Okay, you may be wondering where the heck I have been for the last week or so. The short answer is that I’ve been pretty busy.

If I’m not visiting birth centres in preparation for our big arrival, I’m writing articles for my marketing activities, or I’m guest posting like a mad man.

To prove I haven’t dropped off the planet, here is where I have been posting recently:

5 Ruthless Ways to Be More Decisive

James from The Infopreneur is doing big things and growing a massive community in literally no time at all. His drive and work ethic really rubs off on you too!This article is all about overcoming our fear of decisions. Most regrets you will have are the decisions that you didn’t make. If you are not sure whether or not to read it, let me make the decision for you: read it!

Not to sound crass or to tarnish this blogs reputation (what reputation??) with toilet humour but my light bulb starting flashing on this topic while I attempted productive pooping and I got thinking about the best way to capture ideas at inopportune times.

Ideas can strike at any time and quite often you won’t be ready for them.

I’ve lost count of the number of ideas that have been lost into the abyss that is my mind because it wasn’t convenient for me to get them down. When I did remember then, it wasn’t quite the same idea as it was when I first brainstormed it.

If you’ve been caught out by inopportune light bulb moments, I have a few ideas that might help.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it. – Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill first coined the term definiteness of purpose back when he was conducting a number of interviews with some of the greatest business minds in the world that would eventually form the structure of his book and subsequent audio book, Think And Grow Rich (aff link).

I had read about having a definite major purpose a couple of times before and understand the basics of it.

It is essentially all about defining your purpose in life. What is it you want to accomplish? What do you want to give to the world? In what do you truly believe?

For brevity I suppose I could have entitled this post, “Brevity” but I wanted to remind myself, and you, to be succinct at all times.

As someone who likes to talk to a lot of people all the time, brevity is difficult for me. There is so much to talk about that I have to blurt it all out in verbal diarrhea fashion.

But with more and more people going minimalist and rocking information diets, now more than ever is the time to just say what you mean.

If you have a boss, customers, clients or anybody else that is paying you for a service that you are providing: then you have to take crap.

Shit, as they say, travels downhill.

Bosses are the worst type of crap givers. They usually delegate menial tasks that they can’t be bothered to do themselves. And guess what? When you complete that task, they’ll probably take credit for it too. Ever wonder how that guy or girl who seems to be ridiculously, incredibly and stupendously terrible at their job – yet they earn double the amount you do? Chances are they got there by passing more and more crap down to minions like you.

Clients are just as bad as bosses though. “I need this by 5pm.“, “How long is it going to take?”, “Why can’t you sort it out for me now?“, “If you don’t get me a better deal, I’ll go elsewhere.”

This is the law of the jungle. Much crap will be taken, and many faces will be palmed (if only in your mind).

Attention. Everyone craves it. Especially online when the success or failure of your project depends on it. Even in the offline world you want the attention of other people. It could be anything from wanting respect from your boss for a job well done, to trying to catch the eye of the gorgeous girl at the bar.

Our instinct is to do what others before us have done. You might try and pick up the hot girl by following the advice of the “pro” pickup artists. But if she’s really that hot, chances are she gets hit on daily. Probably even hourly if she lives anywhere near me and I have no place better to be!

If she’s seen it and heard it all before, she won’t care about what you have to say. Within seconds she will have decided that there is no way you’re getting to spend time with her and nothing you can do will change that.

And so it is online.

“Hey yo, Adrian…. I DID IT!”

I relate quite strongly to Rocky Balboa. The personification of an underdog. A no skill, no talent bum from the wrong side of the tracks who became a winner through sheer determination and drive. He went the distance then went back to the streets. Just a man and his will to survive.

For the most part, watching Rocky films and listening to the soundtrack inspires you to run, life weights or hit something (or someone) really hard. But more than that, it makes you feel like you can achieve anything.

We love underdogs. We root for them whenever we can because we want to believe it is possible for the little guy, the guy who doesn’t achieve the success he perhaps deserves. It’s fascinating to me. One example of a real underdog story online would be Jeremy Schoemaker. The guy went from overweight, surgery bound and broke to an Adonis making millions in just five short years. He’s the online Rocky Balboa, without the speech impediment.

But what can Rocky teach us about life?

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

The due date for the birth of my first child, a little girl, is March 8th 2010. It literally seems like only yesterday that I got the news that I was going to be a father.

We spend so much time trying to achieve our hopes and dreams that quite often you forget about what is happening right now. We’re all busy, we all know the feeling of not having enough time and trying to fit as much as we can into our day. But we’re missing the big picture.

Have you lost your spark? Is every day just another monotonous routine? Get up. Go to work. Eat. Go home. Watch TV. Sleep. Wake up, and repeat.

Sound familiar?

If you’re stuck in a rut, you literally cannot be bothered to do anything. Every moment of your life is wasted simply existing. Your mind feels heavy and clouded and there is a constant sinking feeling in your gut.

You’ve lost the passion, the zest, the clarity and you’re not living in the moment. The french call it a certain… I don’t know what.

I call it your mojo. And I’m here to help you get it back.

One of the biggest sticking points with many new blogs is when the readers and/or subscribers don’t grow at the rate you think they should. We’ve all felt the bitter pain of logging into your Feedburner account only to see that not one of the 3 unique visitors you got yesterday had the common decency to subscribe to your blog. The audacity of some people!

One of the quickest and most rewarding ways to gain new visitors to your blog is basically by stealing someone elses! By commenting on other, more established, blogs you can massively increase your blogs visibility and you’ll be able to convert a good proportion of those visitors into subscribers.