5 Simple Ways To Manage Stress

You may have noticed that I didn’t write as much as usual here. There’s a good reason for this: I’m moving out. I left behind my house in the suburbs, rented a small apartment downtown and I’m one step closer to a full digital nomad lifestyle. The causes and effects of this move have much deeper implications that I can cover in only one blog post. I think I may talk about some of them in the upcoming weeks. For now, it’s enough to tell that life is rapidly settling in a new shape for me.

The process of moving out wasn’t without complications. And, since it’s, well, a process still unfolding, I can safely tell that it’s still filled with complications. From the moment I decided to look after a new place until this very moment, things rapidly changed their peaceful course to a roller coaster one. And, during this process, guess what I experienced the most (a part the normal joy, exhilaration, excitement and deep transformations created by a life changing experience)? Yeap, stress

As usual, when I stumble upon some unusual situation, I try to extract as much meaning and learning as I can. And here are 5 things I learned about how one should manage stress in the last 2 weeks.

1. Never Take A Decision On An Empty Stomach

I bet you were waiting for something smart and, possibly, hard to understand as the first tip. Sorry to disappoint you, but this proved to be one of the best rules of coping with stress that I learned in the last 2 weeks. And there are serious reasons for that.

From a physiological point of view, unless you’re feasting for a while now, and your metabolism is already adapted, hunger will adversely affect your brain. You won’t be able to send the correct information to your brain nor to get the correct answer. Your biology will literally be changed and our biology is directly affecting the way we process information.

From a psychological point of view, when you experience a major shortage in your mental ecosystem (like a fundamental need still unfulfilled) you’ll instantly try to compensate. You will be pressured to take the best short term decision, so you can get back to your meal. In other words, you’ll trade the long term benefits of your decision for a short term improvement in your satisfaction balance.

2. Never Take A Decision When You Didn’t Have Enough Sleep

That’s pretty much the same as above, but with a few important differences. Sleep deprivation can act as a double edge sword. On one side, it can give sudden insights, intuitions or it can make you a better problem solver, but on the other side, it can really fog your conscious field. The better problem solving abilities are created because of the shift in perspective you get when you’re lucid for more time, but at the same time, your biology can’t really cope with these prolonged intervals of sleep imbalance.

Won’t get into body chemistry details here (do a search for serotonin, if you’re really into it) but it’s enough to let you know that you should definitely postpone any important decision for a time when you’ll have the minimum hours of sleep under your belt.

Not to mention that the mere ability to negotiate and postpone important decisions for a better moment will be in itself an important stress relief.

3. Establish Clear Exit Points

Stressful situations may spiral for ever if you don’t establish clear exit points. There are only 24 hours in the day, and you can’t possibly finish every thing that you want to in order to bring back order into your life. Chaos will have this tendency to feed itself with the very raw energy you spend to beat it, if you don’t apply short corrections. So, instead of playing the hero that stays up all night packing furniture, just create some mental milestones and, as you reach each and every one of them, get them out of your mind.

If you don’t establish clear exit points, the result will be that you will soon be out of fuel. In your desperate attempt to get out of the stressful situation, you will sink more and more, simply because you didn’t establish when exactly you’re “out”.

This happens more often than you think, and I’m not talking only about stress spikes, but also about more peaceful periods of our life. How do you decide when to relax and when to work? How do you put these mental stops between doing stuff and analyzing what you did?

4. One Thing At A Time

Set short term goals that have to be met in order to move further. During stressful situations, because we’re still acting on the flight or fight impulse, we want to solve everything in one move. In my experience this isn’t happening. Never. Instead, we can improve several parts of the situations and gradually approach the rest of it.

It really goes hand in hand with number 3, when you have to establish clear exit points, but here it’s more on the “break it down in edible chunks” side. Regardless of the size of the stressful situation, it can always be broken down in smaller pieces. Do this process as often as you can and focus only on the next milestone, not on the whole process.

If I’m not doing this I’m almost always paralyzed by the size of the task that I have to solve and the end result is that I can’t move on. On the other side, when I’m breaking it into small chunks, I move forward.

5. Be Flexible

It’s crucial to look around and take advantage of any opportunity that may arise. Especially when we’re stressed we tend to turn inside and completely ignore the outside world, as a mechanism of protection. Instead of doing this, try to keep your eyes open, things may not be as ugly as they seem, as long as you’re ready to act upon your opportunities.

For instance, as I was getting ready to move all my stuff in the new apartment, I completely ignored what would have happen to the house. My focus was only ahead, ignoring what was behind. But as I stepped back for a while, I remembered that somebody, a few months ago, asked if the house was for rent. It wasn’t, at that time. But it could be, now. Called the guy, set up a meeting and in less than 12 hours we reached to a deal.

So, every time you’re getting too trapped in your own battle, do this effort of stepping out of your own skin and look at yourself from the outside. It’s not an easy process, I agree, but it’s one that pays back big time.

