Managing My Writing Output

Mar 12, 2021

This morning I decided to look at my sites, and I counted seven domains where I create some form of written output. Only one, this site, has a clear-cut definition of what content to place on there. The remaining list of six domains have been sites created on a whim or created to fill a specific need, and splitting my time between them has reduced the amount of quality work I can create on others. I had made a promise that I’d create regular content for this blog, and I feel like I am failing.

Finding the right avenue to post my work has always been a struggle for me. In the past, I took to creating new blogs (much like this one) to express a facet of my work and interests, but as I get older I feel that my interests are merging and the lines of separation are no longer there. For example, technology and my Getting Things Done journey have collided in the past ten years, with my productivity system being a creation from the technical aspects of my life and work.

I have to grab hold of the situation and change something, as my diluted content is slowly slipping in quality and frequency. After a short process of mapping out my choices I’ve cut down my outputs to two; This blog for productivity-related output, and another (at a to be decided domain) for my combined technical writing.

I also need to take control of my time I set aside to write. My writing in the previous six months could be described as ‘scattered’ at best. I’d work for an hour or so when I could to create a post but only if I have an idea of what to write. My new attempt to resolve this problem is to schedule time each week to write, even if it is a few hundred words and half-cooked. A few hours on Sunday morning from now on is going to be dedicated to writing.

Location, time, all that is missing now is what to write about.

I spent every morning reviewing my RSS feeds, and I save anything I find interesting into Instapaper, I also use Readwise to consolidate my highlights into a single view from all my media. Finding an interesting snippet or a post that I bring up in conversation is quite easy with this system, but I don’t produce any output from gathering all this data. I’m going to try something for a week or two to see if it helps:

What did you read that was interesting?

I’ll add this to my Daily Tasks on my Journal. Hopefully when I reach Sunday i’ll have a short list of interesting things I could write about, which could reduce the mental strain of trying to think of a topic.

With my first block of time only three days from now, lets see how we go.