Why focus?

[[http://jayajha.wordpress.com/|Jaya]] writes about the [[http://jayajha.wordpress.com/2006/01/24/focus-in-the-blog/|focus (or lack thereof) in her blog]]. I’ve thought about it often enough in the past, and Jaya’s post finally led me to write something about it.

I think focused blogs are great. However, I don’t feel any pressure to write one of my own. People write focused blogs either because they are intensely passionate about the subject (in which case no external incentive is required), or there’s some incentive to blog (they are in a business where blogging is almost essential, the blog is directly or indirectly a source of revenue and so on).

Whatever the case may be, there are two invariants: the author is knowledgeable on the subject, and more importantly, is ready to devote the time and energy. I firmly believe that maintaining a good quality, focused blog is a full time activity — meaning you need to devote atleast 4-8 hrs per day on your blog.

I have neither the time, nor the motivation to spend so much time on my blog. When I started this blog, I said the motivation was to document bits and pieces of my life in case I become famous enough to write an autobiography or something :-) While that may have been a joke, the fact remains that this blog gives me a window unto myself. I’ve often been surprised looking at some old entries and thinking “hmm, now did I write that?”.

I have bad memory — both short term and long term. And even though I’m not entirely into the GTD cult, I do believe that our brains should be freed of doing mundane book-keeping. So I dump pieces of my mind into this blog, and let it be archived. Thats the primary purpose. I haven’t cared much about readership, or making the blog attractive to the visitors or making a conscious effort to make the posts meaningful and insightful.

Not to say that I wilfully write nonsense, just that its not worth my while (yet) to put a whole lot of effort into ensuring quality. That might change over time, but right now, thats the way it is. And I’m perfectly OK with it :-)