After church a few weeks ago, I went up and spoke to our pastor for a few moments. Nothing major, just thanking him for a solid message and encouraging him a bit. He took part of what I said and replied with “that might be a good idea for a sermon”. Like any good pastor, he sees the world through sermon-colored glasses and is always looking for new ideas.

It kind of adds onto my thought from a few years ago that daily blogging is like a photographer that goes on a photo walk — everything around is an opportunity for content. Now, I see it as three different levels of content:

1. Quick content, like a photographer. This is similar to someone that posts on social media multiple times every day.
2. Longer content, like this blog. Compared to many, most of my posts are fairly short, but they’re still more involved than just a photo or a social post.
3. Deep content, like a sermon. Preparing and delivering a 25-minute sermon takes a lot of effort. Not only do you need multiple ideas and points, but then you need to take the time to find ways to weave them together. I do that a bit on here, but a longer talk is a whole different level and I’m impressed by those that do it well.

While the three areas are different, they all follow the same concept — you need to keep your eyes open. This is a big reason why I write every day; simply being aware throughout the day and noticing opportunities for posts helps me pay closer attention to what’s in front of me.

For example, I listen to a few hours worth of podcasts each week. Rather than just putting them on in the background, I actively listen to see if I get post ideas. Even if I don’t get one out of a particular show, the act of listening with intent helps me derive more value while I listen.

Now I’ll be sure to pay close attention in church in the coming weeks to see if I notice this particular sermon idea getting weaved in anywhere.

I recently finished reading the book “The Business of Expertise” and it was fantastic. If you’re in a creative field, I highly recommend it.

As I’ve shared before, I try to carefully track the books I read and work to know why I’m reading a particular book. In this case, my notes show that my friend Chris suggested it on LinkedIn back on August 10, 2021. I thought it’d be fun to find that old post of hers and leave a comment on it. I couldn’t, so here is your shout-out Chris: that book was a great suggestion!

I tried a whole bunch of different ways to track down that post of hers. I played with LinkedIn filters and searches for quite a while, and even tried Google searches to see if it was indexed somewhere. After wasting too much time, I gave up — it’s just too old to be found on LinkedIn

That’s not how our content should be.

It’s not that all old content needs to be front and center, as that’d be chaos, but we should be able to point to old content of ours indefinitely into the future. For example, I share this old “What is spam?” post from Seth Godin quite a lot. The post is nearly nine years old, but you can go to his site, type “what is spam” in the search box, and there it is. If you share generous, helpful content, it shouldn’t become impossible to find after a few months.

Social media is a fine place to share your content; there’s a good chance that’s where you’re reading this. However, this post will also be available on my blog for many years to come. My oldest posts on there are nearly 19 years old now, and there’s no reason to think they won’t last at least 19 more.

People like Chris post amazing insights, and I get a lot of value from her posts, but I hate that they’re vapor. So much of what I read on social media is fantastic and helpful, but it’s quickly gone to never be found again. I can’t reference it later, and I can’t point people to it later. That’s a shame.

I’m still continuing to fine-tune my RSS reading to include more people, as it’s a better way for everyone to share content. We’ll see if more people turn that way or not, but I hope they do.