For the third part in this series, I'm going to evaluate my 50 blog post topics list. I wrote this list so I wouldn't get stuck with writer's block and stop blogging. I didn't like the blog post ideas that I was coming up with just so I could get a post up, so I decided to ensure I wasn't wasting time coming up with a good idea. The list of topics took me a few hours to put together, and in the end I only did 15 of those topics. I also ended up doing the 15 easiest topics first, leaving the tougher topics for, well, perhaps never.
The Tougher Topics Would Have Taken More Time than I Had
Many of the tougher topics (particularly the questions about current affairs) would have required a ton of preliminary research, and once I sat down to write the post, it would've taken me about two hours to write it. Add that to the research time, and tackling one of these tougher topics would've taken between four and six hours of my time. That's time that I could've made room for if I made the blog post a priority, but I couldn't make it that kind of a priority over paying clients.
I wasn't going to do a sloppy job of tackling these topics either. Here's a David Cameron article that I wrote in September 2013, an example of what I would like to do when answering one of these questions. Sure, I could answer a similar question with only two reasons instead of three, or I could include three reasons but cite fewer sources throughout the article, but the David Cameron article is a great article. Not to toot my own horn, but I did a great job in answering the question. If I'm not going to commit to that level of quality, then I'm not going to start the blog post or find an easier way to do the blog post. The David Cameron article is simply how those current affairs questions should be tackled.
Going Back to Making It a Priority
In the first two parts of this series, I've discussed stopping ventures because I lost interest or because I found a better option. This time, I stopped completing this list because I felt I had more important priorities besides taking the time to write on the tougher topics. This blog (for now) is simply for fun and I can't let it get in the way of paying work. Well, I could let it get in the way of paying work, but I wouldn't be earning enough to pay my bills. I also didn't want to spend so much time on just one blog post, because if I did commit four to six hours to write one post, then I would've had to reduce the number of times I published in a week. Back when I was doing those posts, I was publishing about every other day (and I'm currently working to come back to that frequency). Tackling these tougher topics would've meant publishing only about once or twice a week, perhaps even less frequently. That's just no good for blog. At least I don't think that's good for a blog.
Perhaps I'll be able to tackle some of the tougher topics in the future if I plan accordingly. I would probably need to give myself about a month's leeway, and if I do that, then I would need to choose topic that would still be timely in a month or two. That's not too hard, considering that some current issues can go on for months.
