This is the first in a 5 part series of posts based on an interview with Leo Babauta. Read other posts from the interview»
In 2006 I took up running and I started training for my first marathon. I sent daily news to a column in my local newspaper so that I would have some accountability. And when that column ended, I needed a new way to be held accountable, so I started Zen Habits to help me continue changing my habits.
The first month of my blog, I was writing basically for nobody. I got a couple of readers here and there. The second month I started getting more readers who were very enthusiastic. They really encouraged me. The feedback from them was great and it helped me improve Zen Habits.
I wrote a post called the “Top 20 Motivation Hacks.” It was my first real attempt at putting everything that I had been learning into one post. I tried to put the best things that really worked for me, not just things I’d heard about or read about, but things that actually worked. It got picked up on DumbLittleMan.com. They sent me a lot of traffic. After that, I got popular on the delicious. And then, I think it was linked to from a couple of other sites — maybe LifeHack. Those are pretty big blogs. The combination sent me a lot of traffic and a lot of new readers.
Writing “Top 20 Motivation Hacks” taught me how to write a really useful post. That’s basically what I’ve done from there on. I don’t always succeed, but that’s my goal.
I want to write something that people want to share with their friends.
That’s really how Zen Habits has taken off. That kind of content where I’m really trying to help people.
The Power of Less is based on the same concept. I tried to put as much usefulness into it as one book could take. It’s a lot of the basic principles from Zen Habits but really distilled and concentrated, especially for new readers. It’s been out for a few months now. It actually really quickly hit the bestseller list at Amazon.
I was just reading this e-book. I couldn’t stop reading it. I was getting a whole bunch of ideas and just went to my computer and started writing a post about our relationship with food. What I am proposing is that we look at our relationship with food a little bit closer and maybe change it and not use food for pleasure or reward or boredom or anything like that and realize that it’s just fuel.
It’s called Eat, Stop, Eat. It’s basically a diet — or maybe an anti-diet—by a guy named Brad Pilon, a nutritionist. Basically, it’s the idea of intermittent fasting. I don’t know if I’m sold on the concept, but it was really interesting. It’s backed up by research and challenges the ideas you read in the mainstream magazines and blogs and newspapers about nutrition and health.
That’s what I’m writing for my next post. His book really sparks some cool ideas.
I definitely get excited about things.
Leo Babauta blogs at Zen Habits and Write To Done. He is the author of The Power of Less, Zen to Done, and The Zen Habits Handbook for Life. Follow him on Twitter.
Published Monday, June, 22, 2009