There was quite a long pause between my previous article and this one. I had a lot of stirr in my personal life, a lot of events happening concurrently. I could not prepare for a lot of them, because I did not see them coming. Yet, I am grateful for every single push life is giving to me because it makes me feel alive much more when I am being pushed or even held back by the forces outside of my reach than just sitting all day spending my time doing nothing at all.
I did not promise any time shchedule for the articles I publish yet, mostly because it is just about 50 days since I have started this yourney and I do not really know what my audience is, or even if there is any audience to speak of in the first place.
Yet it does not mean I was slacking all the time not posting any new article. I have read that the times publishing 500 words articles abe getting off with it is long gone. I Have not been blogging all that time to witness such realization, but from the perspective I expirience by reading other's people work, I can confirm that longer articles with a personal story are far more engaging. Showing vulnerability is even more added value. Some people stick to the consistency rule, which I roughly explain for myself as "doing some task every day".
I am being consistent, but unfortunaltely not in writing. My couch is helping me a great deal to meet my goals, he himself went through similar journey few years ago. Writing for me is something I am just starting to be passionate about, and I am enjoying it more and more, the more I practice. The freedom to express my thoughts is relieving. There are people who claim that the article of 10k to 12k words is what is the output that brings results these days and I do stick with it, even though it takes half a day for me to produce such a long article.
It is hard for me to meet so many goals at the same time. One article a week. One server update a week. Four slides for the course a day. Cook and exercise. Freelance to not lose premium clients. Save all the screencasts to produce extra content. Keep my operating system up to date. Cram there enoght time to read the books or articles I have in my reading list. Spending quality time with my girlfriend as a compensation for her being so supportive in every possible way. There is a lot of goals and activities I want to engage myself in but only so little time. I believe you have benn in the same situation alt least once in your your life.
The thig is however, real productivity, if I could really call this recent chaotic multitasking as such is inevitably producing results. This is a one single tip I want to speak to you about today.
Hard work brings results
It is true that working smarter is better than working harder, but you have to try things, and fail a lot to get there. Until you are being comfortable in your area of expertise, you are just putting hours, days and months of work in to get there. That is hard work. Hard work inevitably brings results. They might not be the reslts you are aiming for, but results nevertheless.
For me, recelnty, my every day is filled with building graphic materials. I tried to use some open libraries for graphics in the past, and I have written about it, but there are only generic images. They of course save time, but if you are trying to find there some content that you can reuse in a specialised area, chances are you simply do not find an image at all. Even if you find some paid content, and even though it usually costs around two Euro, it is not fitting overall style of your work. Everyone simply has different style, and history has proven us again and again that having consistent brand image is worth it a a grat deal more than just sticking a bunch of unrelated stuff together. It is also the case in the images you are using in your work. If it is a different style, it simply does not fit, even if it is cheap.
Know your content
If you came down the path of producing a content, you produce a lot of ...content. And unless someone else is consuming every single piece of it, you are the only person in the world that knows all that content by heart. It is like taking notes i=from the lecture in school. It just requires one peek into your notebook to recall whole half a hor of lecurer's ramble.
I have read about the fact that you can reuse some of your content before, but since for most of my life so far, I have not been publishing much, apart from some personal Facebook posts or some random Instagram photos, that had no coherence.
Todoay I was able to experience this effect in persona. I wanted to go rollerblading before the sunt went down, but I have not met my critical tasks for todday and it yet and it was getting late. I needed to draw a few more illustrations. Fortunately, they needed exactly a little pieces of the content I have made before, so I could just copy and paste it. That was it, My larger illustrations was mostly complied of my previous smaller illustrations. I have met my goals for today, even overshot them a little and still could move my body by the sunset.
Reuse to save time
IIt would not be feasible to draw everything from scratch. I am grateful for what I do, and that I can do it. Most of what I did in the past was producing lines of code. I could copy and paste the code as well, but it fells different. Maybe because I am new in the field, copying the smaller illustrations into larger one feels completely different that copying parts of code from smaler projects into a bigger one. Maybe becase I usually rework most of the copied code to fit the destination one. Or maybe the code is not visual enough to experience this effect. I do not know. But copying illustrations is a great relief for me. I hope you can reuse your older content for a new one and feel this too.
By being consistent and producing daily, I was able to finish some tasks far sooner than I have expecetd, because of the non-linearity nature of it. Next time you feel overwhelmed by the amount of content you strive for, just try to force yourself to do it. Chances are, your mind just comes up with the content you have made in the past that fits your current work greatly and saves you a lot of time. I iwsh you to be surpised as me to expirience this effect on your own, if you hand't yet. Stay creative and the results are likely to follow.