I appreciate what the author is saying in terms of building some level of longevity into your musings/writings/etc.
However from the article: "First, you need to select a theme, usually related to your professional goals, and then set up a newsletter. Examples of themes can range from database optimization to product marketing".
As a rough hewn cognitive equivalent of a Kinder Surprise, I find this on a personal level utterly impossible. I'm sure everyone has their own style of writing, but I don't start with a concept and work from there. Instead, I furiously flop my lobes around like a neurological snow globe and then calmly wait for the dendritic snow to settle. So my blog starts with an article on how to build a better IDE, then goes into the construction of an infinite wish generator, followed by a paper on the biological constraints of free will, and bla bla bla bla.
I'm aware that this makes my blog virtually immune to even the concept of a target market except perhaps for the most extreme spectrum of ADHD, but I'm resigned to it.
I think that building on an established domain is fantastic and is probably the most effective way to build a following, so I'm always curious how others manage to retain that level of focus.
I feel ya my own brain is a chaotic attractor, and trying to pin down a single theme is like trying to hold water in my fist. I've come to accept that my writing is a reflection of my curiosity-driven ADHD, and that my 'audience' is likely just fellow travelers in the land of tangential interests.
dat being said, I've found that embracing the chaos can be liberating. Instead of trying to force a theme, I focus on creating a 'personal API' - a collection of loosely connected ideas and interests that can be mixed and matched in unexpected ways.
those who can maintain focus on a single domain, I'm in awe. But for the rest of us, perhaps the key is to find ways to create a cohesive narrative thread through the chaos, rather than trying to impose order on it. Anyone else out there struggling to tame the snow globe of their own mind?
Author here. Interesting perspective. I won't say my writing process is as ... meandering as what you describe, but I definitely write on a wide variety of topics.
If you look at my personal blog (which this post is on) then I have followed some of your pattern--it covers a lot of stuff that happened to be interesting to me when I was writing, but is not interesting to me now. But I still read some of them and am impressed by what I wrote. The technical ones don't age well, but do show some level of expertise, especially around communicating technical concepts. I'm a generalist, and it shows.
What I've done is had a second focused blog which I commit to for years, but not forever. The constraint is good for me, both beforehand ("is this something I want to write about for 2-3 years at least" culls a lot of themes) and during it (nothing like writing about something from N different ways to force you to really understand it).
I've done these blogs on:
* permaculture
* vericomposting
* advice for new software developers
* customer identity and access management
These wax and wane and I have shut many of them down as my interests, jobs and focus change.
I think the author raises a good point about how much human time/energy/effort go into creating content for systems that are at best closed loops when it comes to search-ability/discovery methods, and prone to disappear completely if one company loses funding or has a policy change at worst.
Both of those seem antithetical to the free exchange of information that was the ethos of the early internet.
I also recognize the profound economic incentives that work against that free exchange of information, and I'm not offering a solution, so grain of salt and all that.
> I also recognize the profound economic incentives that work against that free exchange of information, and I'm not offering a solution, so grain of salt and all that.
I would argue that there are "profound economic incentives" for an individual to free their content, or at least copy/edit/publish it on the web as well as on the platforms.
The platforms bring reach and an easier interface, but freely available content gives you dividends for years.
> Both of these let you share your knowledge and experience with low effort.
Where I have knowledge and experience, why would I care to write about it? I already have the knowledge and experience, and therefore am no longer interested in it. Writing about something that is not interesting might be something you give in to in exchange for copious sums of money, but certainly not for the sake of entertainment.
Writing is for things you don't know much about, so that the "someone said something wrong on the internet!" crowd will work tirelessly to improve your understanding.
Heh, why the lucky stiff said that he taught "by fated appointment only" and I feel the same. Sharing knowledge is a lot of energy. I like sharing but my energy is limited.
I'm a great teacher on the topics I know, but I'd much rather teach an intern something in a moment of need rather than write a blog post or make a youtube video. I'm glad there are people who blog and make videos too.
At work, some junior frontend engineers were tasked with making major changes to our site color palette with very incomplete guidance from brand designers. I taught them about color spaces beyond RGB, luminance and perceptually uniform color, and palette design and structure with a few examples. I'm no expert and I shouldn't be teaching those topics on the internet, but the project got better results for it, and I'm happy there's more FE engineers in the world with better knowledge about color.
This article lost me at “I prefer a newsletter”. Not the kind of knowledge capture I was hoping to take inspiration from. The word “content” did give the hint though.
I'm the author. I've been blogging for almost 23 years. I think newsletters are better than blogs because delivery into an email inbox > delivery via an RSS feed.
This reads more like how to get more bang from your content buck by upcycling social posts into a newsletter or blog, which in itself is a good idea. I like the process for turning in the moment comments into a more structured article.
That said, I am a little disappointed because I expected the article to be more about encouraging people to integrate social posts into a website and keeping old content available despite seo pressures to get rid of old stuff. As far as I'm concerned, I won't shut down old blogs and they still serve their niche purpose for new visitors 15 years later even if I don't add new content. I wouldn't put this much effort in a newsletter that no one new can access past sending... that seems like as much waste to me as a message in slack, except more effort was put in.
However from the article: "First, you need to select a theme, usually related to your professional goals, and then set up a newsletter. Examples of themes can range from database optimization to product marketing".
As a rough hewn cognitive equivalent of a Kinder Surprise, I find this on a personal level utterly impossible. I'm sure everyone has their own style of writing, but I don't start with a concept and work from there. Instead, I furiously flop my lobes around like a neurological snow globe and then calmly wait for the dendritic snow to settle. So my blog starts with an article on how to build a better IDE, then goes into the construction of an infinite wish generator, followed by a paper on the biological constraints of free will, and bla bla bla bla.
I'm aware that this makes my blog virtually immune to even the concept of a target market except perhaps for the most extreme spectrum of ADHD, but I'm resigned to it.
I think that building on an established domain is fantastic and is probably the most effective way to build a following, so I'm always curious how others manage to retain that level of focus.