***

So what are your tricks on fighting stress?

Introducing The Forums On DragosRoua.com

I think I reached a certain level of interaction and activity which demands new tools. DragosRoua.com has an average of 100.000 unique visitors monthly and many of them are more than just visitors. Not only they leave comments on the blog, but they also send me emails or engage with me on social media.

At this point, I feel like the blog isn’t enough for this. So I started to wonder if launching a forum wouldn’t be a good addition to what is already here (more than 700 articles on self improvement, that is). And, to make a long story short, this is exactly what I did. I will leave the technical details out, and just tell you that the forums are up and ready, go check them out. There is also a new link on the site menu which will always point you in the right direction.

What I Expect From This?

More interaction, more stories, more experiences, many new people entering into my life. Since I embarked on this journey, exactly 3 years ago, I had no idea this blog will have such an enormous impact on my life. Don’t get me wrong, I do know how to set great expectations, but even these expectations proved to be really small compared with what happened.

I met real people all around the world, from New Zealand to Japan, from Las Vegas to Thailand. I am constantly engaged in new and exciting projects. I make a living as a digital nomad. And this is only the visible part .

But I know it can be even more than that. So this where the forum came in. Having and running a forum is a big thing, though. I know, because I had and ran forums before. As part of my network of websites I had two of the most visited forums in Romania, one about cars, with more than 100.000 members, and the other one about recipes, with more than 25.000 members (but more than 400.000 posts – I guess women are a bit more talkative than men ). So this thing will surely add more stuff to do on my agenda, but I’m ready to take it in.

How To Use The Forums

Well, like any other forum on the internet, this one has rules too. I won’t repeat myself here, because there is a pinned post on top of each forum, which will give you an idea about the rules and netiquette. If you want to promote your stuff, feel free to do it in your signature, but don’t overdo it. You don’t like flashlights in your face, so you know what I mean.

If you write, write things that are on topic. Respond, engage, but avoid trolling. I don’t like trolls. They’re boring.

Unless it’s really violent and rude, ranting, as a form of expressing personal concepts, is tolerated. But not much. If you overdo it, you will be kicked out.

Well, I think that’s it.

Let’s chat.

Taming Monkey Number 8 – The Outcome

The official name of my August monkey was “straighten up my finances”. If you came here by accident and you don’t really know what I’m talking about, go ahead and read the introductory post. In brief, I decided to ditch all my new year resolutions in 2011 and instead pick an “inner monkey” each month and try to “tame” it. Read what an inner monkey is.

The Revenue Sources Issue

Initially, I wanted to use the term “problem”, but I realized it will be a little too much to call it problem. In fact, it was just an issue. Basically, my revenue sources were a little bit stretched. During the last 3 years, since I started to write on this blog, I did a lot of experiments in monetization. Some of these experiments generated more revenue than others, obviously. But the whole mechanism wasn’t really oiled. There were a lot of debris floating around. And some of these debris were thoroughly described in the first update about this monkey.

So, where am I now? What are my valid revenue sources and what are the things I should leave behind?

In short, I narrowed the circle of valid revenue sources to only 5 areas: ebooks, partnerships, iOS apps, consulting and live events. There was a strong desire to create an online course and I really wanted to get one done, but it just didn’t happen. So I think I will leave the online courses behind for a while.

Ebooks

This month I launched Brilliantly Better, one of the most challenging books I ever launched so far. In short, the book is a collection of more than 70 articles on this blog, hand picked and edited to create a meaningful package. The online version can be bought for 16.99 (which is a steal, when you think you get more than 500 pages worth of content), the Kindle version can be bought for 9.99 (yes, big difference) and the iBookStore version should come up in a few weeks, at the same price.

One important thing to mention is that I made a video for this ebook, which turned out to be more popular than the book itself. It’s on the sidebar and at the end of this post, feel free to watch it, it’s only a minute. Oh, and if you like it, feel free to share it.

Meanwhile, I have another 5 titles which are continuing to sell, without any specific marketing campaigns, just by being listed on this blog. Here’s a quick list:

• 100 Ways To Live A Better Life: CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore
• 100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life: CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore
• The Productivity Trap: CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore
• The 7 Ages Of An Online Business: CreateSpace | Amazon | Kindle | iBookStore
• Natural Productivity – Assess, Decide, Do: Amazon | Web | Kindle | iBookStore

As a general strategy direction, I think ebooks will make at least 50% of my focus. It’s not only the revenue, which is of course, a steady one, but also the fact that I really like to write. It’s one of the things I’m doing almost effortless and, based on some of the opinions on this blog, it’s something that at least makes people think, if not something that they really enjoy.

Partnerships

I created a new partnership for my WordPress premium framework line of business. It’s called WPGalore, and we’re already working on it. The feature list is ready, the schedule in place, the team assembled and ready to work (it will still be a side project for some of the people involved, though, just to keep the risks low) and there’s even a landing page for you guys. If you want to know more about it, leave your email after you click on the link above and we’ll be in touch.

