And a good one, too (usually when someone says it’s a “good question”, that’s because they don’t know the answer). I have a folder called BlogThis each of my e-mail clients (Outlook and Web), I use the same word to tag items in the virtual and physical world, I have a travel folder with the same name that I use to collect clippings and scribbled notes in, and a folder to collect messages and notes on my SmartPhone. Items are piling up and collecting dust (even if it is virtual) in each of these locations, waiting for me to one day free them from the bonds of the BlogThis tag.
I know I must get to it one day, because knowledge stored away in e-mails is, to steal a quote, technically persistent but instantly forgotten. Knowledge must be made search-able and instantly retrievable (not to mention fit for backup). And although social networking sites provide for posting of links and subsequent one-liner discussions on them, they are just too amorphous to be useful for this purpose.
At the same time, there simply isn’t enough time to write down everything. Would you rather do something new today or write about something you did yesterday? Both are useful in their own way, and a line must carefully be drawn. We spend a lot of our time doing mundane “maintenance” tasks, and some of it doing interesting “value addition” tasks. The idea is to maximize the latter, and one thing that I’m going to try to do is to not merely repeat what someone has already said (possibly in a different medium). Analysis is the key.
While looking for inspiration, I came across Google’s Steve Yegge’s excellent post called You Should Write Blogs (which will make you want to Alt-Tab and start writing straightaway) and Jeff Atwood’s post titled How To Achieve Ultimate Blog Success In One Easy Step (which will make you stop for a moment and think).
Enough blogging about blogging, let me get on with it now!
- Step 1: Make a minimal blogging schedule
- Step 2: Stick to it
- Step 3: When in doubt, read this post again
