Basketball Boy

Here’s a post I started in December 2014, but never published–among other things that didn’t get done in December. 🙂

Here are a few things I learned from my 30 day blogging challenge and what it took to make it successful. In no particular order:

  1. Planning ahead at the beginning of a busy day really pays off and helps makes sure the right things get done
  2. Have buffer material and several posts in flight at the same time. The one you think is a slam dunk will get stuck and the one you start writing on a whim will be the one you publish sooner.
  3. Expect something to go wrong (part of planning ahead and having a backup plan)
  4. You can achieve more, in a shorter time, than you think. Some posts came together way faster than I thought they would.
  5. Trying to write something clear and articulate at the last minute is almost impossible unless I’m polishing a final draft.
  6. Consistent posting sharpens the brain
  7. The act of posting generates more ideas for other posts
  8. I really enjoy writing. I do not enjoy writing under pressure or at the last minute.
  9. People will critique your approach or suggest you are cutting corners. You are the best judge of your own success.
  10. Adding pictures to a post makes a big difference and it doesn’t take very long with some practice.
  11. When you see pictures that you like grab them and save them in a special place for blog posting.
  12. When something is important and you are truly committed to delivering it every day, you’ll find a away–sometimes that means starting 12 hours early on a post that’s only 300 words.
  13. Capture inspiration when it strikes–if you have an idea or an epiphany, write it down in book you carry around or create a new blog post and spend 5 or 10 min sketching out a draft.
  14. The older a draft post gets, the harder it is to give it the original punch and inspiration it originally had.
  15. Consistent posting for 30 days was a definite challenge, but not impossible–60 days, now that sounds hard. Maybe that will be my next posting challenge.
  16. Sharing blog posts on social media was a good experiment for seeing what people were interested in and what they weren’t.
  17. If you look at an old draft and you can’t remember what it was for or it’s core message… just delete it.
  18. Magic often happens when you set a timer for 15 minutes and the only two options (until the timer rings) are to write or sit and stare.
  19. Add a link to your browser bookmark bar that pulls up all your draft posts.