Finding that blogging rhythm

It's amazing how a schedule change can disrupt your rhythm. When summer started, our family's whole routine changed. My wife is a teacher so as the school year ended, she was no longer waking up at 5:15 to get ready and I'm now the first one up. The kids have camps and programs. My daughter started playing lacrosse. I attended a conference. My wife attended a conference. We've tried to squeeze some vacation days into our busy schedule. Our air conditioner died and it's 100 degrees every single day. I'm trying to exercise more. And just like that, I'm not writing.

Now don't get me wrong... I'm having a blast this summer. But it's times like this I realize how challenging it is to blog* consistently. I've had Sketchbook B since 2007 and I'm still trying to find a consistent rhythm. It makes me really appreciate people who blog daily or weekly without fail for years on end.

I'm working on some projects this summer and so posting will continue to be erratic until fall. One of those projects is figuring out where I want to go with this blog over the next few years. What types of things do I enjoy writing about and how do I want to structure things? What does my audience look like and what do I want it to look like? Do I want to have ads? How do I use social media to promote posts? How do I improve the photography on the site? 

I'm looking forward to finding that focus that I've been missing. And hopefully finally finding a new rhythm.


* I try to avoid the words "blog" and "post," but sometimes, it's the most appropriate word to use.

Link: Seth Godin on perfection

Do yourself a favor and read this very short post from Seth Godin on striving for perfection. As designers and creative professionals, we struggle with this. When do we let go of a project? When is a project complete? In my experience, a project is never perfect and I don't think I've ever finished a project that I didn't want to change the minute it was done. I'm particularly bad about holding onto typeface designs until they are perfect... and the end result is that they are never finished. 

Anyway, a good thought to take into a crazy Monday.

Write everywhere: Ulysses comes to the iPhone

My go-to writing app on my Mac and my iPad is Ulysses. I love the simple structure and that I can pretty much write anything... from a blog post to something much longer. And my writing syncs between my devices.

Now, my writing syncs between all my devices. Ulysses for iPhone launched today. The app is impressive and includes some great implementations of iOS features — iCloud synced all my content effortlessly, Handoff works great between devices and the share extension works perfectly.

I don't plan on writing long essays on my phone, but I think I'll use Ulysses on the iPhone frequently:

Brainstorming. When an idea strikes, I can add a note directly to the writing app. Since I always have my iPhone with me, I'll be able to capture those random thoughts and convert them into actual posts or essays more easily.

Links. I can use the share extension to send links I find directly to Ulysses. For links I want to write a post about, this will be much more convenient than using a service like Evernote.

Edit on the road. The keyboard on my iPhone isn't great for writing longer pieces, but Ulysses should be perfect for reading and editing on the go.

Ulysses isn't for everyone. It's a Markdown editor, so you need to be comfortable writing in Markdown. And it's not cheap. Ulysses for Mac is $45 and the mobile version is $25. In this era of free and freemium apps, this is an expensive app, but Ulysses is a professional tool and worth every penny.

I was expecting to have to pay for the iPhone version, but because I had already purchased Ulysses for iPad, I got the new Ulysses Mobile with support for iPad and iPhone as a free upgrade.

If you are looking for a Mac writing ecosystem and like working in Writedown, Ulysses might be the perfect system for you. There’s a great review over at MacStories if you want lots of specific details.

Inertia

Momentum is a powerful thing. At the end of last year, I was publishing 5-7 days a week. Then the holidays came and I decided to start publishing less. And very quickly, publishing less became barely publishing at all.

It all comes down to inertia.

When you get in the habit of doing something, it seems almost effortless to keep it going. And when you stop something, it seems to take an act of God to get going again. And this isn't just about writing... Exercise and eating right are the same way, too.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing more — and for that matter exercising and eating right. January has been tough, but it's time now to figure out how to get going again. I've got to overcome the initial resistance and get some momentum going.

Stealing time

2015 was a long year for me. Literally. My 2015 was three hours longer than 2014 because I rang in the new year on the West Coast. For me, 2015 was 365 days and 3 hours long.

But here’s the thing with stealing time. You don’t get extra time, you have to steal it from somewhere. My 2016 will be three hours shorter* — unless I celebrate the new year in a different time zone again. 

I have lots of projects on my plate at any given time. Add to that my family, my job, organizations, teaching and more. (And oh yeah, I start grad school this week.) I’m always stealing time from somewhere.

I’ve been bad about stealing time from sleep. I tend to stay up late and get a lot done after the kids go to bed. But I need to dial that back and get to bed a little earlier each night. I’m aiming for an extra hour of sleep a night, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that’s 7 hours a week… roughly 15 days over the course of a year. So I’ve got to make some adjustments.

