This is not forgotten about, it’s just I’ve decided to go ‘all in’ on my business and my time and efforts have been focused exclusively there for the last few weeks. From a personal point of view this is fantastic. My business is growing rapidly and I’m loving every minute of it. I’ve got some great clients and I’m learning all the time.

Those of you who have read this site for a while know that I’ve lacked focus on past projects. Now I have something to focus on that I am truly 100% committed to and it’s been easy for me to focus my efforts there. It does however mean that some of my existing projects have stalled.

It is my full intention to complete “How To Build Something Incredible” soon, but for the next few weeks I intend to go all in with my time to work on my business. Finally focusing is one area is really paying off – I highly recommend it.

Thanks to all those who’ve provided support and guidance on this and previous projects. I’m not going anywhere, my time is just being used for other things at the moment.

Why?

I’ve been posting daily for a while now. Small snippets daily fit better with my personality than large chunks infrequently.

The prospect of writing an eBook is daunting.

The prospect of writing daily musings here is not.

I aim to solve the former by doing the latter.

It all begins tomorrow, make sure you are signed up for updates.

First step: Contents.

See you tomorrow.

Pingbacks are still on.

Got something to say?

Great!

I love hearing from readers.

Best way to get in touch is via email: click here for the form (I reply to every mail).

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Blog about it and link to a post! Pingbacks are still active. Go on – do it. Rebuttal content built a lot of blogs and is a lost art in blogging these days.

Go on then, tell us why…

Nothing sinister or underhand, or suspicious for that matter. I think that (used correctly), comments are great part of a blog. What’s more their pretty essential in my eyes for building a community within your own platform.

I’ve simply turned them off because I am focusing on other things. Nothing more, nothing less.

I want to focus on writing new content here every day, building a loyal audience (hello subscribers!), building my business, reading a book a week and recording an album this year.

I’m happy to chat and interact. Drop me a line.

I’ll probably switch comments back on in the future. For now they’re not part of my focus.

The new website is up and running. I think it looks pretty cool – there are still some tweaks to make but I didn’t want making it ‘perfect’ to stop me from getting it out in the world.

Really Simple Web aims to make managing and running your own business website really simple. It is aimed at people with established or new businesses who’s focus is outside of the web world so they have little or no experience running a website, or are more concerned in creating quality products and content. For these people the prospect of setting up and maintaining a web site seem daunting. My aim – to make it really simple for them!

My focus is on websites. I believe strongly that your presence on the web, that is under your control is extremely important whether you are individual, small business or major organisation. Social media has it’s place but your website is the hub of your activities online.

I also want to reduce the information overload for people new to running businesses on the web. I’ll weed out the nonsense and show the actionable steps that can be used to run your businesses website.

My business is structured as follows:

Main stream of work: Web design. Specifically conversion optimized, simple but smart, WordPress websites.

Secondary stream: Site Reviews and One-to-one consulting. All this with the aim of making growing your business on the web really simple.

Tertiary stream: My Really Simple Web blog. I’ll be growing my list with valuable actionable content. This list will serve as an outlet (eventually) for selling products that are amazingly useful for small business owners.

I’ve been running the above business for quite a while but I’m ‘going public’ with it more now.

I will still continue to write here daily, but building this business in to a quality and sustainable asset that delights my customers will be my main focus.

“Have you ever fasted in your life? If so tell me more. If not would you do it? why or why not?”

Yes I have, and do, fast.

I live a primal lifestyle. I strongly believe in this lifestyle, and am fascinated by evolutionary science.

I like to experiment, safely, with fasting. My preferred method is Fast5.

The simple way to describe Fast5 is eating all of your food within a 5 hour window.

In practice, what this means is that when I am doing Fast5 I usually have my first meal of the day around 2pm. Then I have my final meal around 7pm. I will have snacks inbetween.

