It’s hard to believe but a month has already gone by. I started out the year with a goal to post something every day and while I’m only a month in there are a few things I’ve already learned.
Block the time
You can put “write blog post” on your task list, doesn’t mean it’s going to get done. That’s the issue with tasks lists, you can look at them all day but until you block the time, it may not happen.
I feel into that trap several times already. I will admit that I’m pretty good at putting together a posting quickly, but it would be better for me to take my time. It’s not too difficult to drop 200-300 words in an editor, it’s something different to do it in 15 minutes or less. The words maybe, but not a post that actually reads well and makes sense.
To be effective I need to block the time out on my calendar just for writing. It needs to be every day and hopefully at the same time. It goes with the whole showing up thing I talked about several days ago. If you don’t make the time, there’s no guarantee that it’ll get done.
Plan the content
This is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time. Nearly everyone you read or listen too will tell you the same thing, plan your content. Note that I said plan, not to write and schedule. There is a place for that, like writing you post in the middle of the night and have it post first thing in the morning. The trap to not fall into is to plan and write a whole stack of posts, schedule them, and then forget the blog. That would be bad. It could lead to a series of posts that seem completely out of touch with what’s going on in the world.
The planning I’m looking at is to have a set of ideas and possible topics lined up. To have them lined up and available so that when the time come to write I have those prompts and research available to me.
I don’t want to lock myself it, but have some guidepost and guardrails to help me along the way. They should also allow for me to veer off script and touch on what I feel is important as well.
Make it my platform
My goal for this site is for it to be a personal blog. I know that it might seem obvious but I don’t think it is. We live in a world now where everything we look at online is targeted and designed to sell something to us. I don’t want this blog to turn into that.
If you look at what all the “pros” tell us, I shouldn’t be writing the very piece. In fact if you look at the last 30 posts, I’ve broken the cardinal rule according to them.
THEY’RE NOT SPECIFICALLY TARGETED
I can’t speak for everyone but I’m not a one dimensional individual. I’m also not Superman and can’t write on several blogs every day, each with their own individual topic.
There needs to be a return to what blogs were before. We need to return to each of us having our own site. We need to go back to owning our piece of the internet.
So I need to make sure that as I write here, as I build out the site, is me. I need to only take the advice that makes sense and build something that, at the end of the day, represents what I want to put forward, not want the algorithms say it should be.
One piece of advice I will take
There is something that I will take from all the experts out there, an email list.
If you are interested in tagging along for this journey I encourage you to sign up for my mailing list. It’s one of the few ways you’ll hear about updates to the site and what I’m writing about and experimenting with.
I’m not sure where the road will go, but it should be interesting.