Successful Blog

TOO Busy? Find Out in Less Than a Minute

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Got Less Than a Minute?

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Sara asked, “Are We Really That Busy?”

Are we?

We seem to have so much to do and so little time.
We don’t even have time to think about the time we don’t have.
It feels dangerous, but if we stop, we’ll never catch up. . . .

Are we TOO busy? Are we squandering the time of our lives?

It’s easy to find out for yourself. Let’s have an experience. It won’t take long, I promise. After all, it’s about being busy. This simple test will only take as long as you’re willing to invest in yourself. You can do it in less than a minute.

Take the Test

Ready? Will you try this? I’ll give you two links. For each link, follow these quick, simple steps.

  1. Read the word that is the link anchor text as you click the link.

  2. Put your dominant hand on your forehead as you look at the site you land on and say the link anchor text word 3 more times.

  3. Leave the site you land on when you feel you’ve gotten what you need from it.

Ready? Here are the links.

Link 1 anchor text: time poor

Link 2 anchor text: time rich

Decide for Yourself

Well, what do you think? Really. After all, as we think, so we are. [that concept predates our calendar The words we choose affect how we think and the way we perceive our lives.

Were you too busy to even click the links? What does that say about how you value your time?

If you did click the links, which made you feel in control of your life?

Are we really that busy?

OR do we only think we are?

Liz's Signature

Thanks to Week 106 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Seriously: Do New Thoughts and New Taglines Find Us?

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It Started with an Unsearchable Thought

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It started with a blog post. Somehow in writing it, I had a new thought.

Seems a good reason NOT to be a thought leader . . . new thoughts aren’t searchable.

That thought caught a conversation about how our thoughts might connect us.

In the comment box, Alina Popescu said

Hi Liz! New thoughts are not searchable because they don’t need to [be]. They have their own little strategy to finding their way to people. I did not use a search to get to your blog. However, I got here and ceased to be a stranger 🙂 So who cares if you can’t search them? Most of us find new thoughts or are provoked to think exactly when they most need it.

Via trackback, Billy Smith said

It is about discovering, not being discovered « The Organic Leadership Blog

Last night on the telephone, I asked Lorelle VanFossen what she thought. We discussed what we thought about thoughts finding us in the universe. She talked about the “Great Cosmic Muffin,” and she said

You have to write about this in the way only Liz can. It’s important. Don’t leave that thought behind. Send out a new one. Show them how.

It’s hard to say, “no,” to Lorelle.

Do Thoughts Find Us? I Mean Really

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I know that, in the past year, I was thinking some thoughts that weren’t the best. What they brought weren’t the best folks or events.

With every knock, I lost a bit of who I am.

I started listening to EVERYONE, but myself.

Each new problem child outdistanced the last.

I can list unhappy endings one by one.
Yeah, it’s a list, and the list gets progressively — exponentially — more detrimental.

If I constantly flinch, isn’t inevitable that I’ll get hit? Why is that?

Are my thoughts on my sleeve? Do they somehow transmit? I have trouble believing that 1, 2, 3, 4 — small, medium, large, extra large — could be all a coincidence. It just doesn’t seem that coincidence is that organized.

Even more.

When I decided that I’d had enough, when I said, “I’m taking this ‘kick me’ sign off. No more. It’s the end of this rotten stuff,” within hours new things, good things, things I love, started happening. Is that coincidence too?

I think not.

Go ahead, believe whatever your heart will let you.

If right now, I send out this thought on a Saturday, when most folks are out and not reading blogs, will it find you before it normally would?

When I answered Alina’s comment up above, I wrote this descriptive phrase in the comment box.

New thoughts on a mission to find new thinkers.

Alina wrote this comment in response.

Liz, that sounds like a pretty good slogan.

Does it mean that a new tagline came to find me and my blog?

Liz's Signature

SOB Business Cafe 11-02-07

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Chrisg says “… Social Media is a popularity contest. It’s a lot like high school really. Being nice is great, but being popular and having lots of friends is far more important.”

StartUp Princess says, “Instead of getting depressed today about how far I have to go to get organized and establish much needed systems to run my life, family, and business better, I decided to look at what systems ARE working and then see how I can tweak them up for other areas.”

Dosh Dosh says, ” By examining your intentions or goals, you can reverse-engineer your entire blog and easily determine what type of content you should create in order to have the best chances of achieving your aims.”

Smart, Wealthy, Rich says “Well, the goal was to get 1000 subscribers in the first month. Which would have been quite awesome, but it didn’t happen. Instead, it took 3 months to get 1261 RSS readers. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is pretty nice! 🙂

Sometimes you gotta aim high, and then re-adjust. That’s what I did.”

Steve Olson asks, “Some common headlines I see are about how the poor are getting poorer, the middle class is losing ground, and that there is less opportunity today than in the past. But is it true?”

the Artsy Asylum says, “Truth be told not many people can afford the time to spend hours helping us create our Second Life presences for goodwill alone – so many of us do it ourselves and go through multiple incarnations before we get it even close to what we want. It’s not a pretty process.”

Related ala carte selections include

Orbit Now! says, “Here is my spin. It is perhaps NOT as sticky, but that should come as a surprise to no one.”

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Coffee Cups, People, and Magic

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I've been thinking . . .

about magic.

Last November I found journal on a bookshelf in my hallway. It was 10 years old.

In a short passage, I’d remarked on how I overlook my coffee cup, though I interact with it daily. I thought about the people I overlook in the same way.

I wrote about that last year, about what happens when I remember not to do that.

coffee cup

I listen now. I listen. I’ve learned that magic happens when I listen. That people show me, tell me wonderful things about themselves. It’s as if they wait for someone who values what they say and then, they bring out their gifts and give them freely.

I look at my coffee cup. I used to think it was tool. Now I know it holds what I decide — a magic sweet as life.

This weekend I intend to listen with all my might.

Because I was right. Magic is sweet as life.

Liz's Signature

Comments 441- 680+: 34 Links from Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

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Indescribable! — Part 3 birthday balloon

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On October 24, 2007, Successful Blog celebrated our 2nd birthday since my first post here. YEA!! It was a wonderful time.

Every person who came was a gift to me. Every voice that spoke was heard. I went back and read every word. Thank you for all coming around.

My dad wasn’t here, but this is the kind of birthday that would have happened in his saloon. I know. I know. I was there.

Thank you for the successful and outstanding links that you shared.

To end this I’d like to take a quote from the post at the CustServ blog. Meikah said it in such lovely words.

The road is long and bumpy at times, but with everyone’s help, I know we can make a difference.

Don’t forget the Good Blogs made an SOB widget!! Get the code for the SOB widget here.

I’m one lucky blogger to know all of you!
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
The Mic Is On: Happy 2nd Birthday to SOBs Everywhere!