How to make sure your articles get written and published

For some time I’ve been thinking of ways to better organise my article ideas. I want to get my content out there, to you, as fast and as often as possible.

I usually keep my ideas in an application such as Apple Notes or Google Keep. I’ve been going back and forth between the two for the past 2 years, and they’re both great tools. The problem is that many ideas die at the idea stage. I end up ignoring them alltogether or merge them into larger ideas that ultimately prove too big to tackle due to lack of time or other reasons — ahem, procrastination and lazyness.

But I do a lot of reading, because reading is my favourite type of procrastination. So during one of my reading sprees, I saw a technique big online news outlets use to cover important events. They publish an initial version of an article, with the information they have at the time, and as the event progresses and more information is available, the article gets updated.

I think this approach is very interesting and useful. I think it will push me to publish more because I can always come and add more information, later.

So from now on, whenever I have an idea for an article I feel would bring value to you, I will publish an initial version, with the title and an introductory section. I will try as much as possible to provide a final table of contents, to give people a clue on what future updates might contain. Hopefully, this way, you will know what content to expect from the in-progress article. I will also try to find a way to notify you when updates are published.

I’m open to suggestions so if you have more experience with this way of publishing, tweet at me — @oprearocks — or use the comments section.

Photo credits: Frank Bürger — Altes Print