Real Observations from my Reader Survey (seriously this time)

Yeah, I know… it’s the third completely self-indulgent post in a row. Don’t worry, the next one will be aaallll about you

Today, I’ll sum up all the useful information I got from the survey, so you all know what’s going on! (Somehow, I personally find it a bit gutting if I fill in a survey for a blog I like, and then the author doesn’t ever mention the survey again.)

As with the not-so-serious observations from my reader survey, I will use bold type for the reader answers, and normal type for my own comments. Oh, and today, there’s plenty of pictures

Here we go!

Question 1: How did you first come across my blog?

Note that most of the “Other” category actually means “I don’t remember” (before I added that as an explicit option).

I found out that surprisingly many of you come from Google. I get by far the most hits from Google for “simple inventions”, and I don’t think the searchers are looking for what I cover in 7 Simple Inventions I Absolutely Love.

Question 2: In 1 or 2 sentences, why do you read my blog?

I got a ton of great responses to this question. Here are a few that are pretty representative of the whole:

You have a nice, friendly way of writing, and you choose some great topics.

It’s amusing and cheerful and fits in with how I see things.

It have many good tips on how to improve life.. and make it more effective..

It’s innovative and interesting. I’ve tried several pieces of advice and they worked

seeing life from another perspective is invigorating to the mind

Oh, and this one:

You have an eerie way of occasionally putting up content that is really pertinent to my life. In other words, I’m like “I really should learn underwater basket weaving,” and you’re blog the next day or two says “5 Simple Ways to Start Weaving Baskets–Underwater!”.

What a co-incidence, I was just… no, never mind.

Question 3: What topics would you like to see more of?

I’m glad the number 1 request is more crazy fun ideas, because that’s what I enjoy writing about the most

As for the other results, they’re roughly what I expected… except for learning. I’m surprised by the high demand for articles on learning, so I’ll definitely cook some up for you.

Question 4: What is the most important thing I can help people with?

There were a bunch of cool answers, so I want to share a few. Pause for a few seconds to think after you read each one:

getting out of the numbing daily routine and realizing that there are great things to be done with ones life

to accept and love themselves

Figuring out how the minds of women work

being themselves

Opening minds to possibilities that they never thought were there. The [7 Days] e-mails opened my eyes to ‘yes I can’ for the very first time.

To find themselfes.

A thread running through these responses is finding yourself, accepting yourself, and being yourself. I might do a post or two on those topics.

And then there was surprisingly many answers all along these lines:

Realizing how much potential they have. People can be amazing, they just need a little nudge in the right direction sometimes.

How to help themselves

Help them help themselves. They can read entire books about productivity, happiness, and any other subject imaginable, but it is useless unless they GET UP and do something about it NOW. Give them them the inspiration to do that.

I think your motivation email series is excellent. Why don’t you expand it and create a video series etc. So…I’d have to say motivating people to change, I could use tips from you on that

In other words, only you can help yourself. I can provide guidance, motivation and inspiration. But creating the changes is up to you.

I’d like to take this moment to tell you a little secret about my “7 Days” e-mail series.

Originally, it had nothing to do with procrastination. I actually set out to create a bunch of e-mails that would really help you change your own life by having you take small but meaningful action every day. I got inspired by going through a Tony Robbins program where he had me take consistent action 30 days in a row.

But then, for some reason, a few days before I launched it I decided that the idea wasn’t marketable enough. So I re-framed it as “overcoming procrastination”.

So even if you have no trouble with procrastination, my e-mail series 7 Days to Lasting Personal Growth is well worth checking out. Because not only do I cover 7 major topics of personal development (and tie them in to overcoming procrastination :p), but I also help you get started on your own personal development journey by giving you small action steps to take every day!

I can’t magically improve your life. Only you yourself can do that. But, as one reader put it, “helping you help yourself” is what I can do. And my “7 Days” e-mail series is all about that.

It’s free. Try it.

Question 5: Which of the following would you be interested in?

Quite a lot of readers left this answer blank. A lot of you simply enjoy reading, so I’m mainly going to keep writing. But I’ll throw in some videos and audio interviews too, because there’s clearly demand for that stuff.

Also, as one reader pointed out, my audio interviews suck, compared to my blog posts. That’s true, I’ve had 15 months’ practice blogging. But as I recently shared, one awesome attitude that transformed my life is applying everything I learn as soon as possible.

