So, despite various resolutions to blog more, I’ve done little to nothing on that front. For a while there I was blogging only about once a month, which has not helped my relationship with Google, my coy mistress. Life has intervened, but I would be lying if I said I could never find time to blog. I can. Truth is, sometimes I just didn’t want to talk publicly about what was on my mind or going on in my little world and many, many other times I was just lazy. Writing publicly (inasmuch as this is public) requires a little vulnerability, a willingness to toss your thoughts and words out there for others to regard. Mentally, it’s a bit like bathing in the street.
Anyway, I may have found a system that works for me, finally. As with everything else I do, I simply need to trick myself. Here’s what I am doing differently:
- Think, then immediately write. Set the thought down into a blog entry before you lose interest. Right now in Wordpress, I have 14 drafts of various aborted ideas I started to write about. I am unlikely to take them up simply because I no longer care about those particular ideas. However, at the time, I did, so I should have taken advantage of that fleeting moment of enthusiasm. Something interesting might have come of it!
- When you’re feeling productive, crank out as much as you can. I think today I wrote 6 blog entries. Other times, I’ll go weeks without writing anything. You won’t see these entries all in one day because I will schedule them to appear once or twice each day rather than all at once. Google likes this and it also makes me appear to be more consistently industrious.
- Keep to a schedule. Remove the choice. Right now I’ve got a daily recurring task in Remember the Milk for “Write a blog entry”. It gets created automatically every day and if I don’t complete it, it just sits there in my task list until I close it out. If I go several days without blogging, the tasks just add up like household garbage no one feels like taking out. Deleting the tasks or marking them complete seems cowardly, so after a while I just hunker down and write. Quite honestly, the recurring task thing is the main reason I’ve been blogging more.
I am so with you on the 'figuring out ways to trick myself into doing things' tip. (Hence my interest in decision architecture and rational choice theory.)
Am curious re: how Remember The Milk and Google Calendar might work together? Usually I just assign myself tasks right in my GCal, but have been hearing some sphereobuzz re: RMilk.
Now I will have to search your blog for information on the subject of rational choice theory as this is new to me.
RMilk actually integrates with Gcal.
http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2006/11/add-you...
Now I will have to search your blog for information on the subject of rational choice theory as this is new to me.
RMilk actually integrates with Gcal.
http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2006/11/add-you...
I am so with you on the ‘figuring out ways to trick myself into doing things’ tip. (Hence my interest in decision architecture and rational choice theory.)
Am curious re: how Remember The Milk and Google Calendar might work together? Usually I just assign myself tasks right in my GCal, but have been hearing some sphereobuzz re: RMilk.
Now I will have to search your blog for information on the subject of rational choice theory as this is new to me.
RMilk actually integrates with Gcal.
http://blog.rememberthemilk.com/2006/11/add-your-tasks-to-google-calendar.html