Improving blogging efficiency
My blog has been pretty dead lately, and I am not happy about it. I have a list of about 10 posts (and growing) that I'd like to do however lately I have been so absorbed in other things (Web Client vNext, customer visits, etc) that I never seem to find the time to just do it. JD and I had a good discussion on this last week, and he recommended that I should change my approach. That is a process (in this case my approach) is a tool and if the tool becomes more of a hindrance then a help, then get a new tool.
Currently the manner in which I blog is first I come up with an idea that seems to to makes sense to blog about (I don't want to just spew out ideas), then I stew on it for a while (sometimes several weeks), finally I set aside the time to do it and in a single session I get it done. Depending on the content, I can spend from 20 minutes to several hours to do the right post. When I am really busy (as I have been lately), it can be very hard to find that time. It's easy to keep pushing it back and saying I'll get around to it. Unfortunately, often that time never comes, or when it does mental-block sets in.
JD's suggestion was to do more of a progressive blogging technique. Instead of sitting down in one fell swoop and writing a post, he suggested that I should open up a draft for a post and work on it in a piecemeal fashion over time. In fact he recommends working on several posts in parrallel. Some posts he says might take months while others might take days. Inherent is this approach is a continual refactoring and refinement of content. Once the post reaches a critical mass and seems ready for primetime, post it.
What blogging techniques have you found work for you?
