As part of David Aireys first anniversary giveaway, Lisa Gates had the misfortune to win a blog review from me, instead of something useful. So here it is

Lisa runs the blog Intrinsic Life Design, which seems to be a blog about improving your writing (and therefore, your blogging) and the way you go about your life in general - in her own words:

I am the crazy glue on the soles of your sneakers that keeps you committed to your book, your project, your Big Idea. I’m the kick in the pants you wish you had nine months ago when you birthed that Big Idea in the first place. I’m equal parts left-brain, right-brain and I have three words for all you lurking, burning, idea-crazed writers, entrepreneurs and dreamers: Someday is now. 

I don’t know if Lisa likes the term, but ‘life coach’ is what springs to mind, and the blog is certainly very positive and forceful in it’s writing. It is also, not surprisingly, very well written and easy to read which is an essential factor in successful blogging, and one which is sadly too often overlooked.

First Impressions

While you should never judge a book or a blog by it’s cover, it is something we all do, and in this world of Stumble Upon and Speed linking, sometimes a potential reader will only give your blog a few seconds before moving on to the next one.  So as you can see, the layout is pretty simple, a two-column in easy on the eye colours and pretty much everything where you’d expect it. My first thought is that it was a Blogger blog, due to the template, but it is actually a Squarespace creation, a blogging platform I wasn’t previously aware of. It doesn’t perhaps come across as polished as most WordPress themes, but it loads fast, and does the job it needs to.

I always like to see a date based archive, to gauge how long a blog has been in operation, and ILD has been regularly updated since December 2006 which is good to see. An informative ‘About’ page introduces us to Lisa, and other fixed pages tell us about ILD and what it can offer you. The fact that the blog is listed as a separate page, and under a separate URL: ‘http://www.intrinsiclifedesign.com/scaffolding’ made me think that there may be more content under the main URL, but this doesn’t appear to be the case: The main page & the blog appear to be the same thing.

Strangely, about 7 posts down, all of the text turns to italics which makes things a little hard to read.  I think the formatting of a post must have ‘broken’ as this doesn’t seem to be the case on subsequent pages.

The Content

The content is a mixture of thoughts, reflections, challenges and writing exercises, all designed to get you thinking about your writing, or life direction, and assisting you in getting there.

We have the 10 signs of Work-Life balance blow out, which certainly has some valid signs in there for most of us, along with 10 more points for correcting your balance. If you’re having trouble with your writing direction, then these six exercises may get you back on track: I agree with the idea of title first, content second, and it’s something I’ve done from the start, as it helps me to retain direction within a post, and keep on topic. There’s nothing to stop you amending your title later of course, but thinking of one up front can get you going.

It’s not all questions and challenges though, as there’s plenty of food for thought and inspiration too, such as Emerson would have made a great blogger.

A Design For Life?

Being a cynical old brit, and not being much of a writer, I frequently don’t find much to offer from these kinds of site. Some of them can be a little happy-clappy and I can generally sum up my feelings toward them as ‘Yeah, right’. However, Lisa’s blog is full of her personality and that makes a crucial difference. The writing is involving, and as with the best blogs, it feels much more like a conversation than a lecture.

Lisa offers personal coaching, in addition to that which you can get from the blog, and it’s quite obvious that she loves what she does, and going by some of the comments is good at it too. If you feel like your blogging’s gone stale, or that your writing could be improved, Intrinsic Life Design is well worth checking out. Whatever you take from it is likely to be a positive step.