Photo by striatic (CC license).

When it comes to new projects (for me, a new blog or a website), you could say that I’m commitment phobic. For a long time I was more interested in the ideas behind a new project than the execution, leading to a long trail of half-finished projects — and some that never made it out of my notebook.

I found my mind wandering as I was trying to sleep a few days ago and hit upon a project idea that excited me. I could run it alongside Skelliewag. It would only be a hobby thing — nothing serious. My neurons started firing as I began to plan what I’d do when I woke up (ensuring it would be another hour or so before I finally drifted off).

One moderating influence I’m grateful for — in hindsight — was being unable to get online the next day. When I finally sat down to think about this new project, I noticed that something had changed since I started working with this blog.

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Photo by mugley.

This is a guest post from Leo Babauta, who blogs about productivity, simplicity and happiness at Zen Habits.

I’m a pretty prolific blogger — between regular posts at Zen Habits, and writing regularly for blogs such as Web Worker Daily, FreelanceSwitch, NorthxEast and more, and writing guest posts for other blogs (such as the excellent Skelliewag), I write a lot of posts every week.

And what’s asked of me most often, besides “How can you write so much?”, is the more difficult question: “How do you come up with so many ideas for posts?”

That’s not so easy to answer.

Coming up with ideas is a skill, actually, something that’s become easier with practice. And I don’t have one single method of coming up with great ideas for articles, except this one:

I’m ALWAYS on the lookout.

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Photo by gadl (license)

Any successful blog or website must be innovative. If you’re not innovating, you’re not offering potential readers a worthwhile choice.

Solve the same problems and fulfill the same needs as a bigger site in your niche and readers will consistently give their attention to your more authoritative counterpart.

Innovation, on the other hand, will make you the only choice suited to solving the problems and fulfilling the needs of your target audience.

Innovation is only worthwhile when it’s useful. It needs to satisfy a need that currently isn’t being met (at least, not in the same way). That’s when you start to stand out.

In this post, I want to describe a simple exercise you can use to create innovative content by problem solving. Don’t worry — this kind of problem solving is a lot easier than the kind you might have done at school.

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Photo by Sukanto Debnath

Yesterday’s list of 70 sources of inspiration was mainly composed of examples. In this post, I want to explain why the ability to learn from others is essential to your development as a blogger or webmaster.

Here, I’ll outline the process for creating and using something I strongly believe every web publisher should maintain: a swipe file of things they can learn from or use.

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I have my best ideas and learn my most valuable lessons when reading outside the metablog niche.

Step outside the walled garden and there’s a thousand sources of inspiration waiting to be tapped. You just need to know where (and how) to look.

There are no new ideas. The essence of creativity is taking two or more existing ideas and combining them in ways that have never been seen before.

Can you bring the best elements of other niches — and other bloggers and webmasters — into your own niche? Absolutely.

What follows is a bite-sized list of 70 places to find inspiration for your blog or website outside the blogs-about-blogging niche.

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