Don’t Drive Your Blog Distracted

This guest post is by Chris The Traffic Blogger.

I can tell you a thousand ideas I have on how to be creative and when/where to write, but I struggle to create a list of times when you shouldn’t write. Most authors advise that you create articles during the good times and the bad in order to do two things: Improve upon your writing skill and increase the diversity of your writing. With that being said, is there ever a bad time to write then?

Blogging while distracted

Here is the first thing that came to mind regarding a time when you shouldn’t be writing. Focus is a hard thing to come by these days, especially with the increased speed of technology. If you don’t turn off that smart phone, unplug from tweetdeck and mute the television, well you’re going to be interrupted quite a bit when you try to write.

Writing while distracted is a lot like texting while driving. It’s dangerous, your focus is split so your content is not optimal and there are far more chances for accidents than under normal writing conditions. Don’t blog while distracted. Take the time to apply focus and effort to your work.

When I created the post, Explosive Backlink Strategy, I wrote an entire draft of it without unplugging myself from all the previously mentioned distractions. I repeated sentences, created broken links, had grammatical errors galore and left many ideas unsupported. Worst of all however, was the fact that I had written far too much!

When you think about it, it’s a miracle that we accomplish anything at all with all the Facebook chimes going off on our phones and other mediums desperately calling for our attention. Instead of writing less in these conditions, I tend to write more! And we all know that online readers prefer concise, helpful information.

After unplugging myself, I was able to refine my article to the core ideas that mattered and scrubbed all the errors. That’s the difference between being focused on one thing and having your attention split amongst many things.

Keeping a schedule

The key to avoiding being distracted is to remove the distractions during the period of time you wish to write. This takes planning, since distractions are often unplanned issues which you need to deal with in a timely manner. If you plan ahead and schedule of block of time to write, you are far less likely to be interrupted, especially if you take care of anything that needs doing beforehand. Stay focused and you’ll write far better than you would while distracted or on a limited time budget.

For the blogs I run, I tend to keep a very strict schedule as to when I write every single day. The moment I have woken up and had some much needed java, I write at least a few ideas down for articles I’d like to flesh out later on. Sometimes I write whole posts, but usually just ideas. Then, throughout the day, I turn those ideas into main concepts and supportive ideas soon follow.

Sometimes I write five posts a day, other times I jot down just the ideas for several. The point isn’t to finish a post every day, but rather, to take the time to think and write at least something before I do anything else every single day.

Blogging while extreme

Once again, the root problem that I suggest avoiding while blogging is a lack of focus. When you are angry, emotional, and upset, you will tend to focus on the wrong feelings as you write. Perhaps you won’t have any focus, just a blind anger that directs your article for you and feeds your creative thinking. This is a bad thing. A very bad thing. Cooling down and getting the proper focus back is important to avoiding writing while angry.

Always remember to put your audience first and avoid the personal feelings you have towards comments, emails and other bloggers alike. Keep things professional and write when you can afford to be emotionally focused on the right goals for your blog.

I’ve had my scrapes with fellow bloggers in the past, particularly very jealous ones, and I must say that it is far wiser to ignore someone than it is to try to get into a mudslinging contest. Even if you are 100% right and the other person is completely wrong, everyone gets dirty when the mud starts flying.

My advice for anyone who has copycats and jerks following them around the way I do is to ignore them. Don’t publish their comments, don’t respond to their emails and don’t publish responses on your blog. Just act as if they do not exist and keep on doing things better than they do. For heaven’s sake, don’t write while angry at someone as it always ends poorly for you!

What about the reverse of anger… happiness? Should you write while extremely happy? I would suggest not simply because your focus is once again blurred or ultra-centered on the wrong thing. I’ve written some awful, assuming posts while very happy that came back to bite me in the past.

For example, I had to rewrite the first chapter of The Why People Course because I wrote it while extremely excited to be writing my first book. After reading it I came across as way to hopeful and impossibly optimistic, to the point that most people would probably read it and say “yeah right, that’s wishful thinking.” Even though the numbers and statistics were real for me, they might be impossible for others, so I ended up rewriting the chapter when my focus was more on my potential audience and less on myself.

Focus is the key in blogging without distraction, whether the distraction comes from external or internal forces. Write with focus and write well! And please, don’t blog while distracted!

Have you ever blogged while distracted? Tell us what happened in the comments.

Chris is a self proclaimed expert at showing bloggers how they can get traffic, build communities, make money online and be successful. You can find out more at The Traffic Blogger.