Flickr photo by ME°°

Think for a minute about your daily routine. When you turn on your computer, what’s the first thing you do? Do you read first or write first?

It certainly feels easy and natural to start our day with hearty helpings of content. Emails, blog posts and news stories are cooked up to perfection like an all-you-can eat buffet, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All you have to do is open your browser and start reading.

But the problem with reading before writing is you never end up reading just what’s served to you. Much like the all-you-can-eat buffet, one article leads to another, which has a link to a helpful blog post, which contains a great YouTube video, followed by another one, and so on.

Before you know it your brain is stuffed and you can barely make it out of other people’s domains to get started on your own writing. [Read more...]