I started this blog on 10 July with a promise to see how it went: I said I’d been told that blogging wasn’t a distraction but a helpful way of sorting out ideas and opening up conversations.  So what have I learned from the experience?  For me, I’ve found that blogging does several things.

First, it means that I read more attentively.  This doesn’t mean that I’m constantly thinking of the next post, simply that when something catches my attention I’m more inclined to follow it up and see where it goes rather than transfer it to the “to be pursued later” (and forgotten sooner) box.  I suspect that many of us have our favourite displacement activities, particularly online: sites we visit (or stumble upon), flitting from one link to the next and telling ourselves that this is all part of the research process.  It often is, but it…