Find Your Flow

There’s a Habits of Effective Bloggers group writing project going on at ProBlogger.net right now. I’m a regular reader, so I figured I’d participate about what works for me.

I have always written blog entries in one session, start to finish. I’ve got tons of drafts which will probably never end up being published, because I paused in the middle, and new ideas end up taking the forefront. That’s fine, because what I’m thinking is always changing. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Ella likes to do the opposite, though. She sat on this great sexism entry for at least a month before publishing it, and it turned out amazing for her. If you check out any of her blog entries, you should check out that one. So I guess it depends on the kind of person you are.

So maybe that’s my tip for effective blogging: find your flow. I’ve been in a situation for a month or two where I’m being pushed to work in directions where I’m normally very lazy, and I’m trying to be less resistant, to accept the additional workload. I say that because, at my core, I realize that I’m a very lazy person, and that’s not the kind of person I want to be in life.

So while you’re finding your flow, push yourself in a bunch of directions you wouldn’t normally try. Read blogs you normally wouldn’t conceive of subscribing to, and try to really get into the heads of those passionate people. Read blogs by old people if you’re young, and young people if you’re old. If you think your flow is a post a week, try posting every day, or vice-versa.

I believe in this because it works with my current meta-belief of ‘Growth is not accidental – it comes through effort.’ I think if they dig deep enough, many people will see that they already believe that themselves. Maybe it’s a Catholic thing – I was brought up that way and am probably still going through some of the baggage. 🙂 I’ve seen a couple of bloggers from this series that complain that they have no visitors, so why should they even try? To me, the answer is: because you currently do not. So shoot for it. Change your habits and expect good things to happen, and they just might.