Live Curious is 60 days old.

It has been an incredible adventure with nearly 35,000 live curious views!

Here are 6 important learnings and lessons from these first two months.

1. It’s harder than I thought and more fulfilling than I thought.

When it comes to curating and creating content that stands out … it is hard. There is one new blog starting every second of every day. Standing out is hard. There are days I’ve had 1,000 visitors and days I’ve had 40 visitors. I have posted new articles and had virtually no one visit the site. And I have had days where I published nothing new and the site was bustling with new visitors.

As I wrote in 3 Lightbulb Lessons From My First 30 Days Of Blogging …

“On a day when the numbers, clicks and likes are up, I can feel prideful. On the days when they are down, I can feel jealous. Neither are feelings I want to cultivate in my life.”

It can be a roller coaster but the process of curating and creating curious and relevant material is so fulfilling and I believe it does just as much for me as it does for others. I am becoming a better leader as I strive to view, digest and metabolize daily happenings and world events in new ways. Over 20,000 people from more than 30 countries have checked out articles on Live Curious. I have discovered that the world shrinks when you start blogging.

2. It doesn’t have to all happen in the first 60 days.

[Tweet “Allow yourself to be a beginner. No one starts off as a pro.”]

3. Your post will never be perfect. But you need to publish it anyway.

One of my greatest battles is when to post an article. Just like in teaching and preaching, my message is really never done. If I preach five times on a weekend, my message gets tweaked five times! I preach, teach, live and blog in “beta” mode where nothing is ever really perfect and done, yet it must be published.

I have learned that far more important than “perfect” is “previewed.”

Every single one of my blog articles that I have posted over the last 60 days has been previewed by at least one or two people before I post it. Once for grammar and once for sensibility. When the article is grammatically correct and makes sense, it is probably OK to post.

4. The more you learn the less you know.

The blogging world is a deep hole! Like the matrix. Each time I learn one new skill, I am made aware of 2-3 others that go along with it. And I am OK with this because I love being a beginner.

[Tweet “Much of our excitement in life comes from the pursuit not the finished product.”]

5. Don’t compare your beginning to someone’s else’s middle.

I am pretty sure John Acuff said this about writing books, and it absolutely applies to blogging. It is so easy for me to look at people like … Dale Partridge, Carey Nieuwhof, Michael Hyatt and Jen Hatmaker and want to be where they are right now. Their ability to curate and create compelling content is so keen. But I must realize they have been doing this for a while – most of them for many years. And this is when I have to look back at my #2 learning.

[Tweet “When you compare what you know about yourself to what you don’t know about others, you will always come up short.”]

6. Scheduling is the secret sauce.

I have spent over 50 hours researching applications that make social media, posting and blogging more consistent and contagious.

I have come to understand that you can run a very active blog and still have a life!

Here are three different scheduling and automation applications I have subscribed to or tested.  This is not meant to be an exhaustive review as these are all very powerful tools. This is just a short explanation of how I use each of these tools currently to increase productivity and margin in my life.

– TweetDeck – I use this application daily to track, filter organize and view information that interests me on Twitter. I have about 15 columns with lists, key words and users with whom I want to engage or follow. TweetDeck allows me to quickly view and respond to people I follow and people who follow me. It is a brilliant and free desktop application.

– Buffer – I use this application to schedule my Twitter and Facebook posts on the fly. It allows me to be spontaneous and scheduled! It is quite easy to use on your laptop, tablet or phone. The user interface shows quickly and clearly what is scheduled to go out today, tomorrow and next week!  There is a free version of Buffer where you can schedule content on two platforms. If you want to schedule to more than two platforms or accounts you will need to pay $10 a month.

– Meet Edgar – I began using this application around Christmas as a trail version and I am now in the process of determining whether I can afford to keep it as subscriptions start at $50 a month!  But believe me when I say that this application is BRILLIANT. Meet Edgar is the only application that stops social media updates from going to waste.  When you start working with Edgar what “he” does is retain and repost at a later time all your previously created content.  What happens is you create all kinds of “libraries” for all kinds of specific content and then create a schedule for each of your platforms. Edgar automatically posts your content at selected times but then also retains it and adds it back to your library so it can join your queue again in the future! It is an amazing and expensive solution for your online life.

I hope you are enjoying Live Curious friends and please remember that every time you SHARE a post you SEND a meal to hungry child!