Digital Marketing and Web Strategy by Bob Hazlett | One Half Amazing!

As you may remember, I’m doing these 30-day challenges throughout the year to test myself and improve in small chunks.

I figured if I could run 5 times per week at 5 miles per session, I’d be right on schedule. I wasn’t running for time, although I did cut about 7 minutes off my overall time during the month, but rather just running to get in the 5 miles I needed.

It’s month #2 in an all-new episode of the 30 28-Day Challenge. In February I vowed to make quick decisions and excel on my ideas with supersonic speed. I had planned to create 10 different personal websites. You know, for fun and all. And as you can probably tell from my writing, I didn’t make it. Insert disappointed face here.

I could make all sorts of excuses about it being a short month or that I was out of town for work for an entire week or that I picked up some freelance work. Believe me, it wasn’t for lack of ideas or desire. I think it was just lack of wanting to stare at the computer for an additional 4 hours after staring at it for the previous 8.

I wasn’t a total failure, I did get about 4.5 sites done. As some background if you were wondering, my tool of choice was WordPress. WordPress really gives you lots of freedoms to build on the back of a robust web framework. I’d recommend it to all my friends.

So instead of wallowing in my beer, here are the top 3 sites that I’m most proud of. One still needs some work (we’ll call it the half) and the other is a super-secret project not available to the public.

Tired of entertaining your cat? Let me to the hard work for you. Plop your cat down in front of HappyKittyTime.com and our specially made videos will provide him/her enough entertainment for 10 lives!

KickOutCable.com is the site I feel has the most promise. Some of you know that my wife and I cut the cord from cable last year. This site is to teach others how to do the same and watch TV and movies online.

In March, I’m going to attempt to run 100 miles. I’m not a big runner and right now that’s about 6x what I normally run in a month. I’ll put weekly updates at 3oover12.com. I hope I make it.

You may remember back in December, I laid out this grand idea to take on 12 separate 30-day challenges instead of participating in the usual New Year’s resolutions. Well, I just stomped my boot into the forehead of January. Here’s an update of how it all went down.

This month, I vowed to meditate for 15 minutes each day in hopes that I would become  enlightened and clear-minded. Meditation would set the tone for the remainder of my 2011 challenges and serve as a resource when I needed to go a level deeper.

The task itself wasn’t tough, but finding time to sit and calm my racing mind was. My mind would constantly float away in unfinished tasks or thoughts. A little nugget of inspiration that I picked up early on was that my meditation didn’t have to be perfect, I just had to ‘BE’ really helped calm my newbie fears. By the end of the month I was getting better at letting the

distractions pass and bringing my mind back to center.

Of course I had my ups and downs. Some sessions were better than others. I found that sitting upright in the morning gave me good results and weekends were even better (no priorities, no rush to get out the door). I tried all different sorts of meditation from guided meditation podcasts, sitting up, laying down, relaxation iPhone apps, mantras and even theta wave brain synchronization. The Simply Being iPhone app with nature sounds really helped and the Get High Now app created some cool trippy visualizations.

I think I’ll continue to meditation throughout the year, but probably not on a daily basis. 2-3 times per week would be more than enough.

Looking forward to February, I’m going to attempt to make 10 different websites. Some are ideas I’ve been sitting on for a while now and others were given to me by friends. It’s going to be tough in this shortened month. Instead of trying to make a buck with the sites, I think the big part with this challenge is to learn to work fast, make quick decision and get rid of any perfection mentality. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll keep you updated.

A New Year means a fresh start and lots of resolutions. If you’re like me, that usually means they last all of about a week before you give up or life just gets in the way.