From August 11: I’ve written myself into the next month already. Good thing the Share a Draft plugin lets me send people links to upcoming blog posts so that they don’t have to wait for answers. I leave Saturdays for weekly reviews and Sundays for other stories that come up, and all the rest have one blog post a day. I don’t know when I’m going to schedule this post. Maybe I’ll shuffle things around so that some posts are in September. Let’s see if I can fill September up.

There’s more to write. There always is. Ideas from my outline. Answers to comments and e-mailed questions. Things I’m learning.

The main trick is to remember which posts are time-related and which ones aren’t. Or, I suppose, to write things so that they aren’t time-sensitive: to refer to recent events as “recently” instead of “last Wednesday”.

I haven’t been coding as much. You can see it. Here’s my writing activity (yay Quantified Awesome):

Here’s my coding on Quantified Awesome:

Other coding:

Emacs:

At least I’ve been drawing (a little bit, not much):

Writing is just so much more squeezable into the spaces of my life. I can write anywhere. I just need a question, and off I go. Sometimes I write throughout the process of finding that question in the first place. And more people could possibly benefit from writing, while only a few people use my code. Although lots of people like my drawings (and I do too), so I should make more of those.

Writing is less frustrating than coding because I feel like I make immediate progress, and I don’t get error messages. Not that coding is frustrating. Coding is fun. But I’m picking writing more than I’m picking code, and that tells me that I should tweak the rewards so that I pick code more. Besides, there are a gazillion blogs out there, but not as many people working on Emacs, Org Mode, WordPress, Rails, or the other awesome tools that I use. I could make more of a difference with code.

Maybe I need to put a time limit on my writing so that I get forced to do something different. Except it doesn’t really take all that much time to write.

If I’m a month ahead, maybe I should hold off writing and focus on outlining instead. Except writing is fun and it clears my head… Maybe writing one blog post, maybe a maximum two blog posts every time I sit down to write, and checking off some other non-writing task (code, drawing, learning Latin) before I allow myself a writing session again? I’m allowed to write if I’m blogging in the process of learning something.

People think flow is awesome (as in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s research). It is, but it’s dangerous. Too much flow could mean neglecting other parts of life. So, time to revisit other interests…

August 13: Hmm. Writing really has a strong pull. I’ve learned that it’s easier (and often much better!) if I don’t fight my interest, so maybe I should just give myself permission to write and outline (and draw, on occasion) whenever I feel like it.

Related blog posts:

• How to manage a large blog archive
• What do I want to do right now? Understanding my algorithm for discretionary time
• Writing, drawing, and coding while tired