Quit Reading Blogs and Go Change the World
Assuming you haven’t lived under a rock for the last five years and have wasted a reasonable amount of time surfing the Internet, you’ve almost certainly run across a blog or two. You know, blogs - short for “weblogs”, kind of like journals or diaries, but in a digital format. They often remain personal in content, but rarely in audience. So, if you don’t mind my asking, what did you think?
Were any of them particularly enlightening? Were any of them good enough to bookmark and share with your friends? Did they inspire you to change careers, or to propose to your sweetheart, or to give away all of your belongings and devote your life to priesthood in Fiji?
If you could honestly answer “yes” to any of the above questions, please tell me where these blogs are. 
Blogs, while highly conversational, are usually devoid of meaningful content. In other words, they’re easy and often pleasurable to read, but don’t provide their readers with much value… kind of like Cosmo. Blogs come in several flavors: News/Politics (they’re almost indistinguishable nowadays), irrelevant personal anecdotes, collections of numbered lists…
Yes, that’s right - I said collections of numbered lists. Anyone who’s ever surfed the Internet for websites about a personal development topic (such as health or personal finance) has undoubtedly come across a few of these. You know what I’m referring to: “Shed 50 Pounds Before Summer With These Five Great Tips!” As an example, I’m currently looking at one of my RSS feeds (name of the blog omitted to protect the guilty), showing the titles of the latest nine posts. Of those nine titles, seven contain numbers: “Ten Commandments”, “22 Tips”, “Four Profound Agreements”, “44 Longevity Tips”, “9 Easy Ways”, “10 Timeless Lessons”, and “207 Great Tips”. Collections of numbered lists aren’t inherently bad, but they can make the wrong impression - that following these “Five Great Tips” will result in a painless overnight transformation. They won’t, nor will anything else.
How many blogs have truly changed your life in some positive way? It doesn’t even have to be a major change (like giving away all of your belongings and devoting your life to priesthood in Fiji); something as simple as learning to cook would be great. My count is probably hovering around the 3-4 range - and I’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet. Most blogs seem to exist primarily to waste our time. Don’t get me wrong, they do a great job of that, but if we’re already spending all of that time reading other peoples’ scrawlings, wouldn’t it be best if we could acquire long-term benefits from them?
Any blog worth reading should provide some value beyond the text. In other words, if it’s not changing the way you think, feel or act, or inspiring you to go change the way someone else thinks, feels or acts, drop it. The idea seems harsh (and probably is), but I can guarantee that it will be a huge time saver, if nothing else. As a personal example, I started this website with a clear mission in mind - to change the world, first in thought, then in action. I’m barely just getting started on the thought changes, but you might think of this website as Phase I of Scott’s Master Plan (for World Domination). 
Jokes aside, my point is that this website has a purpose beyond simply making money or being an outlet for mental turbulence.
With that said, it should be obvious by now that most blogs aren’t worth reading! Stop wasting your time with them; you should be able to tell within a couple of minutes whether you’ll ever return. And shedding 50 pounds in six weeks isn’t healthy, so you can stop Googling for that, too. Get out of that comfy chair and go contribute something to the world. If you’re not sure where to start, try discovering your purpose first. (FYI, Steve Pavlina’s blog, the one I just linked to, would probably be one of my “worth reading” choices. Spend some time there; it might become one of yours, also.) Remember the old adage, “One reaps what one sows.” For a less kindly-worded motivator, read my Thoughts on Apathy post. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to catch a one-way flight to Fiji. 
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