30 days Writing Challenge

August 1st, I started a writing challenge. Following my preceding 30 days meditation challenge initiated by a post from John Stepper, I decided to use the same vehicle for yet a different kind of challenge: to alter my morning routine.

Current status

Today I tend to start with either my “Kneaver Moment” or, more than often, I’m continuing on my last evening task or occasionally tuning into Twitter and reading posts. All this is very instructive, very productive but leaves aside the important task of sharing what I do and ultimately wish to sell. I tend to push writing later in the day, then postponing again later until I’m too tired to write well. English is my second language, writing is not in my nature so I need to be in my bests moments to write well. I’m procrastinating on writing, I’m afraid.

Change flew in my direction

Last week came a hint from Violetta that made me thinking I could be on a wrong track

I’m afraid she’s true: My best hours are just after breakfast. Let’s use them for a month. I just finished my 30 days challenge on meditation and I will start this challenge with a post on what I learned from it (link is coming).

For 30 days, I will start my day with what I like the less: writing. I’m really ready for work about 10 AM, I could aim to publish like a clockwork for 1 PM ( 11 AM UTC in summer). This gives about 3 hours for writing, editing, publishing. It’s one hour more than what I imagine so it must be realistic 🙂 On the good days there will be a margin.

Here it goes

• I need a content calendar. I admit I hated the idea as soon as I learned about it. On the flip side I learned from #PKMChat that having a queue of topics long planned in advance is quieting my mind and makes me more productive. I will retain the freedom to switch topics. I will reuse the challenge map for this purpose.
• I will work on a weekly period, one type of topic per day and repeating on the same serie same day a week after. Nothing prevents me from having several topics in advance 🙂
• It could be a written piece, a video, an infographic. Writing is one form of content, the challenge is really about producing original content artifacts once a day.
• I need to have several topics in the oven to apply a complete workflow ala copyblogger. Some posts will require a lot of background work and could take up to 2 days of work. They are also building my own background knowledge so it’s beneficial. There will be extra work this week to start this pool.
• Of course, my trusty Kneaver will help me to recollect notes and references but I will use a lot of GoogleDoc. This is to make sure an accidental bug don’t become a barrier with an additional temptation to turn back to what I love the most: coding in the quietness of my desk.

Weekly plan

• Sunday: Today is Sunday, so you guess it, Sunday will be about KM practice. PKM, KM from my point of view. How I practice it in my life. How Kneaver was imagined to solve some issues I came across, how I found solutions.
• Monday: How we learn. I planned several interviews, did two already but never published them. I will first catch up with those, then I will proceed with more interviews or possibly reusing papers, videos from other sources. The goal here is to collect, write, talk about experiences in life-long self-directed learning which is what I expect Kneaver to ease and support. See the Monday post as incoming material to think on and build features, posts, best practices from others experiences. I will also provide a regular update on the ongoing survey.
• Tuesday: #PKMChat topic. It will be ready for noon the day before. It will be a benefit for all participants in different timezones. Questions may change until last minute as usual but the background topic, the research for supporting posts will be done, candidate questions ready. In some case topics are not written by me but will still count in my calendar (small trick). There is a recap automatically done on Wednesday evening, but I expect to introduce collaborative curation of the chat toward end 2015.
• Wednesday: Document a Kneaver feature with a use case. How to address this need, this requirement using Kneaver as it ships. There is now a sufficient set of features in our PKM toolbelt to write for a year.
• Thursday: Onboarding Kneaver. A step by step introduction to how Kneaver could help you execute better toward your goals. This is progressive, I take your hand to get started and to get things done using Kneaver.
• Friday: A short post on things I learned on e-Learning technology and some suggestions I could give from an outsider view. I have a few more posts in my mind in the direction of the learning narratives or using xAPI outside of the Doxa, javascript, social media etc. I will aim to be readable by all, some of my existing posts may need some rewrite as well. I’m not writing this serie for me but for my tweeps in L&D. They will be the judge of how they can make profit of it.
• Saturday: A free post on my personal blog at http://winck.org about Food, Walk, Travel, Drawings, Yoga you name it.

Conclusion

Eek! The pressure is on! (quoting Helen). Now the challenge is started.

Depending on your interests, you will be able to learn me from me by selecting the days. I’m myself really interested in receiving feedback at all levels (topic, content, ideas) but also on the style and the form. My education in English Writing is very limited and I dive into practice directly: It’s a double challenge.

I learned from the former 30 days challenge that 30 days are doable, that they bring in the capacity to adopt a new habit. Now I’m applying it to my work. Side benefit my blog and website will have inflated by 26 new hopefully interesting evergreen posts.

Do you have any challenge going on? Any plans to add some new habits in learning, writing or sharing? I would be happy to learn about it.

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