To be honest, I’m quite thrilled about this new line of revenue, which started early this year and which was almost on the verge of a huge success with WPSumo, if it wasn’t for that team glitch which kinda poisoned the partnership. I’m also happy that I was smart enough to leave a bad partnership behind (please note that the partnership was bad, not the people, all people were ok, we just had different ideas and expectations) and start a new one pretty fast. If everything goes well, we should be up and running sometime this year. We’re targeting November as the month of launch and there are pretty big chances that this will actually happen.

In terms of focus I will give 30% of it to the partnership area.

Oh, there are also another two partnerships in which I’m supposedly involved as a partner/adviser, but these are not even remotely at the same level with WPGalore in terms of management and development. I admit that in WPGalore I’m deeply involved at an operational level, making things happening every day, while in the other two I’m just an observer. I could surely kick some of the assess in those two startups, but I prefer to remain an observer for now and see if things will really take off or not. From the WPSumo experience I can reinforce the fact that the product or the market can be validated, but if the team isn’t, well, everything was in vain. That’s how business function, I suppose.

iOS Apps

When I’m talking iOS apps, I’m talking in fact about iAdd, my iOS implementation of the Assess – Decide – Do framework (just get the book from the list above if you want to know more about it). The app development was stopped, because I decided to wait for iCloud to launch. According to the latest information, this won’t happen until early October. I’m not supposed to talk about the beta releases of iOS 5, although I’m playing with them on a daily basis. All I can tell is that the development proved to be far more tedious than I anticipated. And the return of investment kinda slow.

I will continue to maintain iAdd for iPhone and iPad as I promised, and I will do my best to launch the desktop version by the end of the year. Like this, I will at least know that I created a complete productivity suite for Mac/iOS and take a break for a while from iOS development. In terms of energy and focus this project was really wearing me out. But it’s still a big priority for me, so I will give it at least 10% of my remaining focus. That means that out of 10 hours of work every day, I will dedicate at least one to iAdd.

Consulting and Live Events

I put these two line of revenue in the same paragraph because they’re pretty much similar. And because I don’t intend to give more than a combined 10% of all of my focus to them. Basically, I will just keep myself prepared and updated with all the major trends in this area and I will make sure my skills won’t start to worn out, but I won’t promote any of these specifically. If somebody ask me to provide, I will deliver, but that’s all for now.

The Overall Strategy

Just a few more words before going to the next monkey. As you see, I’m trying to create a mix of passive and active income. The passive income area will be illustrated by the ebooks and iOS apps, which will continue to generate revenue more after the work was finished. In total, they’ll be at around 60% of my focus.

The rest of 40% will be split between my partnerships (which will in turn create some passive income too, based on the business model that will be implemented, but it will require a constant investment of time and value) and my consulting and live events line.

I am pretty sure that I didn’t have any idea about the real balance between my passive and active income before this month, so even if I will take into account only this outcome, this monkey taming can be considered a huge success.

So, 60% passive versus 40% active revenue. It’s not so bad, but it could be so much better.

Monkey Number 9

In September I want to finish, and, if possible, to publish my first fiction book in English. It’s based on some of the stuff I wrote more than 20 years ago, but which still resists to one of the harshest critiques I know,and that would be me. After I read parts of that material again this month, translating a few important parts, I can confirm that. I don’t know if it will be a huge success or an epic blunder, but I know for sure this is one of the oldest monkeys I have.

I’ve been fantasizing to publish that book ever since I was 17. I think it’s time to get this done.

Will see how this goes.

Minimum Life Traveling Baggage

If I look back at the most successful posts on this blog (and there are more than 500 articles published so far) they’re all emerged as part of interactions, not as standalone revelations or epiphanies. They became popular only when they were part of some challenge or response to other bloggers.

I don’t know if this is the rule on the internet, but it’s certainly true for this blog. For instance, 100 Ways To Live A Better Life, a blog post with more than 250.000 unique page views, was part of a challenge from another blogger. A quarter of a million people can’t be wrong.

So, I decided to take on challenges more often. Of course, I will apply some filters. I won’t engage in challenges I don’t like or in stupid link memes. But if there’s something that really rings a bell inside, I will follow. And that’s exactly what happened this morning when I read this blog post by Nina Yau, from Castles In the Air.

In short, it’s a challenge about your fundamental or non-avoidable luggage that you will be willing to take on a distant journey. I dig distant journeys. Been around the world twice, visiting Vegas, Japan, Thailand or New Zealand. Even came up with 44 tips for traveling long distance.

But enough with that. Let’s get back to the point. I split the challenge into 3 main parts. First one is about what I think it’s absolutely necessary to take on a journey. Things I can’t live without. The second part is what I call “nice to have”, things that would be cool to have, but not compulsory. And the third part is about what I will leave behind.

Unavoidable

Things I can’t really leave the house without.

