Blog 30-Day Challenge – Next Steps

After the challenge of writing a blog post every day for 30 days in a row, what comes next?

I’ve summarized the major elements of what I learned. Digestion will continue.

What is coming as a follow up to this activity?

• Refine larger business plans for my information outlets. How can I make my sites better, more educational, productive and enjoyable?
• Continue keeping The Reasonista Diaries. Journaling like this brings a lot of thoughts to the surface, helps me make sense of them, and generates ideas for additional goals and tasks.
• Focus on the coming goals with excitement, remembering what it was like building the mud puddles as a kid. This energy is contagious.
• Try new things. The next new challenge is right around the corner, and can also be beneficial to building the site and its visibility. And enjoying the journey!

A mix of big picture goals and specific tasks always comes out of my brainstorming sessions.

A challenge like the #blog30 has filled pages with ideas, just waiting for me to choose some, and put them to work.

The Benefits of Blogging

Tonight I’m working on multiple blog posts, for this blog and a couple of others, devoted to my other passions.

This is my second 30-day challenge. What have I learned?

• Just write it. Put some bullet points on a page around a topic, and flesh it out. When you decide to do something, it becomes easier.
• Let the words flow. If you feel tempted to edit, just write that into the flow of the words as well. Writing is a right brain activity. You’ll come back later with your left brain and tweak the copy.
• Keep it simple. Pretend you are writing to someone you know.
• Brainstorm your ideas. Use a notebook, file folder or electronic file to capture your topic ideas – whatever works for you. This helps get the writing to flow as well.
• Drink water to keep your energy up. If you are falling asleep, you won’t be able to write well. I have promised myself at least two glasses before I get to my Diet Coke.
• Walking helps free up ideas. Physical activity helps make the words come loose as well. I like to alternate time at the computer with time doing something active.

Have fun! You will meet interesting people, and the ideas will come from all kinds of places that you could never have predicted. This is what keeps me coming back to blogging.

Now, off to write a couple more posts about this wonderful pizza sausage that’s made in the meat department at a local grocery, and some pretty, vintage china dishes you can use to serve ice cream.

Acres of Ideas

Where do ideas come from, to fuel a business with development of new products, processes or models?

Everywhere.

I’m participating in a 30-day blog challenge, and yesterday was the half way point. The organizers put on a check-in call for the participants.

As that call was ending, a further call was announced as a post-challenge celebration.

People began offering to bring food, as though this was to be a real picnic, not a virtual event. It became a fun game.

I offered broccoli salad, something handy to bring to a carry in. And I recalled how I had eaten this salad at an office carry-in, then developed my own recipe because I could not find one.

We can always create our own.

Something like a salad is easy, and business ideas can be, too. Start with the information or ideas you already have, and preliminary goals for their use as new products or services.

Then use paper and pen – or another favorite method you have for recording ideas – and let them flow.

No editing allowed. That step can come later.

If you can get five ideas, then you can get twenty. If you can get twenty, you can get 100. Nothing is too wild at this point, because you never know what wonderful idea can be born from something that seems a bit farfetched.

The 30-day blog challenge is a good tool to help ideas flow as well. Writing every day is a great way to build the habit of reaching for ideas and recording them.

Fifteen days accomplished, fifteen more to go. And if that end-of-challenge party becomes a reality, I will bring the broccoli salad.

The Dandelion Effect

Ideas, like dandelion seeds, don’t all sprout and grow into more. It’s Mother Nature’s way to produce an abundance, so that some will find favorable conditions, grow and produce the next generation.

Hold that thought.

Add something I’ve heard sales people say: “Every ‘no’ is a step closer to ‘yes.’” I understand this better after several years in Internet retail.

Mash these threads together.

If the ideas you think of at first don’t fly, there are always more. If you can come up with 5, you can find 20. Brainstorm a bit more and get to 80.

You might not want to do many of them, but there will also be some gems on that list, some innovative, out-of-the-box possibilities.

This realization has helped me take the “no” less personally — to become less attached to any particular idea — and to look for the variations, or the different ways to achieve the goal.

I’m a lot more comfortable pitching an idea than I used to be. If at first you don’t succeed…

For example, the kitchen faucet needs fixing. I’ve done enough research to know that it could be the cartridges, or the whole thing might need to go. This also tells me that it’s a bigger project than I want to take on myself. I could spend a day, or days, on it with no guarantee of success.

If the odds were better, I might take it on – or if it was a project that only I could do.

In this case, someone with the right tools, and the right knowledge, could knock it out. Like the lawn mower guys who can do, in 15 minutes, what it takes me an hour to do.

Hiring a plumber…only one way to get this handled. I’ve got some creative ideas to pitch, to see if I can get this done in a non-traditional way.

Sifting through the possible solutions gets me closer to a solution that works.

With millions of seeds, there are always more.