The Blogging Hiatus: Next Stop Shark Jump?
Comments(16) It’s been over 2 months since my last post. I haven’t been blogging very long compared to blogging veterans like Scott Hanselman, Phil Hack, or Jeff Atwood, but I’ve managed to establish just enough of a pattern in the last year (about 150 posts) to be plagued by blogger’s guilt and get peppered with the dreaded “so I noticed you haven’t been blogging lately’ comments from friends.
So for my return post, I decided to reflect on the merits of taking a blogging hiatus.
Is an extended absence a sure sign that a blog is about ready to ‘jump the shark’? Or is an occasional blogging hiatus the only prudent counter-measure to avoiding the precipitous ’shark jumping’ decline in quality that eventually happens to most popular sitcoms and blogs?
Chasing Blog Quality
Certainly anyone with an internet marketing background would advise against ever taking a break from blogging due to the negative affects it would have on SEO rankings, page hit averages, readership trends, or whatever other psychological voodoo is currently used in predicting and influencing online readership patterns.
Since I don’t actually make any money at blogging, I am personally more convinced by the argument recently articulated by Jeff Atwood in Quantity trumps Quality. In this post, he describes an experiment done in a ceramics class where one group was graded based on quantity (pots weighed) while the other group was graded based on quality (only one pot required at the end). Surprisingly, the highest quality work overwhelmingly came from the group that was graded based on quantity.
By this reasoning a blog with more frequent posts will eventually produce more quality, which means that a blogging hiatus should have a negative impact on the quality of a blog. Oops.
Although the implied lesson in Jeff’s post makes perfect sense to me, I am still left with a nagging doubt when I think of the large number of once-quality blogs that I’ve seen “jump the shark” even when the author was consistently churning out a large volume of posts.
Does this mean that there is some additional hidden ingredient that is even more important than consistency and quantity when it comes to producing a quality blog?
Chasing Blog Quality
Have you ever wondered why blogs appear to be edging out more traditional publishing mediums even though traditional mediums tend to produce much more polished pieces of writing due to editors, formal peer review processes, the time advantage, and educational training?
I think that the reason has to due with the essential amateur\hobbyist nature of blogs. The fact that most posts are a labor of love rather than an obligation the author is paid to do imbues them with an authenticity and freshness that makes them appealing despite the abundance of run-on sentences, typos, and the occasional erroneous facts.
If a blogger’s enthusiasm is what makes their writing so compelling, then it follows that the most corroding force in the blogosphere would also be motivational in nature. If writing a post for whatever reason suddenly becomes drudgery for the author rather than an absorbing, joyful activity, then quality will surely decline no matter how good someone has become at the mechanics of a writing a blog post.
Thus, it seems to me that the best way to protect the quality of a blog is to respect the natural ebb and flow of internal motivations and exterior events.
In other words, if you are a blogger and are forcing yourself to work on a post, then do yourself and your readers a favor and stop writing until the source of your inspiration replenishes.
Of course, the risk is that your motivation never comes back.
If that happens to me, I’m going to take the philosophical approach and assume that perhaps I am just meant to be doing another activity instead.
What I Did on My Blogging Vacation
Time will tell whether this break has sufficiently replenished my motivation, but even if it doesn’t at least I enjoyed the the following activities with my extra free time over the last few months.
Smiles, Coos, and Tiny Toes -I’ve been graced with the frenetic energy of my (nearly) 7 year old step-daughter for several years now, but have only recently been initiated into the wonderful world of infants by my rapidly growing 5 month old, Sofia. Seeing her smile at me while I echo back her enthusiastic coos and play with her tiny baby toes is one of my favorite past times these days. It doesn’t matter that I walk around smelling like baby spit-up most of the time and or spend way too much time focused on what comes out (or must go in) a baby’s butt, I’m just happy and grateful to be spending most of my free time with my family these days.
- Late-Night Escapism in EarthSea – I used to read quite a lot for pleasure, but I don’t think that I’ve completed one book since I started my own blog. Over the last few months, I’ve enjoyed a new night-time ritual of stretching out on the couch with a good fantasy book after everyone else is in bed. I’ve managed to reread three of the four books in the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula Le Guin during my blogging hiatus. I had completely forgotten how delightful and rejuvenating it can be to completely escape every day life by immersing myself in a good book.
