Blogging As An Emergent Activity (and wishes come true)

I was blasted out of bed this morning by thunder.

Thunder in September? In San Francisco? We never get thunder here. Hardly ever in any case. It’s really rare. Once or twice a year at most! In any case, it’s a hint to get going.

Change focus to break writer’s block

Have you ever had a really hard time getting going on your writing?

Most people do.

Even though I often claim that I don’t get writer’s block, sometimes I just don’t feel like writing, even when I really ought to be writing.

Yet another way to proceed is to do something else, then write about it. Let the writing “emerge” as a consequence of your other activity. Many blog posts on There Is NO Box were written exactly this way: adjunct to something else I was doing at the time.

For example, I have an upcoming post on comparing how the attention requirements differ between blogging and programming, which I wrote in a few minutes – while writing what you’re presently reading.

That’s probably not the best example… I can think of something better…

Whoa! Now there’s a warm rain coming down. Crazy! Check this out: I was briefly interviewed on Justin.tv at TwestivalSF last night at Horizon Lounge on Broadway in San Francisco:
Justin.tv: “Can you tell the children what makes you smile?”
Me: Warm rain makes me smile, it feels good!

This charity for the TwestivalSF event was Operation Smile. I can’t think of a bigger bang for a dollar anywhere! For a ludicrously small amount of money, doctors travel around the world performing the exceedingly minor surgery required to fix children born with hairlips.

What an enormous change in a child’s life.

Blogging as adjunct activity

Right now, I have a draft blog post on how to link time tracking software such as Clicktime to accounting applications such as Quickbooks.

The connection is hard because it’s conceptual, not technical.

You have to consider both the direct costs of producing, say, a blog post, and the indirect costs. A direct cost might be associated with the time writing the post. An indirect cost is induced by the time required for maintaining the blog (upgrading, etc.).

I asked Shuchi, an accounting friend of mine, how best to separate these indirect “overhead” costs. She more or less threw up her hands and said “It really depends, there’s no set answer.”

This is an important point, because Shuchi is helping to build a stealth startup in exactly this space: helping other startups get grip on their administrative overhead! (I’ll add a link to her company once they launch.)

So… what?

Well, that blog post is really hard to write… because I am trying to write the blog post instead of actually making that connection!

I need to make the connection first, THEN write the blog post.

This should be a statement of the obvious, but it’s not. Because my most effective learning technique is writing to learn, I often find the cart before the horse: I start a blog post because I want to learn something important, then get stymied trying to finish the blog post… instead of learning the task!

Does this happen to you as well?

When it does, take a step back and concentrate on the task at hand.

Once you have the task in clear focus, the blog post will emerge on it’s own.

Make a wish come true

You know, I really enjoyed TwestivalSF last night. I didn’t think I would, but I went anyway. And I’m glad I did.

See, in the Western world, we take cosmetic facial surgery for harelips and cleft palates totally for granted. In many areas of the world, it’s removes a potentially lifelong stigma from a child, allowing the child to develop normally. If you have a few moments, check out the Operation Smile website. You could really make an immediate and life-changing difference in a child’s life. You could make a wish come true.

Tagged as: Writer's block