Id papers

From a long experience I know these are fundamental. We live in a world which needs written proof of your existence. Without it, you’re not there. So, I usually take with me my identity card (in Europe I can travel only with that, I don’t need a passport), my driver license and my passport.

Money

In the form of the most used currencies (USD, Euros) or debit cards. I own only one credit card and I keep it topped most of the time, just as an emergency package. The debit cards are used to carry cash in a little bit more flexible way. Never used traveler checks so far.

Basic Digital Gear

By that I mean: laptop, iPhone, iPad. I’m a digital nomad and traveling without any of these won’t make sense.

Pens And A Moleskine

Again, from a long experience I learned that you need to fill in a lot of papers when you travel and if you don’t have a pen handy you will lose a lot of time. The Moleskine is needed as backup if any other digital method of storing information fails me (out of power, broken, etc).

Clothes

For maximum 2 days. A pair of bluejeans, two teeshirts, one shirt, 2 bandanas (I’m hearing my head shaved so I need a way to protect if from sun), socks and underwear. At any decent hotel you can find a DIY washing facility so you don’t need to carry any extra clothing in your luggage. But I still think I need to be covered with clothes for at least 2 days.

A Pair Of Shoes

Only one, and I prefer Caterpillars. They’re good on pretty much any terrain (urban or hiking) and they’re very resistant. I seldom carry more than one pair of shoes in my luggage.

Basic Self Care Stuff

Tooth brush, tooth paste, soap and that also includes some fundamental meds (antibiotics are hard to get in some countries, for instance, and a band-aid never hurts) and sunscreen. After getting burned a few times on some of the most strange meridians of this globe I decided I will never leave home without it.

Backpack

I have a Crumpler which went all over the world with me. But if I didn’t have one I would pick a backpack which can accommodate at least 2 days worth of me: clothes, self-care products and digital gears, and yet will be still easy to carry.

Nice To Have

Things that I usually take with me if I know where I’m going to or if the initial research gave the impression I could.

DSLR Camera

It’s a nice to have equipment but also requires a great deal of attention. So I don’t consider it a fundamental gear.

Local Phone Cards

Not necessary if you’re going there for the first time (and kinda hard to get it in advance) but if you know you’re going there at least a few times per year (like I do with New Zealand) it’s good to have one handy. Prepaid phone and internet cards.

Sun Glasses

I kinda hesitated if I should put it this under unavoidable, but I think you can do without it, and get one pair when you’re at your destination. But again, if you travel a lot and if you’re in some very sunny countries (New Zealand or Australia would be a good example) you need to have a very good piece of equipment with you. It can make a lot of difference.

Extra Clothing

A jacket, a pullover, stuff like that. Just in case the weather goes bad on me.

To Leave Behind

Everything that doesn’t really matters.

Furniture

In fact, all you need is a bed for the night and some tables and chairs every once in a while. You can get those at motels or restaurants.

Car

I did a few trips by car, but it proved to be more cumbersome than I thought. Now, even if I go pretty close, I do it without the car.

Garden

Of course, it’s impossible to take it with you. As much as I love taking care of my vineyard and my cherry tree and my flower garden, I am somehow relieved to leave it back.

TV Set

Of course. Who needs that, anyway?

Kitchen Gear

I like to cook and I do it quite often. But when traveling I’m again relieved to not take care of that.

Maintenance Tasks

These are not technically objects, but they do take a lot of our time and it feels good to leave them behind. Or at least I feel good to leave them behind.

The Aftermath

If you really look at the items you have when you travel, it isn’t that much. Life should really be a holiday and enjoyed as such.

Brilliantly Better – The Ebook

Last Friday I launched – in soft mode – my latest ebook, Brilliantly Better. During the last 48 hours anyone interested in getting it had the chance to buy it at a discounted price, 9.99 USD. As of now, the price of the ebook is at the normal level, meaning 16.99 USD.

Also, a few other things have been completed, adding the final touches to the launch. First, I finished a promo movie. I’m really proud about how it came out, more about that in the next paragraphs. Second, a brand new website has been put in place, and that would be, obviously, Brilliantly Better.

The Brilliantly Better Movie

This is my first attempt ever at making a movie. I don’t know anything abut this so I asked a very good friend to help me out. He’s one of the best guys I know at this thing, with thousands of hours of work on the field, and dozens of commercials already aired. His name is Sega and you can find more about what he does by clicking on that link.

We spent the last Saturday shooting in my living room, experimenting with various lenses and gear and settings and props. I never thought that getting a few minutes of valuable filmed material can be that hard. But it was also incredibly fun. We both enjoyed our time and we did that not because we had to, but because we liked it. Huge difference. Meaning we had a blast

I should also mention that the music and the sound on the movie were also supervised by Sega (I’m the one talking, though, obviously). I should also note that we shoot it with my Canon 450D, with two types of lenses, and the music was made on my iPad, using Garage Band. The editing was completed on Sega’s laptop, on Adobe Premiere. The total number of hours spent on this was around 20.

