Student Blogs

Give Your Bloggers an Inbox

If you’re into the whole GTD phenomenon, you know the importance of inboxes. I’ve developed my own system based on GTD and the Action Method by Behance (they all have similar elements) that incorporates multiple inboxes into my daily routine. I’ve found that logging my ideas, actions, reminders and events in a consistent place and routinely process through these notes, I’ve become more productive.

It’s a good idea to get your bloggers into the same mindset. If they get in the habit of writing down ideas in a notebook that they carry with them at all times, they may not have to use the excuse that they have nothing to write about. You’re never creative when you have to sit down an crank something out, but your mind will definitely wander while you’re waiting for your fresh cut fries in the In-N-Out drive-thru.

I’ve purchased a dozen packs of the 3-pack Moleskine Cahiers to hand out to my bloggers this Fall. I may even get them some cool pens (like the Fisher Space Pen) to encourage their writing. The whole point of this is to give my students an inbox for their thoughts. These notebooks are great for stream of consciousness stuff, but it’s also a good idea to equip them with online inboxes.

Micro-blogging is a great inbox for the crazy stuff you see on the internet that you want to share or remember. I’ll have to write about this later, but I connect accounts like del.icio.us, evernote, and tumblr together so that I have a synced up inbox with all of my clippings for easy reference. It may even be a good idea to take the feed from a micro-blog such as tumblr and work that into the respective blog. Again, more on this later.

So yeah, inboxes. I’m a big fan. They help harness the incredible power that is ADD and give hope to those who can’t remember who they were suppose to meet in 15 minutes.

© 2008 Tim Cox.