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Tracking my ideas for blog topics and videos

holliseaster says:
I write about a lot of topics: suicide prevention, mental health, productivity, music, education, instructional design, and more. Most of them end up at www.holliseaster.com/blog/ .

I'm always coming up with new topics for writing or making videos, and it seems like I get five or six new ideas each time I write. Because I have my irons in a lot of fires, it can be hard to keep track of what I want to write next--do I want to do another post talking about suicide intervention, or is it time for something about optimizing our daily habits to prevent small irritations and worries?

I use RTM for tracking all these topics within a list I call "ps-Write". Whenever I have an idea for a blog topic, I add a task, calling it "Blog: whatever". This is quick and painless, and I can do it in seconds, even from my phone.

When I come back to my computer, I'll check through the list and see if there are any that I want to mark as:
- high priority (needing/wanting to be written soon)
- #wait (meaning that I can't write it until I hear back from someone else)
- #na (for Next Action, a Getting Things Done-style tag that tells me which articles are ready to write without further preparation.

I can then search for any of those tags, use them in Smart Lists, or whatever. I started off with #blog and #video tags, but I found that I preferred having ideas visually sorted in the list, so I switched to the "Blog: write about using RTM for idea tracking #na" model.

So here's an example ideas list:

Blog: interview with KBE #wait
Blog: lean optimization and automation
Blog: understanding by design book review
Blog: write about using RTM for idea tracking #na
Email: send recruiting email to professors !1 #na
Email: write to JK about conference collaboration
Video: how to tune a guitar without an electronic tuner

It works really well for me. Whenever I'm feeling ready to write but not sure where to start, I open up my ps-Write list and scan through the topics I've stashed away. Usually, something feels compelling, and I'm off and running!

Check it out my writing at http://www.holliseaster.com/blog/

Thanks for making RTM--it's a great tool.
Hollis
Posted at 5:40pm on September 1, 2014
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