How blogs help you beat the "content curve"
Here are some blogs that I like and what I like about them
I read a lot. Maybe you knew that. I mostly read books but lately I’ve been finding myself interested in reading blogs. I started on this path because quite a few of the non-fiction books I’ve read are written by people who mention that the original idea for their book came from one of their blogs in the past. Off the top of my head, I remember this happening with:
The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown (I think. Not totally sure about this one)
Just to name a few. This are all amazing books and are some of the books that have had the greatest impact on my outlook on life. So. I wanted to try to get a head of the content curve and start reading blogs by influential people who may come to write the next ten year’s Daring Greatly or 4-Hour Work Week.
This blog post will be about a few things:
A list of blogs that I like and why I like them.
A short list of my favorite blog posts that I’ve found really interesting.
How I maintain reading all of these blogs (without being on their emailing lists and clogging up my main inbox).
And finally, some patterns I’ve noticed about the blogs I like, and how or if I plan on letting them influence the way that I run this one.
Some Blogs I like
Emily's Life Plan for the Week | Emily Mariko | Substack Emily is a popular TikTok and Instagram influencer who posts videos of herself preparing groceries and food for herself. Her substack acts as a weekly newsletter where she sends out the recipes she prepares each week.
debrief | Cece Xie | Substack. Ex-Big Law Lawyer. She sometimes talks about law, but most of the time she talks about media and her travels. Her personal writing voice is almost exactly like her speaking voice, and I can almost hear her voice in the back of my head as I read her blog posts.
All Things Distributed by Werner Vogols - CTO of Amazon. This is a tech blog, and to be honest I don’t read it that often. What interests me about this blog is the quality of the posts and the fact that Vogols posts regularly despite having a no-doubt intense job as the CTO of Amazon.
Articles - Ali Abdaal Abdaal is a popular productivity YouTuber and one of the reasons I started writing my own blog. I’m pretty sure at this point in his career he hires a ghost writer, but nonetheless his blog posts are consistently high quality and get sent out on time every week.
Why I like to read blogs
Non-marketing blogs. People aren’t trying to sell you something - just teach something new or share something interesting.
Personal voice of the bloggers shine through. Solo bloggers aren’t trying to appeal to everyone so you can find ones with stronger opinions or unique writing styles.
Learn something very niche and new. Blogs sometimes have in-depth and informative content on specific topics, and can explore niche topics deeply.
Cool Blog Posts
How to Get Insanely Rich in the Creator Economy (nateliason.com) Part satire, part not. Eliason describes the journey for a content creator to get rich. This includes, building a platform, initial monetization, the creator “pyramid scheme”, building a creator based business, and more.
How to Learn to Draw Anything - by Lian Cho (substack.com) Artist Lian Cho describes how she was able to learn to draw dragons in time for publishing a children’s book on the topic. And how you can apply the method that she used to learn to draw anything new.
How I read everything
This section covers how I maintain reading all of these blogs (without being on their emailing lists and clogging up my main inbox). And honestly… Its been chaotic, but there is an easy way to do it if you’re willing to pay for it (I’m not.).
Notion. I use Notion web clipper to save posts that I really, really like.
Feedly. I use Feedly for saving mainstream blogs to an RSS feed. I currently use the free version, and I currently have no plans to use the paid version. In the free version, I can only have 3 streams/folders which gets pretty chaotic if you have a lot of stuff to keep track of. Feedly paid also has a feature where you can have your newsletters be sent to their feed (and therefore not clog your inbox). Finally, they also have pretty good in-site recommendations on which blogs you should read next based on popularity, relevance, and content type.
Email inbox. I’m still using my email inbox to get newsletters from people who I genuinely like. This mainly includes Ali Abdaal and Emily Mariko.
Finding new blogs to read
See if your favorite influencers / YouTubers / content creators have their own websites or newsletters.
Search “best blogs on [topic] Reddit” so you can get recommendations from real people on what to read next. I liked this thread on people’s favorite tech blogs.
Get reccommendations from Substack.
Changes for my own writing
I want to make my blogs more personal and in my voice. Basically I want to sound more conversational and human. I’m still in the habit of writing like I’m doing a school essay or something weirdly formal for work. Even in my profession (technical writing), we’re highly encouraged to talk in a casual and accessible voice. Sometimes. Execution wise this might mean adding in some funny metaphors or flavor text, writing in incomplete sentences, and not using too many big words or fancy phrases.