead of Windows.

Projects like these have seen a lot of growth because there were multiple people involved in the idea. More involvement means better community, better community means better results, better results = Better Products.

How to Open Source Your Ideas

Photo by CapraRoyale

Now that we’ve covered why it’s a good idea to release your ideas, here are a few ways to do it.

Other people have different strengths and smarts than you

Creating Web Warrior Tools went really well for one main reason: I found a partner that had the strengths and smarts that I didn’t. Leo had many skills that I didn’t (and desperately needed). He kept me grounded, not wanting to accomplish too many things at one time, which is my biggest weaknes. He’s a much better marketer than I could ever hope to be. Leo and I had abilities that perfectly complemented each other.

I could have tried to put together WWT by myself, but it wouldn’t have been a fraction as cool as it is now, and might not have even left the ground. (The fact that it I think it’s cool is totally subjective, by the way.)

It makes sense to only share some ideas with a few trusted friends. The benefit of actually sharing ideas isn’t to get as many people to hear them. The benefit is that you’re actually sharing them with other people.

Many hands make light work

If you need something done, open sourcing an idea is possibly the quickest way. Because of the free-sharing spirit of open source, people give freely to an idea. Sharing ideas with people and allowing them to work on it gets them excited too. Now you’ve got an army of people (with different strengths and skills as you) working on your idea, giving it a life of its own. The idea is now something bigger than you.

How to Open Source your ideas

If you’re still wanting to share your ideas, it’s not always as easy as giving them away. There’s almost an art to effectively giving away ideas. It’s a mix of using the right tools and getting into the proper state of mind.

Online tools

The Internet is a great way to share information, and it’s becoming easier and easier. Instead of using traditional methods like emailing ideas back and forth, try using one of the many online collaboration apps that have sprung up over the years.

• Google Docs - If you like writing word docs but wish you had a little more capability in terms of sharing, try Google Docs. Now you can edit in real-time, see changes by other collaborators, and even publish to the web.
• Docstoc - If you’ve got your idea in pdf or .doc form, you can upload it to Docstoc and share it with the masses. You can then embed the pdf on a website or blog post, among many other things. Viral pdf viewers like Docstoc are perfect for spreading ideas.
• Twitter - Twitter can be a great way to exchange ideas with many different groups of people at one time.
• Blog post - If you’ve got a blog that you post in regularly, release the idea to the masses via a blog post.
• Wikis - Wikis are another smart way to share information in a collaborative environment. You can use online wiki services like pbwiki to create a wiki that you can share and have other people edit.

There are many other methods for sharing ideas that we didn’t touch on. Instant messaging, Skype, and IRC to name a few. The important thing to remember is that the sharing of ideas is quick, is a low-barrier of entry for other collaborators, and is easy to share. Just stop emailing documents, for crying out loud!

Embrace collaboration

It’s important to start changing the way you think about your ideas if you’re going to start letting other people work on them. Pretty soon you’ll have people questioning every aspect of your idea. This is a necessary and healthy aspect of collaboration. If you’re really wanting to let other people (more than one, at least) start working on your ideas, you’ll have to be able to do three things.

1. Realize you can’t do everything on your own - There’s a tendency as idea owners to want to control and do everything. People don’t want to just add input, they want to work on the idea too! Remember, these people have the same goal as you: they want the idea to get better and better. Give up some responsibility. You’ll find happier collaborators and more time for yourself to work on other ideas.
2. Allow for the free exchange of ideas - Now that the idea is open to other people’s interpretation, there are obviously going to be new and different ideas spinning off of it. Some ideas may be so revolutionary and different that they completely change the scope of the original project. That’s totally normal. Remember: The idea is now bigger than just you. You have to be willing to be accept that someone else may have an even better idea than yours.
3. Trust other people - Allowing other people to work on your idea ultimately requires more trust. By letting other people work on the idea, improve the idea and even rip the idea to shreds takes trust. Lots of it. You’ll have to accept that these people working on your idea want the idea to succeed too.

Everybody wins

If you’re able to successfully open source your ideas and watch them grow under the care of one or two other people, or even a large community, you’ll find that everybody involved wins. The community has something to work on, a project to finish. People need goals and a sense of belonging to a cause or project. A community working on an idea is a great way to achieve that.

The money still follows

If you’re looking to make money, you can do that as well under a myriad of other ways. You could publish a book about the project, sell ads on the website, create a “freemium” model plan where people can pay for specific services, and many other ways. You’re creative right? If you’ve got a great idea, odds are you’ll be able to think of a creative way to make money too.

