I've been here for a while now. I love the community, the people are amazing and I learned so much while reading the amazing articles the authors o...
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Thanks for sharing your experience!
How much time would you spend per week for research, development, and writing?
While sometimes I find out new stuff due to customer requirements, and use the writing process (might be on DEV or when trying to file a bug or enhancement idea on GitHub) to refine my understanding, learning something entirely new (like a side project or certification training for a tech stack unrelated to my current every-day work) can take a lot of time and effort. So how do you manage to release good content on a weekly basis?
Thank you for asking, this is a very good and central question to the entirety of content creation.
I only work 80%. That's more or less a left-over of my studies that I finished in May 2020, I simply learned to enjoy three day weekends a lot, but that didn't cut it. I felt unproductive. So I got into writing articles.
You might've already guessed that I spend that extra day for writing, usually that's Monday. I usually have 3 to 4 draft articles I work on in a pretty unstructured manner. Articles like these, those that don't contain any tech examples, take me a few hours maximum, including proof reading, deleting half it, writing it again and proofreading again. Proof reading can be done while sitting in a bus or the train as well, I consider public transport as "dead time" that can be used productively (you don't have to drive yourself, unlike a car).
When writing tech tutorials, I usually code the entire thing first. So, for example, my latest tutorial on different ways to teach a machine to play Tic-Tac-Toe took me some 8 to 16 hours to code out entirely and another 8 to 16 hours to make an article out of it. Sometimes I code something for a side project and think to myself "this would make a really good tutorial", so I re-code the thing in a standalone, more simple, less optimized manner (less optimization = less obfuscation = easier to understand) and then get going. This approach has the advantage that I can basically use an idea twice lol.
What I can recommend is to take notes whenever you're learning something new and want to write an article about it later on. Just a list of simple words or steps you've taken, but less detailed than what you would write in the finished article. You then already have a draft of the content and the rough structure of the article, rest is details, really.
Does that answer your question?
Thanks Pascal, that sounds like a good way to work! I usually tell my customers I only work 4 days a week, which mostly means Monday to Friday when trying to fit in a company schedule as a freelancer, but often it also means still working on Fridays anyway, after doing some of my inspirational ~20% like learning, writing, walking or some other sort of "procrastination" before my weekend. (I learned to embrace procrastination as a good thing as long as I get enough work done).
I kept wondering how some people like yourself manage to post quality content on a regular basis. I also started to draft more than one article when I find time for writing, but as DEV's gamification (and rumors that algorithms in general tend to favor posting often and regularly) might push creators to rather strive for the "achievement" of a long weekly publication streak instead of focusing on quality content.
Your article appeared just in time when I was about to finish my rant about gamification favoring quantity over quality, so I thought you deserved a quotation as one example of how to publish a lot without sacrificing quality. That this is only possible if you have enough spare time for research and writing, was exactly what I suspected from my own experience.
Thank you for writing!
And especially for having fun while doing it.
Your articles and comments are a part of what makes this community warm, welcoming and educative 😊
Keep the flame up :-)
Thank you so much! Can only give that compliment back, your articles and comments are always very inspiring!
Thank you, let's hope you won't accidentally bump into my rants 🤣
I love me a good rant every now and then, don't worry :D Everybody needs to vent from time to time and these rants give a good perspective on the bad aspects! Ranting articles for me are more of "things that made me angry that I want you, the reader, to look out for".
I hope whoever you had a chat with on Friday was a charming and witty individual! 😉
Agree with this 100% writing / any type of content creation should be part of (nearly) every developers week! ❤️🦄
Oh indeed, I enjoyed it very much and am looking forward to the next chat :D
As long as they got the capacity for it, that is. If people don't have the time to write full-blown articles, some Twitter/LinkedIn account with regular "This week I learned" posts already helps a lot.
This is great to see!
Thank you so much! The community you people have grown here is absolutely amazing.
Thanks for sharing ❤️❤️
You're very welcome, glad you liked it! :)