I developed 116 blog post ideas in two days.

How?

Well, I haven’t blogged since July 2021. I’ve been journaling every morning with Morning Pages and processing MIQ’s, but I haven’t packaged or posted any of those ideas for online consumption.

Since July I’ve had countless insights and serious breakthroughs. There was a lot to share. So much to mentally clear.

I can only imagine how many ideas a teacher who hasn’t ever blogged could generate in one sitting.

I use a couple of strategies for generating post ideas that I want to pass on to you…

1. I DOCUMENT what I’ve done rather than create something new from scratch. As teachers we are already showing up every day, solving new problems, setting out on new ambitious projects, practicing our craft every day. Don’t think of writing posts as creating something, pretend as if someone was coming to observe you for a day. What would they document in your process? What would they write down?
2. 80/20. 80 percent of my posts I’m just trying to wrap words around something that already happened. I’m just getting a written record of what happened so when I look back 5 years from now I’ll know what I was up to. I don’t have to mentally work through anything in order to document that idea. For example, writing out my ‘Student Graduation Recital’ process was a simple as copying and pasting my student graduation recital process. Another ‘get-down’ post was simply summarizing a parent talk I already gave to parents this spring. The other 20 percent are ideas I really do want to work through through the act of writing it. Some examples are the post, “What I learned from Virgil?”, “Jacob Collier vs. the Suzuki Method,” and “My Zen Lineage.” I’ve already learned enough about these topics that I know they’ve influenced the way I think, but I need to do more research and think more about them in order to get the post down. This is one of my favorite parts about writing posts. I try to keep a balance in my writing process between the 80 and 20. One ‘thinking post’ for every 5 ‘get-down’ post.
3. I separate out the post development into a couple of phases. The first is to get the ideas into a writing list, then I brainstorm a simple outline, then I write, then I batch post and schedule them out for publishing a week at a time. When I’m writing out the ideas I don’t consider how difficult the post will be to write, I simply get the idea down onto the list. By separating the idea generation from the writing I think it keeps me more honest about documenting what really should be documenting, not simply just documenting what I want to write or don’t have resistance to writing.
4. Start with a small goal of getting down 20. You’ll be amazed how much your brain will generate once you are in a non-resistance, flow state. I started with 52 (for weeks in a year), then doubled it and went to 100. Then while I went through the rest of the day my brain couldn’t stop generating ideas and I got all the way up to 114 in the course of two days.

Here I’ll list all 116 of those ideas. I know many of them won’t make sense to you, but it will be fun for you to see those ideas unfold in the ensuing months. You also might use the idea’s to write the same post from your perspective.

1. parent cognitive load
2. teacher cognitive load
3. DAW for teachers?
4. Design signatures
5. Achievement days 2022
6. Studio News (practical emails)
7. Building my archive
8. Visualize value
9. Re-evaluating group class performances (LV22 influences)
10. SPA course notes and reflections
11. Dynamic vs. Static quality
12. Elizabeth Faidley’s Pinkie House Concept
13. 3D modeling for violin teachers
14. Sleep hygiene
15. Are we in the renaissance?
16. Playlist for a new renaissance
17. What I’ve Learned from Virgil
18. What I’ve Learned from Jacob Collier
19. Synopsis of music appreciation
20. What we have to learn from the fashion industry
21. Ways to practice teaching: VIDEOS TO STUDENTS
22. Ways to practice teaching: SAY THE SAME PHRASE IN EVERY LESSON
23. Ways to practice teaching: THEMES
24. Ways to practice teaching: DON’T BRING VIOLIN TO GROUP CLASS
25. Ways to practice teaching: WATCH FOOTAGE, EXPLAIN WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO
26. Ways to practice teaching: SAY WHAT YOU SEE
27. Ways to practice teaching: 8.5X11 PRACTICE
28. Ways to practice teaching: VIRTUAL ACHIEVEMENT DAYS
29. Ways to practice teaching: SEMESTER PROJECTIONS
30. Ways to practice teaching: FUTURING (vision of accomplished human)
31. Ways to practice teaching: RIVERING
32. Talent, Talent to use the talent
33. Jacob Collier vs. Suzuki
34. This is my work, it speaks for itself
35. If this were easy, what would it look like
36. Twisted
37. Un-twisted
38. Teaching Load (environment, politics, social justice, mental health awareness, sane)
39. Graduation recitals process
40. Parent talk: “Listen to the CD”
41. Parent talk: “What does practice looks like”
42. I don’t believe in parent education
43. How I use notion
44. How I take lesson notes
45. 2021 Fall Holiday gift and gift guide
46. 2022 Playlists
47. Having a desk
48. Managing back pain — what I’ve learned
49. Managing SAD
50. Time management for violin teachers
51. Philosophy of Administration
52. Building Shed #2, What we can learn from construction
53. How I’m thinking about NFT’s
54. Art of video (van neistat, etc.)
55. Using the camera to record lessons (considerations)
56. the group lesson
57. Beyond the lesson (group lesson, practice lesson, practice observation)
58. Practice Reference Recordings
59. Lessons learned from 1.5 years of childcare
60. Childcare #2
61. Childcare #3
62. Mozart Violin Concertos
63. Pre-Twinkle phases
64. Pre-Twinkle group class themes
65. Book 1 group class themes
66. Idea development: journal, whiteboard, excel, blog posts, etc
67. Two levers in learning. 1) Environment. 2) Time.
68. The greatest environment building tool
69. Violin Practice for a Suzuki Teacher
70. Singleness of purpose
71. Affirmations
72. My future biography
73. ‘still’ one point
74. Why do we? [things i question in the method]
75. Living as an enneagram type 3
76. Do you believe in nothing? shunryu suzuki quote
77. What we can learn frohttp://kathrynbdrake.com/116-blog-post-ideas-in-2-days/m Mr. Beast (one point, recruiting supporters for critique, checklist)
78. What we can learn from MKBHD [octopus, moreANDbetter, two seasons]
79. My Zen Lineage
80. Using zoom to observe practice
81. Letters to the studio, what I want you to know
82. I’m not ignoring (climate, mental health, racism, etc.)
83. Violin lesson with you mentors (my lesson with KM)
84. Who is the audience?
85. The most important metric [quality of home practice]
86. To parents: how I want you to design home practice
87. Why I feel uncomfortable talking about meditation
88. I came up with 110 blog post ideas in 2 days
89. Exploring senses using the violin case
90. Exploring senses using a full size violin
91. Encouraging exploration and play [open ended activities, scrambles, opposites game]
92. The difference between story telling and a violin lesson
93. What I’ve learned from Steve Jobs
94. It all starts with writing
95. My vision for the Suzuki Archives
96. What I learned from handing the camera to parents in lesson
97. Why I changed my mind about having 20 students
98. What I wish I had known sooner about instrument sizing
99. Transparency with parents about buying instruments
100. Violin Science I teach every student
101. Lesson length plan
102. The one point — what am I here to do? What is my zone of genius? Why does this need to exist in the world?
103. Sustainable practice routine for a Suzuki Teacher
104. Content development opportunities I want to see on YouTube from Suzuki teachers
105. How I used Instagram to get comfortable being vulnerable
106. 100 Blog Posts Ideas I (probably) Won’t Write
107. Who I’m Not.
108. Book 0
109. What I wish existed
110. Optimize the day, not the life
111. Loyalty [dedicating my life to my 35 students], investing in people
112. My containers [laundromat, studio, desktop, etc.]
113. MIQ’s
114. Lessons learned from a lesson with a brilliant voice teacher
115. I wrote 100 Blog Posts in February. Why? How?
116. Elizabeth Faidley Patreon review