Starting a 2024 Blogging Habit
I haven't been good... #
Background music: The Beths - Expert in a Dying Field
I haven't written a blog post in 8 months, so that tells me that I don't have a habit of blogging. It has been more of a sporadic, impulsive excursion. But deep down I like blogging and I think it helps me out and hopefully at least a few other people out there. So I'm going to apply what I've learned from a few months of self-improvement in other areas as well as from what I've read in books like Atomic Habits to create a new, sustaintainable habit of blogging in 2024. Well at least for 3 months and then I'm going to reevaluate.
But I can be better... #
I've read that people who say they intend to vote, don't always vote. But if they state an implementation intention, where they say exactly when they're going to vote, how they're going to get to the polling place, and think through anything else they need to do, then their voting rate goes up. (Editors Note: As a resident of the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virignia) area, Louie is legally obligated to talk about politics.)
Implementation intention: I will blog at 5pm at my home office desk (or hotel desk if I'm traveling.)
The best To Do List is a Calendar... #
Something I've found that really works for me is to put everything that I want to do, at least at the macro level, on my calendar. In my previous role, I was fortunate to have Administrative Assistants help me with my work and one of my best assistants ever, Minahil, once told me that this is how she stayed on top of everything. I was a little skeptical but her work showed that it was effective. The past months I've been putting that into effect and it has really worked for me.
If I have a lot of small tasks that are together, I'll group them together and even add them as Notes/Agenda to the calendar invite. A side effect that I've found too is that it helps me realize when to say no: when my calendar is full. Also, I've incorporated Self Care (or what we used to call Eating Lunch) into my day to make sure I don't get hangry during my early afternoon meetings.
Recurring Calendar Invite for myself: Blog Saturday 10 at 5:00 - 6:00pm, Weekly on Saturday, until May 12, 2024.
Make it Easy #
I'm using Eleventy to publish my blog. I usually have to figure out where to put my blog posts and then remember how to publish. I need to load my mental model of this project back into my memory. There's three things that can help:
1 GitHub Copilot Chat
@workspace how can i create a new blog post?
This helps with any project you haven't worked with in a while.
2 Make a script to create a new post
help me make a script to create a new blog post in Markdown in the directory "content/blog/". Ask me for a title for it. Convert that title to be kebab cased, then make a blank file in that directory with that kebab cased filename.
I could have written this from scratch, but why not have Copilot write it and I reap the benefits? Now I have a script called "createPost" to make this file to make it easy.
3 Weekly Blogging Keeps My Blog Mental Model in my LRU Cache
One problem with blogging so infrequently is that it falls out of my brain and into long-term brain storage. Blogging weekly should keep it warmer in my brain and as that habit builds, it should become easy.