collections | golfhabits

“All of us every single year, we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all our lives.” – Steven Spielberg

By Ian Hardie

I don’t recall exactly where I saw the words or even if I had seen it in a movie

But what I do know is the phrase stuck in my head

Where is your body of work?

I mulled it over for some months in my head

Something about it was indicating that I had to act

But how and in what way?

Soon afterwards a blog post came into my inbox

Which outlined how the author of that blog

Had spent the last few years consistently writing posts about his specialist field

At that point in time he had just published his 1000^th post

Wow, I thought that’s a pretty impressive…………..

Body of work!

It was one of those moments of clarity that we all get from time to time

If I started to put down my thoughts and experiences about golf

In an effort to help not only myself but other golfers around the world

And I consistently do it for a few years (or more)

Eventually I will have my ‘body of work’ as it relates to golf

So I spent some time trying to figure out how the whole blogging thing worked

And whether or not I could sustain putting up 2 or 3 posts a week over a year

It turns out that is no problem by the way!

I figured out exactly what platform I should use

Which I must say I find the WordPress.com system excellent

Check it out here if you have any thoughts of blogging yourself

I spent a bit of time writing a couple of posts

Figuring out how long they should ideally be and other exciting stuff like that

Then after quite a lot of testing and some more thinking

At about this point in time a year ago

I hit the ‘Publish’ button and waited

Nothing blew up – which was nice!

Since that point in time

I think I’m getting the hang of it all

Through a lot of trial and error

At this point in time there are 165 posts on Golf Habits

Which average just over 710 words a post

To put this in context

Over this first year I have published the equivalent of roughly 1/5^th of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace

Unlike War and Peace though, most of my subject matter hasn’t had much to do with

“The French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families”

Well ok, none of my subject matter has been even close to that

It’s all about ‘Simply Better Golf’ as you know

And apparently some of what I write

Seems to be helping quite a few of you out there

To play better golf after reading it

Which considering that at this point in time golfers from 101 countries around the world

Have viewed what I have written over the past year

The fact that they are able to take the information they have read

And without any other assistance improve their golf

To me is proof that a pure stream of golf information

Can actually help golfers around the world

I suppose I’m a little bit humbled that I have managed to do that

As well as being motivated to continue and see just what will evolve out of it all

Anyway, as it’s a birthday of sorts

It’s time for presents!

Since it’s a little early in the year to do the ‘Front nine for 2013’

Which of course will feature the nine most read posts for the first half of the year

And it’s also a little early to launch a worldwide study that I am going to undertake – into an area of the game that causes a lot of golfers problems

That’s coming soon but you can have a sneak peek here if you want

As is an exciting personal equipment change that I am about to make

If it all works as I think it will – it’s going to be great

But that’s coming soon also

So instead I have spent some time over the past week

Reflecting on the first year of Golf habits

I’ve come up with a list of the five posts that I think have the best information in them

The five most powerful posts I have written – if you like

Which put another way

The five posts I have published so far that I think can make the biggest difference

To every golfers game;

Post 1