For fun, I have written four things in this blog post.  Three things are clearly in some kind of code or such.  One might not be so clear.

The first person to correctly decode all four things and leave the correct translations/solutions in the comments section wins $5.00 US (to be sent by PayPal).

Have at it!

First puzzle

Ometimessay eway aketah isthay oggingblay ingthay ootay eriouslysay.  Eway ustjay eednay otay avehay omesay unfay ceonay niay aay ilewhay.

Second puzzle

fI ew era oot tsenrae dna oot deggod ew teg siht muidem yletelpmoc sdrawkcab

Third puzzle

- …. .. … / .. … / -. — – / .- -. / … — … / – …. .. … / .. … / .— ..- … – / .–. .-.. .- -.– .. -. –. / .– .. – …. / – …. . / — . -.. .. ..- –

Four puzzle (what is the hidden message?)

Even

Normal

Jive

Obfuscates

You

All the best bloggers are world builders. So are science fiction/fantasy writers, politicians, entrepreneurs, architects religious leaders, non-profit organizers, teachers, and coaches.  Oh, and movie directors/producers, too (George Lucas and James Cameron didn’t just make movies – they made entire worlds.  Or even galaxies.)

What?  You say that all they do is move pixels, letters, numbers, and the occasional image?  How could bloggers possibly be world builders?

First of all, relax on one point: I’m not saying that bloggers are planet builders.  I don’t know what your religious beliefs are (they are your business, after all) but I’m not implying that bloggers possess superhuman abilities to move and rearrange matter into organized clumps (although you could be forgiven for thinking that some of them might be under the delusion that they can do such things).

Worlds aren’t just planets.  Worlds, going back to etymology and history for just a moment, are not limited to being orbs in space that orbit stars.  World is a term that related to things like “turning chaos into order”.  World can also be a self-contained, unique reality that exists separate to the “real world”.

A world can be an ideal place, one that represents certain characteristics, beliefs, or ideas.

Blogs have themes, rules, topics of interest, visions, and calls to action.

Here are a few examples:

Chris Brogan: a world of human, café shaped businesses

Beth Kanter: world of compassion where non-profit organizations can use social media to be successful

Rob Diana: world for better coding, design, and techonology

Robert Scoble: world of cool and useful technology

Fred Wilson: world where more people are educated in business fundamentals

Seth Godin: world where more people realize what incredible opportunities are available to us all and what we lose when we squander them

Darren Rowse: a world where individuals can improve their lives by making money online using blogs and social media

Michael Martine: a world where businesses make better use of blogs and social media to be more successful

Steven Hodson: a world where companies and individuals stop making stupid mistakes with technology (see also Justin Kownacki)

Hugh MacLeod: a world where people get off their asses, follow their passions, and do great work

Mitch Joel: a world where companies grasp the fact that media is changing and baby, you’d better run smartly with it

Introvert Zone: a world where introverts can have self-respect and live happy, productive lives

Ian M Rountree: a world where you can do cool stuff, get better, and do even more while growing as an individual

Bill Wren: a world where people can find tools to become better writers

Steve Spalding: a world where you turn things inside out, split the atoms apart, and find the goodness that no one else has been smart enough to find yet

Louis Gray: a world where everyone gets to see and benefit from all of the good technology that’s out there, especially the great stuff that gets overlooked at times

Dave Winer: a world where technology is used intelligently as part of an overall democratic, fair society (see also: Doc Searls, David Weinberger)

Alexander Van Elsas: a world where free technology, the rights of the individual, and commerce can coexist

Jessica Doyle: a loving world full of wonderful art

Merlin Mann: a world where people have the tools to do their best work, and then they go do it

Gary Vanynerchuk: a world where people appreciate the complexity and range of great wines in the world

Brian Solis: a world where companies use social media, public relations and communications effectively and thoughtfully (see also Adam Singer)

Naomi Dunford: a world where individuals can start thriving small businesses instead of working for “the corporation” (see also: Jonathan Fields)

Valeria Maltoni: a world where everyone recognizes the power of honest and significant conversation

Kelly Diels: a world where we better understand the importance of sex, money and meaning and how together they intersect and shape our lives

Dan Schawbel: a world where people realize the power of their personal brand and how it precedes them at every step of the way

Have you visited any cool worlds lately?  Better still, have you made any?

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It doesn’t always come easy.  Sometimes it comes very, very hard.

No, I’m not talking about a bowel movement, although you might be forgiven for thinking that.

It’s the writing.  The blogging.  The whole “coming up with new ideas” thing.  Getting words down in a sensible order that makes a point, informs, or entertains.

Frustration is the feeling of thwarted ambition.  Sometimes the thwarting is just a temporary derailment of will and purpose and, with time and effort, you can get back on track and steam toward your destination.  (Hurray for railroad metaphors!)

The really bad thing about frustration is that it accommodates distraction.  No, that’s too gentle of a word.  Frustration supercharges the tendency toward distraction. Unless we can build the self-discipline to push through the things that thwart our ambition, we can enter a vicious cycle where by the following occurs (in true BASIC style):

10  WHEN INSPIRED BEGIN WORKING

20 IF ENCOUNTER CREATIVE ROADBLOCK

30 IF FEEL FRUSTRATED, GOTO 40

33 IF FRUSTRATION <= DETERMINATION, GO TO 90

40 LOOK FOR DIVERSION TO REMOVE FEELINGS OF FRUSTRATION

50 WASTE TIME WITH DIVERSION

60 DISCOVER THAT TIME HAS PASSED

70 DISCOVER THAT NO WORK HAS BEEN DONE

80 GOTO 20

90 DO WORK

100 FEEL SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

110 END (SATISFIED, SOMEWHAT)

The key to avoiding frustration would seem to be avoiding distraction, as painful as it is.  But what if you are trapped in the loop?  What do you do to get out?

