Last week I broke the chain of daily blogging.
Just like the first blog post in the chain mentioned, missing that day was a choice.
After picking up some positive traction with my book, the desire to write a second one surpassed my desire to blog daily. I’ll still update this blog, likely just twice a week now.
What did I learn from blogging daily?
Quantity Over Quality
There is no doubt that if I posted once or twice a week that my posts would have been better, but I likely would have missed some great insights along the way if I didn’t post consistently. The daily habit of posting forced me to reflect on my day and what I learned. I didn’t always mine gold, but I did come up with a few things that would have slipped by.
The Whole Point of Blogging (and the Internet) is to Connect with People
I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure this out. People who I really, really, really enjoy (Seth Godin, Derek Sivers, James Altucher) left comments on things I wrote. That blew my mind. And of course in giving away free ideas, I was able to connect with a lot of interesting people. A blog is an amazing connection tool.
I Don’t Know What’s Going To Work
A post that took me 5 minutes to write (How I Wrote a Book: Step by Step) is my most popular blog post with over 20,000 unique visits. Some blog posts that I spent over an hour on (Rethinking The Book) didn’t receive that much traffic. But traffic wasn’t entirely the point of blogging. It was just a nice side-effect. The main reason was to experiment and develop my thinking.
Blogging Daily Isn’t That Hard
Blogging daily isn’t hard if you make it a priority. People shower daily, eat daily, drive to work daily, watch tv daily. When you choose to blog daily, you’re making it a priority and shifting down something else. For me that was likely reading articles on Hacker News or books.
Where I’m going from here…
I’m switching gears to posting twice a week. Not sure if I’ll set two specific days or not yet. All I know is that I’d rather have a 2nd book out this year than write a daily blog. I’ll still be blogging, but a 2nd book is the priority.
Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig or read my book.
I’m subscribed and read most of your articles.
Thus far, I’ve enjoyed the Kevin Clash documentary you posted thus far, and well, you usually keep it pretty interesting.
I looking forward to read your daily post and i expect your daily work!