When I had signed up for Blog Action Day I did a little brainstorming to generate some good ideas. After half an hour I came up with this one and decided to stick with it.

I liked it because of its simplicity. And because one thing I and I think many of my readers use for several hours each day is a computer. Plus, many of the tips can – over time – save you quite a bit of money.

These are just 20 ideas on what you can do reduce the wear and tear on the environment. Some may contradict each other a bit. How far you want to take them is up to you.

Now, what more can you do with your computer to reduce the wear and tear on the environment?

Sometimes it can feel like you are carrying a piano on your back. Pressure can really weigh you down.

Too much pressure can make a lot of us angry, feed up or sad. Or simply, over time, knock you out cold with a burnout.

Now I don’t how your mind works but personally I perform better without a lot of pressure. It’s easier to focus on your task and not second-guess or hold yourself back when you feel light and relaxed.

Like most problems in life this one is mostly in our minds. You can actually remove some of that pressure before it gets the best of you.

Here are a few of the things you can do to accomplish that.

1. Don’t listen too much to others.

Or worry about what they might think. Or getting their validation.

If you use too much time and energy to focus on these three things you may be heading down a pretty harmful road. And the thing is, most people aren’t thinking about you, what you do and your problems as much as you may fear anyway.

They are busy with being focused on their own life and challenges.

An important part of this is to not to see yourself through the eyes of others. Doing that can build a self-image and expectations that become very hard to live up to.

It can make you end up filled up with negative feelings and that won’t help anyone. And, as I said above, you don’t really know what people think about you anyway. Your worries about what people may think about you are probably mostly in your head.

What they may actually think about you shouldn’t take too seriously anyway since it’s just their opinion.

And such things are often more about the guy/gal with the opinion rather than the person/thing they have an opinion about.

2. Forget about perfectionism.

Perfectionism is pretty pointless. It’s just you putting unnecessary pressure on yourself and thereby reducing your ability to do excellent work.

Take a look at the next point to find a better replacement for perfectionism.

3. Focus on the process, not on the outcome.

Detaching from the possible outcomes and just keeping your focus on the work you are doing makes it easier to both live and live up to your potential by reducing many of your inner, mental obstacles such as performance anxiety and other worries.

4. Be OK with mistakes and failure.

This one ties in to the two previous tips. If you allow yourself to redefine mistakes you’ll be less prone to get yourself stuck in perfectionism.

And the world won’t collapse if you make mistakes or fail.

The morning of the day when you learned to ride a bike you fell off it time and time again. But you just brushed yourself off, perhaps cried for a minute or two and then you got up on the bike again.

And towards the afternoon, or the next day, you probably started to become pretty good at riding your bike. The same applies here.

You have work on your skills to sharpen them. See failure or rejection not as something incredible negative that might end your life if it strikes.

Redefine it in your mind to lessen the negative emotional impact and the fear. See failure simply as feedback on what you need to improve on.

Listen to the advice that failure gives you and you will improve.

5. Just do it!

If you often get stuck in procrastination and get little done the pressure can start to build up.

“Just doing it” is a great way to get out of an overthinking or procrastinating state and just get going with what you want to do.

But that’s not always so easy. Then everybody would be doing it.

So, what’s the problem?

I think two important factors are that you may get too wrapped up and too closely identified with your thoughts and emotions. But you aren’t them, you are the observer of them.

So you don’t have to obey what your thoughts or what your inner emotional resistance may say. You can get going anyway.

6. Cut down on busywork and unimportant stuff.

Feeling like you just have too much to do and too little time for the most important things?

Then you probably need to do some decluttering in your life. Eliminate some of the less important stuff.

To prioritize and find what’s really important to spend most of your time on, both at work/in school and life in general you can use the 80/20 rule.

To not get stuck in that unimportant busywork ask yourself: “Is this, what I’m doing right now, useful?” a few times throughout your day.

To remember to actually ask yourself this, consider writing it down on a piece of paper and put that paper where you can’t avoid seeing it. Or use that question as your screensaver.

I also think it’s important to realize that you don’t really have to do everything you are doing. You always have a choice. Sometimes there will be big consequences if you choose to do or not do something.

But you always have a choice.

And if you choose to spend more of your time on the most important stuff and less – or none – on the unimportant things your life will most likely improve in any area you apply this thinking.

7. Don’t take things too seriously.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do a good job. Or that you should avoid responsibility.

But having the attitude that the sky will fall down if something goes wrong is most often inaccurate outside of your own head. And it’s not a good headspace to be in to perform or feel well.

I guess this one ties into many of the other tips but I think it’s good to emphasize how helpful a more relaxed attitude can be both for you and the people around you.

