d20 Small Viable Blogging Tasks

Responding to Grumpy Wizards piece 'where do I start'- on how to get rolling on various projects, I thought I would share my own recipe for cranking stuff out for this blog.

For me I started this blog as a place to write up my hypotheses on the data I was scraping together. I figured that was the sufficiently different niche this blog would occupy.

In the first days I set myself an 'every 2 days post something' rhythm. That turned out to be a lot, especially when I started to fold in more time consuming things like reviews and lessons learned. So I eased back the schedule and set myself a different rhythm.

Now the thing that gets me started is the giant slush-pile. I find myself awake in the middle of the night. Time wasted if I just scroll through the internet but time well spent if I knock even a few dozen words off one of these post ideas

C. Kinch gave a top tip on his Send Three & Fourpence podcast - based on getting hobbies done as a father - of identifying what your 20 minute task is. Assuming you can get that small a chunk of time to yourself, how can you push the stone along in that time?

So - a meta-type table: d20 typical small blogging tasks:
1 - read a book I've got, scribble review notes on envelopes saved for the purpose
2 - type up those notes into one of my review templates
3 - photograph the book, upload it and create the post blank
4 - get the notes from the review template into the post
5 - fill out any missing bits
6 - cold-eyes read a review to find typos, other issues & fix them
7 - do some data crunching, make the graph that shows the interesting points
8 - frame up the post with the graph, the major points, get formatting right
9 - re-read and clean up the argument to make sense to people coming cold to it
10 - write a couple of entries on a random table
11 - mess about with an online tool to bulk out said tables
12 - mess about with a tool and save the screenshots
13 - clean up the screenshots, make a graphic for a post
14 - do a blog challenge - create the post, get the links right
15 - schedule posts, read the slush-list to pick next ideas
16 - brainstorm future post ideas, jot a few points for each
17 - scour the 'draft posts' for forgotten content
18 - take an old post idea, flesh out the points, recut it to make a full post
19 - read the osr blogs, save interesting stuff to the weekly list
20 - prep a weekly list post

For a similar take on generating content for campaigns see "Plot creation: lessons for DMs from 10 years of Nanowrimo"