It’s been about a month since I’ve been blogging daily. Of all the benefits of blogging, there is one that stands above all others – Blogging forces you to think.
When you blog every day you’re forced to ask yourself “What did I learn today? What did I experience today?” Everyone has an answer to that question, but if we don’t force ourselves to reflect upon what we learned, it’s often forgotten.
There is something to be learned from every situation, but it’s sometimes like mining for gold. It can take some digging and mining to find the lesson or nugget of wisdom from an experience. There is a lot of be found, but it can take some effort to find it.
The default setting for most people is to coast through the day–to get through it as smoothly as possible. This is fine, but if you never force yourself to reflect on things, you’ll have a difficult time learning from life, which is often the best educator.
You don’t have to put your thoughts into a public blog every day, but I highly recommend at least blocking off 15-30 minutes a day for self-reflection.
Without self-analyzation, you’re just coasting–which works for most people until they realize they’re headed for a cliff.
Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig
Good point.
I write, not just for blogs. Daily, I need to force my brain to work on something to put into either my writings or my blogs.
If I have gone through an entire day without coming up with material for either, or without having done some sort of research to back up my writings or blogs, I’ve failed on that day. I consider a day where I’ve done something a bit more significant than a couple of shared links or a “repost this” status on Facebook a success.
And I try to aim for more successful days than failed days, on aggregate.