Every few months I take a look at my blog and start asking the following questions:

• How do I get more readers?
• Should I figure out what my blog is about?
• Should I redesign my site?

And the list goes on and on…

See here’s what I always forget – lamiki.com is not, nor was it ever intended to be, strategic to the level that a business blog needs to be. And while I have gotten jobs and business from my blog, it is not a business.

Your First Blog is Your First Blog

As I experienced this crisis last night and wept, dramatically, to my husband, he brought up a good point – your first blog is like your first AOL screen name, dedicated to whatever you’re obsessed with at the time and once you grow out of that phase, you get a new one.

My husband is smart. And, ironically, the name lamiki was derived from my first AOL name.

Goals are Great, but Make Sure You Want Them

Five months ago I outlined my goals for the year and my blog, twice. I also outlined a very detailed plan of everything I was going to focus on with my blog for the year. Things like guest posting, a redesign, and a tighter content strategy – things that are included in that first list and much, much more. (Did you know that I’m ambitious?) And then in March I set a new goal:

Now I have one achievable, measurable goal. One that does not require the content calendars that I love to create, yet love to hate. One “must have” goal every single month when it comes to my blog and everything else has been demoted from the “required” list to the “would be nice” list of things I want to do.

My blog is not a business. It’s a passion project created to give me a place to write and share how I see the world. There is no monetization strategy and if I decide that’s something I want to do, there will be a new domain.

In the end, we all have an enormous amount of stress and responsibilities that we juggle every single day. And if something in your life that’s supposed to give you pleasure and a break from it all starts giving you stress, you need to make a change.

Photo Credit: Snapies

When I was seven years old my bedtime was 8pm. A time that is tolerable during the winter but excruciating in the spring after daylight savings time.

On Easter that year as I was getting ready to go to bed, I peaked out of my bedroom window and saw the neighbor kid across the street in her front yard hunting Easter eggs. And the worst part – she was two years younger than me! Talk about not fair!

It’s around that time in life that many kids learn how to say, “You’re not the boss of me” and ache for a day when we will be able to make our own rules about our own life.

Well, judging by the popularity of content on the Internet, general professional knowledge – generally people become overwhelmed when presented with too many choices.

Why? For a number of reasons that all boil down to being afraid about making the wrong decision and missing an opportunity. Often times it’s called the paradox of choice.

That’s right, fear.

Don’t worry; I’m in this boat too. It’s why I ask my husband if I should do something instead of the other so that if I make the wrong decision, I have him to blame (his words, not mine).

So, this week, here is a collection of articles with advice on things that you should do, things you shouldn’t do, and one more to make life a little easier.

Things You Should Do

Ten Things I Want To Tell Teenage Girls by Kate Conner on Lily Pads

Read this because: You were a teenager once, know someone who is a teenager, or who will be one soon.

You are beautiful. You are valuable. You are enough.

Six Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs by Jay Goltz on The New York Times

Read this because: You’re like me and have big plans to be a founding entrepreneur some day. But you’re scared (see above) that you don’t have the character profile or, hell, the DNA to be one. But all soft skills can be honed and the way you look at the world can be finessed. View this list as six things to work on while you wait for that some day to arrive.

10 Rules for Brilliant Women by Tara Sophia Mohr on We Unite

Read this because: You don’t know who Tara Sophia Mohr is and have never read her “10 Rules” before.

I first read Tara’s 10 Rules shortly after it was first published on the Huffington Post. After that, I got to know her through The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign and had the pleasure of attending one of her salons last spring when she was in Seattle. Tara is a writer who is dedicated to coaching women leaders on how to sit at the table, speak up, take bold actions in the world.

Bonus reading material: Here’s the post I wrote as part of the Girl Effect Blogging Campaign this past year: Change the Statistics.

A little bit is a lot. By Sarah K. Peck on It Starts With

Read this because: We all procrastinate a lot. We turn small tasks into daunting affairs that paralyze us and if we just change our perspective, we can get it down. Sarah K. Peck does an amazing job of illustrating exactly what procrastination looks like, and how to overcome it in a way that’s not so scary anymore.

How to Influence People: The Most Overlooked Secret by Cody Goins on Goins, Writer

Read this because: I love it when bloggers of all shapes and sizes share their “little known” secrets, and this is one that could change how you approach life.

Things You Should Not Do

3 Words That Guarantee Failure by Geoffrey James on Inc.com

Read this because: You love brainstorming big ideas and setting goals, and what’s better is you’re into meeting them. But there’s one thing you can say after setting a goal that will determine if you will succeed or not – three words that you might say that will subconsciously put you on the path towards failure.

For the record: You can say those three words when it comes to something like eating food or learning a new skill.

