Photo by Mr T. in DC

Post by Jason D Barr.

“It wasn’t that I was able to persevere. I was unable to stop! I just couldn’t give it up. It was just too important. It never entered the realm of possibility. But, I never was sure, really sure, that it was going to work and I would ever really be an astronomer.” – Vera Rubin, Astronomer (emphasis mine)

Is that an awesome quote, or what? Talk about putting yourself out there. Vera Rubin wanted to be an astronomer during a time when it just wasn’t acceptable for women to have those kinds of ambitions. She tried to enroll in Princeton’s graduate astronomy program, but wasn’t allowed. She found another school that would take her (Cornell) and studied under some of the greatest minds in physics. She’s currently 81 years of age and still teaching, having authored 114 peer-reviewed research papers (and counting).

Why is it that some people, like Dr. Rubin, are willing to do just about anything to accomplish their goals, and others are willing to let adversity (or worse, apathy) push them off their course?

“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” is a question that counselors and motivational speaker-types often ask. I like what my Twitter friend, life coach Tim Brownson, asks his clients, though: “What would you do, if you knew you would definitely succeed?”. Turns things on it’s head, doesn’t it? It assumes certain success, rather than just avoiding failure (because, as we all know, you can avoid failing without really succeeding).

So, what’s preventing you from doing what you want to do? Is it fear? Uncertainty of how to begin? Plain old laziness? I’ve experienced all of these, and trust me, they’re no excuse for a truly motivated individual. When you get to the point where, as Dr. Rubin said, “[giving up] never entered the realm of possibility”, you’ve moved past any chance of failing. It’s only a matter of time.

1. “I’m scared.”

This is nothing to be sneezed at, folks. For all the admonitions floating around about affirmation statements, there is evidence that for those who are the most in need of it, positive self-talk can be hurtful. While this is just one study, and doesn’t conclusively prove anything, it demonstrates that the situation isn’t black and white. The fear of “what will other people think when I fall on my face?” is very real and paralyzing. That fear can’t always be overcome with a couple “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggonit, people like me!” statements in the mirror.

So, how do you get over your fear? By moving through it. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” is what Ambrose Redmoon said. There’s no magic statement or shortcut to get past the fear. It’s going to be with you forever. All these silly platitudes like “the first step is the hardest” may be overused, but they’re actually true. And, while you may not believe it, you can do whatever it is you want to do. It might not happen fast, it most certainly won’t be easy, and you might reinforce your fears more than you struggle past them, especially at first. You just have to be willing to find that courage somewhere inside of you.

2. “I don’t know where to start!”

This is another tough one. Until you’ve done something, you’ve never done it (obvious, right?). So, while people spout off platitudes about “Just Do It!” and “Begin With The End In Mind”, those of us who can tend toward the overly-analytical end of the spectrum think, “Yeah, but how?”

So what can be done? How do you overcome it? My guess (and this comes from a lot of personal experience, a little talking to other people, and no actual scientific research) is that many people aren’t willing to get started because their goal is just too big. A massive goal like building a business (for instance) involves so many interconnected but different steps that many people just throw up their hands in frustration and go back to the couch. This is not the way to overcome the problem!

Don’t think of it as one huge goal; think of the incremental steps. Rather than saying to yourself, “Today is the day I begin building my business!”, say “Today is the day that I’m going to sit down for an hour and mind map my interests and skills. I’m going to find out what I’m really good at and interested in!”. So much less intimidating, yet still a crucial step.

I think of it like following a path through a lava field. Most people, I think, wouldn’t stare at the end of the field as they’re walking; they’d stare at their feet and make sure the next step is placed somewhere they won’t get burned. Look at the next step, not the finish line, and the task won’t seem so daunting.

3. “Eh, whatever. It’s not so bad right now.”

I don’t really know what to tell you about this one. Sure, I could contradict what I just wrote and say “Just Do It!”, but that seems a little trite and disingenuous, doesn’t it?

I’m sure we’ve all heard the statement, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”, right? It’s the same with laziness. It all boils down to comfort zones. A person will refuse to get moving until their fear of failing where they’re at becomes so acute that they’re no longer scared to move on to something else.

The thing is, you’re in charge of how you respond to your emotions. You can’t help feeling lazy (at least, I’ve never figured out how to), but you can help acting lazy. I still feel lazy all the time when I’m supposed to write, or mow the lawn, or do something “grown up”. I’d rather go watch TV with my wife or play video games. The only difference between now and a year ago is that now I don’t let my feelings tell me what to do.

