Beginner Blogger

Just discovered your blog today, but already like your posts

I’ve taken the first step to starting my blog NinetyPercentAction, but ironically as you can see, I didn’t get very far. Definitely overloading myself with more information than I need – reading other people’s blogs and materials really makes you FEEL as if you’re taking action, but it’s really not. There’s no shortage of great blogs out there (I find myself discovering so many blogs I think are worth reading, my Google Reader is getting quite out of hand), but even though all the info may be useful, if you don’t just start, none of it will be applicable to you.

Thanks for the reminder! Gonna really try to launch my blog in these next few days.

@AY – I LOVE the title of your up and coming blog! Glad you like the posts and hope you keep coming by – but only if it’s in that 10% of the time when you’re not taking action You’ve taken the first step and actually have your blog out there. Many people don’t even get to that stage! Now get cracking on that first blog post and away you go

@Derek – I totally agree. As I said in the post I have SO MANY books and ebooks to read and I’m subscribed to HUNDREDS of RSS feeds. It’s just too much. It’s time to start applying everything you’ve learnt into practice and see what results come of your ACTIONS. Then analyse then perhaps seek more information.

I realised today that I need to snap out of it and actually do something. I spend most of the day doing ‘blogging’ related things but I wasn’t actually taking any action on all the information that I’d taken in. So this post resulted

I don’t think there’s *ever* any harm in researching & consuming the most amount of content you can get your hands on.

Back when I played poker for a living, friends wondered why I still bought almost every poker book that came out and read old ones over again… if you’re not actively learning, then you’re regressing. Keeping your mind sharp and constantly challenging your own way of thinking is paramount for increased success.

There’s a balance, though… Yes, many people just plainly procrastinate, but I think that’s a fixable trait. The underlying issue may be the blogger’s confidence in their decision making – hence reading 300+ blogs for varying opinion, trying too many different ways of doing things, flip-flopping and never fully committing to anything.

It’s one of the prime underpinnings of my blog (veiled in sarcastic wit) that NO ONE IS AN EXPERT. Sure, there’s plenty of people who can show your *their* path to success and many of their strategies can indeed work for you… but remember, you are different, your blog is different, your niche is different. Read up as much as you can, weigh the merits of the advice and then choose what you believe is best… and commit to it!

I recently removed clutters from my emails. I had to delete almost 200-300 emails. Reads 100s and create filters.

I am very bad at handling Information Overload.

@Agent – I tend to just mark all emails as read these days. That’s the new ‘inbox = 0′ for me.

Hey Don,

Loving your comment contribution! Awesome stuff.
For managing people and connections I think the best way is to create a list (can be private) in twitter then use a service like hootsuite or tweetdeck that can implement lists (I’m 90% sure tweetdeck can handle lists).

That way you can have multiple columns of the people you want to chat with on twitter. As long as they’re posting often enough it should be relatively easy to skim through all twitter posts of those you want to stay connected with and communicate with.

Also if you use google reader put the blogs of those you want to connect with regularly into its own folder.

These are just a couple of ways. I’ll write a blog post at some stage where I’ll go through how I keep up to date with everyone and manage to stay connected with the peeps that are important to me!

It’s been awhile since I’ve done it, and I should definitely get back to this, but one way to combat feeling overloaded with information is organizing things. Say for example I check out a blog and I see good advice on how to do something I have wanted to do with my own site. Now say I’ve seen about 15 great articles with tips I want to apply to my site. Instead of feeling like I have way too much information to digest and use all at once, I just bookmark it with a tag such as “to do – archives” or something similar. I was doing this for a while with my Delicious bookmarks, and I started doing it a bit with my StumbleUpon favorites with tags… so every time I get the inkling to change themes, I can just visit my favorites tagged with “wordpress-themes” and I have a plethora of resources I have come across in the past.

It’s definitely good to do some spring cleaning on a regular basis. Like if you are looking at your feeds, and you see some that have not provided you any useful information in ages… just go ahead and unsubscribe. And when you do subscribe to feeds, be sure to organize them in groups, that way when you’re in the mood to read about social media, the feeds are all in one folder / tag. I find that keeps me from getting too overloaded with info, while at the same time I can keep up with lots of new sites as well.

~ Kristi

I completely agree with this – I always need to do the ’spring clean’ every now and again. I’ve started to realise that I don’t even miss out from not getting those emails: I benefit from it! I stay subscribed to the people who I enjoy reading or who I’ve formed a relationship with like you say.

