I have been Blogging for a couple of years now. It may have taken me a little while to become comfortable with the creation, format and process associated with creating a posting, but I thought I had it down. I was familiar with how to do it…I thought.
The old saying is “Familiarity breeds contempt”. I don’t think that is the case. For me familiarity seemed to breed a confidence in my capabilities that resulted in a lack of attention to detail.
I wrote my last article (“It’s Not “What””) and did all of the appropriate and required steps in the process to make sure it was posted. I then went out to all of the various and assorted sites where I announce a new article and updated them. I thought I had done everything. Why wouldn’t I? It’s what I have been doing for the last 2 years.
The only difference was that I normally go out to my site to make sure the article is posted and that it is accessible. For some reason, I didn’t do that last time. I must have gotten distracted, or something else came up. In any event, I didn’t go look. I didn’t double check the end result / finished product.
If I had, I would have seen that I had not in fact posted my article. I had left it in the “Pending” file. I did a great job of notifying everyone that there was a new article posted for them to read, but didn’t close the loop of actually putting a new article out there for them to read.
In the process of becoming so comfortable, so familiar with the Blogging process I created both my own problem and a topic for my next article.
It is hard not to put things on “autopilot” when we are doing something that we have done many times in the past. When we are doing something we are familiar with, we have a tendency to not give it our entire attention. The end result is that eventually a mistake gets made in an area where it should not normally occur.
I would not have thought to talk about a continued focus on the basics and standard processes, but then I would have thought that I would not have made such a basic mistake as not making sure that I had in fact posted my last article.
I will check to make sure that this one does in fact get appropriately posted.