So, that’s it. The three best statements you can make to ensure your failure. Recognize any of them? I don’t know about you, but I recognize all three of them in my life multiple times per day. What they all have in common is that they’re products of circumstance. If you allow your circumstances to control your responses, then you’ll never overcome. However, if you refuse to be a victim of circumstance, and get to the point where failure is no longer an option, then circumstances will just be a passing issue. So, give your circumstances a beat-down. Master your emotions, don’t let them master you.

Jason D Barr writes Start Being Your Best. You can follow him on Twitter.

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During my morning run today I realized that my days were starting to get a little out of hand. Recently I’ve been dipping back into the old habits of unstructuring my day in order to work on whatever idea moved me each day.

Photo by jef safi.

However, recently I lost a big portion of my income and have started to do outside freelancing development to cover the bills. (Short plug: If you’re looking for a web developer, I’m taking on a few projects right now. Feel free to contact me.) My previous workflow just wasn’t going to work with the added responsibility of making an income from my ideas.

So today I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I’ve changed how days work.

Boundaries Get All the Bad Press

If you think about it, our society has a serious issue with the association of the word “boundary”. We don’t like the thought of being constrained in any way. Consider these historical events that revolved around breaking boundaries:

• abolishing slavery
• tearing down the Berlin Wall
• wommen’s suffrage
• nearly every war/battle ever fought

These are only a tiny, tiny portion of events in America (and worldwide) that cause our modern society to wig out and run in the opposite direction when faced with the word “boundary”. When you read about boundaries being enforced in the news and elsewhere, it’s typically in a negative or controversial fashion.

The same is true with how we work. Entire industries are built on the prospect of “sticking it to the man”, quitting the “9-5″ and becoming your own boss. And rightly so… the antiquated business work model is old and in serious need of an overhaul. (See: Excellent post by Leo on natural working rhythms.) But we’re straying from the point, aren’t we?

While we may hate it, work and boundaries go hand in hand. I’m not talking about oppressive mandates passed down by a suit. I’m talking about structure. Structure is what ensures our work days are effective, especially for those with jobs that demand creativity on a regular basis.

Without any sort of boundaries, we loose focus. We can’t perform. Things get dropped, ideas are lost. And when it comes to the business of capitalizing on ideas, it’s imperative that our ideas are seen through.

We gotta have structure.

Structuring Our Day = Better Returns On Ideas

Photo by Nicholas T

Somewhere down the line somebody thought it would be best if we just made the process of forming and working on creative ideas as loosey-goosey as possible. And the concept makes sense too: How can ideas truly thrive and grow unless they’re constructed in an environment without boundaries?

Unfortunately this is all a myth. I can tell you from experience, (and I’m sure many of you would agree), that bopping from idea to idea is unsustainable. Yes, it’s important to have some elbow room with how we work, like the 3 opened project method. So here’s how I walk the fine line of working in a structured manner, while at the same time allowing for random ideas, thoughts and other miscellaneous work.

My Daily Structure

I start with a plain white sheet of print paper. I’m not using an online list because of the quick “jot-friendly” nature of paper and pen. I just let the ideas/tasks flow from the hand onto the paper. (There’s something magical about writing something down with a pen that imprints the output into your mind. This doesn’t happen with computer-based typing for me.)

Instead of making the typical “To Do” list, I break apart my day into 3 different categories:

1. Writing
2. Thinking
3. Development

These are the three different aspects of my job, or the different “gears” used to get stuff done throughout the day. I’m either in writing mode, development mode, or thinking mode. The three columns allows me to switch effortlessly between different types of work. If I’m tired of writing, I’ll switch to development. If I’m tired of development work, I’ll switch to thinking. And so on.

GTD enthusiasts might link this to breaking work into contexts. Not me. It’s much less structured than that. It’s just an added dash of structure to a day that holds endless creative possibilities.

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I’ve written a guest post on 16 ways to keep razor sharp focus at Zen Habits. I’ve been struggling a lot with finding focus in my own life recently, and writing this was a way to address my own problems in the area. Here’s the tip that I’ve been finding most helpful recently:

Plan the night before. Planning the night before is a great way to really get focused on the next day. “Sleeping” on your tasks and goals for the following day can really help your mind expect what’s going to happen the next day. Essentially, you’re preparing your mind for the following day.

Hopefully my stumbling about to find focus can help some of you as well.

