I’ve noticed this behavior in myself. The need to conform and read other blogs to see how I’m supposed to be. When I gave it up and just let me be me, it all became so much easier.

Anyway, totally love your blog and love what you have to say. You inspire me and I love people who inspire me, so thanks. I often feel very liberated after reading your blog, the mark of any good writer and teacher, I’d say. Keep up the excellent work, dude.

Limiting rules = bad. Rules that spark creativity = good.

“Rules in and of themselves are not bad. It is only when they limit my potential that I start thinking about removing them from my life.”

I totally agree with this. Though, the confines of a set of rules often produces the greatest creative work. There is no point in limiting what you want to do, but I find rules sometimes spark the greatest innovations in HOW you do it.

Thanks for the interesting read.

If it’s another step towards where you want to go, do it. When it’s complete, you might even feel inspired to go back and do what you should have done.

Rich

Again, for me, words, labels and all that comes second to what gives you the results you want.

Update: I thought of a few things where constraints are awesome, such as limiting your diet to only healthy foods. It forces you to be creative with what you’ve got.

An example: there’s a “rule” of blogging that says “Thou shalt post every day or else.” There are good reasons behind the rule, but it’s still limiting. You start looking at blogging as a chore, instead of a privilege or a passion. You write just to write, not because you have something to say.

On the other hand, having a posting schedule can be a blessing. You might, for example, constrain yourself to writing no more than 2 posts a week. But instead of stifling your creativity, such a constraint can actually force you to put more effort into each post and encourage you to really appreciate the act of writing. Constraints give you focus, direction, and purpose.

What do you think?

My philosophy is always to run on 80%, so if you can do 5 posts a week, why not try 3 times a week. That way you give yourself some breathing room.

Second, isn’t the whole idea of making living online about freedom? What good is a “freedom” for if you set yourself even more strict rules about what to do than a normal company would? That’s the problem that probably everyone faces sooner or later when working only for oneself. You can always achieve more by working more, but at some point that kind of life is not fun anymore, and the amount of money that comes with the additional effort is not worth it anymore if it sucks out all the fun parts of the life.

Life is about enjoying it to the fullest, and if one is self-employed and has such a great opportunity to do whatever he or she wants, I think the spare time should be then valued even more and there should be lots of days to give oneself the opportunity to just relax and do nothing and feel good about it. I had the same problem when I was playing poker… it was fun and I earned easy money by playing it, but at some point I took it too seriously and forced myself to play too much, which made my life worse. Then I found the correct personal balance in life between work and having fun, which is for me pretty heavily weighted towards the “having fun”.

Everyone goes through the same feelings, but wise people learn from the experience.

Whenever you feel inspired, harness it and write 3-4-5 posts at a time. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Keith!

Thanks for stopping by, Srini! I’m loving the blogger interviews at BlogCastFM so far!