Monthly Archives: June 2012

Taking control of Life [Part III Dont break the chain]

This is a supplementary/add-on post to my earlier post about 30-days challenge. On the same line I recently made a dont break the chain calendar and posted in my ttbid blog. Dont break the chain is motivational chart for your long term goals. Read the details and description of how to use it.
Click here to directly download the chart. I know you’re gonna thank me for this 😉

Taking control of life [Part-II 30 days Matt Cutts way]

Doing things first hand is ^greater^ than reading, analysing or experiencing it vicariously. You cannot shape up career or life in general, simply by reading Tony Robbins. The progress starts when you actually start implementing what you study or what you know ‘should be done’.
I see blogs- writing about procrastination & not doing/delaying things that you want to do. It’s everywhere & I might have written something similar in past as well.
I’ve been reading Matt Cutt’s blog & his updates through social media streams (since years) and I was fascinated by his 30-day challenge. I wanted to share the idea with my friends (and those who’re reading this) but I knew I’m not eligible to preach it, unless, I do it first-hand. So I tried it myself few days back. I know it’s a great concept & we see the results in MattCutts’ blog regularly. For some (especially those who’re not webmasters/SEO enthusiasts), his blog articles are too lengthy, so I’m attaching his famous video clip of speech at TED instead. It’s concise.
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Quoting verbatim from his speech:

A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit — like watching the news — from your life.
There’s a few things I learned while doing these 30-day challenges. The first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture everyday for a month. And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-confidence grew. I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work — for fun. Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that adventurous before I started my 30-day challenges.
I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days.Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000 word novel from scratch in 30 days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’ve written your words for the day. You might be sleep-deprived, but you’ll finish your novel. Now is my book the next great American novel? No. I wrote it in a month. It’s awful. But for the rest of my life, if I meet john Hodgman at a TED party, I don’t have to say, “I’m a computer scientist.” No, no, if I want to I can say, “I’m a novelist.”
So here’s one last thing I’d like to mention. I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There’s nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they’re a ton of fun. But they’re less likely to stick. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 31 looked like this.
So here’s my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to tryand give it a shot for the next 30 days.
Thanks.

So we have live testimony of this formula. Matt Cutts has been inspiration to many, including yours truly. To begin with I started with ‘cleansing’ staying away from online social media for a month. And result was amazing. Not only my addiction to the facebook reduced after 30-days of fast. I also started taking control a typical habit of getting carried away on the web.