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Challenge Complete: 2 weeks of blogging every day


...and in last place. by ....Tim

…and in last place. by ….Tim

I talk about challenges a lot. I do them regularly. I like how they’re short, hard, and full of variety. You can experience something without doing it forever. They’re easy to start because they don’t last that long. My only problem is stacking them on top of one another. That doesn’t work.

This post is the last in my most recent challenge, 2 weeks of writing. A small mastermind I’m in decided that we all needed to publish more. What better way to focus on something daily than to do a challenge around it. 2 weeks of publishing daily. My plan was to post on numerous blogs but all of the posts ended up here. I learned a few things doing it.

Capturing good sources (and having them ready to use for writing)

Writing is great when everything is in your head and you just have to spit it all out onto the page. I’ve been practicing with doing that more. No interruptions, no research, no checking, no looking for things. Just writing. It can be tough to do. You need the details from other articles and other places to be able to write accurately and make sure you get all the parts of the idea in your article. These sources have to get found at some point. Probably before you write your article. I’m trying two different approaches with this, passive and active. I’m no pro but this what I’ve learned playing around with blogging challenges.

The passive approach is to gather things as they come across your radar. When you see a link or read an article that could be useful in an article you can save it in Evernote or something similar. The web clipper extension for Evernote is amazing for this. You can highlight passages right on the page and tag things later. I save them to a Clippings notebook and then file and tag them all at regular intervals. It gives me a second time to read through all the articles as well. This approach can work great for a group of articles that you read related material regularly or things for a personal blog. It could be hard to get enough material for specific articles but just sitting around and waiting for the right sources to float by.

The active approach is to look for sources for an article you have already started. You start the article, then go look for sources that have good information, pulling out parts you can use or quote. It reminds me to writing research essays in school. Pick a topic. Research. Write. This is probably what method you should use if you need to write specific articles or just have a headline or topic to start with. If you need to research to write an article, that time has to be factored in. I always forget this fact and sit down to write, forgetting that another chunk of time needs to be devoted to research and only then I can write something slightly intelligible.

Schedule writing ahead of time

Remembering you have to write and publish an article right before you go to bed sucks. Schedule in time to write your article at some point before that. Ideally it’s in the morning when you are fresh but any time during the day works. I like getting it started in the morning and finishing it in the evening. The ideas percolate over the day.

Pictures

I used of header images for blog posts this blogging challenge. I used the ImageInject WordPress plugin to quickly find a photo that worked. Some of them are pretty corny. I could have spent more time finding a nicer photo but it was quick and easy. ImageInject searches through Flickr and Pixabay. There are a bunch of image search plugins out there. 

2 weeks of blogging

Here’s the 2 weeks of blog posts!

October 21: This post!

October 20: Travelling Clears Your Habit Slate (actually posted on the 21st)

October 19: Find Your Curators

October 18: Chunking

October 17: Don’t Let Your Life Get Stuck In Maintenance Mode

October 16: Where Todo Lists Fail

October 15: Trello Tips

October 14: Becoming Aware

October 13: Being Strong to be Useful: Being Thankful for Movement

October 12: Goals that actually work? Base Them on Action

October 11: Finding Flow: Just 4% Harder

October 10: Abundance Over Scarcity

October 9: Being Intentional is Difficult but Worth It

October 8: Coffee and Ideas Meet Again