A doctor admits: "I love to blog but I still don’t really know why"

From Mike Cadogan, the founder of one the most popular medical blogs Life in The Fast Lane, based in Australia:

I blog to vent, to educate, to converse, to cogitate, to archive thoughts and to stimulate discussion.

I love the concept of a launching a thought, an image, a moment… into the inferno of the blogosphere, and observing the response.

With the average blog-reader attention span being around 90 seconds, I find that most of my ‘good’ posts – thoroughly researched, with well constructed arguments and propositions… are lost on this ‘average‘ reader… Yet, strangely I feel better having taken the time to arrange my thoughts, review the evidence and archive the information.

The advent of Facebook and Twitter has changed the way readers comment and share, and in many cases the promoted discussion continues out-with the confines of the original medium…

I love to blog but I still don’t really know why…

My reply is here:

You blog because you have to, Mike. And we are lucky to have you as a writer.

I have more prosaic and simple reasons to keep several blogs focused on different aspects of clinical practice: internal medicine, allergy and immunology, pediatrics, and IT.

I simply blog as a way to keep track of the new developments in medicine that are relevant to my practice and patients. The blog is a digital notebook and an archive accessible from any place and device with an internet connection.

A lot of people find it useful and that's great but this is an added bonus. If I don't find a blog post interesting and useful, I don't hit the "publish" button. A custom-made Google search engine makes it all searchable in 0.2 seconds. It just works.

Quotes from an interview with Seth Godin and Tom Peters:

"Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.

No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook.

And it’s free."

Comments from Google Plus: Neil Mehta - Loved your poetic post. I attempted to reflect on this earlier this year and came up with some reasons http://blogedutech.blogspot.com/2011/05/reflections-on-why-do-i-blog.html but find that it does not come close to your beautiful prose. Thanks for sharing. References: Why I Blog? Why I Blog: Andrew Sullivan from The Atlantic Shares His Thoughts on Blogging Why Do I Blog? Why blog? Notes from Dr. RW. A perfectly reasonable list. All doctors should consider blogging. It's do-it-yourself CME. "One of the best decisions I’ve made in my career was to start a blog and a wiki, leaving a paper trail of ideas" http://bit.ly/GX7Z6C Why I blog and tweet - retired surgeon/program director/dept chair Skeptical Scalpel shares best practice tips http://buff.ly/1E1zHdI