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photo credit: Film Colourist

While visiting friends a few weeks ago, I noticed a change that I wasn’t too thrilled about. Technology was beginning to take over their lives. Literally.

Over the last six months, technology had changed the way my friends socialized. Before, you could hold a lengthy and meaningful conversation with them without any distractions. Now, you can’t go 90 seconds without checking the latest text message on their phone. But the worst part is that you could be in mid-sentence and hear a little “ding!” and either friend would instantly whip out their phone and start texting a reply. Sometimes they’d try to fake acting interested in your conversation with a nod and a “uh huh”, proving yet again that multi-tasking never works.  Other times they’d politely interrupt and say, “Sorry, one minute. My friend texted me.” Even though there was an apology, what I heard was “One sec… you’re not as important as my other friend”. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

This is a perfect example of how we’ve started to let our lives be overrun by the urgent, not the important. Instead of talking to the person in front of them, they were willing to interrupt a conversation for a more urgent input: their cellphone.

The Urgent

It’s incredibly interesting what we’ll do when an urgent stimuli (the “ding!” of a text message, for example) rears it’s ugly head. Text messages are the worst offender. We’ll hear the text go off, and even while trying to concentrate, the only thing we can think about is the text message. Why? Because it’s an urgent prompt. It’s begging for your attention. Other forms of urgent inputs:

• Cell phones/text messages
• IM
• Twitter (it’s true!)
• Email (especially with pop-ups)

The Important

So what are the things that we should be worried about, the “important” things in our lives? Easy. The things that last and provide value.

• Friends/Family- There’s nothing more important in life than friends and family. They are directly linked to our happiness and well-being.
  
• Life Goals - Goals that we’ve set that want to be accomplished eventually.
  
• Projects due/commitments - These aren’t necessarily related to work.
  
• Health- Taking care of our bodies is incredibly important. Personal health is something that greatly adds to our level of happiness (believe it or not).

Unfortunately, focusing on the urgent ensures that we’ll never get to the important. In order to make sure we’re doing what’s important, we need to find a way to ignore the urgent and focus on the important with steely resolve.

I struggle with this daily. (As I write this I’ve had 2 text messages and the doorbell rang!) As a person who makes his bread working on a computer, I find that it’s quite easy to get distracted. The web is a beautiful and social place, but not one well-suited for productivity. Eliminating urgent inputs is something that is going to continue to grow in importance, especially with the widespread adoption of iphones and the like. Our world is continually becoming more connected. As a result, it’s going to be much harder to filter out the urgent stimuli.

How about you? Are there any methods that you use to really combat these urgent messages in our everyday lives?

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photo credit: philippe leroyer

This post is written by Jaclyn Schiff of The Schiff Report.

Unless your workday includes multiple references to deadlines, leads and sources, you probably don’t think of yourself as a beat reporter. But maybe you should.

Beat reporters focus on covering a specific issue or particular sector over time. News directors say that beat reporting helps journalists understand issues better, so their stories can provide their audience with more depth and context, according to this NewsLab article. Chip Scanlan, the director of National Writers Workshops at the Poynter Institute, says that the best beat reporters are “well-organized, determined” and have a “clear sense of mission and a wide range of sources.”

In the age of information overload, thinking of yourself as a reporter with a beat can help you filter information effectively. If you take this role seriously, then applying some of the techniques that beat reporters use to stay on top of the facts could help you to be more purposeful and productive with your own intelligence gathering. In addition, the extensive understanding that you will gain from following an issue over an extended period of time will give you an edge in contextualizing and analyzing information. The benefits of a carefully selected beat could be endless when it comes to work, blogging and even your social life.

The Benefits of Being a Reporter

I’ve seen the benefits of monitoring a beat first-hand. More than a year ago, I began following the global health beat when I started working as a staff writer and Web producer at my current job. At the time, I had a vague knowledge of major global health stories, like the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, concerns about bird flu etc. I certainly wasn’t an expert. But after just a few months of following the latest news and developments — as part of my daily routine in the office and after work — I found that my knowledge of these issues helped me to develop more ideas for freelance projects, write interesting blog posts and network with people who have related interests.

It has given me something interesting to say when I meet people at events and at other social settings. It’s not because I know as much about the push to eradicate malaria as Jeffrey Sachs or any other global health expert. I don’t. It’s simply because I pay more attention than the average person, which makes me a decent resource on the subject. “Because these days, authority doesn’t come from a badge, or a press pass, or a degree, or a date on a birth certificate. Authority comes from attention,” observes Twenty Set blogger Monica O’Brien in this post.