Right now, my plan is to be more efficient and make the most of the time I have. Maybe I’ll be more effective working with more sleep. But efficiency will only get me part of the way. 

After that, it’s about prioritizing my projects and commitments. We’ll see what projects make the cut and which ones go on the back burner.


* Actually, 2016 will be longer than 2015 because it’s a leap year.

Reflections on my daily posting schedule

At the end of September, I decided that I wanted to be more structured with my writing. I wasn’t posting consistently and I wanted to write more. So I decided to set up a writing schedule.

My plan was to publish 5 days a week through the end of the year and then reevaluate. And so here I am — 13 weeks and 88 posts later — and it’s time to reevaluate. Here’s what I’ve learned:

  • I loved it. I really enjoyed writing more often. I grew up writing, but as a designer and a manager, I don’t get to write much for myself any more. And honestly, I really like the deadline pressure of having a schedule.
  • Writing sparks other creative endeavors. I found that writing more often tended to spark other creative ideas. I’m now got an army of things I want to tackle in the next year, and much of it came from things I posted on the blog.
  • I need to combine my blogs. A while back, I started an “Off-Topic” blog as a place to host my non-design related rants. I figured it would be best to segment my work that might appeal to different audiences. But while it made sense at the time, it didn't work so well in practice. Some blog posts were obviously off topic, but it wasn’t always clear where a post should go. (And some weeks, I only wanted to write off topic...) I think it makes sense to merge almost everything back into the main journal. 
  • I need to find a new home for Wanted in Columbia. One of the reasons I started the “Off-Topic” blog is because I decided to fold Wanted in Columbia into Sketchbook B in hopes that I would update it more often. I am updating more often, but it needs to live on it’s own and have it’s own world. I thought about phasing it out, but I enjoy doing it too much to kill it. I may go back to Tumblr. Or Medium. And probably change the name. Look for more soon.
  • Traffic increased, a little. I wasn’t writing more frequently to drive up the number of visitors, but traffic did increase a little.
  • I’ve got to figure out how to promote with Social Media. One of the reasons traffic didn’t increase more was because I didn’t use social media very effectively. When I promoted posts, they did better. But when you are writing daily, I feel like promoting constantly is annoying your followers. I’ve got to figure out how I want to promote posts and what channels I want to use. I’m been using the free version of Buffer to organize things, but I may need to upgrade to the paid version.
  • I need to revamp the schedule. I like writing more regularly, but I need to revise the schedule. Since I’m moving Wanted in Columbia and folding the Off Topic Blog back into the main journal, I’ll need to revisit the schedule. I’m going to leave the Wednesday Quick Tip on Wednesday, though. I may scale back to 4 posts a week here on Sketchbook B.

I’m proud of my 13 week experiment. I’m going to take the next week or so during the holidays to figure out what form the schedule will take, but I’m absolutely going to continue to write with some kind of a posting schedule.

Why do we do what we do?

I came across this post about motivation from one of the guys behind Basecamp*. The thrust of the article is that too many people are obsessed with the process of building a business simply to get rich. The post is about the Silicon Valley, but it could just as easily be about art and design.

It seems today that designers have been successful making their side project a full time gig.** And so it seems that every side project is a failure if it doesn’t eventually become a full time job. 

At times, I’ve forgotten why I started Sketchbook B. I’ve started paying too much attention to web traffic and font sales. But the goals for Sketchbook B have never been about building an audience, selling ads or making money. It’s all about experimenting and having fun.

One of the goals for Sketchbook B was to give me a chance to write more, but I wasn’t writing consistently. So recently I started to post daily. I made the decision to try a publishing schedule to force myself into a routine because I wanted to get more disciplined about writing.

After a couple of weeks though, my weekly page views were pretty much unchanged. I wondered if it was worth the effort. No one new was reading. But I came across Matt Gemmell’s post about “blogging” and I remembered that page views aren’t the point. Writing was the point. And I’m enjoying my site more in the last few weeks than I have at any time since I started it in 2008.

I’ve come to the realization that “side project” might be the wrong term for what I do. Maybe “passion project” is a better phase. I write, design type and experiment because I love design and creativity. My typefaces and other random projects were never intended to be a full time job. I’m looking to be creative in ways that I can’t be at work.***

Sketchbook B is simply my creative outlet, and I'm proud of that.


* I’ve used Basecamp for years. And I was a devoted user of Backpack before 37 Signals phased it out. :(

** It probably seems that way because so many people were starting side projects during the recession.

*** I seriously have the best day job.