One of the things that really helped us out was the fact that we have a lot of common beliefs. During the last 3 years Sega has been on his own quest too, traveling through India and Asia. Also, he started to write a novel about his spiritual adventures, the book (in Romanian) should be published soon. Also, we’re both fussy and expensive. But, as you can see, we deliver.

As for the movie, you can see it at the end of this post. If you like it, share it. Also, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

What Should You Expect From The Ebook

I’m sure you already clicked on the first link and you read everything on the Brilliantly Better website. I’m writing this for the 1.34% of you who didn’t.

You will get more 70 articles, 500 pages, each and every one of them carefully selected out of more than 700.000 words I’ve written on my blog since I started it, 3 years ago. It’s just the best of what I wrote so far.

And I won’t say a word more than that, because you should really be at the ebook site now. And because I deeply hate those ridiculously long and shallow sales pages, that way of promoting stuff I did just doesn’t click with me.

Enjoy Brilliantly Better – The Ebook!

Brilliantly Better – The Ebook – The Soft Launch

The time has come for me to release another product. This time, it will be a VERY, VERY different launch. Partly because we’re dealing with a very different product, but partly because I want to experiment a bit in this area. So, without further ado, let’s start this.

Brilliantly Better – The Ebook

During the last 5 years, I wrote more than 500 articles on this blog. That’s more than 500.000 words. For these articles, I received around 9.000 comments. I know the numbers are making you dizzy. They make me dizzy too.

But keeping this blog was never a contest. Was a way to improve my life and (potentially) the life of other people. Or, at least to inspire them so they make their life better themselves. Judging by the numbers, it looks like I did it.

But there’s more to life than just numbers. Sometimes, we feel like we’re somehow directed on our path. Like an invisible string will pull us on our journeys. Looking back at my blog, I can almost see that red string. I can identify topics, concepts, ideas, situations that made this blog so popular, and that also shaped my life for the past 5 years.

Those things, that soft core of my every day activity, that precious marrow, well, that’s what you’re going to find in this book. Brilliantly Better is made up of more than 70 articles, packing together more than 100.000 words, all of this spread on more than 500 pages. It’s the best of my writing. And that’s all I have to say about this book.

And the next thing I’ll do is to will let you have an excerpt of it. Namely, the foreword, the table of contents and the first article, which, by the way, it’s an article very close to my heart, called “Playgrounds And Balloons”. If you want to get the entire book, read on. Otherwise, just click the link below to download the free excerpt.

 Brilliantly Better Excerpt (212)

The Soft Launch

For the first time, I won’t use affiliates for this book. Of course I want it to be popular and reviewed. But I want you to do spread the word about this only if you really enjoyed it. That is for sure a first for me, never did that before.

Also, I will use a soft delay until the book will be fully launched. Meaning it will be available today, but only for a close audience: my newsletter subscribers and the readers of this post who really want it. The sale price will be 17.99 USD but until Monday you may get it for 9.99 USD. That’s because you’re smart, you know.

If you want the book at this price, just leave a comment using your real email address and I’ll email the link to you. Yes, it may look cumbersome, but at least I’ll know you really want the book.

That’s it for now. A bigger blog post should follow on Monday, when the normal launch should take place.

WPSumo Promo Code – August 2011 Edition

It’s that time of the month again, namely the time when we’re adding the promo code for WPSumo. If you don’t know what WPSumo is, well, then it’s time to find out that WPSumo is a great WordPress framework, with a ridiculously high amount of features. I’m a partner on this project, so it’s not a surprise that I run my own blog on this framework.

So, without further ado, let’s see the code:

wpsumobest

This promo code will give you an instant 30$ off of the Developer License. The one that lets you use WPSumo on unlimited domains, that is. In order to use it, you just have to click on this link:

WPSumo Developer License

and then scroll down to the field where it says “enter coupon code” (obviously). Enter the promo code and then click “Proceed To Checkoout”. You’ll be taken to PayPal where you can finish the transaction. The total amount should be 99 USD.

Why You Should Do This?

In last month’s promotion (which wind up pretty well too) I gave this URL: 12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo, for those of you unaware about the possibilities of the product. I also promised that I will give a new reason each and every month. So, here’s the 13th reason to switch to WPSumo: “All the cool kids are using it”. I’m serious

How To Create A Landing Page In Less Than 5 Minutes

But I know that being cool has no meaning whatsoever if it’s not doubled by some serious knowledge, especially in our business. Internet, that is. So, I’m giving you access to another screencase, in which I’m creating a landing page in less than 5 minutes, using WPSumo.

Just remember, the promo code is

wpsumobest

It will shave an instant 30$ from your purchase, thus leaving the Developer License at only $99. All you have to do is to click the link below:

WPSumo Developer License

Enjoy

WPSumo Promo Code – July 2011 Edition

I know many of you were waiting for the usual Mariner Promo Code fiesta here, but alas, all good things come to an end. The Mariner promotion, allegedly one of the longest promotions on the internet, with more than 2 and a half years running, is currently on hold.

