How To Use Scheduling To Increase Your Motivation to Blog

A Good Schedule Can Increase Your Motivation to Blog

One of the advantages of my attempts to improve my typing speed is that I have generated quite a lot of blog posts that I might not otherwise have written.  I have two blogs - one is quite a popular beauty one that generates a small amount of money but more importantly makes me much better known in my business.  There is absolutely no substitute for people knowing your name when it comes to getting things done.  The other one is very much a labour of love.  It is about history and it positively costs me money to keep it going.  I just enjoy doing it and although I will never turn it into a source of income it makes me feel good doing it.


Now like most bloggers I do have a bit of an issue with keeping posting regularly.  Search engine bots and real human readers both like to see regular updates.  But with all the chaotic things that we all have going on in our lives it is sometimes tough both to find the time to actually knock out the posts and to find the inspiration to come up with something worth putting into the public domain.

There is of course the strategy of building up a stock of blog posts to schedule in advance.  This is one of those things that is a lot easier to say than to do, but as it happens thanks to my aim to increase my typing speed I happen to have done exactly that.  So I now have posts on my history blog scheduled way into June and as far ahead as May on my beauty one.

So far so good.  It is a good feeling being ahead and it is nice to know that I can take a break without losing the interest of my readers.  But the interesting thing is that while it might be logical to slow down a bit now, I actually feel more motivated to blog now I have a buffer than I used to be only a month ago when I was blogging hand to mouth.  This is quite interesting and a bit counterproductive.  You would have thought that as I am well on schedule that might deflate my motivation a bit.

I think this is a special case of something that is sort of well known.   We all fear loss more than we desire gain.  Losing a large sum of money feels worse than gaining the equivalent amount.  A lot of very bad business decisions and even more personal finance ones arise from this fallacy.  Finding a blog post to fill an empty slot in a schedule doesn't feel remotely as satisfying as adding another one to an already long list.  Delivering is easier and more enjoyable if you have already delivered.

So the best strategy for keeping up blog posts is to post them less frequently than you write them.  This means that your scheduled posts build up and so does your motivation to write more.   I have a feeling this would work for other things as well.

(Oh and if you are wondering, I am now up to 40 words per minute and this blog is scheduled up until the middle of April.)