Two part video addition to this post. I decided to merge them together to make it more potent

Now let me start off by stating that I didn't intend to SCHEDULE/CREATE the whole year ahead, but simply PLAN out the whole year.

That distinction out of the way... here is how I did it!

Many companies will give you a "content calendar", for maybe 30 days, or even in some cases 365 days. However it is usually generic ideas, or just simple social media posts. Now while they are useful to post on social media, those are not PILLAR posts, or "main course" type posts. I.e. Blogs, Videos, or Podcasts (or all of the above i.e. like OmniContent).

My point is those pre-made content plans are good for an additional layer of consistency or being timely for holidays like Easter, Holi, Eid/Ramadan, MLK day, etc. However they don't cater to your core audience, and the way to do that is to create content based on your niche(s).

Now since my main brand is about Polymathy, that gave me a path to doing multiple sub-topics/sub-brands. At least that "meta-niche" is my excuse to do so!

Point is that for me I could plan out 2-3 pieces of content a week for the whole year just with my main niche alone, well I have two: "Knowledge Management For Polymaths". Thus that is like DNA strand, with two topic intertwined. I digress.

Since I have other topics such as "how to be a modern content creator", the brand you are reading now, or even my gaming/swimming/exercise/travel/etc topics.

Planning out weekly content is just 52 ideas, biweekly (one for each main topic) 104 ideas, making a piece of content for each of my ideas... now that is where things get interesting.

Note: I already basically had all of my ideas written down!

Another thing I want to get out of the way! I already had 98% of the ideas already put in my Obsidian Vault, and some of them are nearly a decade old. Others are only a month old, and the rest somewhere in between. However the point is that there were many posts I wanted to get out ASAP.

There were posts I was remaking from moving from Substack. There were posts that were tied to a time of the year. Such as doing a post about my "yearly note", doing quarterly tech stack, monthly notes, etc. Those are pre-determined planned out pieces that have an automatic slot.

I go into detail visually a bit more in the video above, but here is a screenshot to showcase what I mean about planning the whole YEAR.

Now the blank spots are where I missed a day. Things happen, I got sick a couple weeks ago for a whole week and half. It was really hard to do anything.

This screenshot is of February, and notice there are at least one a day. The only two blank spots are posts I moved to the next day after missing a day. I was either sick, demotivated, or super stressed. This is why batching out ahead as much as possible is super helpful.

I won't talk about it much in this post, but that was my reasoning for the Content Blitz. So that I could prepare a ton of content ahead of time. Get my baseline posts ready and made ahead. Then from there make more content on top of those.

Tuesdays became the "PolyTools" day, the old name for this channel "the Content Polymath". However since I already had a ton of tools posts scheduled I just kept it going. Thursdays became the day for more content creator focused posts. Usually a video, but always a blog. Often both.

Fridays tend to be the Polymath newsletter, but that one has been inconsistent as of the time of this writing.

I had planned on Wed being a catch all day, swimming, exercise, and travel. However I have since removed the swimming posts, as my idea for that series fell short of what I'd want to put out. I still have monthly travel posts. Saturday gets a monthly gaming post.

Then I have my 🍃 NOW Page every month on the 1st, every quarter I do a My Current Tech Stack, and so those also helped fill in some days.

After putting all of those planned series in I had about 270 posts already planned. The real job came in when I had to fill in the blanks between.

My thought process was...

I know we as people aren't perfect, and I couldn't have planned on getting sick. However trying to establish a daily writing habit, creating posts ahead of time, and having things already planned. Those help out so tremendously, even if you aren't super consistent with all three.

People get so systematic in their head, or worse don't see the systems at all, and then they get mad at themselves for not performing to their internal goalpost.

This content plan, the content blitz as well, they are endeavors to try and maximize my ability to output as much as possible. While attempting to account for external factors you cannot control.

If I fired on all cylinders ALL YEAR ROUND, then ooooohhh weee, I would be so far ahead. Getting towards my goals extremely fast. However even just a fraction is still more than what most people do, and every video gets repurposed into clips as well. I made sure my two main channels got at least a video a week planned, and some weeks get more than that. Ideally all weeks would get more than one, based on news, new tools, or something in my life.

My gaming channel and swimming brand had to take more of a back seat, but even the gaming channel has gotten some action due to the hardware I've acquired.

I hope this all motivates you to do more, and perhaps create a plan yourself too!

This planning of the whole year is the foundation or baseline, and then I can build on top of it.