My Experience Of Fast 5

Of the fasting methods I have tried so far, I find it the one that is most easily manageable with my day-to-day activities. I also like that you essentially eat the same volume of food, but in a shorter window. Other fasting methods mean you cut food, but Fast5 doesn’t require this – though you will probably consume less food in this time frame.

I find that it means I focus more on eating correctly. I also find it is good for cutting body fat over short periods safely.

I am currently doing Fast5, though with a slightly larger time window (around 7 hours) at the moment.

Getting Hungry

If I have been living a strictly primal/paleo diet for a few days, I don’t get hungry during Fast5 sessions. This is because my body is adapted to it’s natural state, burning fat for fuel (rather than carbs).

Any hunger that comes is mild and passes or can be cut with fluids (I drink coffee, green tea, yerba mate and water (all without milk or sugar) throughout the day).

Why Do I Fast?

Simple:

• I like to experiment safely with my body.
• I believe in evolutionary science. Humans evolved to eat plants and animals and to survice periods of feast and famine.
• Sometimes it makes things easier to stick to eating the right foods.

Fasting is a highly controvesial topic. The scientific research I have read combined, more importantly, with my own testing mean that I keep it as part of my life.

If you have never had a problem with food (eating disorders) and have self-discipline and the ability listen to your body then I believe fasting can be part of an overall healthy lifestyle.

Of course this is a personal choice. Best way to find out more? Experiment for yourself.

I do this for a number of reasons:
- To enable you to ask me anything – duh…
- To give me more ideas for the kind of content you want to get from me
- Asking questions is something we should all probably do more

So go on, ask me anything. I may answer it in a musing, essay or digital publication.

I will always give you a personal reply.

You can ask me:
via email: chris@cjstott.com
via this contact form
via Google+ or Twitter
via replying to your subscription email
via the comments below.

A problem I have always had will be something that I plan to tackle in 2012.

FOCUS

I need to focus. The way to focus is summed up perfectly by Tim Cook, in a speech given during Steve Job’s leave of absence from Apple in 2009.

We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.

While I’m a big fan of saying yes, saying yes to too many things is the fastest way to not reach your goals.

So in 2012 I want to keep things simple and focus.

In order to focus I need to pick what I want to work on, but eliminating as much as possible.

Why do I want to focus? Because when I focus on as few things as possible, I can make it incredible.

Personal

Note that most of these are remaining consistent on habits I have been developing over 2011, so although there seems a lot, it’s a matter of perserving with things I already do to an extent.

• Read a book a week (this is in part to consume less online material)
• Focus personal training on outdoor activities.
• Complete Toastmasters competent communicator manual.
• Publish daily to this site.
• No buy any personal physical products unless it is funded through selling something.
• Record an album (10 songs) of guitar music.

Business

• Web design, my focus will be provding web design to clients and building my business to a larger scale. I will do this by providing customers with an amazing experience.
• Build the supporting website for the business, mainly to act as a funnel for web design clients and build a list.
• Pare down and build my affiliate sites in to quality resources.

Travel

Travel is my passion, if I could I would travel constantly. Alas, with the purchase of a house this year, funding travel is going to be difficult. To that end, I hope we can see more of the UK this year, and if I get a run of well paying web design clients, perhaps I can fund a trip.

In a bid to focus:

1) Maintain existing good habits.

2) Fund life through business.

3) Follow my passions (learning, travel, music – for pleasure not profit).

What about you? What are your focuses going to be next year? Let me know in the comments below.

Every so often it’s a good idea to have a rest and regroup.

I’m working on getting things in place for 2012. Though I don’t usually do exhaustive New Year’s resolutions, this year I’m doing a full annual review and planning for 2012. It’s going to be good. Of course it will be shared here for full transparency.

If I am to sum up what 2012 will be for me and my work in one work it will be: focus.

More coming on that soon.

So the (almost) daily posts will be sporadic for the next week or so, then it’ll be full steam ahead in the New Year (daily posting will be part of the New Year plan).

