I’ve finally begun to tackle the jungle of my gardens, starting with the front one. I’ve been hacking away at the rampant vegetation for the past few nights for about 10 minutes at a time.

Even after a small amount of work I’m beginning to make a difference. At least now when the postman makes a delivery, he can actually find my front door. OK, I exaggerate, but not by a lot.

As to why I don’t do a concentrated assault and spend a few hours at one go on it, that is more complicated. I have a number of things on the go that I want to devote regular time to. So setting aside a whole evening or weekend afternoon to the garden just doesn’t seem practical at the moment.

I also feel that building it into a regular event (another habit, like my writing project) will have more lasting results.  Maybe ‘m making excuses but that is how it seems to me.

I’ve been playing around with creating a small program that will allow me to create many thousands of new, original articles from a base of three variations of the same piece. I’ve had some thoughts on the design and started to develop something in Perl. I’ve got SQLite providing the database function to store my information.

The problem I’ve immediately run up against is the lack in Perl of a visual environment. At least in the initial stages of my program, I want to be able to cut and paste between my application and article directories on the web, in order to submit the articles. Perl just doesn’t provide the framework I need.

Happily, I’ve found an alternative in Lazarus and the Free Pascal compiler. Together they provide a free software alternative to Delphi, which is a visual, object oriented implementation of the Pascal language.

The efficacy of simple behaviour modification techniques is shown by the continuing production of material for my blogs and other article writing projects. I’m now into my third month of writing. I’ve missed writing on only a handful of days in that time.

I began my writing project in May, with the intention of forming the habit of writing for a period each day. The purpose behind that was to be able to create material for a blog and other online projects.

Although I’ve been doing things in this area for two or three years, I’ve never been very consistent or had much success. One main reason for this is that I was relying on other people’s material, mostly in the form of PLR articles. These turn out not to be effective, at least not without substantial rewriting, something I was unable to sit down and do with any consistency.

So to create original material for my own blogs, I needed  to write on a regular basis. However, I’ve had good intentions of that kind before but without lasting success. This time I decided to apply some simple behavioural modification techniques to myself

I arranged a reward, in the form of breakfast, for writing for a certain length of time each day.  Note that I started very small, at only 2 minutes a day. This was deliberate as my intention was to form a habit that lasted. Rather than commence with too difficult a target which would make it tempting to give up, I began with a small effort. I then gradually increased the time spent writing each day. I’m now, after two months,  at over 17 minutes a day and still going.

I’m writing this at the early hour of 5:40am, in an effort to get an item ready for my blog today. I recognise the importance of having something new for the blog on a regular basis. This is in order to keep the search engine spiders coming back. The more material you have published online, the more is indexed and that increases your chances of being found by readers.

As to why I’m up so early, it’s because I’m going to Bristol on the train. I’m fortunate that there is a direct link between Warrington  and Bristol so the journey shouldn’t be too bad, around three hours in total.

I don’t have a set time to be there but I want to make it at a reasonable time in order to get things done.

The visit is part of my company’s effort to dramatically improve productivity.  I’ve been seconded to the team that is implementing the changes in our group. We are being assisted in the process by a group of consultants.

My health regime is very, very limited and really needs to be better. I exercise only sporadically. Sometimes I go for a few days or even a week at a time when I exercise every day, or nearly so. Then I stop and a little later I’ll start again. So each time I’m starting back at the lowest level.

On the good side, at least I’m still doing some workouts, however limited, and I haven’t given up altogether.

What I need to do is apply some behaviour modification techniques to the situation, just as I’ve done with my writing project. Which, by the way, is now up to seven weeks in duration of writing on an almost daily basis. None of my previous efforts have lasted so long.

Up to now I’ve been writing material exclusively for this blog in my allotted morning time. But I want to branch out, now that I’m up to writing for 11 minutes each day.

