Thanks to Bill Lascher who I met at the Portland, Ore. WeMakeTheMedia conference in November I have learned a name for something I felt in my gut for some time but just couldn’t communicate it accurately. It’s called “Slow Blogging.”
Mr. Lascher’s blog helped me find this link to a nice manifesto on the topic. The writer, Todd Sieling, of Vancouver, B.C. said it best in the first part:
“Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy. It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly, and that many thoughts are best served after being fully baked and worded in an even temperament.”
I started my personal journey through adulthood as a philosophy major in college where slow and precise writing was the gold standard. I would spend months writing deep philosophical papers and essays. At that time when the Internet was just getting started, blogs did not yet exist. All I knew was that good writing took time, just like anything good. Most things done quickly aren’t as good as things that take an investment of time. I know there are exceptions, but not many.
When I was nearing the end of my college education I took quite a few electives in journalism and found that I took to that style of writing easily. I think it just felt easy compared to the long philosophy tomes I had been producing previously. I’m not saying it was less intelligent or less worthy, just easier for me. At the time I wasn’t looking forward to graduate school and getting my doctorate in philosophy so I took some journalism jobs for a change of pace. It could have just been academic burnout. I’ll never know for sure.
That temporary change of pace became a way of life and career that has lasted more than 20 years and counting. I’ve enjoyed the news biz because it is quick. If I let myself, I tend to have a short attention span and the fast moving world of news writing fed my habit. But ever since then there has been a gnawing feeling that kept coming back to me from time to time. I think that even though I was enjoying the short-form writing of newspapers and magazines, I missed some of the longer or at least more thought out writing I had practiced in a previous life.
Before I go any further, I’ll point out that I like some of the faster forms of written communications such as Twitter and other real-time Internet conversations. I regularly tweet and have met a lot of good people with much wisdom to share — Mr. Lascher being one of them — but that short form should not be replacing a longer, more deliberate form of writing in my life. This I have realized fully when I read Mr. Sieling’s blog manifesto.
Why am I writing this? Because I want to share something with you. I want to share my revelation that I have been less of a writer because of digital distractions. I have let my brain’s reward center lead my writing and communicating, always seeking that next re-tweet on Twitter and other personal feedback fixes. Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of the social networking blog Mashable, wrote a good piece about this very topic on CNN.com. It’s worth a read. In it he writes:
“Web companies are rushing to satiate our desire for instant gratification, pushing real-time updates to us anywhere, anytime. And yet the studies show that these constant interruptions make it harder for us to process the information — to digest it, come to conclusions and take action.”
I believe that if I force myself to focus on more long-term writing projects and spend less time keeping up with the Twitterstream, my Facebook existence and breaking online news, I’ll improve. If you do the same, I think you will too.
What do you think? Any advice for me? What have your experiences been dealing with digital distraction? Do you agree that slow and deliberate writing usually produces better results?
If you comment on this article on Twitter, please use the hashtag #slowblog so the comments stay together.
Again, my thanks to Bill Lascher and Todd Sieling for their ideas which I value greatly.
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Joe:
Good, thoughtful piece!! I know from my own experience that my best work, whatever length has been something that has been brewing long in my head and heart and continues brewing through the keyboard.
If we make commments off the top of our heads, that might be all the brains people get.
Joe, thanks first of all for the references. More importantly, thanks for saying this, and saying it articulately.
As you recognize, I can’t deny I use twitter (or facebook or many other Web tools for that matter). More and more often I realize how disappointing these tools are, though.
One small example: I used to pride myself on knowing the birthdays of people I cared about. It was up to me to set some sort of recognition of who I valued, whose birthday I remembered. Now that FB knows birthdays I’m told days ahead of time whose birthdays are coming up, and then there’s a public cavalcade of greetings. It’s not so much that I don’t get to be the sole person to say “happy birthday,” it’s that I want to do so from my heart, and I want those who greet me to do the same. It’s a mixed blessing, it’s nice to be recognized on your birthday, but is it recognition if those greeting you have been told it’s your birthday?
That’s a simplistic, somewhat off topic example, but I believe it illustrates the ease with which we disconnect ourselves from getting to know the world around us.
And, can we quantifiably claim our lives are better off with such technology? Did professionals 30 years ago not get things done? Did the world not spin? I believe it did.
And yes, it can continue to spin now, and it will continue to spin differently. That is why I don’t completely reject technology. I’ll use it when it’s there, but I’m really wondering just how valuable it is to me when, as I comment on this post, I’m already wondering “isn’t this a comment? shouldn’t it be short and sweet, not long and drawn out like this?”
Joe, thanks so much for taking a look at the manifesto, and especially for sharing your own take on being conscious of pace. I like that you touch on the consumerist lifestyle, where companies rush to first state that we need instant gratification and then step in to provide it. That myth, that faster is always better, often short-circuits our decision-making and leaves us with less than we bargained for and wondering why. Being conscious of how fast we’re being asked to act and how fast we need to is a great step in living better.
I’m really grateful for your post as I hadn’t really hooked up those ideas before, but they seem a natural fit.
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