Blog Posts of 280 Words or Less

I’ve been blogging on and off for over 10 years now, but for some reason I’ve been struggling to churn out new posts lately.

I have ideas. But they’re sitting in a folder in iCloud.

Here's the thing though: I don't have any trouble writing and sharing ideas on Twitter. I do it all the time.

I think it’s the constraint of the 280-characters and the causualness of the medium. There's a lot of creative power in intentionally limiting yourself and lowering your inhibitions.

A personal blog’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. It can be anything you want it to be. Any topic. Any length. Any format.

And because of this, I can’t get anything done. 

So, I'm going to try to limit all new blog posts to being 280 words or less (a head nod to Twitter's 280 character constraint).

I think this will help promote clarity, brevity, and simplicity.

It's also a promise to the reader: every single post you read here won't take up more than a minute of your time.

Here's the process I go through on Twitter that I will now transpose to my blog:

1. Have a thought.
2. Write it down in 280-units or less.
3. Share the thought if it's interesting enough.
4. If that thought sparks another thought, write it down in a follow up of 280-units or less.

Like threads on Twitter, I'll start doing threads of posts on my blog. If I write a post that opens up an interesting rabbit hole, I'll write another that goes a little deeper.

First post under this new framework will be published tomorrow.