My colleague Angela Titone (one of the most insightful people I know), recently sent me an article outlining a few tips for more regular writing. It is a topic I struggle with frequently.
To some degree, my struggle is not uncommon to most I imagine – time constraints. The only time I get something written is when I push something else to the back-burner. This post is a prime example. I have two presentations over the next 24 hours and neither are exactly were I’d like them to be. I have an article due (ok, let’s be honest – it is already past due). I have 215 emails from the past day sitting in my inbox that are stressing me and 57 haven’t even been opened so I don’t know with certainty if those 57 should be stressing me or not. Oh, and I’m in Toyko and it is currently 2:46AM here. I’m forgoing several things – including sleep – to get this post out.
I’d like to post everyday. But instead I post significantly less frequent than that. I do worry about the balance between frequency and quality. I’m not convinced they are mutually exclusive – but I do worry that they could be to a degree. I’d rather error on the side of quality.
Several things mentioned in the article referenced above did resonate with me – especially the first two. I get hung-up on research and wanting to ensure my thoughts are complete all the time. As a result, I spend more time on each post than I should. At any given time, I have dozens of browser windows open. They are each tied to something I want to write about – but only after I can do more research to ensure what I write is completely encompassing. This post will mark my 200th post. But I have another 50 that I’ve yet to post because I “just haven’t quite finished my thoughts in them.”
I am trying to break this cycle. Instead of compiling all of my thoughts and research around the 2012 Holiday season for example, I’ve broken them into shorter posts that I get out more frequently(see here, here, and here). I have a fourth holiday post that I’ll publish – as soon as I can get around to finishing it (Yes – I recognize the irony in this sentence). In some ways, Gascoigne is simply suggesting a paradigm shift. Perhaps my paradigm shift will be to publish more partial thoughts that I subsequently revisit at a later point to flesh out.
