A long time ago I was doing some reading on how you write and publish blog posts. One suggestion that helps me is the 24-hour rule. And that is to finish your post and then wait 24 hours before reading it one-last-time. After all, a blog post is going to be public, out there on the internet with your name on it, for a very long time.
The problem with this 24-hour rule is that I usually find one or more things that need to be changed. And then I have to wait another 24-hours.
When you are on a deadline, like, for instance, having a self-imposed quota of 2 or 3 blog posts a week, the 24-hour rule is inconvenient. It drives you to compromise on the level of quality.
By that I mean that there is a hierarchy of quality levels starting with spelling and grammar and ending with saying what you intended in the most concise, articulate manner possible. A deadline drives you to ensure the spelling and grammar are correct and then you compromise on just how well you get your point across.
For me the deadline and quality levels force a certain tension, all of which drove me to abandon my blogging of all things Excel. Yet since a deadline and quality levels are self-imposed, they are also controllable.
I’ve decided to stick with the 24-hour rule and forget about the deadline, or any deadline for that matter. Consequently my blogging will continue, at my own pace.
Right now I’m working on a post about the Excel iPad app.
So the 24-hour rule stays and the journey continues.
I was wondering if you were every going to post again. Perfect is the enemy of good. You can always edit your posts.
Very interesting. This 24 hour rule is excellent. Thanks for sharing.
Insightful. In my own case, there is nothing more important than energy and momentum, and both start to suffer if an project goes on too long. As SF says above, perfect is the enemy of the good.
Glad to see you back in the game! You have a unique perspective very good content.
I think you’ve misinterpreted. You wait 24 hours, then either post or edit AND post. Unless you make wholesale changes, the idea is to make sure you actually like what you wrote, and to fix any minor errors you made. So if I found a clumsy sentence in here, I’d fix it and post. But if I changed this to read something very different, I’d probably want to wait again.