If you face issues while trying to achieve some goals, you may be tempted to give up. What I would suggest before you give up, or before you even think of trying harder, is to take a small step back and see why things are not going smoothly. You can do this by observing yourself, and by observing both people who are successful and people who are not successful at the same goals you are pursuing. When you run into problems, continue your efforts at a slower pace in order to figure out why you are facing problems.

While not being able to drive fast, I found some space among slow drivers

As I said in February, driving up the 5 North reminded me of different situations in other parts of life. One of the things I noticed was that finding elements to reduce boredom due to blogging helps. I also noticed that whenever I drove up a steep hill on the freeway, my car would slow down because of the amount of power required to drive up at fast speeds. I had to slow down and drive in the slower lanes on the right hand side in order to let the faster traffic pass by. Even though I had slowed down, I was still headed in the same direction as the faster cars. There was no reason for me to compete and race with those cars. Competing with myself was better.

Your blog is like your car in a similar situation. Whatever goals you may have in mind, you can move towards them regardless of your speed. If you feel your plans or efforts are not working, you can continue aiming for your goals at a slower pace to make sure you keep doing something useful while you figure out the reasons behind the issues you face. If you feel that slowing down will hurt a deadline you may have, you should try to start early on future efforts, including any efforts and plans for observing and solving the issues you already may be facing.

When facing issues, first thing you should do is to slow down and observe

One way to find out why you may feel that you are facing issues is by slowing down and observing the things you consider important for your blog. If you think the number of comments or RSS feed subscribers is important, then not getting enough comments or subscribers may feel like a problem. Observing the things that affect commenting and RSS feed subscriptions can allow you to find out where the problems may be, even if the problems exist in other aspects of your blog. Stopping because of experiencing problems or disappointments is not a good idea. Slow down instead of stopping first, and then decide what to do after observing your goals and the problems.

Finding other blogs which are facing similar issues can be helpful. You can even ask other bloggers politely about the reasons why their blogs face those issues, while also telling them that the reason you ask is because you are facing similar issues. You can even look at sites getting a lot of comments and RSS subscribers to figure out why those sites are more successful at achieving the goals you are having problems with. If content is the sole reason why a site is getting more comments or subscribers, then you should see if content is the only main reason you are not getting enough comments or subscribers on your site.

Avoid competing with others when you face issues

If you face challenges in achieving your goals, you can try setting up new plans to achieve the same goals. You should slow down your blogging efforts instead of giving them up in order to figure out why you are facing problems. Try not to compare your blogs with others. Do not compete with others; compete only with your own expectations. You should not base your efforts on what others do, but on what you can and want to do. Otherwise, you are basing all your efforts on something that others control. You want to avoid that.

As for my car driving up on steep hills, it just kept on going and going, like an energized rabbit. I did notice a few trucks pass by me a few times. In those situations, I tried to get ahead of them. If you are bored going up a hill and do not have an automobile companion, you can setup short term goals for a few seconds to reduce boredom, like going faster than speeding trucks for a few moments.