I’m sure you haven’t been keeping tabs on how often I blog or noticed fewer blog entries lately. Most people don’t for most blogs, email updates and websites. We get so much information that we don’t stand by wondering where the latest update is from so ‘n so.

It pangs me not to keep this blog updated much lately. But then I remind myself that I’d rather deliver nothing than something useless to you even if it affects search engines.

You don’t need a reminder of the advantages of consistent updates and blogging. What about making time for it? All the experienced bloggers tell us to make time for blogging and to stop making excuses that you don’t have time.

I do that for family.

I do that for volunteering and giving back.

I do that for clients.

I do that for exercise.

I do that for sleep.

If we “make time” for everything we want to accomplish, soon we’ll find ourselves losing sleep and overdoing it to the point that our brains feel overloaded. Speaker and author Jill Konrath wrote about this in The Year I Lost My Brain and How I Found It Again. Then today I read the top five regrets people made on their deathbed.

Multitasking is not always a good thing. It divides your attention, thereby sacrificing the quality of the two or three things you work on at the same time.

Oprah is right when she says, “Live your best life.” And that means sacrificing blog entries. If I work to accomplish all the things I’d like to do, it’d sacrifice at least one of the above and that would not be living my life. I’m not going to put off things just to make something happen.

I don’t want to regret not spending more time with my kids at every age. I already wish I had spent more time with my daughter who was growing up while I still had a corporate job and less flexibility. By the time my boys came along, I had the flexibility and fewer regrets.

In the past year, I’ve made time for things we hadn’t done together as a family. We saw the Harlem Globetrotters. We went to the State Fair. We went to the city’s International Festival. We went to the Texas Tornado hockey game. We went to LegoLand.

What will you make time for? What will you let go? How are you living your best life? How do you feel about blogging regularly or inconsistently?

On a popular weight loss show, a contestant weighing over 500 pounds kept repeating, “I have to lose my dad. I have to lose my dad.” While I’m not in the contestant’s shoes needing to lose almost 300 pounds — the amount his dad weighed — his statement shook me. His body language, his face, his words all revealed he was feeling paralyzed.

Photo from sxc.hu user vivekchugh

This “it’s too big of a goal” thinking can overpower people in all parts of their lives. Many set big goals and objectives thinking of only the result. Then reality hits when they see how much work and time it will take to reach this big goal. Paralysis, delays and procrastination follow until they stop trying and fail to reach their goal.

Make it happen. It can be anything you need to change or do. Lose five pounds. Write 100 words. Work on the project for five minutes.

Change Overwhelming Goals into Doable Ones

A more doable approach is to break the big goal into smaller, more manageable goals. This doesn’t mean ignoring the big goal of losing 200 pounds, earning your first million or serving your 10,000th customer. To turn these big goals into bite-sized goals, set smaller goals of losing 10 pounds for this month, earning extra $100 a week or finding two new customers this week. As soon as you reach this smaller goal, bump it up. Thinking smaller and accomplishing those little steps will give you the satisfaction and motivation to continue.

You can apply this approach to many situations with these steps:

1. Identify what you want to change or accomplish.
2. Create a bite-sized goal that brings you a step closer to what you want to change or accomplish.
3. Reach goal? If yes, go to the next step. If no, go back to step two and try again or modify the goal to something more reachable.
4. Celebrate and up the goal.
5. Repeat steps two through four until you reach your big goal.

Start with Five Minutes

Instead of thinking “I need to write an 800-word article,” start by writing 100 words or writing for five minutes. Continue this process, building your way up to the big goal of the 800-word article. This approach of small steps cuts the chances of your giving up.

This do something for five minutes approach works great for when you’re not in the mood for working on something. Do it for five minutes and see what happens. For email addicts, close your email application for five minutes. Increase the time as you adapt. For web-based email, try using a different browser that you never use when you need to do something on the web. Make it a rule that you can’t open the web-based email application on that browser.

