

How to Never Miss Writing a Blog Post - nathanbarry
http://nathanbarry.com/how-to-never-miss-a-blog-post/

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veyron
I subscribe to the "silence is golden" camp -- blogging when there's nothing
meaningful to say just devalues your efforts when you actually do have
something useful to say.

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user24
this isn't necessarily a point against scheduling posts. I have about 8 draft
posts which sit there for months on end until I finally revisit them and get
then done. There's even a fully written (and awesome) blog post that's just
waiting for me to tidy up and githubify some code.

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hxa7241
I would think you need some kind of content strategy, more than tricks.

Get stimulus from various or particular kinds of things and respond to it.
That is probably the best source I can think of.

Maybe keep notes of many/any ideas and add to them and rethink them over an
indefinite period.

I have posted something every week for about 8 months now (missing only one
week). They are idiosyncratic, but some are probably quite interesting -- two
or three have appeared on HN.

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azov
Is writing a blog post no matter what - even if you don't have much to say -
such a worthy goal? It's not like there's a shortage of blog posts in the
world...

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matwood
Writing begets writing. The process of sitting down and figuring out what to
say is something that gets easier and hopefully better with practice.

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aaronf
I like Seinfeld's technique - "don't break the chain".
[http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-
se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

We're going to add individual task tracking to LazyMeter to automate this.

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BasDirks
I preferred you would have forgotten to write your post so an empty one would
have appeared instead of this one ;)

I treat my cats with more dignity than you treat yourself. Stupid little
tricks like yours work for about a week, or longer if you're stupid enough to
be sensitive to this kind of thing.

It makes sense to schedule your writing, but this method is not exactly the
bee's knees, and the title of your post "How to Never Miss a Blog Post" kinda
reminds me of bad advertising.

Your work kicks ass though, and your posts on design are interesting. Get a
favicon btw!

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nathanbarry
It almost did. I was only 12 hours away from an empty post when I wrote this.

I try to write useful content, but often need a little encouragement. This
helps me. It's not for everyone.

Thanks for the complements about my work. And you're right, I should create a
favicon.

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joshfinnie
Has Wordpress's "Future Post Date" feature become more reliable? If I remember
correctly, there were some issues with Wordpress posting unfinished posts due
to a bug or something...

I do like the idea of forcing a deadline upon you to get a blog post out
(though this only works when you have something like a once-a-week post
schedule). Just wondering if there is a better way to do this technique.

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nathanbarry
I've found the WordPress schedule feature to be quite reliable. Just make sure
you set your timezone. That caused me some confusion at first.

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AD7863
Genius. Good for personal blogs but won't be appropriate for some other kinds
of blogs e.g. news blog.

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DanielBMarkham
Regular blogging is trickier than you think.

For instance, I started a little hobby blog a few weeks ago. I have a hobby of
collecting funny pictures, so I thought it might be fun to filter them yet
again, then tag the hell out of them and post them on a blog. Who knows? Might
have a lot of traffic one day. If nothing else, it'll make it personally
easier for me to find my pictures. (shameless plug: <http://caption-of-the-
day.com>)

Pretty simple, no? I already have the pictures. The tags should be pretty
obvious. It's just select one, then write a tiny bit of text describing it,
then post.

For some reason even this tiny amount of work quickly becomes a chore. I've
started doing exactly what this author is doing: schedule the post first, then
use the upcoming deadline as a motivator.

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chaosmachine
_tag the hell out of them and post them on a blog. Who knows? Might have a lot
of traffic one day._

If you're going to rehost other people's work, you should at least link to the
source. Most of the images on your site are taken from popular
webcomics/blogs, so it shouldn't be hard to find the url.

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DanielBMarkham
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll consider doing that (Although the purpose of
my comment was what a pain in the ass it is already.)

Hopefully every comic has a link included in the image. If you find one that
isn't, I'll remove it. There's no intention of taking credit -- or even of
using too many web comics. I have a lot more stuff. I guess the comics just
floated to the top of the second sort. If anything, my dream is posting plain
images and then letting the audience make up their own captions (hence the
name of the site) But I'm happy if it only ever amounts to a fancy image
storage system. That outcome still beats uploading them to FB (which is what I
was doing before the site.)

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sirmxanot
I really like this strategy. Its so easy to let those deadlines you set for
yourself just slip by.