Realize you have a choice about what attitude you should adopt, just like with what you choose to do/not do. It might take some time to replace an old and ingrained habit for another. But over time you can do it

8. Take 30 belly breaths.

This is more of a temporary solution compared to the ones above. But it’s also an immediate one.

If you are feeling pressured and stressed out right now, you can use a few dozen belly breaths or so to relieve some of that for a while. Here’s what you do:

– Sit in a relaxing position with your legs apart.

– Put your hands on your stomach. Using your stomach breathe in slowly through your nose. If you are doing it right your stomach will expand and you’ll feel it with your hands.

– Breathe out slowly through your nose and do it with some force so you feel your stomach pull slightly inwards towards your spine.

– Breathe in and out 30 times. Take slow and deep breaths.- After you have taken 30 breaths and focused on counting them you should not only feel more relaxed and centered. Your body will also be able to continue breathing in this manner without you focusing on it. And that’s it. Continue with your normal day.

Trying to reach where you want to go, trying to be successful can have it’s obstacles.

Maybe you procrastinate a lot.

Maybe you have some doubts that you’ll be able to get there.

You may feel anxiety when creating something new as everything has gone well so far. You don’t want to fail and disappoint the people around you.

Like most obstacles in life these obstacles are inner, mental obstacles.

So what do you do?

One thing that has helped me to keep striving towards where I want to go is to focus on the process instead of the outcome. You just focus on what you are doing. You don’t think about the possible outcomes of what you are doing when you are doing what you do. You detach from that. You just keep your mind focused on doing the work.

You don’t think about how you may fail, disappoint yourself or have great success. You don’t think about how you may disappoint, amuse or in some other way be seen through the eyes of others. You just focus on what you do.

For instance, don’t focus on getting great reactions from your audience while writing your blogposts. Focus on writing excellent articles without thinking about what people will think about them.

Don’t focus on losing 10 pounds. Focus, for instance, on walking for 45 minutes each day or running for 30 minutes every other day. Just go and do it and don’t think about the outcome while walking/running. In time your pounds will come off.

7 powerful advantages of focusing on the process

You feel less anxiety and stage fright. As you detach from the possible outcomes – like what your audience will say about your new post or song – you can just focus on the moment and your performance.

You don’t care about outside pressure as much. Regardless if it’s real or mostly in your head. And you’ll put less pressure on yourself. As you detach from the results inner pressure and outside influences matter less. You can only focus on one thing at a time. If you focus what you are doing you’ll enjoy just doing instead of worrying about what may come up.

You are more creative. When your mind isn’t stuck in worrying about potential negative outcomes it opens up and allows you to be both more creative and open to your own, perhaps slightly odd ideas.

You procrastinate less. That has been my experience anyway. It’s often the negative feelings described above – stage fright, worry, pressure – that makes you procrastinate about important stuff. If those feelings lessen then you’ll also have less of a need to procrastinate.

Bad days don’t stop you as easily. Your focus is on the process, not on what happened yesterday or might happen today. And even if you feel bad about what happened I’ve found that the feeling isn’t as strong as when you are wrapped up in potential outcomes. This makes it easier to keep going.

Following up on a success will be easier. You’ll have less of a problem with living up to perceived expectations after having done something well. Expectations can put a bit too much pressure or doubt in your mind.

You have less fear and more freedom overall. If you are detached from the outcome you can – from what it may look like from the outside – take larger risks. You’ll have less fear of failure and rejection since those fears to a large degree are based on worrying about outcomes.

Focusing on the process doesn’t mean that you stop planning or tweaking your processes. Focus on your goals while you plan. Focus on educating yourself so you can improve and tweak your processes. And focus on what you are doing while performing the tasks that will get you where you want to go.

Focusing on the process works well in combination with a Just do it! mentality. The combination gets you out of an overthinking state and into action. It helps you get going and do the things that will give you results. Results that sitting around thinking can never give you.

Patiently building your own inner freedom

Now I’m not saying I’ve got this down perfectly, that I never worry and that I stick to focusing on the process every time I for instance write. But I’m pretty enthusiastic about this because it gives you an inner freedom to do what you want and less power to your own, inner mental obstacles.

I have found two things that make it easier to become process-focused. One is that focusing on the process instead of worrying about the outcomes is like working a mental muscle. At first it’s weak and your old worrying habit often sneaks up on you. You have to be patient just like when you are improving your discipline or anaerobic capacity.

Two is that worrying is just a habit and a pretty useless one. And the important thing is that you don’t have to keep it up just because you are used to it. It’s easy to assume that you should keep on worrying because you’ve always done it and everyone else seems to be doing it. But leaving this habit behind and instead focusing your mind on what’s important and on strengthening your new habit is a possible and more useful choice.

