"Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you have not planted."

Posted via email from I’m Sridhar Machani

It’s going to be about stopping the planning activities and start doing those things we’ve in our minds for a long time.

If you’ve some sort of business interests on the web, you’re likely to fall in love with the Google Buzz! The visibility to your products and services has just got multiplied by several factors.

However, I’m amazed at the negative reactions about Google Buzz.

Google may not be too bothered, because it gives them the added visibility. There is a worry about privacy flaw and some even have written that “Google is bad”. Com-on, Buzz is just another service. You’re free to use it or scrap it. If you’re like me, you can:

• Keep the Buzz.
• Disable sharing information about who you follow and who follow you. Edit your Google profile and uncheck the option to do so.
• Post to the public or choose a private group from your contacts.
• Figure more on the Buzz privacy policy.

Why so serious?

By default, Google has opted you in, and you’ll have to “opt-out” to turn off Buzz. This strategy seems to have scared most folks about the potential Buzz flaws. I agree that Google’s strategy is questionable, but like all their decisions, they must have crunched solid data to back themselves.

What I like about Google is that it doesn’t care much about who released a product or a service first. Its approach is to make it better, and leave it to the people to use the best one (or two!). They seem to have won with Gmail, Gtalk, Docs, and many other services.

What about you? Do you like Buzz? Are you thinking about how to use and create more Buzz for your blog, product, event, or service?

From the official PayPal blog:

“…personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in India have been suspended…”

Evidently, the news has attracted enough attention to force an update on the situation. In some ways, this could be related to how many beneficiaries actually declare and pay tax on the funds they earn via PayPal and other such sources.

Ajith Prasad at Dollar$hower reckons Making Money Online in India gets tougher.

Do you have alternate ways to keep the money coming in? Or would you wait for things to get settled?

“Bloggers struggle to make money online. Many…if not all…bloggers have zero business owning experience and are looking for a way to become self sufficient through their own doing. So…to overcome this, bloggers need to take a serious look at how money is made through blogging in today’s atmosphere. The “problogging” days are gone. What we are left with is a lot stronger business model of actually creating resources online that are valuable to our readers and generate income at the same time.

If you are struggling to make money online or are only making enough to get by…this is your ticket to freedom. The old ways of doing things (that many people are still doing) are gone.

Problogging Is Dead is going to show you how to make a significant income online…”

Source: http://robbsutton.com/problogging-dead/.

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits carries a lovely piece of advice to improve productivity and it starts with an equally beautiful quote:

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu

It is perhaps a coincidence that yesterday I tried to wake up and felt terrible. There was no energy left to wake up, goto office, or even do the stuff I love doing normally (reading, writing). I knew it was time to take a break and told my wife that I’m taking an off from work and not going to turn on the computer. My wife shrugged it off, and said, “Yeah, right”!

Just the sweet thought of doing nothing was a huge relief. It was like removing a shit load of burden off my shoulders. I slept for another hour, shaved, and got refreshed like I was taking off for a long drive! I spent the rest of the day doing things I usually don’t do, like reading the newspaper, watching TV, talking to my wife and dad, taking a nap after lunch, and even speed-read a book (about content marketing ) before dozing off to bed.

Next morning, I was eager, energetic, and was even humming a song!

I’d been thinking about how to identify and focus on things that matter the most and hold on to them (again by Leo Babauta). Simple things like these can boost your productivity and can have a huge impact on your life in general, like I’m beginning to realize.

Now, can you guess the missing dots in the title of this post? “Think” and “focus”. So, the mantra is stop what you’re doing, think, focus, and get more done in your work and life.

Finally, I leave you with this nice quote from Adam Pash on Lifehacker:

“One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now.”

Do you have any favorite productivity quotes that you fall back on in your downtimes?

When I signed up for my first domain (http://coffeebreaklabs.com) and web host (Yahoo small business), all I wanted to do was to create a useful blog and make some money out of it. Isn’t it how it all begins? Why did it fail? What next?

Some of the links mentioned on this post may be broken or may break after a while.

Look at all the things I did while hopping from one idea to another, clearly on my way to super failure:

• Started off with one of the default HTML site templates (http://coffeebreaklabs.com/home)
• Discovered that social networks were the norm of the day
• Spent almost three months to create a Drupal-based site
• Brainstormed on the site content and architecture for more days and nights
• Created nodes to represent different types of content (concept, tasks, references)
• Created and granted granular access levels to different types of users in a hierarchy (from a visitor to editor, strategist, and owner)
• Launched the site without any content on it (yes, I did that!)
• The site fell flat on its face and crawled even without any users
• Discovered WordPress.org and got so immersed in its magic that I moved my site from Drupal to WordPress
• Several iterations of themes and plugins (another few months!)
• Took a dip into SEO with Google Analytics, Feedburner (RSS and Email) subscriptions
• Did social media marketing on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In

And look at where the domain is today: it is obsolete in the larger scheme of things and it may not exist for long (the web hosting term expires soon). Wait, I’ve not given up! In its defense, I’d say that the idea itself was not bad and I might come back to it later to give it another shot. The several months of effort will guide me through my future projects with the collective wisdom I’ve gained, called experience.

In this blog, I’ll write about all the mistakes I did, the trials and errors, and the amazing things I learnt on the way, so stay tuned to this blog if you don’t want to go through the grind and waste precious time. In the upcoming articles, I’ll talk about my second avatar on the web and how I’m working hard to make new mistakes! Yeah!

What do you think were your top three mistakes when you got started on the web? Fire away in the comments!