So, long live our newest promotion, the one related to the ultimate WordPress framework, WPSumo. As you may already know, I am a partner in this project. That means that I know pretty much everything about it. So, without further ado, let’s see the code:

wpsumorocks

This promo code will give you an instant 30$ off of the Developer License. The one that lets you use WPSumo on unlimited domains, that is. In order to use it, you just have to click on this link:

WPSumo Developer License

and then scroll down to the field where it says “enter coupon code” (obviously). Enter the promo code and then click “Proceed To Checkoout”. You’ll be taken to PayPal where you can finish the transaction. The total amount should be 99 USD.

Why You Should Do This?

So, let’s pretend you’ve never been on my blog before and just stumbled upon this post by doing a search for “premium wordpress frameworks” (which is very likely to happen, by the way). What can you actually do with this WPSumo? Well, you can do a lot. I strongly advise you to have a look at this article

12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo

and then come back here. Because, from now on, I will publish an extra reason in each monthly promotion about WPSumo we’re going to have.

How To Create A Work With Me Page

Have you noticed my latest Work With Me page? Kinda neat, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the content here, but about the look and feel. Well, believe it or not, I did it in under 5 minutes. And I also created a nice screencast in which I’m taking you through this process, step by step. Yes, I did that in under 5 minutes and you can watch the proof right now:

Just remember, the promo code is

wpsumorocks

It will shave an instant 30$ from your purchase, thus leaving the Developer License at only $99. All you have to do is to click the link below:

WPSumo Developer License

Enjoy

12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo

I’ve been an early adopter on many toys and gadgets. I’ve written about iPhone on this blog when the iPhone was just a rumor. I bought Thesis in its early days. And I also downloaded, tried and promoted Scribe SEO when almost nobody knew what it was all about it.

But what I am going to do today will be quite different. Because it’s not technically about being an early adopter, although it may certainly look as it is. Fact is I am a third of WPSumo, the newest and brightest wordpress framework in town. Yes, a wordpress framework. But not a regular one. WPSumo is something that will really, really rock your socks.

The Reasons

Everything in this Universe has a reason. Newton apple felt down because there is this thing called gravity. On a much simpler level, we usually get or do or attract things because we need them. So. WPSumo was born out of my need for something better than what I had so far.

No pun intended to what I used so far, and I mean Thesis. But there is a time when something better comes into our lives and we just have to go with it. I’m not alone in the WPSumo team. There are two other wordpress wizards who not only made this possible, but also made it possible in an incredibly short amount of time. We spent only 100 days on development. For what we were able to come up with, 100 days is like a minute. We packed an amazing amount of features straight from the day one of availability. Yes, we do have a roadmap and we plan to add even more features. But we just thought it wouldn’t be right to launch it without each and every thing we can think of. Let’s get down to it. I left the paragraphs intentionally short because there will be much more info at the main WPSumo website. But it’s also nice to have an overview of what features we think are crucial for this product.

Reason 1: Mobility

WPSumo comes with an integrated state-of-the-art mobile theme. It’s like a child theme, only for mobile devices. It’s for free, you know, and integrated with the main framework. And you can customize the hell out of it. Read more…

Reason 2: SEO

I know how important SEO is. As a matter of fact, a third of my blog traffic is coming from search engines. I know, it’s not as it should be. That’s exactly why I’m using WPSumo advanced SEO settings. Title, description, metatags, robots, all from within a handy setting tab. Read more…

Reason 3: Child Themes

Although DragosRoua.com is my main blogging outlet, I do have another blogs. And I want a single solution to manage all of them. This is why we packed child themes into WPSumo from the day one. Read more..

Reason 4: Developer

I do write some PHP code every once in a while. So I wanted to have an open structure, a structure upon one can build his own features, if need will be. WPSumo features a very interesting back end structure which can have both hooks and extensions attached. Read more…

Reason 5: Export. Import

I like to tweak my theme on the local machine, most of the time. Then, I do the same things (more or less) on the live machine. You know the drill. Well, not anymore. WPSumo settings can be exported and imported into any WPSumo instance. Read more…

Reason 6: Style Editor

Although I know a bit of CSS, I’m not a big fan of hand styling my theme. On the contrary, I’d rather spend that time writing or coding interesting stuff. This is why we created a very powerful visual style editor. Pretty much everything can be styled form within this. Read more…

Reason 7: Shortcodes

Think of shortcodes like the brick and mortar for a site. Buttons, tabbars, titles, you name it. We have packed a lot of shortcodes into the default WPSumo installation. Making a button or a tabbar is just a matter of point and click. Neato. Read more…

Reason 8: Social Media

I get around 70% of my blog traffic from social media. That’s a lot. And I really want to take care of this visitors stream. So we paid extra attention to the social media integration. That means every button, from Twitter to Facebook and even Facebook Comments (enabled by default on this post). Read more..

