Have a dumping ground for your ideas

It’s important to have a dumping ground for ideas when you are on the go. This can be a notepad, google keep, an email to yourself, or whatever method you have for writing reminders.

At first I tried adding drafts to my wordpress site. I found it too easy to forget about the topic this way, though, and did not like the lack of oranization tools.

Another approach was to use folders in dropbox.

Then I tried using labels in Google Keep, but Google Keep is my catchall for everything.

I also tried Wunderlist, Asana, Trello, Google tasks, Todoist, DropTask, Any.do, but none of these gave me the level of customization, filtering, and ease of management I was looking for.

Airtable

Airtable shows promise. It lets me customize the post idea with a variety of details, then let me sort them as tasks in a kanban board, filter on status, etc. It’s incredibly powerful. It behaves like a spreadsheet, mobile app, kanban board, calendar, card gallery, all depending on your use case or whether you’re on mobile or desktop.

new idea - add to Blog Editorial Calendar (yea I kept the default Airtable example table. I’m cool like that.)

So If I find an idea to be worthy of a spot on my editorial calendar (this is completely subjective on my part), I’ll add it. This gives me a template to decide certain factors such as:

  • starting title
  • priority (multiples of 10 so items can be inserted between without having to bump all numbers fllowing)
  • target publication
  • section (this is not clearly defined, it should probably correlate to categories in wordpress)
  • attachments if I have any
  • sub tasks if I think of any on the spot
  • a priority listing
  • whether I’ll need to perform a test, demo, or research, or if I can just brain dump, etc.

Set up a markdown file in the appropriate directory in a git repository

I keep all of my content in markdown format in a gitlab repository. I love this approach for many reasons:

  • I can easily see changes with timestamps and diffs.
  • I can format and organize very quickly without having to deal with HTML tags
  • I can preview the html output right in VS Code or a web app
  • I can drop the markdown right into the wordpress post editor and jetpack will convert it to html for me.
  • I can easily check them out to my phone with SGit, edit and preview them with Epsilon Notes, and commit my changes on the go

Break the writing of the posts up into several phases:

planning phase

  • concepting
  • outlining
  • demoing

writing phase

  • drafting (initial)/Brain Dump
  • drafting (final)

responsible phase

  • fact checking/reviewing snippets
  • adding images
  • editing

Sweep and dive approach

sweep in-progress entries and update markdown files with what feels right for the phase it’s at, dive in if it feels right

At the start of a session, I’ll go through the airtable list from top to bottom and review current status and markdown file. If I have something to contribute to either, I’ll make an update. If the update to the markdown file turns into a brain dump, I just let it happen. But if after 30 seconds or so I can’t think of something to add or I start to feel distracted or disinterested in the topic, I move on to the next entry in my blog editorial base.

If I get sucked in and end up writing a thousand words, that’s awesome. That’s really what I’m going for. It’s much too difficult to sit down and say to myself ‘I’m going to write an entire blog post.’ Too daunting. And it comes out too unnatural and feels like work. With the sweep and dive approach, it’s much more fun. The danger is that nothing ever gets finished, or the order doesn’t appear to be planned, but I think those are minor concerns. Worst case scenario, a post can just be nearly finished, in need of polish, and I can be disciplined at the right times to perform editoral duties and schedule a publication. I also find it much more useful to do the ‘fun’ part of brain dumping when I feel good about it, and do the high level editing when I’m feeling critical. I just need to control the impulse of publishing immediately when I finish better :D.

The important part is to pick off the low hanging fruit to feel like you’re making progress, and to keep the queue full enough that it’s easy to find the low hanging fruit. After a few small wins, it’s a little more palatable to perform the editorial, proofing, FAQ-anticipatory, and admin tasks.