In yesterday’s post, I commited to publishing 30 blog posts.
On Facebook, I committed to donating to Trump’s presidential campaign for each day that I miss.
Right now, it’s 7:23 PM. Gotta get this done.
In this post, I go over the type of blog I’m creating.
I know, I know. Just get on with the writing already. Talk about the monastery, meditation, circling, leadership, living in a yurt in Vermont, yadda yadda. Bear with me. I want to set my intentions down for a reason.
In Peak by Anders Ericsson, the key point around deliberate practice is having a good mental representation or good mental map of what you plan to do vs what you’re doing now. For example, rock climbers will map out their climb beforehand. Surgeons will plan their surgery and every possible alternative. Writers will write an outline for their book.
So, here, I’m figuring out what kind of content I want to create. But there are a lot of different types of blogs just like there’s many types of television, music, books, newspapers, and so on.
Here’s what I am not doing:
- Pop-culture, short & shallow content
Anything that values entertainment over valuable content. These forms of information and entertainment follow a proven gimmick that hooks people, but they have no long term value.
Examples: Buzzfeed, TMZ, procedural tv shows, reality television, USA News, etc.
- Individual Masters
These are written by individual masters in their fields. They tend to post rarely, but all of their content are well-researched and thought out long-form, quality pieces you couldn’t find anywhere else. I don’t feel like I’m a master in any general field but possibly in my smaller niches.
Examples: investigative journalism, Tim Ferriss Blog, Early Retirement Extreme Blog, Paul Graham’s essays, Mr Money Mustache, long form journalism (New Yorker, Atlantic).
- Individual Masters with regular, shorter content
Basically, I’m thinking about Seth Godin’s blog. His blog is the only one I follow regularly anymore. He posts daily, amazing pieces of content. I would love to write like Seth Godin.
- Niche blogs with unique personality
These blogs often have the same re-hashed content with the main differentiation being the author’s branding and personality.
There’s a ton of blogs in every niche saying the exact same stuff. If you are a beginner to the field then any of them is a good starting point. But, if you’re already even an amateur expert, most of them are just duplicates of each other.
- Curated content
This is an interesting category, but I just don’t have enough time..Generally, these curators can find the best content around a topic and then present an expertly distilled version to the audience, sometimes with their own insight on it.
Examples: Brainpickings, social networks like Quora, Reddit, and HackerNews.
So, what am I going to do? My interest is authentic, vulnerable, and trustworthy writings from my life. My deep search is how to find, embody, and express the truth? How to live with deep integrity and be massively effective in the world?
A year ago, I was talking with a good friend about how we could build an audience. Both of us were keen on having location independent careers and sharing our thoughts more widely. But neither of us felt like experts nor particularly fame seeking. Why would anyone want to read about us? I advocated that what we lacked in experience or expertise, we could make up with vulnerability and showing an inside look at our growth over time.
For example, I’ve often been hooked on following journals of people consistently updating their growth (or lifestyle experiments) in a new field whether it was business, dating, or traveling. There is a whole industry of people writing books on their life experiments including Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Body, 4 Hour Cook), AJ Jacobs (The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment), Gretchin Rubin (Happiness Project), and Joshua Foer (Moonwalking with Einstein). Not to mention Morgan Spurlock with Super Size Me, A Day in the Life, and 30 Days.
More recently, I’ve been inspired in the last two years by Mike Hrostoski and James Altrucher. Both of them really tell their succeses and failures without reservation. James’ has a ton of Quora answers that could be short books in themselves. But, I was particularly inspired by Mike’s AUGUST: A True Story About Love, Sex, and Entrepreneurship, a very raw 30 day memoir.
I was also inspired by Gimlett Media’s investing in time consuming, high quality podcasts rather than the existing successful model of quickly produced interview podcasts, I want to turn against the tide of the existing trend for faster, shorter, smaller, bit-sized. I want quality, depth, rawness.
I’m not an expert. But I have a unique journey. I want to share and let others know it’s okay to follow the unknown path. It’s okay to not have everything figured out. I hope this inspires and helps others to live more fully in the truth, in compassion, and for the health of all beings.
So far, my FB posts have been very raw journal updates on my struggles and growth in the past year. It seems to have struck a chord. I’ll use this month to figure out how to do the next step.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about how I used electronic shocks to stop my Reddit addiction.
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The top image is titled “Death found an author writing his life”. I imagine that’s how I’m going to feel tomorrow trying to schedule 8 posts before retreat begins for me.
This post was actually published 8:18 PM. And I already had this as a rough draft. So, each post is taking me at least a hour to write and publish so far. Likely far more.
I also really liked this article covering different types of blogs: https://www.leadpages.net/blog/types-of-blogs/. I guess I am aiming for guide, rouge, test dummy, and tell-all most of all.