BWB (Blogging While Busy)

There's no getting around it: Following and participating in conversational media, especially blogging, takes time. For many folks, that's a huge hurdle. Occasionally my own time crunch lands me in a blogging bind.

I've been fortunate lately to score several meaty consulting projects. However, they're all due in approximately the same time frame, so I'm scrambling to get them done. Hence, I haven't been blogging much lately on any of my blogs.

However, I have been reading and commenting on a few other blogs. For me, that tends to take much less time then crafting a typical post for one of my own blogs. (I really don't like dashing off half-formed thoughts, that doesn't suit me.)

It strikes me that I can leverage my comments on other blogs constructively to both create postings when I'm really busy, and to expand the excellent conversations I've already joined. Here's what I have in mind...

I'm going to try a few postings in which I give a quick snyposis of a blog-comments conversation I've already joined. Then I'll show what I commented, and maybe add some extra thoughts.

This would seem to offer a few benefits:

• Expanding a conversation from one blog audience to another (my own)
• Faster time to post
• Creating a more coherent record of the more substantive things I have to say, regardless of where I say it first.

I'm putting this into practice with my very next posting. Of course, I won't be doing this with every single comment I make -- but I do track every comment I leave by tagging those pages in Del.icio.us. (See: mycomments)

What do you think of this strategy? Have you tried it? How do you cope with blogging while busy? Please comment below.

Comments

[Gray Miller]

I don't, unfortunately. I'm one of those unfortunates who early on took on several blogs, personal, professional, and artistic, and then followed up with a couple of podcasts. Currently I'm trying to find ways to discipline myself to continually have some new content in each blog, not only content, but meaningful content--and there's the rub.

One solution that has been helping a bit is very low-tek: a moleskine notebook. I jot down ideas, quotes, all the time, often for no specific purpose. Then, when I'm tired and not feeling like posting, but that little nagging voice is saying "C'mon, what would Amy/Heidi/Bob/InsertBloggerHere say?" I can just open the book, scan through the thoughts, pick one and build a post around it.

Still, it comes down to discipline. I have to force myself to face the white box without fear, fill it, and move on.

[J Spadafora]

Sometimes I ask myself, in the midst of being busy with something, if blogging about what I'm doing might actually help. Granted, this is more likely to be true when it comes to posting to my behind-the-firewall work blog than my personal blog. For my personal blog, I try and post at least once a week -- I don't want to continually find myself too busy to do something that is supposed to be fun.

btw, you may want to check out this alternative to your del.icio.us system for comment tracking: cocomment

[Kami Huyse]

I really want to comemnt on this right now, but I can't, i'm too busy :-) One of your comments on my blog has been making me think this week. I will blog about it tomorrow. Thanks for the idea!

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