I’m not going to write yet another post about how to grow your blog subscribers (in my experience working for blogs like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, our key tactics were to write regularly and to break news on topics of widespread interest) but instead I want to share some thoughts on the personal and professional growth opportunities presented by ongoing reading of subscriptions to one or more specific blogs.
You may follow bloggers on Twitter or email, but I find it useful to subscribe by RSS for an interface dedicated to long articles. I do that through Feedly and lately through Pocket, via IFTTT, in order to get the articles read to me aloud on my phone when I’m in transit. (My new favorite is The Living Library, about data and society.)
There’s a four part “growth mentality” model I’m going to use here to talk about the benefits of subscription, but you might appreciate using the model itself for other things as well.
What are the benefits you could capture by growing in this way? I’m motivated to subscribe to blogs for one reason in particular: they are a powerful way to be exposed to thoughtful perspectives on matters that may be useful to me later. I regularly get to cite something at work that’s really useful and that I read on a blog. I high five myself in my mind when I do. Regular reading of high quality longer form sources is a fast track to building out the mental toolbox.
If I could really nail regular reading of my subscriptions, I think I could add a lot of powerful timely knowledge to what I have to offer at work.
What’s something else I’ve succeeded at that’s inspiringly similar in challenges and opportunities? I have totally succeeded at adding both daily work logging and daily personal journaling, after deciding I wanted to years ago and struggled for a bit. So I’m confident I could add regular reading of my subscriptions too. I have, but this is the second question in the model – and I could get all the better at reading my subscriptions, too.
Who is someone else I’ve seen successfully grow in a similar way? My wife has added some practices to her intellectual life that I find pretty inspiring.
What would I say in a letter to a friend advising them how to grow in this way? I’d advise anyone to find an interface that works well for you, to refactor and clean up your subscriptions regularly, to not worry about unread items, and to consider a relationship with your items that is optimized for quality over quantity. One article considered deeply and connected to other matters in an actionable way may be worth 10 articles or more quickly scanned and all-but-forgotten. Finally, I’d recommend using the BJ Fogg method of building new habits: keep it small, tie it to an established anchor habit, and celebrate each time you do it to train your brain with positive reinforcement.
There you go! Now I’m going to take action on this. Next thing will be to try to figure out how to write blog posts regularly again, using the same growth model as well. 
