How long does it take me to write a blog post?

I recently gave a talk about blogging in a mobile development meetup and after the talks, I got asked: "how long does it take me to write a blog post?".

A seemingly simple question to which there's no easy answer.

The difficulty stems from the difficulty of defining which activities are part of "writing a blog post". The right answer depends on what the intent of the question is.

If the question is about how much time I spend in my CMS writing a post, that’s usually around 15 to 60 minutes per post. During an NFL game on Sunday evening, I often may write 2-3 posts while waiting for the ball to be snapped. I consider the time I spend writing a post a trivial part of blogging.

If the question is about how much work and insight goes into a good technical blog post, we need to consider all other activities than just the writing.

Here are some activities I can think of that contribute to my blog posting:

• Reading, listening, watching (other blog posts, books, talks, videos, podcasts)
• Thinking and pondering
• Adding thoughts to my notes and reading my existing notes
• Utilising previously written blog posts, talks, workshops and other materials I have
• Writing code in projects both at work and at hobbies
• Having discussions with people
• Helping others and answering their technical questions
• Organising and participating in events
• Living life

Sometimes when I set out to do the actual writing of a blog post, I have 95% of it already written in my notes and I just need to copy-paste and edit a bit to move text around and make it coherent for a blog post. In calendar time, sometimes it can take year or two for an idea to become a blog post.

If the question is about how much of my life is spent in blogging, the answer is difficult. I don’t consider most of the activities listed above as something specific to blogging. Blogging is just a public outcome of things I do.

I find it impossible to separate these activities from the time it takes to write a blog post in any meaningful way. I could calculate only the time it takes me to write in my CMS but that wouldn't be very helpful metric to me or anyone else because it would hide all the work done before hand, some of it being writing semi complete posts in my notes.

I guess sometimes the question stems from the person trying to see if they could fit blogging into their life between work, family and other hobbies. The good news is there’s so many ways to blog that almost everyone can fit in some amount of it into their lives if they so wish. You can write often or rarely, you can write long or short posts, you can mix-and-match as you wish.

I often find it easier to write when I’m busy because being “busy” usually means I’m doing stuff worth writing. When I work full time as a developer, I come up with so many things to write about because I’m learning new things and solving problems worth sharing daily. On the other hand, when I’m not working full-time, I have more time to read, think and write. My blogging history over the past 6 years or so reflects that quite nicely: my main gaps in my attempt at weekly publishing are not from when I’ve been busy but rather times when I’ve had nothing to do.