The hardest thing about writing a daily blog is not the actual writing part; it’s coming up with a new topic every single day. I’m often asked, “How long does it take you to write your posts?” And the truthful answer is that it varies greatly.

Part of this variability, of course, has to do with the length and depth of each post, but another big part of the variability is that I have to first land on a topic.

The usual criteria are that I’m looking for something that is roughly aligned with the topics covered on this blog, that is interesting to me (and where I can hopefully bring a unique perspective), and that I haven’t already written about over the last 12+ years. Another challenge is remembering what I have written about!

The two techniques that I have found most helpful in optimizing for the topic problem are to 1) keep a list of topics as they hit me (I do this in the to-do app on my phone) and 2) read the internet until I land on something that excites me.

Technique one is the most efficient because it means I’m more or less ready to go once I sit down to write. But I don’t always have topics on the list. It’s not easy having a daily writing practice. It’s a huge commitment that sometimes feels worth it and sometimes doesn’t.

That said, hard things tend to be the things you want to do in life. There’s probably also something to be said about the fact that the hardest part is the thing that AI isn’t good at.

Cover photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash