Here's how to set them free.
Writing sure accumulates over a couple of decades.
Most of mine is on my 20-year-old blog.
Nearly 1,300 published articles.
Most of questionable quality.
All written and published in WordPress.
Overall questionable quality …
… but somewhat insightful at times.
If you were to have absolutely nothing better to do, you might ask me:
“John, where are the top 10 ideas on your blog?”
And I'd have to get back to you. Maybe in a few months.
Because I wouldn't know where they were.
All I have are the published articles on my website.
I have broad categories, but most articles don't even have tags.
That's little help finding anything.
I'd have to hunt through and review pretty much every article to compile my top 10.
My best ideas are locked up in those web pages, in plain sight.
My articles need to undergo surgery.
I need to get these articles on the operating room table, get out the scalpel, and start cutting.
Cut the insights out of them and put them in a separate place by themselves.
Cut around the transition phrases, the rabbit trails, the puns, and the tweet quotes to get to the vital organs that made that article come to life.
After doing that for all of the articles worth operating on …
… then I might be in a position to answer your question.
It would be a time-consuming process, but worth it.
Far better would be to do this as I wrote the articles.
WordPress is adequate for writing the articles and publishing them.
It's not good at letting the writer identify what parts of those articles are important.
Obsidian, though, excels at this.
Obsidian is a Markdown-based text editor that excels at personal knowledge management.
Not just the documents, but their components, and most importantly their connections.
For the past year and a half or so, I've been writing my articles in Obsidian first, and porting them to WordPress and Medium (and also Substack) later.
I have some 200+ articles in Obsidian now, and they're already prepped for surgery. It's a matter of doing a Note Refactor on a section I like, and boom! It's in its own note, separated from the article, and ready to be re-used or linked elsewhere.
Those ideas that were locked up, are now unlocked and free to roam.
With more “atomic” notes I can easily recombine them.
No more pawing through individual documents.
No more trying to remember which article I recounted that brilliant idea from Mark Thompson or Jamie Northrup.
They're all in their own documents and linked to places that I would look for them.
They're re-usable. And much more useful.
And they lead to a more coherent lifetime of written work, and greater impact.
A journey is easier with a toolkit.
Like a hiker has her backpack, a writer has his favorite tools, some very personal and handcrafted.
My Obsidian Starter Kit for Content Creators is how I'm journeying with my words and my thoughts.
It's a collection of templates, processes, and dashboards that keep me from losing my thoughts in a sea of words.
It continues to evolve and it's already helping me out.
If it sounds like it would help you too, I invite you to check it out!
Photo by My Foto Canva on Unsplash