Why Do We Blog? That is the Question

A great post by Scott Adams, the famed creator of Dilbert has got me re-thinking this whole blogging thing, well - re-thinking it for the fourth time at least as those of you who read this blog will notice.

He says:

I’ve decided to blog less. I posted daily (mostly) for two years, with the theory that my efforts would be compensated in four ways.

1. Advertising dollars
2. Compiling the best posts into a book.
3. Growing the audience for Dilbert
4. Artistic satisfaction.

Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but at about the same rate people figure out how to use RSS feeds to get the content without the ads. So there’s no longer a correlation between how hard I work and the ad income I earn..

My book based on the blog posts, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! got great reviews for content, but angry reactions in people who feel that other people, who didn’t read the content on the Internet, and never will, should not buy the book..

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert..Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably “I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post.” Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it..

I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That’s why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially..It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.

So all this nonsense about social media and blogging and how it all makes us famous.. naah, it's more likely to make us (in)famous as Scott puts it so well above. So here are my top 4 reasons:

1. Cleaning up the mental jumble known as my brain
2. Hoping that these insightful posts would in 2 years remind me of insights I had 2 years ago and then promptly forgot about
3. Writing for other reasons than work!
4. Gathering the best posts (as voted by visitor numbers) into a book

I'm your classical definition of a knowledge worker. I used to be a skill worker (people employed me for my skill in translating complex ideas into designs that sold toys). Now they employ me to make sense of a ton of stuff happening around us and suggest ways for the business to cope with it all. That means my brain is devouring information continuously to stay ahead of the game. Some ideas stick around and mature into business opportunities, others are forgotten about. Much like you have to clean your office every now and then, I like to clean my mind by putting some thoughts down in a post. Utterly selfish I know.

So occasionally I have some useful thoughts and I find that unless I jot them down I forget about them. I had this dreadful interview recently where they asked me to list a pile of my accomplishments. I couldn't have been asked a more grating question as I'm stuck in this rut where whenever I accomplish something my satisfaction is very short lived and simply serves to highlight all the other things that still need doing. Much like the more you learn the more you realise how little you know and how much more there is to learn out there. So the important thing is to catalogue the learning, not the accomplishment.

So being this 'knowledge worker' I find I spend my life writing emails, letters, and presentations - in fact most of my writing is exclusively for purposes related to work. How boring! At least here is a chance for me to vent my spleen about stuff, which doesn't have to fit into a Power-point and be only 20 slides, in 30pt font size for a presentation lasting 45 minutes.. hurrah!

My highly erratic and diverse topics mean a book of my blog posts would be every editor's nightmare and the posts that are most popular on this blog is my collections of bumper stickers - which are funny, sometimes profound and but always funny. Difference is, I collected them together in one place people can find them and laugh about them, but I didn't invent them. Therefore I'm not sure they should be in the book.. so you can see where this is going. I'll stop now.

1. Advertising dollars
2. Compiling the best posts into a book.
3. Growing the audience for Dilbert
4. Artistic satisfaction.

Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but at about the same rate people figure out how to use RSS feeds to get the content without the ads. So there’s no longer a correlation between how hard I work and the ad income I earn..

My book based on the blog posts, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! got great reviews for content, but angry reactions in people who feel that other people, who didn’t read the content on the Internet, and never will, should not buy the book..

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert..Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably “I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post.” Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it..

I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That’s why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially..It’s hard to tell the family I can’t spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.

So all this nonsense about social media and blogging and how it all makes us famous.. naah, it's more likely to make us (in)famous as Scott puts it so well above. So here are my top 4 reasons:

1. Cleaning up the mental jumble known as my brain
2. Hoping that these insightful posts would in 2 years remind me of insights I had 2 years ago and then promptly forgot about
3. Writing for other reasons than work!
4. Gathering the best posts (as voted by visitor numbers) into a book

I'm your classical definition of a knowledge worker. I used to be a skill worker (people employed me for my skill in translating complex ideas into designs that sold toys). Now they employ me to make sense of a ton of stuff happening around us and suggest ways for the business to cope with it all. That means my brain is devouring information continuously to stay ahead of the game. Some ideas stick around and mature into business opportunities, others are forgotten about. Much like you have to clean your office every now and then, I like to clean my mind by putting some thoughts down in a post. Utterly selfish I know.

So occasionally I have some useful thoughts and I find that unless I jot them down I forget about them. I had this dreadful interview recently where they asked me to list a pile of my accomplishments. I couldn't have been asked a more grating question as I'm stuck in this rut where whenever I accomplish something my satisfaction is very short lived and simply serves to highlight all the other things that still need doing. Much like the more you learn the more you realise how little you know and how much more there is to learn out there. So the important thing is to catalogue the learning, not the accomplishment.

So being this 'knowledge worker' I find I spend my life writing emails, letters, and presentations - in fact most of my writing is exclusively for purposes related to work. How boring! At least here is a chance for me to vent my spleen about stuff, which doesn't have to fit into a Power-point and be only 20 slides, in 30pt font size for a presentation lasting 45 minutes.. hurrah!

My highly erratic and diverse topics mean a book of my blog posts would be every editor's nightmare and the posts that are most popular on this blog is my collections of bumper stickers - which are funny, sometimes profound and but always funny. Difference is, I collected them together in one place people can find them and laugh about them, but I didn't invent them. Therefore I'm not sure they should be in the book.. so you can see where this is going. I'll stop now.