5 lessons from my first week in blogging

Wow! I think I've learned a lot in the last week. It's been a pretty amazing experience.

Here is a bit of rundown on what I've learned:

1. In order to start a blog you need to just start the damn thing. This is not a joke. As I say in About the Busy Bee - I'm a procrastinator. I started thinking about a blog, then I started reading blogs, then blogs about starting a blog etc. I would probably have continued on researching and planning until I completely abandoned the idea had Mr Busy Bee not said to me, "Shouldn't you just start a blog and see if you enjoy it? You'll work it out if you experiment with it." Brilliant!! So just get out there and experiment.
2. All the websites told me how easy it is to start a blog - it only takes five minutes. Yes, that's true, but it took me a little while to work out how to tinker with the layout. Don't let it get you down if you don't pick it up straight away. I've certainly got a lot to learn, but I'm really enjoying the learning process.
3. Social media helps to get your blog out there, but it also incredibly distracting! I'm not one for social media ordinarily, but it has taken up a lot of my time (as discussed in the blog post: How social media made me anti-social). Keep your eye on the prize. If you want anyone to read your blog, you do have to get it out there, but can you can lose HOURS playing on Facebook and Twitter.
4. Reach out. I reached out to a couple of people whose work I admire, beginner bloggers like myself and professionals. All were exceptionally kind to me and I was flattered that they took the time to give such genuine responses. If you genuinely love someone's work, let them know. I guess we all need a pat on the back occasionally.
5. Blogging is fun! I've had a great time planning my blogposts, playing with pictures and finding like-minded bloggers. I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of people reading my blog (some don't even know me) and that's giving me the courage and inspiration to continue on into the second week. 

So there you go. By no means do I think I've got this thing worked out and no doubt one day I'll look back at these early posts and think they are terrible, but for now I will settle for being incredibly happy that I'm having fun and learning. Surely that is the very best reason to do something.

Empty rewards from little sugar coated tasks

I've been reading Daniel Levitan's "The Organized Mind" (2014). I say reading, but that's probably very generous and makes me sound more intellectual than I actually am. It's probably more correct to say that I jump through the book like a bunny that's had too much caffiene - which is probably how I go about most things in my life!

Ordinarily, I'm more of a Marian Keyes or Mhairi McFarlane kind of girl, but I'm trying to shake things up as a better life investigator - expand the mind you might say.

But, I've gone off topic like the caffeine bunny that I am.

I'm a multi-tasker from way back. I've gotten worse as I've gotten older and jammed more things into the limited minutes in my day. When Princess Sparkles was 6 months old I went back to work a couple of days a week and I was still doing my Masters in Business Administration (don't judge me - I'm the main income earner in the family and I was SO close to finishing that damn masters that I don't actually use in my corporate escapee job). There are only so many hours in the day and I had to multi-task like a demon.

Daniel Levitan (The Organized Mind, 2014, p 170) says:
"In multi-tasking, we unknowingly enter an addiction loop, as the brain's novelty centers become rewarded for processing shy new stimuli, to the detriment of our prefrontal cortex, which wants to stay on task and gain the rewards of sustained effort and attention. We need to train ourselves to go for the long reward, and forgo the short one."

That's me!! I'm so addicted to achieving things that I definitely forego the long reward in order to get the kick of "achieving" something. I took the day off work today so that I could write an essay for a competition. It's quite an intellectual thing about addressing gender parity and there is REALLY good prize money. But here I am writing my blog because:

• It will take me most of the day to even get a draft of that essay done, so no immediate reward there
• Most likely thousands of people will enter the competition, so I won't win it anyway (one day we might talk about my self esteem issues, but that's for another day)
• It's intellectual so I have to turn my brain into serious mode and it just doesn't like being there.

So here I am foregoing the reward of actually writing something important that I'm passionate about because I'd addicted to shiny new stimuli and "empty rewards from little sugar coasted tasks" (a great phrase that I'm pretty sure I nicked from Levitan, D, The Organized Mind 2014).

Is anyone else out there out there addicted to "achieving" (ahem... just a little sarcasm there on my part) and multi-tasking? How far do you go with your multi-tasking and what do you do to try and manage it?