I’ve had a few days when I didn’t check email between first thing in the morning and noon. That’s HUGE for me. It took a while to make it happen, but I started by closing my email app and switching to “Contacts” in Gmail so I’m not staring at the emails waiting for me. I have good days and bad days when it comes to checking emails less often. It’s progress.

I check email obsessively on days when I want to hear from someone. That desire for a little connection is one that changing email habits won’t cure.

I picked up this philosophy from the the short “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way” by Robert Maurer.

How did you make it happen?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

My second child and older son turned 12 this week. Wow. Last year of the tweens. It won’t be long before he’s taller than me (5.5″ to go). E Since he loves to play video games, I’m sharing this article I found on his birthday: Factoids of the day: Game not over. The article highlights how games make us better. It’s all true, but we still need to limit video game time for kids or else they’d play all hours. Gotta get ‘em movin’!

The Challenger disaster happened 25 years ago today. I was in school, but I can’t recall how I found out. The only thing I remember feeling stunned while watching the explosion in front of a clear blue sky and seeing the looks on the family’s faces that looked neither happy or sad because they didn’t know what happened yet. AP asked Facebook readers where they were on this day. It’s a chilling read.

Brain food…

• 22 Social Media Marketing Tools: Apps for managing multiple social media IDs in one spot. [Link: Alan K'necht]
• Ten Useful Hacks to Make Things Happen: Another winner from Valeria Maltoni.
• If You Think Someone Is Mentally Ill: Loughner’s Six Warning Signs: I believe it’s important we’re all aware of these signs. Unlike sinus infections and diabetes, mental illness is an unseen illness — and a very real one that needs treating infections and pneumonia.
• Five great Gmail timesavers: I didn’t even know about Smart Mute, but then I don’t fall into too many group conversations — thank goodness.
• Thsrs: The shorter thesaurus.
• Kill Your To-Do List: Some people just need to dump to dos altogether and try this one. Be sure to check out the comments for more great advice.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• This is the web right now: Another winner from Oatmeal.
• iPad Game for Cats: Smart doggy!
• Social Media Guru Robbed after Using Foursquare: This is actually a parody of a very serious problem. I stopped using the service months ago after reading several true horror stories. I loved the service, but it’s just not worth the dark side of it… [Link: t2]
• 36 Facebook T-Shirts to Match Your Status Update: First it was Twitter tees… now FB. LinkedIn far behind? Nahh… too serious of a social network.

Marathon runners don’t prepare for marathons by running for miles. They start small and build up. It’s that muscle memory thing. Some of our writing assignments can be big and daunting. So we attempt to write only to let ourselves be interrupted many times in the course of an hour.

Meet the Pomodoro Technique. This procrastination busting approach can work great for writers. If GTD works for you (Pomodoro doesn’t replace GTD — it only contains a small part of GTD), there’s no reason to try something different or change it unless you think it’ll work better. After all, if we stick with status quo, we forgo opportunities to find ways to do things better, faster and more efficiently.

If you’re on a roll and can’t stop writing; by all means, don’t! The Pomodoro gives you an option when you’re struggling to write at all or without interruptions. Maybe you feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do. Stop.

Focus on one task at a time as the following steps quickly show you how the Pomodoro works:

1. Pick a task and do that task for 25 minutes straight.
2. Take a short break — about five minutes.
3. Work on the task again or pick another one to do for another 25 minutes.
4. Repeat until you’ve done this four times.
5. Take a longer break.

While I don’t struggle to get work done, I gave it a shot and it worked well by the second round of 25 minutes. I gave in to my powerful urge to check email during the first one — I’m gosh awful about that.

The tasks can include doing research for a story, writing an article for X publication, blogging for Y client, doing your marketing for the day, completing your administrative work, replying to emails. You get it. Just stick with one thing for those 25 minutes. You begin with a sprint and work you way up to completing the marathon of an article, book, whatever without feeling like, “Oh, man. I have 24 miles to go.” Instead, “I’m going to do two miles. No problem.”