So I’m well aware that my audio and video at the moment is of less-than-stellar quality. That’s kind of the point

Question 6: Do you have any questions you would like me to answer in my future posts?

Quite a lot of you actually had no questions whatsoever. Then there were a bunch of good questions I will answer in future blog posts. And a few quick ones I can answer right now:

How did you come to be where you are? A little bit more about you. What are you studying?

I got up from my bed and walked to the chair, where I sat down. Hi, I’m Vlad. Right now I’m studying the reader responses to my survey.

(Or alternately: Hi, I’m Vlad, and I’m studying maths in Leeds, UK. I’m here because I wanted to study abroad, and UK seemed like the best choice. You can get a pretty good idea about my general interests from my blog. To find out more interesting details from my life, you can follow me on twitter: @VladDolezal.)

How to go from here to there..

That’s actually a pretty good question and might warrant a whole blog post, but I can give a quick answer here:

One thing I found very useful is writing down a general plan. First figure out where you are, and where you want to get. Then fill in the big milestones you need to reach to get there. Think like a painter – do the broad strokes first, fill in the details later.

For example, let’s say your goal is having $1 million. To reach that, you probably need to sell a good product to a large audience. To do that, you might need to start a company. Before you do that, you’ll need to assemble a “mastermind group” of like-minded individuals. Before you do that, you’ll need to figure out what your vision is – your unique contribution to the world. And so on.

Got the idea?

Also, if you want some help in figuring out your mission in life, check out Chris Guillebeau’s Brief Guide to World Domination. It’s a free pdf report -  just 29 pages, but packed chock-full of useful information. It’s been downloaded over 100,000 times already.

How do you find inspiration that meets the market? In other words, how do you make sure you are posting stuff that people are looking for (supply/demand) and keep it within your personal philosophy?

Good question. Actually, until now, I didn’t give that much thought to what others want. I know, how evil and selfish. The fact is, I simply figured out what stuff I enjoy, then wrote about it in a way I would personally enjoy reading.

But that’s changing with this survey, because now I’m trying to figure out exactly what you want

Or, to sum it up with a picture:

I’m consistently moving from the light-blue section to the dark-blue.

will life ever be better than right now?

Yes! All you need to do is give me all your worldly possesions…

Is procrastinating bad?

Actually, it comes to how you define procrastination. The way I define it, it’s the ultimate evil, because it’s neither productive, nor fun, nor restful.

If you’re talking about hanging out, having fun, that kind of stuff – that’s very good indeed. I wouldn’t call it procrastination. (I might go into a bit more detail on how I think about procrastination some other time.)

What’s your web platform? Is hosted or you own computer used as server? What CMS do you use?

Not sure what you mean by web platform. I use bluehost for my web hosting. I use WordPress to manage my blog.

How can you make an unpleasant task more intrinsically motivating?

Make it fun. Basically, don’t take yourself too seriously. Put a unique twist on it. Go and watch how kids can have so much fun with anything, even sticks and pine cones. Then approach the unpleasant task with the same mindset – find a way to “play” with it.

Would you like to adopt a very stinky German Sheppard?

Errrr….

…

There were a ton more good questions, but we’d be here all day if I answered all of them. (About half of the questions were asked by a single person, too. (You know who you are.))

Question 7: Any other comments/feedback:

This section literally blew me away. Thanks a TON to everybody who left a positive comment

I got dozens of dozens great inspiring comments encouraging me to keep going. I think I’m going to assemble them all together, print them out on several sheets of paper, and just hang that right above my desk, so I can look at it every time I start to lose motivation.

Here’s just a very small selection:

Keep up the great work!

Great blog! Keep going!!

Keep up the good work…you really inspire me

Thanks, and keep on keepin’ on.

I don’t think you could fully appreciate the effect your blog has had on me and probably other people. I think this is such a beautiful thing – searching for ways to make your life better and then dedicating part of it to make others’ better too. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but through your selflessness you’ve made at least one person in the world feel less alone – and that’s definitely worth something. Thank you, and keep it up, I hope more knowledge and good come your way.

Thanks for sharing your ideas

You rock!

…

Thanks! You guys rock too!

And that’s all for today. Again, thanks a ton to everybody who filled out the survey. I’ll be back with you on Saturday.