My blogging habit

My blogging habit works best when I regularly post my thoughts here. At such times, it’s a mix of quick notes (scribbled down to remember what I was thinking about), mind maps (to explore the thoughts), and finally, writing the posts.

Another thing that keeps the ball rolling is reading articles and books, underlining the interesting parts and posting the quotes here. If I haven’t connected ideas in the text to other ideas while reading it, this will sometimes happen while typing in the quotes (for this reason, I seldom cut and paste).

Since I switched to the new blogging software, where I can reload the browser to immediately see what I have typed so far, I have found that this often makes me lose focus. So now I try to do this less frequently.

When my blogging practice proceeds at the right speed, ideas connect automatically, all the time. whatever I’m doing. It’s very stimulating—especially when very unrelated ideas connect.

And then something strange happens: People sometimes wonder how I can possibly have time to write as much as I do, but the thing is, that when my blog is on a roll, it requires less effort. When I lose the tempo, it’s a struggle, but otherwise I blog all the time, whether consciously or not; writing is almost automatic—I just type whatever comes out of my brain.

I’m convinced that this is something that anyone can trigger.

Now I’m reminded of something Malte wrote about Aikido practice: “to master the bokken (wooden-sword), performing one concentrated cut a day would be enough. That’s one cut, not two, not zero.” To me, this is about staying in focus.

Blogging is not typing, it’s what you do all the time.

So: make sure you remember your thoughts and ideas, explore them before writing them down (I like mind maps), and make sure you keep it going (post a lot, never throw away posts—crap posts are manure).