I should note that not every great idea will make money at first, or maybe even ever. But there is a great chance you will. If the idea is solid, making money shouldn’t be that hard.

Something bigger than you

The best part about unleashing your idea and letting a community take hold of it is the fact that now the idea is bigger than you. You’ve created something that other people have worked on, talked about and added value to. That’s something special by itself.

It takes a smart person to come up with a great idea. It takes an even smarter person to develop that idea by sharing it with others.

This post was helped along by Leo of Zen Habits. In fact, Leo and I helped each other write our posts. We collaborated over IM and helped outline ideas for each other’s post. The result: Leo’s awesome post about rules for work and this post on open sourcing ideas.

Note: This is a guest post by Stu of Improved Lives.

In most of the personal growth advice you will read, positive emotions are considered the goal. We think to ourselves, ‘I’m going to do this, this, and this and that will make me happier, more optimistic, and more outgoing.’

And you know what, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there are many, many different techniques, exercises, and strategies that you can use to achieve those goals.

The best way to achieve those ends would probably elude you though, because it is so simple, most of us don’t even think about it.

It turns out that one of the best ways to build up and create positive emotions is by having positive emotions.

Like most of the really useful techniques and exercises in personal growth, this comes from psychology. The theory is called the Broaden and Build theory, and it’s a fairly simple one.

Negative Emotions Lead to more Negative Emotions

Because of the way our brains are wired up, negative emotions tend to cause restricted, short term survival oriented behavior. For anyone familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, another way to put this would be to say that negative emotions tend to make us focus on the two bottom levels of the hierarchy, which are:

• Safety needs - safety of our job, of our body, of property, and our immediate health
• Physiological needs - concern for food, water, sleep, and breathing

The really important thing to understand is that this focus feeds on itself in a positive feedback loop. That means that focusing on negative emotions will make you focus even more on negative emotions, and your focus will slide farther and farther towards the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

It’s a vicious cycle that a lot of people struggle to escape from.

Positive Emotions Lead to more Positive Emotions

The good news though is that positive emotions work in the same way, which is where the broadening and building comes in.

When we experience positive emotions, our brains lose that narrow focus, the horizons of our mind expand, and we experience varied and novel thoughts and actions which encourages us to explore the world.

And just like negative emotions, positive emotions build on themselves. So experiencing positive emotions leads to more positive emotions and an even broader view of everything around us. This build up of positive emotions affects many, many different areas of our lives. Here are just a few examples.

The Benefits of Positive Emotions

The Broaden and Build theory shows that positive emotions build:

• Attention and Focus - When we’re experiencing negative emotions we tend to ‘miss the forest for the trees’. When we are experiencing positive emotions, our attention and focus are broadened and deepened.
• Scope of Cognition - Positive emotions cause us to see more interconnection in the world, be more flexible in our thinking, and see more relation and integration in our thoughts and ideas. All these things add up to a big increase in creative thinking.
• Better Relationships - Unhappy couples tend to interact in structured, predictable, and rigid ways. In contrast, happy couples interact in more unpredictable, natural, flowing way. Additionally, happy couples actually build up a surplus of positive sentiments for their partner and their marriage. This surplus acts like a buffer against negative emotions and conflict.
• Resilience to Negative Emotions - Positive emotions actually help to override negative emotions. It has been shown that “individuals who express or report higher levels of positive emotion show more constructive and flexible coping, more abstract and long-term thinking, and greater emotional distance following stressful negative events.”

The benefits of positive emotions are clearly varied and extremely substantial. The next thing we need to look at is how to bring more positive emotions into our lives.

4 Ways to Create Positive Emotions

There are many excellent ways to bring positive emotions into our lives. Here are just a few that research has shown to be particularly effective:

Do Relaxation Techniques - Relaxation techniques includes things like meditation, yoga, and muscle relaxation exercises. The primary positive emotion associated with relaxation techniques is contentment. Contentment is particularly good for reversing negative emotions and building resilience to negative emotions.

Find Positive Meaning - Finding positive meaning works in three different ways:

1. Reframing adverse events in a positive light (also called positive reappraisal)
2. Infusing ordinary events with positive value
3. Pursuing and attaining realistic goals

The trick to finding more positive meaning in your life is to just be constantly mindful of it. Evaluate every situation you’re in and try to apply those three ways to find positive meaning. The payoff is that people who find a lot of positive meaning in their lives will experience more of the whole range of positive emotions.

