Sunday, January 27, 2008

Why Blog? According to Chris Anderson ...

As a part of the interview with Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) for Blogging Heroes, I asked him whether blogging required a significant time commitment. His response addresses the question, but also talks about why he blogs, what he gets from it, and more. He comments you may find interesting if you're a blogger or intend to be.

You know, I don't spend that much time blogging. I feel guilty about how infrequently I post. I’ve got this massive backlog of draft posts for the Long Tail blog, for example, that I feel guilty about.

As you've heard from probably everyone you talk to, having a blog is this beast—a monkey on your back. It wants to be fed every day, but we all have jobs and it's hard to do. So I don't blog as much as I'd like. I try to post on one of my blogs every day. But that doesn't mean that on every single blog I blog once a day. But I feel like I’m blogging all the time, and I also feel like I’m under-blogging.

Basically I devote an hour a day to blogging-related functions. That is, either writing posts, or editing other people’s posts, composing drafts, or thinking about or pulling together research that will go into drafts. I wish it were three hours a day. I'd love to spend more time. It's a really satisfying process. I think I do my best thinking via my blogs. Because that is really what a blog is about: a blog is a scratch-pad, and a discipline to collect your thoughts, compose your thoughts, advance your thoughts, and do it in public in a way that can amplify your thoughts by not only reaching an audience, but also getting feedback on your thoughts. Blogging for me is really largely a way to make myself smarter.

Blogging is incredibly satisfying. I’d love to be blogging full-time. But blogging is an avocation; I don’t make a penny from it. I have to balance it with my day job. We have colleagues here at the magazine who have taken blogging sabbaticals, which is to say they've taken sabbaticals from work so they can blog more. I'd love to take a blogging sabbatical.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've just started blogging and I will definetly check out the book, thanks for the tip!