Over to you, dear Brainiacs.  What do you do to get out of a rut?

Image by DOH4

Something different for a change of pace:  a video showing the evolution of the design of the Airbus A380-800 aircraft, all in drawings:

In a world of one draft blog posts, it’s quite intriguing to see something go through so many design changes.

According to Wikipedia.org, this airplane has 530 km (330 miles) of wiring in each aircraft.

Can you imagine how freaking complex and hard it is to make one of these airplanes?

Maybe we should all reflect on this the next time we’re struggling with a website or a blog post.

Image by johndal

Thought wrestling (different from the action that you see above, yet oddly similar) is one of the skills that you can develop as a blogger.  Here are some thoughts on that.

Yesterday’s question was why do you blog if not for money?  More than a dozen readers responded with their reasons for blogging and there were a few common themes in the responses.  I want to focus on one of those themes today:   developing your thoughts via writing.

Here are some examples of what some of you wrote concerning creating and refining ideas (or wrestling them into shape):

Susan Murphy (Suzemuse)

I started blogging in 2006 because I was interested in improving my writing. I thought that putting my thoughts online would be a good way to do this…  I blog mostly because I love to write. I am the type of person that will wake up in the morning with an idea in my head, sit down at the computer and crank out 1000 barely-edited words in 20 minutes, and hit Publish before I have a chance to think about it too much…  Blogging helps me sort things out in my head.

Rob Diana (Regular Geek)

I started blogging as a way to get things off my chest and to get some thoughts on “paper”…  Another side of this is that I have found the blog being a way for me to explore ideas. I always thought I would give opinions on tech news, but that quickly gets boring. For example, when everyone was writing about the (Google Buzz) launch I waited until I had a good feel for what it was. I realized that it felt incomplete, like it was meant for something bigger. So, almost two weeks after the launch I finally wrote something that was not a review or comparison to Twitter and Friendfeed, but more of a “why did Google release this” and “where is Buzz really going”.

Rob Patrob (Robert Paterson’s Weblog):

I blog because I think best aloud. It is a way of working out ideas – like an artist’s sketch book.

Ian M Rountree

But part of why I blog is to leave a permanent record… having a record of how my thoughts progress from one month to the next really helps me make sure I’m going the direction I want to be going.

Bill Wren (he linked to one of his own posts and I’m posting an excerpt of that here):

A friend of mine asks, Why should I blog? For me the quick and easy answer is because I like it. More specifically, I like writing. And if I look at everything I’ve posted on this blog and my other blog (Piddleville) I realize that what I’m really doing is thinking out loud online. I tend to work out ideas on my blogs.

AnneMieke (Mindstructures)

But if you would ask why I love to (blog), then I could not answer that so easy. The closest I could say, is that it is a way to get my thoughts in some form that is understandable…  Going straight to words is not possible for me, so writing is not an option. But with blogging I can (easily) use graphics that I can adjust all the time to make myself clear.

Ilinap

Blogging is therapy, but a whole lot cheaper… Blogging forces me to dig deeper than I would otherwise let myself go. I come face to face with some buried emotions and experiences. I reflect on my own brand DNA, my shortcomings of motherhood, my worries, my celebrations, my fears. Some things I’ve seen crop up in my head are still too painful or controversial to manifest into words. But thanks to blogging, they’re there, off the so called back burner and poised for capture and introspection.

These comments suggest to me that people are getting value from describing things that matter to them.  The blog becomes a tool to develop ideas, to gather thoughts and force them into sentences and paragraphs of meaning.

One of my first posts of 2010 was a collaboration with a lot of smart people who were giving tips on how to do better work.  Seth Godin chimed in with the following tip:

#1 thing: start a blog and write every day.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that tip, but after reviewing it in light of the comments above, I think I have a better understand of what Seth was trying to communicate with his tip.  He was talking about developing ideas.

The practice of regular writing and sorting through the thousands of pieces of information that we process daily helps us to get better at analyzing and using information.  Putting structure around data and wrestling thoughts into order helps us to exercise our reasoning and creative thinking muscles.  This is a critical skill that anyone can use to do better work.  The other comments that I’ve quoted in this post also support this concept.

What do you think?  Is blogging really thought wrestling, the new king of mental sports?

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Image via Wikipedia

Information is good:  we learn important new things through the books, programs, movies, and, yes, websites and blogs that we are exposed to each day.  The real time web, or even a reasonable time web, makes it easier than ever to get information quickly.  Having access to lots of timely information isn’t just good for journalists.  It’s all good, right?

One thing that I’m noticing in myself is that the mere act of consuming information can be rewarding, regardless of what it is.  I assume it’s a psychological phenomenon, a reaction to the stimuli that our brain receives, but I don’t know anything about the science behind it.

We sometimes complain that we are overburdened with too many demands on our attention.  Yet, is it possible that we actually enjoy it?

Gen Y and younger people sure seem to enjoy have a multitude of inputs to handle at once:  TV, music, texting, E-Mails, message, etc. all being done while Web browsing.  Some of us Generation X types like to have lots of stimuli thrown at us, too.  The ability to flick channels on TV, tab between browser windows and media snack or sample content can be its own pleasurable reward.

[Side note:  I've been multitasking as I've been writing this post - at least 20 times...]

I’m trying hard to think of potential benefits of this addiction to multiple stimuli, but I’m not sure if there are any less you’re a journalist, a military leader, or an air traffic controller.  At the same time, our bodies and brains were built with some kind of ability to take in stimuli like this.

Do you think that what people call “love of learning” is really just when we get a high from being bombarded by stimulation?  And does the psychological phenomenon of flow have anything to do with this?

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