- Taking Control of Neglected Areas of my Life – It seems like the better I got at focusing on the latest technology, software development trends, and best practices, the worse I was at taking care of all of the other responsibilities in my life. Throughout my blogging hiatus, I have been religiously following the Getting Things Done approach to personal organization and task management and as a result I have eliminated several metric tons of psychic weight that had accumulated as a result of chronic procrastination. For the first time in my life, I feel comfortably in control of my home, finances, and various other non-work related realms of my life and am now finding myself with excess energy that I am starting to reinvest back into my various software-related addictions.
Wells that’s all for now. Thanks to those of you who stuck around and waited out my absence. Until next time (whenever that may be…).
Yours truly,
A Much Rejuvenated Caffeinated Coder
Popularity: 8% [?]
I think you’ve correctly identified the cause of blogs declining quality is the pressure to keep up a posting schedule even when you can’t think of anything to say or don’t have time to do a topic justice. I’ve found myself in a similar position and think a hiatus is in order. I feel a little burned out on my blog and honestly can’t think of anything to write about. I’ve started writing a lot of code recently for an open source project and find that it sucks the life out of me. Code doesn’t like to share brain space with anything else.
Great to have you back Russell.
For me quality trumps quantity. I tend to skim through the scheduled blogs, while giving more time to the bloggers that post less frequently. For me, scheduled blogs lose credibility – they become obnoxious, make me feel forced-fed, and are often removed from my RSS Reader altogether.
You have a five month old, and you’ve managed to read books and implement GTD? I’m very impressed.
If I didn’t read at the busiest times in my life, I’d go crazy. Three cheers for your Le Guin, and keep up the good reading.
Blogging, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to help stave off the madness that much.
Ahh, good question you raise… I’d say that the moment you get bored and/or feel pressed in producing a new article, that’s a good moment to do some root cause analysis: what’s the underlying reason I’m feeling this way? As most bloggers only do it for the love and not for the money, you should clearly have fun in blogging, if there’s no fun why would we even be doing this? A couple years ago, I didn’t really feel like continuing to blog. After a time-out, I knew I wanted to continue.
In the end it should be your own decision: it’s not about the readership, but about you and your life: there’s more things to it, as the beautiful accompanying picture in your post shows.
Hope to see more great posts from you though!
@Jack – Yes, open source commitments are another very time intensive thing. I’ve been wanting to dive into a project for a very long time, but could never seem to find the time to both blog and contribute to open source at the same time. That is definitely a hiatus-worthy endeavor.
@Adam – Well said. I’ve also unsubscribed to a few blogs that were obviously going through the motions just to stick to an arbitrary schedule.
@Denton – It helps that our 5 month old is finally sleeping through the night (although she still commands 100% of our attention while she’s awake).
To be fair, the EarthSea books are pretty thin and GTD actually frees up time after you make the initial investment in getting the system in place…:-)
@Dan – I love Ursula Le Guin. This might be the third time I’ve read that series of books. She definitely helps stave off the crazies when my stress level climbs to high.
@Arjan – Thanks for saying my daughter is beautiful. I think so too…:-)
Glad to hear that at least one person came back stronger after a blogging hiatus. It gives me hope.
[...] The Blogging Hiatus: Next Stop Shark Jump? – Russell Ball Russell raises some good points here. Taking a hiatus from blogging is the blogger’s own choice, and (s)he has no obligations at all to readership. We blog for the love of it, and not for money (most of us anyway). [...]
YOU
ARE
BACK
It is like we timed comebacks!!!
@Justice – It’s like we have a cosmic blogosphere connection. In other words, we are BBMFWAJMADNG! (Best Blogger Mates Forever Who Are Just Metrosexual And Definitely Not Gay)
BTW, Are you still sore from the alien anal probe?
Honestly, Russell, you shouldn’t have to justify your blog absence/hiatus to anyone. I find that although a few rare dev bloggers post regularly because they are passionate about what they’re doing (e.g. JP Boodhoo), so many more do it out of obligation b/c they want to get or maintain their MVP status and chase after dangly carrots.
You have it right to prioritize stuff like family, other hobbies, and your own truth to self. I’m glad you’re back blogging, but I hope you continue to do so on your own rules!
Dude! Welcome back!
[...] I still definitely enjoy researching and writing about more serious, technically oriented posts and will continue to do so, but I think that focusing too much on serious content for too long definitely contributed to me becoming a little burned out on blogging and needing a hiatus. [...]