Reason 9: Layouts And Sidebars

That’s where it gets interesting. Some of my posts have a life of their own, so to speak (and I’m sure many bloggers experienced this). So I wanted a way to create a more customized experience for them. Like having a different sidebar for each popular post. And to do this visually. You got it. Read more…

Reason 10: Ads

I admit, this was not one of my requests, but rather a general need in the market. After all, we did this framework for other people, not for us. And these people need a  very flexible and customizable solution to manage their ads. That’s exactly what we did. Read more…

Reason 11: Portfolio And Featured Area

Another thing that isn’t really my thing, but it’s huge for other people. We created a featured area (an extremely diverse and complex featured area) and a very powerful portfolio feature. So, if you create something visually and want to promote it with wordpress, you’re in it. Read more..

Reason 12: Blog Audit

When we decided to create WPSumo, I realized that my plugin, Blog Audit, just needed to be in it. If you don’t know what Blog Audit is, very briefly, it’s a piece of functionality which is unique (as far as I can tell) that lets you measure your blogging effectiveness (how often do you write, how many comments you generate, etc). Read more…

Reason 13: Affiliate Program

Yes, I lied, there are 13 reasons. This one is for you. We decided to create an affiliate program for WPSumo. Basically, you get 30% off of any sale you made. And that’s on top of riding the wave of the latest and brightest framework in town, you know. You get that for free, because you’re smart. And cool. Seriously now, here’s where you can sign up.

Well, that’s it. If you’re serious about blogging, you should get that baby.

5 Reasons For A Healthy Blog Hiatus

Ok, I hear you guys. Especially the guy in the back, all pumped up, ready to write 10 posts each morning, to comment on 20 blogs in his lunch break and rock the world in the evening. I hear what you say: “A blog hiatus? As bloggers, aren’t us supposed to write day and night? Are you I-N-S-A-N-E? ”. Nope, as strange as it may seem, I’m not insanse. In fact, I’m better than ever, although my blog activity took a plunge in the last month or so.

But it was a good thing. Ok, “good” and “bad” may have different meanings based on your cultural background, religion, life philosophy and a number of other, possibly unrelated, reasons. Let’s not use “good” or “bad”. Let’s use “healthy” instead of “good”. Yeap, my blog hiatus turned to be a really healthy thing. Without further ado, here’s why.

1. You Need Time To Refine Your Message

If you write each and every day, you may lose sight of the big picture. It’s true, the habit of writing each and every day is an amazing asset. It makes you productive and ready to go whenever you’re hit with inspiration. But at the same time, it makes you repetitive and a little bit anxious. What am I going to write about today? Am I going to be inspired?

I’m sure that each and every blogger hit the “blogging burnout”. I know I hit it more than once. It’s a tough game, that blogging burnout. In my experience, it’s the closest thing to depression I know. It’s like you’re out of options, which, of course, it’s never true. You always have an option, but sometimes, when enough is enough, you just don’t see those options clearly.

As in fitness, the muscle is built during the rest time, not during the effort.

2. You Are Involved In Other Projects

And that’s fine too. During the last few months, two of my projects took the lead. One is iAdd, which grew way over my initial expectations, from a proof of concept to a stable-and-almost-mainstream iPhone / iPad (and soon Mac) app, and the other is my newly born baby, WPSumo. If you followed closely my social media stream, you know what WPSumo is.

But if you didn’t, let me start by saying that this is the biggest project I embraced since I sold my company, two and a half years ago. It’s a wordpress framework packed with tons of features. I’m only one third of it, the other two being taken by two wordpress wizards. We launched last Friday and we’re still pumped up with all the enthusiasm. I will write extensively about this framework in the next few weeks, so stick around.

So, although I’ve been a little bit quiet in writing, my blogging activities were actually enhanced.

3. You Want To Evaluate Your Work

During the last two months my blog had a significant surge in traffic. In simpler words, the number of people who are visiting DragosRoua.com is now constantly in the 120.000 – 130.000 area. And that’s a steady flow, not based on some volatile circumstance. I actually feel that I entered another level.

And this requires a little bit of analysis. I’m not talking only about extracting data from the statistics, although I started to do it more seriously during the last few weeks (and identified some very interesting patterns) but also about my main vision and next steps.

You cannot clearly see where you’re going if you don’t stop every now and then on a higher cliff.

4. You Write Somewhere Else

Exactly, one of the reasons I wrote less on my blog it’s because I started to write more on other blogs. I became a regular contributor to Stepcase Lifehack. Interestingly enough, my first article there, 7 Not So Obvious Habits To Maximize Productivity, got a lot of attention and I’m really happy about this.

It’s a completely different experience for me. It’s one thing to do a little bit of guest posting, and another to be a regular contributor to a mainstream blog. At this moment, Stepcase Lifehack has more than 80.000 subscribers. I am quite enthusiastic about this and I will try a few different approaches and writing styles.

