I had a post started listing my New Year’s Resolutions. Then I spent some time catching up (and fleshing out) my RSS feeds on google reader. Along the way, I read 14 New Years Resolutions posts, 128 Predictions for 2007, and various other posts all related to the New Year. This overdose cleansed my intentions of anything resembling a topical New Years Post. So instead, now it’s time for something completely different.
I’ve been working hard at posting relatively consistently lately. While I certainly can’t claim a perfect daily record, December sure looks a heck of a lot better than November or October. Here’s the tricks I’ve been trying to practice to keep on top of posting:
- Drafts! - I constantly have ideas that would turn into
greatdecent (Ahhm!) — mediocre posts but constantly forget them. If I drop a draft in even if it’s only a title, I can flesh the post out later as long as I remember the topic. On that front, I mainly use vagablog as mentioned before. My palm’s always with me, so any time an idea strikes, so does a draft post. - Being busy - Having nothing to do is the worst time for me to post consistently. I post best when I really ought to be working on other things (like when I original wrote this text as I was supposed to be finishing up an article). Of course, this isn’t exactly a good thing. Ideally, I should be able to post without such a bad habit.
- That’s it?
Yeah, that’s it so far. Any advice on tricks you use to keep yourself consistent in something like this would be helpful. Those two alone won’t keep me on track, that I know for sure.
Though I’m probably not qualified to speak about “posting regularly,” one thing that I have found that helps is forward-dating posts. I tend to have a couple ideas at once that I write out into posts, but then if I post them immediately I have nothing for a dry spell. By artificially spreading my posts out, I can try to keep content coming all the time.
Right now, none of my posts in the mornings (with the exception of a podcast that I recorded that morning) are actually written in the morning. My goal is to keep about three days ahead, but I don’t manage that too often.
Left by John B on January 7th, 2007