A Way to Nurture Your Passions: Start Multiple Blogs

Nurturing your multiple passions is important to improve yourself. By nurturing your passions, you will be able to cross-pollinate different fields and come up with fresh ideas that put you ahead of the pack. The question is: what should we do to nurture our passions?

There are many ways to do that, but here I’d like to discuss one of them: creating multiple blogs for your passions, one blog for each passion. There are several reasons why blogging is a good way to nurture your passions:

  1. It pushes you to keep learning
    You can only write something meaningful on your blogs if you keep learning. The responsibility to update your blogs will give you the pressure to learn.
  2. It pushes you to digest the information and knowledge you get
    To express things in your own words, you need to digest the information and knowledge you get. This will give you better understanding of the topic.
  3. It pushes you to find new ideas in that field
    Unless you just want to repeat what other people say, you need to find new ideas to write about.
  4. It reminds you of the need to improve yourself
    The existence of your blog reminds you that you have a passion in that field that you need to nurture.

Here are some steps to take to nurture your passions through blogging:

  1. List your passions
    What are the things that make you excited? List them all. You may end up with a lot of items in your list. At this stage, just write everything you come up with without filtering them.
  2. Choose a few passions to start with
    Since you may come up with many items in your list, choose only a few of them to start with so that the number of blogs is manageable. You may choose the ones that you are most passionate about. There is no right number here; just find what works for you.
  3. Create the blogs
    These days you can create new blogs in minutes. You may want to use free services like Blogger or WordPress that can give you easy-to-use blogs in no time.
  4. Build reading habit
    To write well on your blog, you should feed your mind with relevant knowledge and information. Read books, blogs, or magazines in the fields you choose.
  5. Set a minimum update schedule
    If you don’t set a minimum update schedule, you could let months pass by without updating your blog. Choose a schedule that is manageable for you. As a general rule of thumb, the more you want to develop a passion, the more often you should update the blog. Of course, since the blog is just for your personal growth, you don’t have to update it too frequently.
  6. Write freely
    You don’t have to polish your blogs and posts unless you choose to. Remember, the goal here is your personal growth and not creating professional blogs. You may write whatever things that come into your mind.
  7. Aim to write thoughtful content
    While you may write anything you want, you will grow faster if you write thoughtful content. So aim to write better content with better ideas over time.

By starting blogs for your passions, you will have multiple outlets for your creative expression. Even better, you can combine ideas from different passions to get fresh ideas.

Photo by Per Ola Wiberg

10 Comments

  1. I agree, I currently have 3 blogs on the go. One for my software development practises (http://weblogs.asp.net/garrypilkington/default.aspx) one for astronomy (http://astronomylinklist.loquela.co.uk) and one which kind of covers everything else I am in to such as personal development, living frugal and health (http://thisimprovedlife.zapto.org). By having multiple blogs I am constantly learning about these different areas that I am interested in without getting bored by only concentrating in the one area.

  2. Yeah, this is very true. It’s also a great way to document your progress as you excel during the exploration of your passions. Some may not know but in addition to my MLH blog, I’ve also got one that is tracking my progress as I endeavor to learn how to echolocate.

  3. Great article! Having multiple passions is great — and you are right, being able to write about them and explore and grow through blogging is neat thing to do!

  4. […] A Way to Nurture Your Passions: Start Multiple Blogs […]

  5. Hi Donald,

    I’m sorry I’d have to disagree with starting multiple blogs unless you have exceptionally high work rate or unless you have very few other other hobbies to pursue and few commitments, hence you have a lot of spare time outside your normal work hours.

    Reading books, blogs and magazines in the field of your interests will already take up much of your time and reading is already enough to nourish your mind, it is not necessary to write down your thoughts. We don’t have to write down everything on our mind or everything we learn.

    However, if you’re thinking of blogging for a living, developing multiple blogs may perhaps be a viable business model. If not, it’s better to stick to just one or max. two blogs in the field that you’re most interested in.

    Cheers~

    Mark

  6. Donald,

    I found trying to manage multiple blogs too taxing to add my other tasks of maintaining 15 websites and publishing 2 newsletters.

    I have a number of passions, so I started 3 blogs to satisfy them. It soon became too much, and I found myself having to decide which one would get most of my attention. I’m down to just 2 now.

    Although I enjoy writing, I don’t whip up posts as fast some people seem to do. Therefore, writing quality content for more than one blog is challenging.

  7. Garry,

    …without getting bored by only concentrating in the one area.

    This is one of the biggest benefits I get by having multiple blogs. Though the blogs are not quality blogs, they help me diversify my life and avoid boredom.

    Tim,

    It’s also a great way to document your progress as you excel during the exploration of your passions.

    I agree. This way you can document the lessons you learn along the way. It’s also motivating to look back and see how much you’ve progressed.

    Jules,
    What I like about blogging is it requires your active involvement. You can grow faster that way.

    Mark,

    Reading books, blogs and magazines in the field of our interests will already take up much of your time

    You’re right. What I mean actually is reading something in the field without having to take much of your time. So I just changed the wording in the article to “books, blogs, or magazines”.

    Mark and Flora,
    You don’t have to spend a lot of time on the blogs. Updating it just once a month will do. In my case, I don’t even proofread what I write since I don’t intend it to be read by other people. The purpose of the blogs is to help you do something active regarding your passions.
    Having said that, blogging is just one way to nurture your multiple passions. The important thing is to nurture your passions and do it in the best way that works for you.

  8. I really enjoyed this article as I have recently tried to incorporate 9 areas or passions of mine into a single blog using blogger’s label/categories feature to distinguish between them.

    Combining them all into just one blog makes updating them less daunting as even if I update just one area the whole blog benefits.

    Reading this post, all four points you make are excellent – especially the fact that publishing blogs pushes you to find new ideas in that field!

  9. I love the idea of blogging about your passions. If you can handle multiple blogs, why not? The most beneficial part of blogging is that when you put your knowledge together into a meaningful structure and teach others, real learning can occur. Often we forget that the best way to cement what we learn is simply by teaching others.

    Thanks for the continued great posts…it fires me up when my batteries are running low.

  10. domforth,

    Combining them all into just one blog makes updating them less daunting as even if I update just one area the whole blog benefits.

    That’s a good idea. For some people, the thought of having to update multiple blogs is overwhelming and yours is a good way to overcome it.

    Michael,

    Often we forget that the best way to cement what we learn is simply by teaching others.

    I agree completely. That’s why I love blogging here 🙂

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