Will see how this goes, but for now, it’s a nice new toy.

5. You Just Need A Break

One of the biggest traps of personal development is to aim for perfection. Perfection is boring, being better is where all the fun is. So I’m not afraid to admit that I just need a pause from time to time. I’m not a writing machine, nor do I want to become one. Sometimes I just want to leave the work behind and enjoy life a little bit. Or a little bit more.

***

So, here are the 5 reasons that made my blogging hiatus quite useful and healthy. Now that you’ve read this, go back and continue writing on your blog.

Blogging With An iPhone, An iPad And iAdd

(Every once in a while I have this urge to write a shiny, picture-rich blog post. The following post is one of those.)

The other day, after the storm passed away, I surprised myself thinking at how my digital nomad life has changed completely the way I work. I don’t have an office anymore – and I do enjoy this every minute, after more than 10 years of working for my own company, in my own office – and that means I work pretty much everywhere. The distinction between work and regular life slowly faded away. It’s not like I’m working anymore. I spend quality time in a coffee shop for a few hours, but at the same time (and in the same place) I do write blog posts, write code or do consulting.

Although it may seem like a very comfortable way of living, it’s not even remotely like this. It’s very easy to get distracted and stop creating value. As you may imagine, is very important to keep things under control.

So, how I manage to actually run a fairly popular blog, do consulting on a regular basis, create iPhone apps and self-publish my ebooks? The short answer: I keep myslef organized. The long answer: you just started to read it . What follows is a very accurate reconstruction of what it takes for me to write a blog post, from idea to publishing. Sepcifically, this very blog post.

On the technical side, it involves and iPhone, and iPad and iAdd. Of course, a Mac is necessary for publishing too. As you may know, I am the creater of iAdd, so I am definitely biased here. It’s not like you can’t use something else, it’s just that iAdd really works for me.

Capturing Blog Post Ideas

Being on the run pretty much anytime, I started to capture my ideas using my iPhone. In the beginning I used a mind-mapping software, but now I use iAdd. iAdd let me save in it 4 types of information: tasks, projects, ideas and events. Every time I have a blog post idea, I fire up iAdd and quickly jot the title of the post:

A blog post is more likely to be created as a project. After I added the project, I start to add short tasks to it. They are more like the building blocks of the entire blog writing process, not only paragraph sketches or ideas.

Once I feel I’m ok with it, I sync my app to Dropbox. The newly added project will be safe and, more than that, it will be available next time when I sync with my iPad too.

Managing The Actual Process

Now, suppose I’m back to a more comfortable place and I have a little bit of time. I take my iPad, fire up iAdd and do a sync. After the sync, my project from iPhone will be magically available on iPad. (Just click on the following screenshots to enlarge them).

The first thing I do once the project is available on my iPad is re-ordering tasks (I can reorder tasks on the iPhone too, but usually I don’t have time for this, plus, on the iPad is more space).

After reordering, I quickly peruse the tasks and if I feel the need to enhance or complete any one of them, i do it.

Of course, now it’s time to add more details, so on the iPad I add the more complex tasks to the project.

At some point, the blog post project will be finished. From this point, it takes two different routes. First of all, the entire project gets sent by email (you can do that from inside iAdd). Like that, I will have all the ideas on my Mac too. I usually copy and paste the email message in my blogging setup.

But moving the work completely on the iMac will undermine the power of iAdd. So, the second route the project takes is to be sent to Decide. This is how it looks when it’s sent to Decide.

As I already told you, not all the tasks are involving writing. Some of them are atomic actions which can be performed anytime. For instance, in this specific project, I have to make screenshots. This can be done anytime. It’s an atomic task that can be performed any time I have 15 minutes free. So, I start to add contexts to all the tasks in the project.

And also I add due dates to each task.

After I finished, all the tasks are ordered ascending by time, giving me quite a clear idea about what I have to do.

One more thing. I may keep the project in Decide for as long as I want. And usually I do. I don’t write all the blog posts at once. I have other projects too. But once I’m committed to a project, I move it to Do. All the tasks that have been added in Assess, completed with contexts and due dates in Decide, will show up in my time based views in Do. Meaning that if one of the tasks is due Today, I will have it under my Today tab in iAdd. Along with the project title too. Once done, the task can be crossed off.

But if I feel a little bit lost, I can also look at the entire project in Do. I can see all the remaining tasks, and, if I want to edit their due dates, I send the entire project back to Decide.

Well, that’s pretty much it. Expected more? Sorry to tell you that I like things simple and effective

Conclusions

So, I capture all the ideas on my iPhone, I manage the entire project on my iPad and then I publish on my Mac. If I add together all the tasks involved in creating a blog post, I think I am somewhere between 1 and 3 hours for any of the blog posts I manage like this. It doesn’t happen in one chunk, as I told you, because my work time is unusually fractured, but the good thing is that it does happen in a consistent way.