For busy practitioners, finding large blocks of time can be challenging. It’s always nice to create a free afternoon once a week. In today’s healthcare climate, creating that “free” time often requires working longer another day to do it.
Fortunately, you often don’t need hours to write articles. Use small breaks in your daily schedule to create content.
Maybe you have an anesthesia delay before starting your second surgery. Instead of sitting in the surgeon’s lounge watching TV, you create an outline for an article. Maybe you have 20 minutes before you have to pick up your daughter from soccer practice. You pull out your smartphone or tablet and list the bullet points for your next video.
The key is to keep materials to help you write with you at all times. I have a Moleskine notebook and pen in my bag at all times. I also have Evernote on my phone and iPad, so I can review the articles I’ve clipped for future posts from anywhere, anytime.
Whatever technology you prefer – laptop, phone, tablet, pen and paper – keep it with you.
Also read:
Try batching your content and tasks
Write five posts
I found that using small periods of time to write posts, or at least outline them, has a few benefits. First, I waste less time. Instead of turning on the TV, mindlessly surfing the Internet, or playing around on Twitter, I’m doing something productive.
It also allows me to capture more ideas, helping me be more creative. An idea will come to me out of nowhere. By quickly jotting down the basic idea and key points right away, I create a post that might never have happened otherwise.
Finally, using these 10- to 15-minute breaks to outline posts makes my batching of posts easier. As I’ve written before, using larger blocks of time to write several posts at once can be more effective than writing them separately. Having the key points already outlined makes this process even easier.
And in case you were wondering, I used a small break of time to write this post. I arrived early for a talk I was giving in order to load my presentation on the computer in the conference room. I then had about 15 minutes before I started my presentation. I wrote this post in my notebook, and I typed it a few days later. So I know this practice works.
Also read:
Brainstorm topics for your blog
Collecting ideas for blog posts, videos and more
Try it the next time you have a small period of free time. See if it helps you get more blog posts or other social media content created.