The 5 Silent Career Killers For Women by Lauren Carlson on Women 2.0

Read this because: Whether you’re a man or a woman, there are things that you might be doing to sabotage your career. (Confession: I do 4 out of 5 of the things on this list on a daily basis, in my career and otherwise). Check out this list and start altering your behavior now. Carlson goes into more detail about each “silent killer” on her own site and in this blog post.

15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly by Brian Clark on Copyblogger

Read this because: If you can’t write or talk good, than you just look silly. And that will do more damage to you then anything written above.

Now View The World Through the Eyes of Calvin and Hobbes

Sixteen Things Calvin and Hobbes Said Better Than Anyone Else by Edd McCracken on Book Riot

Read this because: I’ve given you a lot to think about. And when the world is overwhelming and you need to take a break on self-actualization, go back to the basics and learn how Calvin and Hobbes made sense of the world better than anyone else could.

What did you read this week?

Photo Credit: Pepsix
Kung Fu Calvin fan art illustrated by John Kimball

I am quickly becoming obsessed with making goals and am flirting with the danger-zone of over-planning and not getting anything done. But it is the second day of the New Year, so I’m still in the safe zone, right?

Today was New Year’s Day observed, which meant I had the day off work and since Johnny was working from home, that meant the day was all for me.

I slept in (yay!), had a home cooked breakfast with the man, ran off to meet another friend for coffee and to talk about our year ahead, had lunch with one of my truest, most amazing friends, made it to CrossFit (deadlifts, hang snatches, and overhead squats, oh my!), and am now enjoying some writing time. This year rocks already.

Put Your Goals Somewhere That You Can See Them

In following my track record of making goals and achieving them, the sure-fire way for me to fall flat on my face and not get something done is to write out a set of goals and then hide them. Sure, this works really well when cleaning my desk and I find my goals stacked between that book I didn’t finish and that notebook that has pages left unfilled (surprise!). And even though when it happens, I’m usually surprised by how many of those goals I actually accomplished. And while it’s been proven that the very act of writing down goals increases your likelihood of achieving them, it’s hard to be unintentionally intentional.

So this afternoon I went through my goals for the year and picked three things that I want to make sure I carry with me through the year. They are my goals, mantras, and things that could be roadblocks between achieving my goals this year.

From there, I wrote down five or six things for each category on index cards and literally pasted them to the wall of my office.

I used the red light/green light approach to organizing these three categories:

• Goals on green cards, as that’s where I want to go.
• Mantras on yellow cards, as I’ll probably be stalled when I need to remember them.
• Roadblocks go on pink cards, as those are things I need to stop doing. (more…)

There are two kinds of end of the year/New Year blog posts to write. The first is a reflection of the previous year – everything you did, everything you didn’t, what you’re proud of, and what you’re not. And the second is a laundry list of “do’s” and “don’ts” for how to make the next year rock much harder than the last.

And then there’s a third, which doesn’t reveal anything about the writer but gives you, the reader, a map of how you can stick to your resolutions for the first time ever.

Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work Out

New Year’s Resolutions are like plans – you write them for how you’re feeling (usually fat) at that time (post-holidays) for the future (that has yet to be written) – and they never work out. They look great on paper, but horrible in execution because they all lack one thing – foresight and the understanding that you have to sacrifice something to accomplish what you need (and the ability to adjust to continue the momentum).

Instead of resolutions or plans, I make goals. I did this unknowingly as I entered 2010 and consciously as I entered 2011. I met the three goals I set in 2010 but not all of the goals I set for myself in 2011. While all of this past year’s goals looked great in December 2010, by mid-2011, an imbalance between work and life happened and parts of those goals were prioritized while others were not. Plus I set too many goals.

I don’t feel like 2011 was a failure, but just plain weird. In the Christmas letter John and I sent to our family, I summarized the year as one of “change,” and by God, if that isn’t true.

2011 started with a lot of oomph, passion, and excitement as things were set in place that I had been working hard towards achieving in the previous year and a half. But I got burnt out early, outgrew that opportunity faster than I imagined, and a new opportunity revealed itself and I jumped on it. If 2011 was a shape it would look like a giant “U” with a big, deep dip in the middle.

A New Template for Plotting World Domination in 2012

Earlier this week, my husband and I spent the evening working through Benny Hsu of Get Busy Living’s 2011 Year in Review Worksheet. What I like about his template is it focuses on how the previous year ended so you can reflect on what you’re proud of, what you accomplished, what you learned, what didn’t work, and where you’d like to see yourself in the future.

Benny’s worksheet helps you see where you want to go by reviewing where you came. It’s similar to racing a car – they say that you should look at where you want the car to go, not at the wall that you don’t want to run into.