The mechanics of allocating time to more than one task has however eluded me until now. Which just goes to show that I’m not as bright as I thought I was. The diificulty I was wrestling with is that I only have a simple kitchen timer and I don’t really want to buy another. The idea of using a computer stopwatch is too inefficient to keep going. Anyway, a workaround has at last occurred to me.

I can set the timer for half of the total time. When it goes off, I can stop and restart it with a couple of quick button presses. At that point I change to my second project for the remaining time. So simple, yet not obvious, at least not to me.

I’ve just been trying out a few programs on my Linux box, using Debian they are very easy to install (or remove).

First was Tipptrainer, a typing tutor to learn and practice touch typing. It seems OK if not meant to be fun. It will do the job, I’m sure.

Next was a fun arcade game, Circuslinux - a clown shoots into the air, bursting balloons. When he comes down you have to catch him on a seesaw so that he bounces up again. Good music and fun to play. The downside was that I had to change my graphics resolution, it didn’t like 1024×768.

And finally I installed Stopwatch to use as a timer to record my writing work. I’d have liked it to beep when it reached zero, but I guess that was not a design reuirement.

The Linux box I’m using by the way is my works laptop. I’ve installed Sidux on a 4Gb memory stick so that it runs without touching the internal hard disk. The disk is encrypted so that Linux can’t read it but that isn’t a problem.

Sidux was a breeze to install on the memory stick, it comes with a script that does it just fine. Following the  installation, I’ve had fun learning how to tweak it with the language pack for GB English and keyboard.

Already this is a record for me in terms of persisting with a project. Although the time I spend writing each morning is still small (under 10 minutes) that is not as important as the fact that I’m still doing it.

Good intentions are not enough in themselves to make things happen, as I’ve seen over many attempts in the past at working in a more disciplined, steady way.

Maybe I’m not going out to celebrate just yet, the gains are not that large  and I’m still a very long way from achieving my goal of writing for an hour each day. But nevertheless I’m quietly pleased with my progress.

One immediate benefit is this blog. OK, so it is not a work of art. It is just a small contribution with no great claims to entertain, teach or otherwise improve the human condition.  But there you are, at least it exists and it wouldn’t have without my attempt at applying behaviour modification techniques.

Some purists in the blogging world would have us believe that those of us who display advertising on our blogs have gone over to the dark side. You’ll have gathered from the way I phrased it, that I don’t agree with that proposition. Yes, spam blogs (splogs) are not very attractive but whose fault is it that they exist?

When you create a highly successful form of advertising, as Google has done, that rewards people hugely for producing and promoting useless sites then you can’t really blame them for taking advantage. It is up to Google to find ways not to reward splogs and websites of no value. And to be fair to them, Google is fighting back. Unfortunately if some innocent bystanders suffer in the process, their attitude seems to be tough luck. They are producing automatic rules for identifying spam sites and their methods are not perfect.

Back to my main argument. If you are writing a personal blog that becomes listed in the search engines and they begin to send you traffic, why not make a little money from that? And if the accusation is raised that people are writing blogs for money, isn’t that what journalists do?

Just as journalists range from guttersnipes and hacks to high-minded analysts, so do bloggers. You choose which to read.

Graham

I said I’d explain about my writing project. I’m trying to make money online (along with several million other people, I know). One of the proven techniques to make money is to write and publish articles, with the aim of bringing traffic, i.e. people to your site. Once there, they might buy something or click on a link which will earn you money. Of course, you also need to write content to put on your website.

The difficult part for me is to apply myself consistently to the task. There are so many other things to do that sitting down to write just never seemed to happen.

Now I’ve taken a leaf from the the psychologists book on self-management of behaviour. I’ve implemented a program of regular writing, followed by giving myself a reward. I’ve arranged that I complete a spell of writing in the morning, then have breakfast (the reward). So far it seems to be working. I’ve now written on 27 days out of the last 35 and that includes 4 days when I was away on holiday in Ireland.