How to force yourself to post regularly

Many people feel they want to start a blog, write a book, or start some other creative endeavor. There are many roadblocks and excuses people can use to prevent themselves from making progress, or to stick with it if they don't seem to be making headway right away. Perhaps you don't have a lot of free time, or feel like you have little to contribute. Here are some of the tips I've found that help me to gain some traction.

1) Just start

Finding a topic can me the most difficult, but each of us is unique in some ways. We each have our own interests and perspectives on things, and have some sort of knowledge others may benefits from. If often helps just to write your preliminary thought down, even if you cant think of a title, are not sure how you will organize it or how everything will go together. It's important to remember that you're not publishing the first things you're writing down: You can change what you write repeatedly.

2) Give yourself lots of writing opportunities

Even if you don't have much free time on your hands, you probably have some. Personally, I find i'm more likely to make progress on a blog post if I have the opportunity to write any time of day by using my smart phone to write. I often have little chunks of time where I could be writing, but tend to gravitate towards browsing the internet. Some of you may find it helpful to write notes on paper as ideas come to you. If you wait until you get to sit in front of a computer to write, you may forget ideas you have, and unless you manage to find consistent time to do so, your writing opportunities may be sparse

3) if you struggle to release content, force yourself to stick to a specific release schedule

Consistency is more important that perfection. You can't be afraid to share your thoughts with the world. If your platform supports it,  set a release date on a predefined interval for all blogs that you're working on (I'm doing weekly) . Doing this actually forced me to finish a post,  instead of just starting a number of posts without ever finishing them. While you may not have a large audience early on,  and posts are not necessarily permanent once they're released, this nevertheless forces you to make a post release-worthy. For other types of creative  pursuits, this may be more difficult,  unless you can create some sort of public accountability for you getting your work done. If your projects come in smaller, discrete chunks,  such as YouTube videos, similar ideas can work,  but if you're writing a book,  it may be difficult for others to keep you accountable for your progress. Therefore, unless you are very motivated, it will be easier to blog or vlog than to write a book. 

4) Find reasons to stick to it that give you motivation

There are many motivations you may have for writing a blog,  or a vlog,  or producing some sort of content or creating software.  If you write these down,  you may be more willing to keep going when you don't see result away. I will be sharing some of mine in a later post.