New Routine : Be More with Less

Deeper Week 3

Ever wonder why Less is More?

Everyone should consider to remain flexible with social media. What works three months ago, may not work today. What works today, may not work three weeks from now. And I am almost on my final week away from Facebook.

I believe this principle can be applied to blogging ... traffic and frequency are directly correlated.

The more you post, the greater your traffic.
The more you practice, the better you get at it.

This is true when you are relatively new blogger like me, seeing my traffic grow in 2011 was self-rewarding, however I started questioning the content, time, purpose and preparation ... I didn't want to be posting too much, get burnout or become too noisy.

I have to agree (with Michael Hyatt, Jeff Goins, Ali Luke & Darren Rowse) that if I could get the same amount of traffic with half the posts, I could probably gain several hours each week that could be invested in other activities. I could read more, research and choose which quality knowledge to share.

My friends are busy everyday. Doesn't mean they don't enjoy spending time reading my post, they just don't have the time to keep up. Others might need some time between post to process the data and apply it. We all have different skills, personalities, and constraints on our time and energy.

My plan is to keep my post short and simple (to the point). Planning ahead will probably help me avoid posting sub-standard content when I am in a rush.

Routines play a very important role, because they make room for other things. I have established a weekly routine, it gets me going in the right direction, stay focus, otherwise I spend a lot of time playing catch up. The feeling of being left behind is indeed stressful. But always remember to make your own, simply copying with someone else’s routine probably won’t work.

Honestly, I only write when I feel inspired, writing to a weekly set schedule doesn't work for me. Why? It is not fun, I used all my creative juices and imagination at work. Therefore blogging shouldn’t be a chore, I figure if posting frequently isn’t working out for me, it’s probably not working well for my readers either.

I particularly like what Seth Godin said when Brian Clark asked him how he wrote every day. Seth refused to answer, and then he said "There is this feeling that if we ate the same breakfast cereal Stephen King ate, then we’d be able to write like Stephen King writes."

Seriously, Why Bother?

Deeper Week 2

I came across a very interesting article by Gill Matthewson, as she reflects on the continuing disappearance of women from architecture and why we should care.

In 2002 Paula Whitman indicated that women comprised 43% of architecture students in Australia. Their representation in the profession varied from state to state: 11.6% of registered architects in Queensland, 15% in New South Wales. Victoria has the highest proportion of women registered at 18.2% (I probably contributed 0.001%)

Despite near gender parity at architecture schools and in graduation numbers, women still constitute just 20% of registered architects in Australia in 2012 ... and women earn less that men. (absolutely shocking)

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) surveys states that about 86% of architects practice in small offices (which means less than 5 people), the average income for architects is less than the award for carpenters/ draft person (this is true) and many architects practice part time (often ‘moonlighting’ between employee architects and private commission).

The world is simply not constructed in a way that allows everyone to “just get on and do what they want to do”. Gender is, of course, inevitable – it’s a critical part of our identities. As soon as we meet someone we make assumptions about who they are and how we might want or need to interact with them; however assumptions do make social life manageable.

We base these assumptions on everything from what people look like (including their gender, what they wear, what they carry, their age, ethnicity, height, etc.) to what they sound like (accent, type of words and other noises they use, etc.). But gender carries a lot of weight and who can disagree?

Where things come unstuck is when simplistic stereotypes kick in and we get gender judgement: because I am a woman, or a man, I will ‘naturally’ act, react, think, work, play, design, live, desire, etc. in a particular way. These valuing systems are at times really obvious and at other times very subtle. And because gender is a basic building block of how a society operates therefore judgement are based on gender ripples through everything from the small to large scale.

It is complicated ...