Separate your needs from your your wants

Reading through my RSS reader I found an article about “Separating your blog wants from your blog needs” (it is actually the name of it) on Problogger, a blog about blogging, the best of its kind. I find it really interesting, mostly because its statements can be applied to real life. Those statements or recommendation of what you should do are:

• Write a blog manifesto, or…

Have clear goals on want you want and for which you need to do something.

A manifesto is a way to express your goals with some project, as a blog. It’s mostly presented in an e-book format, sometimes with 1000-10000 words; sometimes just a single page poster-style. In it, most blogger put a clear statement that shows the reasons ands goals for the blog, making some impact, trying to get more loyal readers.

What’s important to us, is that setting your goals, and by that your needs, for either what you want, or what you need to do, help us lead our own actions to an end. And yes, a happy ending, accomplishing our goals by doing the needs along with the wants. But that comes later…

• Give yourself a designated blog time, or…

Have a specific time for working in your needs, and another for your wants.

Working on a blog is hard sometimes, specially when you run out of ideas or when you have other needs to take care about. Setting a designated time will help, as your own mind will know when it’s time to turn on the “creativity machine” and when will it start thinking on new ideas.

Your mind will always work on your needs subconsciously, not always on your wants. setting a specific time for both will make sure it works to accomplish your needs and your wants.

• Keep a notebook, or…

Be aware, always.

As I said your mind will always work on needs and sometimes on wants, either way you set or not a designated time, being aware of the environment will help you on both. An idea is a somehow complex concept. We use it for creativeness and logically solving problems. Yet it’s always there. So, an idea will form out of “nowhere” and will help your on your task, being it a way to do them quick, or to be more multitasking or other. What’s important is that they don’t come from “nowhere” but from “everywhere”. Yes, as your subconscious is working, it will get ideas from every single sense input. It gathers information from what you see and what you hear (and from what you touch, taste and smell… ).

So be aware, listen, and pay attention to your environment, so you can later catch an idea… Or many, who knows…

• Stop worrying, or…

Stop worrying (?)



The Problogger Guest’s article talks about stop extra-worrying for your needs; social media and regular content. Worrying too much would cause you write crappy content. It uses that “quality over quantity” analogy.

So, yeah, quality is better than quantity, in any matter. Talking about ideas, many crappy or similar ideas won’t be, ever, better than one really good idea. So, talking about needs and wants, if your needs become overwhelming and you need now to de-stress, stop worrying about it. Just don’t, for a while, and you’ll realize you don’t need to.

Sometimes your wants are more important than your needs, so, if that times comes, please let yourself free to do what you want, not what you need, at least for a day (or any other time unit).

• Re-evaluate the length of your posts, or…

Re-evaluate the time spent on needs/time spent on wants.

Setting a specific time for needs and wants is ok, but going farther (or a bit farther) you should re-consider each one’s importance. You needs’ and your wants’. Then you have to re-evaluate your time spent on every task, organizing better to better accomplish goals.

So, set a specific time according to the time you want to spend on what you need and a specific time according to the time you want to spend on what you want. It sound harder than it actually is.

• Lose the day job, or…

Get rid of some needs or change them (extreme solution)

As the original article said, quitting your job for the sake of blogging is an extreme solution only viable in case you do know your blog is going to give you what you need (as… money). And even when not talking about blogging, it is an extreme solution.

They main reason for this kind of articles (this one, not Problogger’s) is to teach other people they must organize themselves better, as to be clear what are their duties, and how they can use other time to do things they like. So having, as a solution, “changing some need for another” is perhaps counterproductive. You must do whatever it takes to have enough time. Set things you are going to do and make a mental schedule putting wants on a side and needs on the other. Priorities are mostly needs-first, so after you complete your needs, you may enjoy your wants.

Either way what you are looking for is a way to divide them, to actually have needs on one side, wants on the other and be able to complete your needs along with being able to enjoy completing your wants. It is possible. It’s easy, actually, if you actually put your soul on that (not to be too dramatic…). The only thing you need to do is think, and plan, the rest will come easily.

Original article, by Nicola Ibberson: Separate Your Blog Needs from Your Blog Wants.

Nicola Ibberson runs her own blog Little House In Town in which she writes about “sustainable living, travelling, the seaside, cookery and random things going on in my life in addition to the odd cheeky one about vintage style, ethical fashion, tattoos and various knickknackery” so I wondered, Why in earth is she writing about blogging?… Then I realize, she blogs.