Just Smile - Our brains don’t know the difference between a real smile and a fake smile, so when you fake a smile, your brain responds in the same way (releases the same ‘happy chemicals’) that it would if your smile had been genuine. So even faking positive emotions can have a real, positive impact.

Do Something you Love - Some of my favorites are playing soccer, reading, and cooking. These things relax me, make me feel good, and let me forget about the world for awhile. Everyone’s favorites will be different and unique. Make sure you know what your favorites are and make sure they are always close at hand.

Remember that positive emotions are only one half of the equation. Negative emotions can be a serious detriment to any progress you make with positive emotions, so be sure to squash negative emotions as they come and replace them quickly with something more positive

Further Reading:

- Cultivating Positive Emotions to Optimize Health and Well-Being (pdf) by Barbara L. Fredrickson.
- What Good Are Positive Emotions? (pdf) by Barbara L. Fredrickson.

Image by Joyseph (license)

This is a guest post by Stu, who writes about how to use psychology for personal growth over at Improved Lives. He is the author of posts such as 112 Quick and Easy Personal Growth Exercises and 5 Happiness Boosting Exercises: Which Ones Work and Which Ones Don’t Do Anything.

If you like this article, please give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon. Thanks a lot! =)

Further reading:

- How to Improve Your Social Skills
- Stephen King’s Top 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
- 16 Practical Tips for Solving Your Problems More Easily

Posted in Productivity

It’s Sunday afternoon. You’ve just had a wonderful, two-week vacation. You relaxed and did things you wanted. As the afternoon progresses, a feeling of anxiety sets in.  Your post-vacation excitement is fading as you anticipate getting back to work. Say goodbye to relaxation and sunshine. Say hello to a full voice-mail box and an endless list of tasks to tackle.

If this is how you feel when you return to work after a vacation, you’re not alone. There are ways to make the transition from your relaxing vacation back to work less difficult:

Get organized before you go.

Before leaving on vacation, make a list of tasks to complete and tick everything off as you get it finished. Having that reminder helps you leave feeling like everything has been taken care of. Knowing that you’ve left everything in order will reduce anxiety when it’s time to return, taking your mind off of unfinished work, letting you focus on relaxation.

Ease back into it.

Keep your schedule light the first few days back. Don’t try to do everything you missed while you were gone all at once. If possible don’t plan any big meetings or set any major deadlines for those first days. Sort through and organize the tasks at hand. Talk to your co-workers to find out what you missed, then set your priorities.

Focus on the positive.

Think about your friends at work and other reasons you enjoy your job. This will help you feel positive about going back to work. Your state of mind can have a significant effect on your work life.  Those who have a positive or optimistic attitude deal with fewer work-related problems, are more energetic and generally feel more peaceful and calm.

Post vacation reminders.

Bring a vacation reminder that you can put at your workstation: a photograph, souvenir or ornament. These can create a more harmonious work environment by giving you something to look at when you’re feeling stressed, reminding you of the relaxing time. Make sure your souvenir is appropriate for the office. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Schedule your next vacation.

While it may seem far away, having something to look forward to helps you feel better about being back at work and if you’re planning on taking a trip, it may motivate you to start saving for that next relaxing and exciting vacation getaway.

Many people experience some degree of the back-to-work blues no matter how long or short their time away. If these feelings of apprehension don’t go away or they get worse, it might be an indication of more serious issues. Take time to figure out why you feel like this about returning to work. It may be helpful to speak with a manager or a professional for additional support and resources that can help you pinpoint the root of the matter.

For most, a little time, some planning and a few positive steps can help you reflect on the highlights of your last vacation without losing sight of all the great things you’re doing right now.

Recommended: The Mind Mapping Manifesto A Practical Cure for Information Overload

My Own Realizations

I’ve written articles on being humble before and I strive to stay humble when talking and sharing about my own knowledge and skills with others.  I used to have a much more competitive and egocentric attitude which I learned to change.  The problem is that I’ve taken that so far, I often now reserve myself while trying to be humble but it’s at the expense of sharing with others.  If there is an area I could help I often hold myself back to avoid being overbearing or pushy with my ideas.

Interestingly, I recently met David Zinger from Slacker Manager while he was in Calgary and he reinforced something I’ve been told not only by him, but also friends and colleagues recently.  He saw right away at how I shrug off some of my skills and he questioned me about that.  I’ve had this impression of myself that I can be too ‘pushy’ with my ideas.  David recommending getting past that by simply offering your help by invitation.  If you give the invitation to someone else, you leave it up to them if they want to take advantage of it or not.  They don’t have to accept and you certainly are not pushy by offering help by invitation.