To be honest, when I think back over the week about my blog it’s true I spent a lot of time procrastinating and clicking through to random things instead of actually writing! In fact, I’d wanted to get a few posts scheduled to go over the Christmas period but never got round to it.

I suppose I should stop commenting and go write

Great content in your post Sarg.

If there is anything that is more detrimental to successful blogging, it is information overload added to procrastination.

I have been through both of these and it is not fun to try to break the trend (spring cleaning , as you so nicely put it).

The one problem that i have is that i like to know alot about what i am writing about, so i get researching the topic i am going to post, and i end up spending so much time researching, that i lose focus on why i started the research in the first place. This tends to cause poorer quality posts then i would like. Its just another bad habit i have to work on.

Thanks again for the kick in the butt, reminding me to cleanup my own act.

Dwayne QUist

Sarge,

I find it’s easier for to keep up with blogs through Twitter. I also use Diigo (not Digg) for bookmarking and what’s cool about Diigo is that I can highlight the important text that I want to come back to. That way I don’t need to read the article again to find the parts I like. I can also keep everything in different lists so for example if I’m researching “podcasting” or “lifestreaming”, I have those articles in different lists on Diigo.

@Ileane

Thanks for this

I think it’s really important to constantly be re-evaluating the information your consuming because after a while your needs change and you don’t need that content anymore. This is particularly important from digital perspective as “digital clutter” can build up and more importantly, stay around if you don’t keep on top of it

Great inspirational post. I agree that many bloggers do a lot of time wasting instead of taking action. Just do it! I will be including this post in my weekly Sunday’s Best round up.

[...] How to deal with information overload and take action – Beginner Blogger – Sarge writes a good inspirational post that prompts you to take action. [...]

Yeah i think there is a big issue where people spend there lives reading about what they need to do with their blog without going out and actually doing it! Some of the biggest lessons that I have personally learnt from blogging have not come from reading sites like this but by actually going out and making the mistake yourself. Once you see how stupid your mistake is you won;t make it again and no amount of reading will teach you lessons like that. There is no harm reading though to get a little inspiration and them implementing it bit by bit!

The biggest problem with websites coming to a stand still is inspiration and as Niall said then trying to find out how others are doing it.

I did a post called stop reading this, which basically said to my readers to stop dreaming, stop reading other sites and get to work on their own.

It can be too easy to lose your way and then wonder why your traffic is lower than a slugs belly, when you had the idea to set up your website, it was a great idea, it still is, just work hard and keep focused.

Everytime you have a post idea write the title in you draft software or write it on a scrap piece of paper with one or two bullet points or brainstorm map.

Great post, re-tweeting now

@James – sounds like a post I did too – called OMFG just stick to your goals! Thanks for the RT

@Dick – WOW. Just read your blog post. I’m really glad I was able to inspire you and you dedicated a whole blog post based around this post. Hope I can continue to motivate you with future blog posts! Thanks for stopping by and checking out BB

And yes I will be putting some shrimps on the barbie on Christmas Day haha

Everything well said. Over eagerness on blogging may sometimes get one to have a daily bombardment of tons of information.

I myself experience that as I was just starting; and it causes lots of headache to me as I spend so much time daily on my blogging.

But now my blog is doing ok, I have a more relaxed stance on my blogging activities.

@Eric – Exactly. It’s like a cycle isn’t it? Study, plan, practice, learn, study, plan, practice etc. You learn from your mistakes, read how to improve, plan your next attack and take action!

@Elmot – There is SO MUCH information out there. You have to pick a specific area you want to improve on, study up on that then take action. If you try to take on too much at once you get overloaded and your mind doesn’t focus.

That’s great you’re more relaxed about your blog. Thanks for stopping by!

@Sundeep – I’m sort of the opposite. I WANT all the information I can get in a specific topic I’m focusing on. The problem is that there is generally too much information out there that you can possibly comprehend and you have to set yourself a time limit or certain point where you stop taking in so much information and start actually producing something from what you’ve learnt.

You are so right! I’m constantly researching and finding great ideas, but learning about those ideas doesn’t turn into action because I’m piling new information on top of old information. I wrote about my view of actually going through this information overload a few weeks back in my blog. http://yourpetstoreblog.com/2009/11/19/so-little-time

Brilliant idea sarge! This post serves as a very good eye-opener to the bloggers. This idea of yours can really give bloggers more ideas on learning blogging.