Finding the Beat

So to start, you’ll have to identify your beat. Most reporters are assigned to a specific beat, and creating your own can be an asset or a burden. Think about your main goals for staying on top of the news and let that guide you towards your beat. For example, if you work in advertising and your aim is to get ahead at work, you could focus on creating your beat around a specific demographic or ethnic group, which will help you develop authority on trends and current information pertaining to that group. Your beat needs to be your niche. This ProBlogger post has some useful tips that could help you to identify your beat, if you’re having trouble.

Once you’ve identified your beat, you can start being proactive about monitoring it. Here are three steps for following a beat based on my experience, journalism training and articles I’ve read over the years:

1) Research the history of the topic. Every issue has a backstory and it’s important to understand this background in order to pick up on future nuances and contextualize new developments. It also helps to identify the key players involved in your beat. Who are the people and organizations involved? What are their agendas and how are they viewed by others?

2) Set up online alerts and feeds to follow the news related to your beat. Use RSS feeds to subscribe to the range of bloggers who are writing about your beat. Establish Google Alerts or a similar service to return daily key word results, then set aside a time once a day or at least once a week to actually go through the results. Depending on how often you do it, it doesn’t have to take more than 10 minutes, and the simple act of skimming can do wonders for keeping you on top of the latest developments. If you find that you’re not going through alerts that are sent to your e-mail then you can do keyword searches in Yahoo News or Google News and review results that way.

3) Go offline. Subscribe to mailing lists for government and private organizations involved in your beat. Make a point of going to events, conferences, lectures etc. that have relevance to your beat and be sure to meet some of the people there and introduce yourself. This is an important way to stay in the loop. Also, be on the look out for interesting stories or angles on your beat when you’re reading the newspapers and/or magazines. I’ve found some really unique ideas that can be applied to my beat from reading through stuff that I would not have come across from a feed or keyword alert.

You probably do some of these things already, but probably not in the context of following a beat. A simple shift in the way you think about how you monitor information can make you a more organized consumer of news and minimize the information clutter. The hardest part is letting go of the fact that you just can’t monitor multiple subjects with the same amount of careful attention. Unless, you’re retired maybe.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t read general news items daily. You should. But if you want to gain the benefits of following a beat, then you have to be selective. There’s a reason that beat reporters often work way more than 40 hours per week to monitor just one subject area.

Jaclyn Schiff is the author of The Schiff Report, a blog about Generation Y. Sometimes her posts include how-to tips, but more often she’s writing about topical discussions that involve millennials.

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Photo by Stefan Tell

Focus and productivity go hand in hand. Like peas and carrots, or peanut butter and jelly. They’re almost synonymous. Yet, focus is the oft overlooked, redheaded step-child of productivity. And you can be darned sure you won’t be productive without focus.

Really, productivity is just doing things that you’re supposed to do. Staying on task. Etc. However, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that you’ll stay on task if you can’t focus.

Your attention has to be laser sharp if you want to keep that productivity chugging along. The antithesis of productivity is, well… slacking off. And slacking off always, always starts with getting sidetracked.

Example: You’re plowing through your email, and you open a message from a friend who’s been dying to show you a hilarious video on YouTube. So you watch the movie, then watch some of the recommended videos that show up on the page… and before you know it you’ve blown 30 minutes just watching videos. It happens all to quickly.

Diligence is needed to keep your focus sharp. Here’s a few ways to keep your focus laser sharp, and your urge to procrastinate at bay.

Break Down Projects. This is a staple of almost any productivity system. If your project is too large, you’re giving your mind an open invitation to lose focus. If your todo list has “write science fiction novel” at the top of it, odds are you’re going to lose focus before the task is completed. In order to keep this focus, the task must be broken down into bite-sized pieces. Using tasks like “Brainstorm book title”, “Organize first chapter”, etc. makes the project more complete-able, thus staving off urges to goof around.

Focus on Simple Solutions. When trying to find solutions, it helps to try the easiest ones first. Many times we try to find complicated solutions to easy problems, simply because we can. This is a band mindset to have, especially if you’re concerned with shrinking your attention span.

Go ahead, try it. The slacker inside of you will respect that you’re only doing as little as possible. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Take frequent, smaller breaks. Small breaks are good for quickly regaining focus and direction. A quick breather can enable you to step back and say, “Oh yeah… that’s what I was working on before I started playing that game.”

