I recently got picked up by TechZulu, a prominent tech blog. I'll be contributing general technology and healthcare-tech editorials for them. I never could've imagined writing for 2 major blogs - HIStalk and TechZulu - within 9 months. Blogging has been one of the best decisions I've made.
I've decided on my new years resolution for 2014: to write a book about running a healthcare technology startup.
I want to continue to improve and refine my writing, so I'm going to invest more time in it. I'm going to deliberately practice writing.
I'm going to begin a more structured writing process in which I outline every post in bullets at least a day before actually writing the post. Then, after writing and revising the post, I'm going to score myself on a scale of 1-7. Why 7? Because it's been shown that people score things on a normal distribution when asked to score things on a scale of 1-7. My goal is a score my posts along a normal distribution. The key metrics on which I'll assess my writing are: quality of thesis, clarity of explanation, and conciseness.
I'll track scores in an Excel sheet, and review them periodically as I get ready to write the book.
Below I've included the outline for this post.
1. recap how i got here. get ready for writing a book about being a startup CEO, which will be my new years resolution for 2014
2. reference book - deliberate practice
3. how am i going to deliberately practice? bulletize every post first. then write. then edit. then self grade. going from 2 day to 4 day process.
4. how am i going to measure my performance? page views, tweets / likes, and qualitative self-score
5. scale of 1-7 because that allows for the best normal distribution. 1 is forgettable, 2 is almost forgettable, 3 is sub par, 4 is par, 5 is above par, 6 is memorable, 7 is a treasure. goal is to have a normal distribution of scores.
6. sub components: quality of fundamental thesis, clarity of explanation, conciseness
7. will revisit and analyze scores in early 2014
9 months into 2013, I've written at least 3 blog posts every week as I said I would for my 2013 new years resolution. I've maintained a perfect record.