Ok, it might not be the travel that has improved it, but being stuck on a plane for 12 hours certainly allows time to focus. The task for Day 11 of "31 days to build a better blog" is to prepare 10 blog posts for use in the future, when time or imagination are working against you.

So here is what I did

# 1. First I took the trusty Moleskine notebook that @PJ_Danny gave me for Christmas and at the top left of each opening wrote a blog topic. I set myself the challenge of doing 40 and kept at that one task until I had 40 openings with a blog topic on each.

#2. Next I went through, and on each opening created a basic Mind Map, one for each blog post. I did this on the left hand side. At this stage it was a basically just a Brain Dump and the goal was to keep moving. When I got stuck I went on to the next page, and went back later. I wasn't worried how good the ideas were, I was just creating options for material I could write about later.

#3. Once those were done, I went back to the first page and this time went through, post by post, and reviewed each mind map, decided on a theme for the post and created the blog title. I followed rules I learnt from Problogger : How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog

#4. Finally I went back through each page and wrote out the headings for each section of the post. Having already created the mind map and title, this became pretty easy.

So What did I learn

First, it was hard. Not too hard, but challenging to stay focused on the one task for 2-3 hours without distraction. I had to ignore the in-flight movie system, and most importantly I had to remind myself that I needed to develop the discipline of a professional blogger and know what my goals were. Second, it was extremely satisfying. I now have an outline complete for 40 blog posts. How often do we have a spare 2-3 hours available and just waste it in front of the TV? Just imagine what could be achieved if we spent time totally immersed on other parts of our life ... blog design, writing, goal setting or refining our business plan? Tasks are always easier if you chunk them down, and stay focused, as I did. Don't get bogged down, just make sure you keep moving as energy creates movement, and movement creates energy. Have fun This post was my homework for day 11 (I've jumped ahead a bit) of "31 days to build a better blog"