blog regularity

I've been able to post more regularly for a while now, and I attribute that to a few specific changes:

1. Every time I have a thought for a blog post while working in the office, I write it on a post-it note. Then I immediately stuff it in a pocket and bring it home, where it gets added to a pile of other post-it notes. I do something similar in the field or while in transit - I rip off a square of scrap paper and bring it back to the hotel (or back home, if I don't get around to writing it right away).

I used to write long posts in my head while I was having technical difficulty/was getting annoyed by something, but I'd have a long day or get distracted and would forget them by the time I was actually sitting at a computer, ready to type. Now I just collect my pile of little pieces of paper and sort through them when I'm ready. This leads to the other change:

2. I used to get home from work, scan through all my usual reading, and try to come up with something new and interesting from that day to react to. The problem was that it made blogging into a chore when all I really wanted to do was decompress and start dinner. It also lead to my production dropping off a cliff if I'd had a hard day (or month). So now what I do instead is take advantage of my schedule: my sweetie sleeps in on the weekend, and since I'm a morning person, I'm awake, alert, and undistracted then. It's the perfect time for me to write long, complicated posts. I still write posts during the week, but I've been freed from the feeling that I have to come up with something on any given day.

Bloggers, do you have a particular writing routine that seems to work well for you?