So, focus on the process and it becomes easier, smoother, more relaxing and more enjoyable to do your work. Focus on the process and doing what you are doing right now in an excellent way. Focus on the process to rediscover the joy you once felt when doing something but that lately has been buried in a pile of expectations and negative feeling.

Do that continually and you’ll be in a much better place to achieve the success you’d like.

If you want to learn how to become a better writer then where do you go?

Well, you can take a creative writing course.

Or read the books, biographies and studies of men and women hailed as literary geniuses throughout history.

For today, I’ve chosen to take some advice from one the most popular fiction writers of the last few decades: Stephen King.

Now, great sales figures aren’t always an indication of greatness in any field.

But it probably means that the creator knows what s/he is doing and what works. Plus, I have found that that quite a few of Stephen King’s books like Insomnia and The Long Walk are really good reads (and sometimes even greater films.

I’ve learned/been reminded about these seven tips by rereading King’s memoir/how-to-write book On Writing – highly recommended for many good insights into writing and a writer’s life – and by a whole bunch of his novels I’ve sacrificed sleep to keep on reading.

Many of these tips can be useful no matter if you are a blogger, writing reports at work/in school or quietly spending your nights secretly working on that great novel that will astonish the world.

How to Become a Better Writer

1. Get to the point.

Don’t waste your reader’s time with too much back-story, long intros or longer anecdotes about your life.

Reduce the noise. Reduce the babbling. In “On Writing” King gets to his points quickly. Get to your point quickly too before your reader loses patience and moves on.

2. Write a draft. Then let it rest.

King recommends that you crank out a first draft and then put it in your drawer to let it rest. Now, how long you let your text rest may vary.

King puts his manuscripts away for several months before rereading and start the editing process.

I often let a post rest for a day or two before I start editing (as I’m sure many other bloggers do from time to time too).

This enables you to get out of the mindset you had when you wrote the draft and get a more detached and clear perspective on the text. It then becomes easier to edit, add and cut in a sometimes kinda ruthless way. The result is most often a better text.

3. Cut down your text.

When you revisit your text it’s time to kill your darlings and remove all the superfluous words and sentences. Removing will declutter your text and often get your message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional punch.

Don’t remove too much text though or you may achieve the opposite effects instead. King got the advice to cut down his texts by 10 percent from an old rejection-letter and has followed this advice for decades.

While editing my blog I’ve found that 10 percent seems to be a pretty good figure not just for mammoth-sized books.

4. Be relatable and honest.

King has an honest voice in his fiction and in his memoir. He tells it like it is and makes us relate to him and his characters.

Since King’s fiction often is of an odd kind with strange plots that seldom happen to normal people I think one of his strengths as a writer is being able to write relatable content anyway.

One of the keys to doing that is to have an honest voice and honest characters with both bad and good sides to them.

People we can relate to with all of their faults, passions, fears, weaknesses and good moments. King’s characters seem human. That creates a strong connection to the reader who starts caring about the characters.

Another key to being honest and relatable is keeping a conversational style. Keeping it simple and using language that isn’t unnecessarily complicated. Using the words that first come to mind.

5. Don’t care too much what others may think.

King admits to being needy about the emotional feedback he gets when he lets his wife read a new story for the first time.

He gets a kick out of hearing her laugh so she cries or just cry because something in manuscript really touched her.

But he has also gotten tons of mail over the years from people who confuse his sometimes nasty characters with the writer. Or just thinks he should wind up in hell. And King hasn’t always been a favourite among literary critics either.

But from what I gather he just sits down at his desk and keeps writing every morning anyway.

If you listen too much to your critics you won’t get much done. Your writing will probably become worse, less fun and reflect your own growing self-doubts. And criticism is often not even about you anyway.

6. Read a lot.

When you read you always pick up things. Sometimes it might be reminders about what you know you should be doing while you write.

Sometimes it’s some cool idea or just the world and atmosphere the writer is painting.

Sometimes it’s something totally new that makes your jaw drop. That one is my favourite.

And sometimes you learn what you should avoid doing. There are almost always lessons you can learn.

If you want to be a better writer you need to read a lot to get fresh input, broaden your horizons and deepen your knowledge. And to evolve you need to mix yourself up with new influences and see what happens.

How do you find time to read more?

You can cut down on other evening activities like watching TV-shows you don’t care for that much anyway.

Or, as King suggests, you can bring a book to waiting rooms, treadmills or toilets. I like to plug in an audiobook while I’m on the bus or walking somewhere.

7. Write a lot.

I’ve saved the most important tip for last. To become a better writer you probably – and not so surprisingly – need to write more.

Many of the best in different fields – Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods – have gone beyond normal limits of practise. And so they reap extraordinary results.

But what do you do when you don’t feel like writing? Waiting for inspiration can become a long wait.

One good way to get around this is to find an effective solution to reduce procrastination. You may have to try a few before you find one that works for you.

Another way is well, just to do it. And if you just get going your emotions changes a lot of the time and any initial resistance or laziness becomes fun and enthusiasm instead.

“For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”
– Badlands

A couple of days ago you could pick up Magic, the new album from Bruce Springsteen in your local record store.

I haven’t listened to Bruce that much these last few years, but I used to be really into his music.

I even saw him when he played in Gothenburg in 2003. It was pretty awesome.

In retrospect I think that some of the things that attracted me to Springsteen are the same things that got me interested in personal development. While a lot of the other music that I listened to at the time was kinda negative and whiny Bruce radiated positive energy and thoughts. It wasn’t depressing but it was also not optimistic in a cheesy way.

There was an incredible enthusiasm in the music and often a thought about how there is something more to life than just sitting around or trapping yourself in a boring and depressing rut.

And while sitting here, looking back and listening to the wonderful “Your own worst enemy” on repeat I thought about a few of the things I’ve learned from Bruce Springsteen.

1. Practise, practise, practise.

It’s tempting to believe that talent is just about everything. But of course we mostly just get to see really successful people at their big, crowning moments.

We don’t get a feel for, or seldom even a picture of or text about, all the time and energy they have put into creating and practising and refining a song in some dingy basement. Or the hours and years that have been spent hunched over a keyboard or a golf club.

Now I’m not saying that talent doesn’t play a part. But when I think about what I’ve read in biographies about Springsteen I’m reminded about how anyone who is really good at anything didn’t get there without lots and lots of work. Probably more work than some of the people that didn’t get so far. So maybe it isn’t always the talent that decides who is going to be really successful and who is not?

2. Give it all you got.

It’s really fun to see how much someone can give. Seeing someone just giving it all over and over, seeing how energetic and creative they can be, for so many years is really quite inspiring. Seeing Bruce Springsteen on stage is a good reminder that most of us probably have a whole lot more to give, a whole lot more potential hidden somewhere within.

…Even if you only have few fans.

It’s a bit easier to give it what you got when everyone is cheering you on. But you may not get the great response you’d like immediately.

I remember an anecdote from one of the biographies about Bruce when he and the E-Street Band is out on tour in the late 1970’s. In one town they discover that there are only something like 9 people and a dog at the concert. So do they try to sneak out early?

Nope.

I think Bruce says something about the audience having paid for the tickets with their hard-earned money just like everyone else. And then Bruce and the band plays for 4 hours. That’s not just a great and giving attitude. I also think that there is a joy and validation that comes from within that made Bruce and the band go about business as usual and give a great performance.

And I think this mindset is one of the things that propelled them towards a bigger breakthrough and larger audiences.

It’s easy to get stuck in a reactive frame of mind where you need the outside validation to keep going.

One way to not do that is to choose to do something you really like. Then your motivation will come from the inside rather than the reaction of others. This is for instance important if you’re a new blogger. Choosing the right topic to blog about can carry you through the first few months and help you write some really good stuff even though it might seem like only 9 people and a dog are reading your posts.

3. Be bold.

There are a whole lot of bold lines and emotions in Bruce’s music. And I think there is something to be said about boldness in any communication between people. When you keep at a normal tone you can get normal or sometimes little attention.

But when you go bold you start something bigger. You hook your listeners not just to your words, but you suck them into your world. You arouse all these different kinds of emotions in them. You create a stronger experience and a powerful connection. Being bold can of course be scary, but there are payoffs too.

4. Have fun.

This is something that sometimes gets lost in the mix. But one of the biggest lessons I have learned from Bruce is to relax and have fun. When you watch him and the E-Street Band on stage you realise how much fun they are having while creating and performing. And I think this is an important point too: together they create their own fun from the music. They don’t wait around for someone or something else to bring the fun and excitement. They produce it from within.

5. Emotions are contagious.

And that fun they create doesn’t stop within the group. The emotions, the energy from one person travels outward and onward to the next person. So enthusiasm is contagious. And so is optimism. And anger, boredom and apathy too.

I think one of the biggest keys to Bruce’s success is how he is able to convey his own emotions through your speakers (or on stage) and make you feel a lot too. As I said above in point #4, when you go bold with your emotions you create a strong connection to other people. So going bold in a positive emotional way is a good tip for creating a real connection and perhaps starting a good relationship.

6. You are the one holding yourself back.

As I’m listening to “Your own worst enemy” over and over again I’m reminded about one of the most important things I’ve learned over the last year. Most of the time it’s not someone else holding you back. It’s you.

If you go beyond the surface of a problem you often discover that what seemed like an external problem actually has a solution within you, within your thoughts and behaviour. And not saying this in a rah-rah motivational way. It’s just what I have discovered to be accurate a lot of the time.