Time to change my blog schedule

Image by bottomlayercz0 from Pixabay

There is a saying that “He who stops becoming better, ceases to be good.” That pretty much sums up my life philosophy. I currently have four daily habits and one weekly habit. Every day I practice French for a couple of minutes, draw a picture, publish a short video, and play the drums for 15 minutes. And every Saturday I write a blog post. I´m in my second year now of these five simultaneous habits. These last weeks my gut tells me that I need to make some changes in this schedule, especially the writing habit. For over a year, I set my alarm clock very early every Saturday and got up before my family woke and wrote a blog post. But now I feel that the sacrifice to get out of bed in the weekend is too great. My son just turned two, and he is so much fun to be around that I can’t describe it. That’s why I have chosen to prioritize that morning hour with my family instead. It is now more important than writing. That, and the combination that work has been exceptionally intense the past month or two, and in times like that, those cozy morning hours and a day where you are completely “free” is more important than ever.

It’s clear that the Saturday morning blog posts must go. I won’t stop writing, because it is an immensely valuable process to me, but I need to find another routine. I suspect a regular weekday might be a better option from now on. Spontaneously I am considering Monday mornings. That way, I will do the writing with a “blank slate” in my mind. As soon as the next work week starts, it is easy to get caught up and distracted. If there is one thing I have learned from writing 66 weekly blog posts, it is the importance of doing the writing when you are focussed and present. The later in the day, the more thoughts and impressions have entered your mind. And personally, I feel like the difficulty increases the later in the day that I do the writing. And consequentially, it has always felt easier in the morning because the mind is clear. I guess that same mindset should work for Monday mornings too. Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s try it and see what happens! Another benefit is that I would always be early out of bed every new week, which seems like a great way to begin anew after a weekends rest.

Another interesting thing to consider is the importance of when you publish your content. I suspect that the timing is a crucial parameter determining whether you appear in people’s news feed or not. Maybe Saturday morning is a bad time to publish? Of course, you can always preproduce your content and schedule a publishing time. But I have always felt that the authenticity would suffer. It just feels better to me, to publish my content the very same second I have finished creating it. That way, it becomes impossible for me to over-work it. There is always a point of diminishing returns where additional work won’t bring any additional value and instead rob you of valuable time that would be wiser spent elsewhere. I have always suffered from something I have named “the engineers’ curse” which means that I over-work, over-think and over-polish everything I do, because I have an extremely strong desire to make things correctly. Correct to the degree that it actually hurts or hinders me in my growth. That’s why I think it is an important rule for me to have this constraint that when it’s done, it’s done! After you have hit the publish button, it’s out of your system and there is no point to think about it anymore. Just like a football player cannot analyze that pass he made to another player one minute ago whether it was the right one or not. Then they will lose the game for sure. You must focus forward if you’re going fast. It’s also similar to driving on a racetrack, or in the rush hour traffic in Kathmandu. Forget about your rear-view mirrors. If you look in them, you will have a crash.

If I pre-produce my content and schedule it for later publication, I would likely not be able to let it go from my thoughts until it is published, and the means that I would have less mental capacity for the important things that are going on around me in the intermittent time. Well, maybe scheduled publication is a skill you can practice too? However, I’m just not convinced that it would work for me. What are your thoughts on this matter?