Goals, plans, and strategies are the same way – look at where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go. (more…)

Today is the last day of November which means that all of the men who grew ‘staches for Movember can finally shave, we all flip our calendars and freak out about the goals we have left to meet in 2011, and it is the end of National Blog Posting Month. This is my second year at posting one blog post every day for the month of November and – woah – what a month it’s been!

Goals and Milestones

On November 1st I made six goals for myself to keep this month. Here’s how I did:

1. Post at least one blog every single day

By the time I publish my recap, I’ll have published 27 blog posts in a month with 30 days. I skipped three days; one was because I was out with friends and forgot and two were because it was the first week of my new job and I was tired.

This weekend I read Om Malik’s list of lessons he learned from ten years of blogging and he shared something Doc Searls said: “Blog if you have something to say and respect your reader’s time. If you respect their time, they are going to give you some time of their day.” And while there are a few blog posts I wrote this month that I categorize as “throw away” posts (meaning that I could have gone without writing them because I was too exhausted from life, uninspired, was unwilling to write, or had plain and simple writer’s block), every single post that I wrote and published went live before midnight and that’s an awesome accomplishment.

2. Stick to the content calendar

Who was I kidding when I wrote this? My blog is the place where I can write about “life according to Laura,” and this life says that content calendars are great, but mostly irrelevant for whatever I’m feeling right here and right now.

Screw that.

Okay, okay, so I probably stuck with the content calendar 30% of the time, like today and this recap. I’ve had this recap blog post planned for an entire month

3. Be fearless

Yep, did that, but not without hesitation.

4. Increase traffic

I totally nailed this goal and my traffic for the month of November 2011 was up 56% from November 2010. I’m proud of achieving this goal.

5. No epic blog posts

I made sure not to write or publish any “epic” blog posts this year. Epic blog posts are essays or articles that could honestly be a senior-level college thesis. They include a very strong point of view and research to back that up. And they take a lot of thought to write and a lot of time to edit. Epic blog posts should not be cranked out in 2-4 hours, but days or weeks.

While I technically didn’t write any epic blog posts this year, there were three blog posts that were about timely subjects and I wrote them a day or two in advance. The problem, you see, is that NaBloPoMo isn’t about writing everyday, it’s about posting every day. So there were a few nights where I cranked out that day’s post, published it, and went straight to writing the next one. That was a little hard, but it sure was fun to relax and not write the next night.

Small victories

Oh, and the best part about not writing epic blog posts is I’ve been listening – to what you’re responding to in my posts, to what other bloggers are writing and asking about – and I’ve put all of those ideas in a queue and I’m very excited to dive deeply into those topics. So get ready.

6. Read one new blog every single day

I’ve been reading a lot this month, but I haven’t been commenting as much as I wanted to. Why? I quit my job and started another one. Oh, and I’ve been blogging. A lot. So suck it. It happens.

Milestones and big announcements

• I came out as a writer, a real writer (and my first writing professor responded to it)
• I quit my job
• I started a new job
• I started a new weekly-roundup series
• My husband became an artist
• My friend launched his daily art project
• I started a Facebook page for my blog (Toss a girl a like?)
• Yesterday, I published my 100th blog post on lamiki.com

Bragging rights

• 500 Words or Less – I wrote a blog post about something that a writer said at an event and he wrote a response back. That was pretty awesome.
• Hipster Generation of Entrepreneurs – I I wrote a response to the New York Times article about the Entrepreneurial Generation and I was quoted in an article on GeekWire in response to the same NYT article – big win in my world.

Blogs I had the most fun writing

• Happy Thanksgiving Eve – I had the most fun writing this post and telling you not to listen to every other blogger and Tweet during Thanksgiving (Okay, ‘fess up, who stayed online all weekend?)
• Picturing My True Identity – Because who doesn’t love sharing photos of themselves from high school?
• That Blog Post About my Cats – Even though cats may rule the Internet, being a cat lady is still does not. This was one of the most creative posts I wrote and, let’s be honest here, I have cats, two of them, and they’re pretty awesome.

So long, NaBloPoMo, we’ll meet again!

I had fun this month. And while I really think that the 2010 NaBloPoMo experiment was my breakout year, I kicked ass this year and I’m emerging from the 2011 NaBloPoMo season as a better writer who is pretty damn good at blogging. And as a result, I know you and myself a lot better. Thank you for being with me on this journey.

What’s next? Not a new blog post on Thursday, December 1st, but you will see a new post this weekend.

Stay tuned boys and girls. And thank you for being here with me.

Photo Credit: Lorena Cupcake