Back in my very first post, I promised to refine the website based on feedback and the natural evolution of softuary.net and myself as a leader. It's been almost 8 months since that first post so I recently dedicated one of my early morning sessions to reflect on how it's going so far. I am a big believer in feedback, but because softuary.net is still flying under the radar it doesn't receive much traffic and has officially received zero comments. No problem.
So, in the absence of useful feedback, I turned to my favorite improvement tool: the Retrospective. I recently talked about what a Retrospective is and how to conduct them. The use case I discussed was using Retrospective techniques to improve a recurring meeting series, but those same techniques equally apply to single person endeavors like softuary.net.
So, what are my reflections after nearly 8 months?
Part of my retrospective mind map.
Things To Keep
It's Alive!
In short, softuary.net is still alive, active, and something that I'm proud of. That fact itself is something in the Things To Keep category.
By nature, I am an idea guy. My mind is always thinking about the future and generating both good and bad ideas. The follow-through on those ideas has always been unnatural for me. In fact, persistence and sustained execution are skills that I didn't have until I had developed them as a working professional. So, the fact that I continued to prioritize and post on softuary.net throughout many difficult circumstances during the past 8 months is a small victory.
Special Category Posts
I enjoy all the posts I write, but I take special pleasure in writing the special category posts (Productivity Hacks and 10 Minute Monthly Challenges). These posts are faster to write, and feel less educational but much more practical for readers.
Frequency and Length
In my first post, I said I would target to post twice per month with an average of less than 1000 words. 1000 words is the magic length that enables readers to get through the entire article in less than five minutes.
I've had a fewposts that were way over 1000 words but the average word count of all my posts is 1011. A little high, but not bad. And on average, there are 2.43 weeks between posts. Again, a little high but not bad.
Things to Change
The common theme in the Things to Change category is that I'm just not efficient at this blogging stuff.
It pains me to say that because I take pride in being efficient and effective in all things I do. And as the old proverb says if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. For those that work with me, they know that I am relentless when it comes to organizational effectiveness and constant improvement. But if I'm honest with myself, I know that I'm neither efficient nor effective at this. The number of hours I spend per post is likely so high it's scary (but I don't really know because I'm not actually tracking it).
Aristotle once said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” As I continue to grow as a blogger and leader, I can apply the same techniques and mindset to blogging that I do to the rest of my work. With that mindset, improvement is inevitable.
I Need a Process
When I encounter an area in my organization that is not effective, I step back and look at the overall purpose, value and process being used. For me, the purpose and value of softuary.net are clear. But the process? To be honest, I don't have one. If I forced myself to flowchart the process I use, the resulting flowchart will be full of holes, unconnected activities and wasted time.
Obviously that can and will be improved.
Lack of Feedback
Producing content for softuary.net is an open feedback loop (e.g. I don't receive feedback). I publish stuff but I don't immediately know what is working well and what is not. What I need are some indicators about how long things are taking me and if those things are generating value.
So, What Will Change?
- I'm not going to focus on Twitter simply because I don't feel like there is a good return on my time investment (ROI)? I have a personal Twitter feed that I use to read content, and I don't post much on that account either.
- I will develop a writing process and writing schedule. The act of defining a process and time plan forces me to be aware of the meta situation and not only on the next blog post.
- I will create a few small metrics for softuary.net to give me quantitative data about how it's going. Such as average word count, common topic tags, hours per post, etc.
Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.
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Image credit: Photo by Milada Vigerova used under CC0 Public Domain