Switch activities constantly. Switching activities helps your mind stay uber sharp. There’s no worse drudgery than having to work solid on the same thing without any change. The most diligent worker will find any excuse to switch the atmosphere, even if that means doing something completely un-productive.

Here’s a little known tip: you can work as long as you want (and stay sharp too), if you’re constantly switching activities.

Don’t let your mind trick you. The mind is a cunning thing. If it wants to procrastinate, it will make you believe that other things are more important than the task at hand. Or it’ll completely confuse your inner timing. When is the last time you got sidetracked by thinking, “It won’t take long to follow this link…” Famous last words.

Slack off when you need it. Sometimes we just have a jonzin for some good, ol’ fashion slacking. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I’d even encourage it! Every now and then we have to just cut lose and give in to our primal need of doing nothing. So whip on some sweat pants and flip on the tube. Getting it out of your system is much better than trying to ignore it sometimes.

Keeping your focus can be a hard thing to do, and more of a conscious effort than you might believe. But if you can master your focus, you’re well on your way to getting more stuff done.

These are by no means the only way to keep your focus. Feel free to share your anti-slacking tips in the comments. We’d all love to hear them!

Another great resource: Leo’s article on 7 Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done.

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While perusing everyone’s favorite bookmarking site, I came across this incredible photo of the Grand Tetons at night. While the picture alone is pretty impressive, the amazing part is how many planets you can actually see: The Milky Way, Jupiter, a kickin’ star named Arcturus, and the Big Dipper. That’s a pretty stellar cast. And it turns out that normally it takes five separate camera shots to get all of these high-profile stars/planets in a single frame.

Here’s the part that kills me: I spend 8 hours a day looking at 14 inches of computer screen.

I’m going to call this Work Tunnel Vision (WTV), for lack of a better phrase. This is when we only focus on what’s directly in front of us (job/career), as we pass by the finer points of life like friends, family, children, and even incredible starry nights. It keeps us from having proper perspective. It ensures that we work too long on stuff that probably isn’t that important. Ultimately, WTV skews our priorities.

It’s quite easy to lose focus on what’s truly important sometimes. This was just a gentle check to force us all to ask the question:

Am I focusing on what’s really important? Or am I too busy working?

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The Theory of Constraints blog has an interesting article on the damaging effects of multi-tasking.  In a project setting, it’s easy to get distracted and try and complete multiple tasks instead of just working on one. This article argues that multi-tasking is not only a bad mindset to have, but it can actually make projects up to 30% late, with only one instance of multi-tasking going on.

When multi-tasking happens, your brain has to mentally go back to the beginning and let your mind catch up to the beginning of the last task you did.

Multi-tasking is the act of stopping a task before it is completed and shifting to something else; in software development the term “thrashing” is often used to describe this practice. When a task is stopped and started there is the immediate effect of a loss of efficiency. Each time a person has to re-start a task, time is required to become re-familiarized with the work and get re-set in where he was in the process. It is very much like the physical set-ups done on a machine in production. Each time you tear down a machine to do another task, you have to set it up to run the part again.

Don’t Break Your Attention- Make a Digital Dumper

While working on projects, it’s quite easy to get distracted by little details that may crop up in the development process.  However, if you can fight the urge to work on them and instead put each detail into some sort of bucket, you’ll keep your train of thought on track longer, upping productivity tenfold. I use iGTD (mac only) as my digital “dumper”, but any sort of collection bucket (digital or paper) will suffice.

So let’s review: Instead of doing many things at once (thinly-veiled in the name of Productivity), focus your attention on one task at a time, which in the long run will allow you to do more.

It’s like the tortoise and the hare parable, except for desk monkeys.

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Self-perspective is one of the hardest things to understand. I mean, it seems simple enough on the surface; it’s merely what you think of yourself. But many times we don’t see that how we view ourselves can affect our successes as a professional/parent/circus clown/etc. Maxwell Maltz put it best when he said

Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.

There’s nothing more dangerous or helpful to your individual success than high self-image. Many have failed miserably at fostering high self-image, while others have risen like fresh cream straight ‘outta the udder.

Companies are the same way. A company with positive self-image is going to be around for a while, and one such company has shown what it truly means to be confident in their product. Love or hate them, Google is an excellent example of masterful self-image.

1. You don’t have to change to fit in. Google knew what they were: a great search engine. Yet instead of tinkering with the latest thing, the continued to improve their bread-winning product, Google Search (I know, I know… do I really need to link to Google?!). Sure, they could have kept fiddling with new technologies early on, trying to stay relevant and trendy like the other search engines. But as Bush Sr. put it so eloquently, they “stayed the course“.

