Articles for August 2015

Time-saving Hack: Listen To Audiobooks During Your Commute

Commute image

Just a quick post detailing a time-saving hack that I discovered recently thanks to George Savva (@GeorgeSavva1), my effectiveness coach, who deserves full credit.

For years I’ve wanted to read a few business books but I’ve found that I’ve never had the time to do so – sure enough I’d buy them, but then they’d simply sit and gather dust on my bookcase shelf. I work all week, and then in my spare time I’d rather blog and spend time with my family than sit down and read a book. It’s simply an issue of allocation of time.

With my freelance SEO business I’m based at Welsh ICE in Caerphilly – from where I live it’s about a 15-20 minute commute each way. And as much as I used to enjoy listening to Radio 2 during the drives, George made me realise that I could put that time to better use. If I haven’t got the time to sit down and read books, why not buy them in audiobook form and listen to them in the car instead? I try to work four-day weeks (as I try to take one day per week as paternity when workload allows), so that’s 30-40 minutes per day and potentially 2-3 hours per week that could be utilised listening to audiobooks. In fact, in just a few short weeks, I’ve listened to multiple books that I’ve wanted to read for years, including:

…And coming up I’m planning on reading listening to:

(Please note: all of the above Amazon links are affiliate links.)

If anyone has any other suggestions of books/audiobooks, please let me know (either by comment, by email or by tweet). I recommend Tom Buckland’s marketing books post – at least one of its suggestions you’ll spot from my to-listen-to list above.

So whether your commute back and forth work by car, bus, train or tube, you might also find that spending the time listening to audiobooks to be really useful.

Update: I wanted to share a few great responses that I received via Twitter when I first published this post, which offer further advice:

[Motorway image credit – Highways Agency]

A (Long Overdue) Theme Change & New Logo for SEOno

SEOnoOver the weekend I finally got round to implementing a new WordPress theme on SEOno. The last time I did so was nearly three years ago (October 2012) and while the previous theme – SmartOne – had been an absolute pleasure to use over the years, it was starting to look and feel a little dated, so inevitably I felt that it was time for a change…

I’ve always liked the idea of using a plain, minimalist theme, so the new theme – Emphasize – mostly retains that feeling. In fact, I’ve gone as far as editing the theme’s colour scheme to mostly match the previous theme…! I’ll probably keep tinkering away and making the occasional tweak here and there, so what you see now might not end up being the finished product.

I also decided to get an official logo for the blog – the first time that I’ve done so. Previously I simply took a screenshot of the previous theme’s title (which was basic italic text in blue) and called that my logo, which was… naff. When I was asked to give a logo to the UK Blog Awards last year (I was shortlisted in a category), it felt a little embarrassing. So now I have something proper. Well, I say “proper”… It was generated using the Hipster Logo Generator. Say what you will… I’m happy with it. Besides, having a hipster logo kind of fits with the often tongue-as-cheek-as-f*ck style of the blog, don’t you think? πŸ˜‰

What’s interesting is that I was recently chatting to a designer that I know via Twitter and it seemed odd to him that I was going the cheap/DIY route with this and not investing in it properly. I guess that I’ve always liked going down the DIY route – especially with the blog – even at the risk of aesthetics. I’m certainly no designer (saying so would be an insult to the design community!) so I know that it probably could be better, but for now I’m happy with keeping things simple.

I welcome any and all feedback – good or bad. Feel free to email me, tweet me or drop a comment below.