Wishing you and yours a fantastic Christmas and New Year!

If you were following me before, and wish to continue to do so then please click here to follow me again.

Why did I do this?

I’ve been on Twitter for years. I started using to promote a blog from the past back in 2008. Over time I have evolved as a person, I’ve taken a different direction with my work and I’ve seen people come and go from the platform.

Fundamentally I believe that you should cultivate your own platform. Any social networks, or outposts to your digital self that are beyond your control should be used to channel people back to your digital home.

My Twitter stream was full of irrelevant content.

I’d followed too many people who I didn’t have the time to stay up-to-date with.

Also, most of my social networking fun and games takes place on Google+ these days.

I’m still fond of Twitter though. It’s simplicity is something that I love, and the 140 character maximum makes for concise thoughts. The problem is when you follow too many people, you 140 characters multiplied by several times a day multiplied by over 1000 people makes for a lot of noise.

Unlike joining a third-party platform as a beginner, I already understand Twitter. I know how it works, how people interact and what apps work well with it.

As I look to focus my activities in 2012 I thought a fresh start was in order. Cleaning out Twitter is the beginning of that process.

As social networks mature, we have to mature with them. We have to work out what is relevant to us, how we want to work with these tools and utilize things that provide us with value.

The digital world is fascinating but complicated. That’s why it’s fun, but every so often we should re-evaluate and adjust course accordingly. That’s my experience of a fresh start with Twitter.

What went well in 2011?

I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro!

This was my 30th Birthday present and challenge to myself. I made it all the way to the top and was very proud of myself.

We moved house

This was a pain, and as only happened recently it’s still a financial pain. I don’t really see moving house as much of an achievement as I like flexibility of location and therefore moving should be easy. However, it’s a pretty major life change so I’ll stick it in what went well.

I managed to maintain a healthy day job Work:Life balance

I still have a day job. Fortunately I am able to manage it effectively around my life.

I stayed primal

Of course I could have stuck to it more, but i’m in the 80% range. I certainly want to make sure that I have a good fitness goal for next year having had Kilimanjaro this year. Goal for next year will probably be around functional fitness.

I re-kindled a writing habit

I got back in to blogging and managed (although with admitted peaks and troughs) to cultivate quite a healthy writing habit. I’m defintely favouring shorter blog posts rather than long eBooks (see below)

I didn’t buy an iPhone 4S

This is quite an achievement for me. OK so I did buy an iPad. I also switched back to a very basic phone (as my iPhone 3G is practically a brick now). I resisted the urge to buy a fancy phone. I suspect this will change rapidly when NFC goes mainstream.

What did not go well in 2011?

Lack of focus with my online / freelance businesses
Although I spend a lot of time working on my online businesses, I don’t have focus and that is causing lack of progress. This absolutely must be rectified in 2012. The only way to do this is to pick less than 3 things to work on.

Extremely poor editing

I enjoy writing. I enjoy publishing. The bit in the middle, editing my work bores me to tears. This is why I have written but unedited free eBook on in my Dropbox waiting to be shared with the world. I certainly need to get these out in the world before starting any more.

Not playing enough guitar or being in a band

On my death bad I will wish I was in a band. Nothing serious or chart topping just some fun. I again continue to fail to make this a priority in my life.

Still seem to be spending too much money

I don’t know where it goes. I need to track this better so that I can channel funds towards my passions.

Didn’t travel enough

After our years round the world trip, we said we weren’t going to travel abroad this year. Travel is my passion – sue me. While for some people I traveled a lot this year, I want to spend over half of my time abroad so I have to put this in the ‘didn’t go well’ section until I tip the balance. I traveled to Las Vegas for my 30th, Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, Zakynthos for a break with the wife and Montpellier in France for my annual family rugby trip.

This is the first part of my 2011 annual review.

It’s very personal, but if you’d like to ask questions then please do so. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next part of the review.