So, I guess, having this told to me several times now, and especially when someone I first meet can see me doing it, I realized I need to be more careful of that perception I’ve created and not to limit myself with what I have to offer.  I’ve taken the step to share these findings and my skills by writing here at Learn This and I truly love knowing I can impact people’s thinking, their knowledge and lives.  Now, I need to extend that out by invitation to more people I interact with in person, not just behind this screen.  I hope this site will continue to find me friends and people to meet in person as that is where I hope to extend more invitations of help.  All of this led me to look at ways to offer what you know by invitation and these are some of the ways I feel a person can do that!

Realize What You Have to Offer

You need to recognize your own strengths and know what you are capable of before you can offer help to others. Obviously, there is help you can offer in almost any area even if you don’t have skills for that.  I’m meaning to look more at what your unique skills, talents and strengths are so that you can offer the best you have.  Take time and surveys to think about and outline your strengths so you can find ways to make them available.  There are great resources online in surveys, articles and of course in books (such as Discover Your Strengths, The Strength Finder) to help uncover your strengths.  Ask others you know what they see are your strengths and accept what strengths you have.  Sometimes we ignore our strengths we have because we want to have choose our strengths or give the impression that we have strengths that are not real.  While strengths can certainly be changed, it takes time and practice to learn them and its far more valuable to realize what you already have and take advantage off it.

Don’t Miss An Opportunity to Help

Once you realize the strengths you have, look for opportunities to use them.  Use them for yourself, use them to help others and look for ways to offer to others, the benefits of your strengths.  This might be some expertise, special skills, knowledge, personal trait or characteristic.  Any of these can be helpful in different situations, so pay attention to where you have a chance to use them.

One way to do this is to watch others who you know have a strength in common with you and see if you can see how they use it.  Ask them how they use it and observe their actions.  Seeing it demonstrated is a great step is seeing how you can do the same thing.  Look for ways they take advantage of their strengths and replicate their actions.  As you learn their techniques you can begin to apply the same steps and take advantage of every opportunity you can to share your skills and abilities with others.

Once you know your strengths, practice them and are comfortable with it as well, its helpful to offer that strength to others.  Sharing your experiences and especially your strengths with people will continue to reinforce them and it will give you the confidence to share it at every opportunity.  Make yourself and your strengths available to others.  Offer your services, your skill set, your help.  Putting out what you have to offer to others can take many forms.  Consider all the ways you could do this:

• Face to face communication to others with an offer of your strength
• Invite others to ask you about your strengths.
• Share your story of how you’ve developed your strengths
• Ask others about their strengths to bring attention to the topic
• Advertise your services
• Start a blog, write articles or white papers about your strengths
• Reveal your strengths to others and encourage them to ask for your help

Growing the opportunities you have to help can also expand if you put attention to it.  This tends to cascade where you can develop those areas even further.  Continue to develop that and learn about it by practicing it, learning about it from others, and reading about those strength areas.

Keep The Invitation Open

This relates to not missing an opportunity but I think applies more when you have already helped someone or have been turned down for help.  If you respond to those people and inform that the invitation is always open and that you are willing to offer help, it is far more likely to reoccur.  People unfortunately feel an obligation to pay back what they have gained from someone and so they are often reluctant to ask someone again for help or to continue asking.  You can help to diffuse those feelings by offering your help and extending that invitation again even immediately after helping.  If they know you are still willing and not avoid them to get out of helping, that extra invitation can bring a lot of comfort in having to ask again for the other person.

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My friends at Six Apart recently asked me to make a list of blogs that I enjoy. I think they’re planning to use it for their new Blogs.com project. Unfortunately, I’m late getting it to them (typical), but if it’s still useful, I’ll post it here in a day or four.

As I think about the blogs I’ve returned to over the years — and the increasingly few new ones that really grab my attention — I want to start with, ironically enough, a list. Here’s what I think helps make for a good blog.

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1. Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?
2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?
3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go. Then, on some level, they encourage me to follow the evolution of their interest through a day or a year. There’s a story here. Ethical “via” links make it easy for me to follow their specific trail of attention, then join them for a walk made out of words.
4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.
5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect. I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more.
6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication.
7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. At some point, everyone wants to kill the Buddha and make their own obsessions the focus. This is good. It means you care.
8. Good blogs try. I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules. Duh. I made a list, didn’t I? Yes. I did. Big fan.

And, yeah, you should disagree with potentially all of this. It’s because I have an opinion, and so do you. It’s why you probably have a blog. See? The system works.

Coming soon: the blogs I read, enjoy, envy, and admire.