How I took the time for social media and content creation
Before I started this blog and opened my profile von Twitter, I was convinced that I had couldn't possibly fit another project in my schedule. No way. Well, here we are. How did it happen? I will tell you, but first, let me explain the situation before I started so you understand the mentality shift.
Maybe you know the phrase "do good and talk about it". Before I started, I already had one personal project I dedicated most of my time on. It is a job searching platform for voluntary work. So I did good, a lot, but I rarely talked about it. On the one hand, I wanted to progress with my project as fast as possible, on the other hand, there are advantages to building a community on social media. First of all, on the internet attention is power. Whatever project you want to start, it will have more success if you can generate more attention. Second of all, finishing a project is great, but the next step is deploying and advertising your result and that comes back to generating attention. In my case, there is an organisation that I am developing the platform for and they will take care of marketing and consulting. My personal reasons were to get more professional contacts for later developer jobs and that I always wanted to write a book where the readers could write comments to influence the story and now I do. Check it out: https://arturkunz.blogspot.com/search/label/Lamp%20Universe
So what changed? My first move was to just create a twitter profile and try to interact with unknown people on the internet. It went great, but I still struggled with the creation of more complex content until I saw one short video snipped of Gary Vee, where he told me what I needed to hear: "Document instead of Create". That was a lot easier. I didn't have to write complex articles where I am really creating something. My creation is my personal project, my working schedules and my thoughts. I can write about these. I can write about me. With these thoughts, I tried to make a youtube video where I document my progress of the web app and what I am planning on doing next week. I was deeply unsatisfied with the result. So I started this blog instead. Again it was Gary, who influenced. Just a few days before I heard a podcast where he said that not everybody has to do video and some are just more talented writers. I was absolutely more satisfied with my writing than my video. I started with a simple schedule for this project: Every Friday I would just start the day by summarizing the progress of the last week and write a post about it. That was the start I needed. Then I started writing about other things. By realising the advantages and possibilities of talking and acting on it I slowly shifted my mentality. I still want the project to progress as fast as possible and now at the same time, I want to produce content on this blog and be active on Twitter. I also plan to expand to Instagram next week.
How does my schedule look like right now? After my morning routine, that consists of meditation, writing down ideas, planning and whatever I want to on a piece of paper and breakfast, I start getting things done. I normally work in a 45/15 rhythm: 45 minutes of work are followed by a 15 minutes break and so on. If it is Monday, Wednesday or Friday I use the first 90 minutes of my "getting things done" time to write an article. I try to outline them a day earlier before going to sleep and otherwise during the "writing things down" habit. It slows down my progress on other things only to some degree because now I also normally also work longer before I relax in the evening watching Prime or playing videogames with friends. In the 15 minute breaks I fresh out my room, drink a glass of water, move around a bit and then put out my phone and interact with other people on twitter. Interacting on Twitter doesn't feel to me like work so it still feels like a break. And that's how I fit content creation and being active on social media into my schedule.
Let's summarize: For producing content I refer to the phrase "do good and talk about it". Of course, you need to get things done. You need to do good, to talk about it. There is no talking without first doing something. For me, the hard part was talking about doing instead of just doing more. I solved it by thinking about the advantages of talking to achieve a mentality shift. I started by documenting my doing as an easy entrance to content creation. And I chose to write blogs instead of filming videos or recording podcasts because it felt more satisfying to me. Lastly, I reworked my schedule: On release days the first two work units of the day are dedicated to writing articles and the time between all work units I mostly use on interacting with people on social media.
If you want to read more on the challenges of creating a blog? Here is a helpful article by a blogger I recently discovered: https://widk.ca/10-challenges-to-becoming-a-blogger-and-how-to-overcome-them/
Maybe you know the phrase "do good and talk about it". Before I started, I already had one personal project I dedicated most of my time on. It is a job searching platform for voluntary work. So I did good, a lot, but I rarely talked about it. On the one hand, I wanted to progress with my project as fast as possible, on the other hand, there are advantages to building a community on social media. First of all, on the internet attention is power. Whatever project you want to start, it will have more success if you can generate more attention. Second of all, finishing a project is great, but the next step is deploying and advertising your result and that comes back to generating attention. In my case, there is an organisation that I am developing the platform for and they will take care of marketing and consulting. My personal reasons were to get more professional contacts for later developer jobs and that I always wanted to write a book where the readers could write comments to influence the story and now I do. Check it out: https://arturkunz.blogspot.com/search/label/Lamp%20Universe
So what changed? My first move was to just create a twitter profile and try to interact with unknown people on the internet. It went great, but I still struggled with the creation of more complex content until I saw one short video snipped of Gary Vee, where he told me what I needed to hear: "Document instead of Create". That was a lot easier. I didn't have to write complex articles where I am really creating something. My creation is my personal project, my working schedules and my thoughts. I can write about these. I can write about me. With these thoughts, I tried to make a youtube video where I document my progress of the web app and what I am planning on doing next week. I was deeply unsatisfied with the result. So I started this blog instead. Again it was Gary, who influenced. Just a few days before I heard a podcast where he said that not everybody has to do video and some are just more talented writers. I was absolutely more satisfied with my writing than my video. I started with a simple schedule for this project: Every Friday I would just start the day by summarizing the progress of the last week and write a post about it. That was the start I needed. Then I started writing about other things. By realising the advantages and possibilities of talking and acting on it I slowly shifted my mentality. I still want the project to progress as fast as possible and now at the same time, I want to produce content on this blog and be active on Twitter. I also plan to expand to Instagram next week.
How does my schedule look like right now? After my morning routine, that consists of meditation, writing down ideas, planning and whatever I want to on a piece of paper and breakfast, I start getting things done. I normally work in a 45/15 rhythm: 45 minutes of work are followed by a 15 minutes break and so on. If it is Monday, Wednesday or Friday I use the first 90 minutes of my "getting things done" time to write an article. I try to outline them a day earlier before going to sleep and otherwise during the "writing things down" habit. It slows down my progress on other things only to some degree because now I also normally also work longer before I relax in the evening watching Prime or playing videogames with friends. In the 15 minute breaks I fresh out my room, drink a glass of water, move around a bit and then put out my phone and interact with other people on twitter. Interacting on Twitter doesn't feel to me like work so it still feels like a break. And that's how I fit content creation and being active on social media into my schedule.
Let's summarize: For producing content I refer to the phrase "do good and talk about it". Of course, you need to get things done. You need to do good, to talk about it. There is no talking without first doing something. For me, the hard part was talking about doing instead of just doing more. I solved it by thinking about the advantages of talking to achieve a mentality shift. I started by documenting my doing as an easy entrance to content creation. And I chose to write blogs instead of filming videos or recording podcasts because it felt more satisfying to me. Lastly, I reworked my schedule: On release days the first two work units of the day are dedicated to writing articles and the time between all work units I mostly use on interacting with people on social media.
If you want to read more on the challenges of creating a blog? Here is a helpful article by a blogger I recently discovered: https://widk.ca/10-challenges-to-becoming-a-blogger-and-how-to-overcome-them/
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