How do you balance short term windfalls with long term projects? It is easy to make lots of money, the hard part is keeping the income coming in.

Judging by the articles I’ve read in Harvard Business Review these are problems that every CEO faces. The stock market rewards short term performance but what is the cost to the long term survival of the company? Just the same, can a company that invests in markets that may never materialize really stay on top? It appears the correct answer is that both must be balanced.

Example: You have an entertainment website; do you triple your daily revenue by loading it up with flashy ads and pop-unders at the cost of growth, or hold off in the ads for the benefit of returning visitors?

I think successful long term planning requires not only discipline (money today) but long term strategy. And luck helps too.

Over a month ago I announced that I was taking a “blogging holiday.” The holiday turned out to include 5 posts. At the very least I didn’t feel bad about not posting regularly.

I noticed a few other big bloggers took summer breaks as well — John Reese at Income.com is out for a few weeks. Frank Schiling at Seven Mile is out until September. For one of the most prolific bloggers I read, thats quite a long break!

My blogging vacation included a break from reading blogs too. I blocked bloglines.com on my primary machine and managed to catch up with my RSS subscriptions at the end of the month. This was a welcome break and I am going to keep it that way. Never before has there been so many bloggers posting highly valuable ideas and information, but that doesn’t stop reading from being horribly distracting!

Summer in the Northern Hemisphere has another month or so. For some of us it won’t be long until cold weather returns. I am not looking forward to it.