I would venture to say that a solid 50% of my blog is just crap. It’s sponsored posts. It’s crap I wrote at 7:30 am upon realizing I was about to miss a set post time in 30 minutes. It’s half baked raw ideas.

Another 25% fall into the actual half-baked area. There’s a line or an idea worth gleaning from there, but even I’m not totally sure where I was going with the post by the time I finished it.

And then, I’m probably being overly generous to myself here, there’s the last 25% of posts that keep this blog going. The posts that when I talk with college stage management students, they already know the content because someone pointed them towards that weird personal finance stage manager’s blog ages ago. They’re several posts that barely get read but I know days and weeks of research went into them and that it’s really a little gem (like my poor, neglected Personal Finance Mountain analogy – guys, I made my own illustration and everything).

The thing is though, if I didn’t write 100% of those posts, the 25% wouldn’t exist ether. There is no world in which I know how to pick through the crap in my brain and only publish the really good stuff. Some of the really good stuff was so carefully crafted. Some of it was written in a manic fit the night before it was due to be posted.

The same is true of the half-baked stuff.

And the raw.

When I started blogging and reading about blogging, I read about two main schools of thought on posting.

Only post when you have a finely polished gem! Take all the time you need! Posting schedules be damned!

-and-

Post absolutely anything but stick to the schedule. The schedule is king! All hail the posting schedule!

I’m an all hail the posting schedule.

It’s a little bit like how I wrote in my post about how I got to where I am financially. There was a dude I used to date who decided to get in shape and ran till he vomited. Thinking back on him, he was totally only a finely polished gem sort.

I will not run till I vomit. I will just go run. Probably only for 5-10 minute the first time. Two days later I’ll aim for 6-11. I need a set schedule and tiny incremental goals to keep working towards.

If there’s not set schedule, I’m not running. I’m not writing. And both projects will just cease to exist.

(Disclaimer, I’m not really a runner. I ran a 5k once. That was enough for a lifetime. I do like swimming though.)

I feel very strongly that a lot of the trick in life is to just keep going. Some may need a regimented schedule down to – 8- 10 am, three days a week, I write. For me, all I need to know is that by 8 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I need to have something to post on this blog.

Sometimes between working ahead and some sponsored posts, I can get up to a month ahead. And I don’t write another blessed word until the night before that next post is scheduled to drop a month later.

Most of the time though, I’m a few days ahead. But that posting schedule I set back when I first signed up for a few WordPress account in 2013 has carried this blog through 6 years. The only late posts have been technical errors on my part, where I messed up a date or time scheduling ahead. Or the delightful week and a half where I was working through my blog being hacked and could barely access it.

So what has this religious posting schedule gotten me?

Discipline. In general, I think you build the discipline muscle you use for everything anytime you use it. And I think it’s probably the most important muscle we have.

A few full baked ideas. Personally, I know there are a lot of posts on the same topic, because my poor, faithful readers read through a dozen posts over a couple months of a totally raw idea. Then a few more posts later when it become half baked and finally a fully baked idea. That seems to be my writing and learning process, in personal finance and in life – so thanks for following me through it!

A net worth update every month, because yasssssss, one less topic I have to think of. However, I’m also like 99% certain that most of financial growth has come from that rather than budgeting. Budgeting is like how to be more frugal. Net worth is like how can I make that sucker grow (not to knock budgets, they totally have a place too).

Less fear of failure. I am really lucky. I fail a lot and just keep moving. In my head, I’m like that Dizzy, Dizzy Dinosaur, spinning around the board of life, sometimes I knock over the stack of tiles, but I just keep spinning. When I write a crap post, I just move on to the next one. Fresh page. Start over. Learn something from that last failure and keep going.

Wasn’t it Thomas Edison with the famous 99 ways something won’t work quote. Perhaps there are no failures (that’s a lie, there are failures):

25% of success is a lot better than 0%.