2. Become insanely successful at one thing, and use your confidence to branch out. This is almost straight from number one. Larry, Sergey and the gang kept at refining their central product until it was the best. Only then did they say a collective “booyah!” and branch into many other arenas like contextual advertising, feed readers, as well as every other aspect of our digital lives.

3. Not too fast, now (aka the “whoa nelly”). You can’t rush perfection, people. It took Google quite a long time before they started looking at other projects. If they had run around chickens with their heads cut off trying to create the “next best thing”, they would have squashed any possibility of creating one truly amazing thing.

Positive self-image is a lot like that: You don’t have to rush things. Make the world wait on you for once.  You have to believe what you’re doing is worth waiting for.

(Note: Interestingly, Google is taking the headless chicken approach these days with all of their acquisitions and new products, but they appear to have simmered down and focused more on features.)

4. Always act like you know what you’re doing. I just had to throw this one in for fun. Google will lead you to believe that they’ve known what they were doing from day one. Ok, come on… this is impossible. Believe it or not, they have screwed up before. They have had growing pains. But so does everybody.

It can be a great strategy to cover your insecurity with a fig leaf of bravado. It’s OK to occasionally act like you know what you’re doing, even if you really don’t. Come on, just stick out your chest, throw up your head and make a fool of yourself proclaim to the world that you might definitely know what you’re doing.

Really, we can form our self-image (kudos to Google) in one word: Confidence. Be confident enough not to rush, or sell out, and you can even act like you know what you’re doing (when you really don’t) from time to time.  Walk like you know you’re the best thing to hit the block since Google, and you’ll be fine…

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I just publicly launched PopDeal today, a tech deals aggregator. In layman’s terms, it collects all of the latest technology deals from around the web onto one page. I had previously launched PopDeal in another form before, but it turns out that it had a fatal flaw.

It was crap.

Yep, I built a crappy website the first time around. Sure, the concept was interesting, but there were some key elements that I overlooked when building the website. I tried to start a site that had users submit deals that were voted on, and the best deals hit the homepage like Digg. I had almost no visitors after the initial launch, and the concept never took off.

Many new sites fail every day becuase they made many of the same mistakes I did. This article hopes to give some pointers to anyone hoping to build a kickin’ website the first time around.

1. Be vicious about deadlines and goals. I can’t stress this enough. If you’re going to build something, stay disciplined and focused on setting deadlines. If you don’t, you’ll spend too much time building features that won’t ever get used, and you’ll stray from your core concept. You’ll have a Frankenstein for a website before you know it.
2. Only launch the bare minimum. Start with a simple solution and build upon it later, keeping focused on the purpose of the website. There is a difference between what might be cool and what is beneficial. PopDeal is built around a really simple concept, but when I first launched it I tried to dress it up into something it wasn’t with voting features and other doodads that only took away from the focus. Only launch with what’s beneficial. Let your userbase decide what’s important after that.
3. User generated content is much more work than it looks. Yeah, I drank the Kool-aid and thought that I would take the Field of Dreams motto: “If you build it, they will come”. Nope. Did not happen. It’s a hard concept to master, and many people go into building a site based on user generated content unrealistically (including yours truly). Not only do you have to recruit users with incentive, you have to moderate them and keep them happy. Don’t think you’ll automatically have people willing to contribute to your site right from the start. Odds are it will take much longer, if it happens at all.
4. Know your audience. This one was crucial to the success failure of the first PopDeal. I thought that people who liked finding technology deals would also like to take the time to post them and vote on them. Wrong! Most people who look for deals are people who want to put for the least amount of resources into finding the deal. They weren’t going to take the time to post it. They were in search mode, not share mode. Now PopDeal is strictly powered by other deal sites. The searchers have less barriers to finding the right deal.
5. Keep a site updates blog. Surprisingly, keeping a blog on the progress of the site updates is a great way to keep you motivated. If you have readers holding you accountable and expecting changes to the site, you have more motivation to make your users happy. Plus, by growing your blog’s readership, you’ll give incentive for users to keep coming back to your site.
   Unfortunately, I didn’t start a blog until I had already re-launched PopDeal, but already I can see the benefits.

So there you have it. Check out PopDeal to see if I’ve really put my money where my mouth is, and to see if you think it’s a better concept. Hopefully I’ve given some helpful pointers and a good list of things not to do when developing a website.

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