In a way, you’ll build your muscle memory. You complete these tasks in short, doable bites. Maybe you’ll find that this works so well for you that you’ll stretch the time or go on an writing spree. (Remember to take a computer break for the sake of your eyes and hands.)

Of course, you might be anti-GTD and everything and it works for you like it does for Jamie.

How do you complete your writing tasks or projects?

• Getting Things Done with Twitter: Don’t like the idea of paying through Twitter.
• Twitterfall: A New Twitter Tool for Journalists: I get nervous about new twitter tools because they can boost your addiction and time spent on twitter [Link: Esther]. And a link to Twitterfall.
• Becoming a Great Programmer: Use Your Trash Can by Esther Schindler.
• What the Hashtag? Can’t figure out what the # means in twitter? Wonder no more.
• Word Count Plus FireFox Plugin: Counts number words in selected text and total.
• How to Be Likeable: 10 Things You Can Do Today [Link: GL Hoffman]
• SPOGG: Society for the Promotional of Good Grammar
• Poll: What is the first media outlet you look/listen in order to get your news on a daily/consistent basis? Saddened (but not surprised) to see print low on the list. Created with twtpoll (multiple choice only).

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Awesome Foosball Tables: WOW. Hubby would love one of these, but they’ll remain admired from afar just like his favorite Corvette ’61.
• The Great Pyramid PC Mod: Cool.
• 10 tips to give up Facebook during Lent
• Evaluate tech purchases: Retrevo and Wize [Link: Web Worker Daily]

Why do we “get a feeling or craving” for something at a certain time of year? It’s Pavlov at work. These become habits and with habits come expectations.

Not everyone can succeed in working in a home office. The temptation to procrastinate and do non-work stuff is too great. Lone workers don’t have to worry about people watching over their shoulders or Alt-Tab to switch away from the improper web site.

Turn “forcing yourself” to get things done into “habits that make it easy” to get things done in six steps:

1. Create a general schedule: This depends on what you do for work. As a writer, my activities are: communications (emails), writing, editing, research, administrative, and interactions. Assign blocks of time for the activities for the day.
2. Stick to schedule: I’ve made it a habit to start the day with an email, followed by a blog post (when I do one), and then article writing for the morning. The afternoon is for the tedious, less creative work and social networking (reading blogs, tweets, etc.). I know I don’t function as well in the afternoon as in the morning. I also exercise mid-day.
3. Give it time: You won’t have that “feeling it’s time to do something” overnight. It takes 21 days to form a new habit. It works, I promise. When I got into habit of not working due to hand surgery, I thought I’d never get back into work. I did. Just had to push myself to do #2 and it fell into place.
4. Work from the same place: If possible, set aside a space for work. I have two places: my little home office and my bed with a laptop (I had back problems plus that’s where I play games for reviewing).
5. Handle guilt: You might feel guilty about household chores and other personal activities that we must do, but don’t want to do. Set aside 30 to 60 minutes a day for such activities and do them then. That gets rid of the feelings of guilt and carries you through the day.
6. Take a break: Don’t let yourself get carried away with working at your computer all day and eating lunch at your desk. You may feel like you’re on a roll and not tired, but a break revives you. Make this personal chores time, if need be. The physical break gets you moving and your eyes away from the screen. I have a dog, so unless I want her to do her business in my house — I must take a break to walk her. We don’t have a backyard and she refuses to go before walking at least half a block.

Think about the different times of the year. Do you find you crave something or expect something? For example, my family can’t help but crave cake in January with three of us having birthdays this month and one in early February.

I used to play tennis on Saturday and Sunday before I got hurt. It’s going to take time to get back in the mood for it after a long time off plus the cold weather. So I’ll start with one of those days and build back up.

If my routines don’t convince you, maybe these people in Daily Routines will.

Habits can work on an hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly basis. It’s what you make of it. Steps 1 through 4 work for most habits. Pick one thing to turn into a habit and try it.