Question: Ask a Science Blogger June 15:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?
My guess: blogging is easy. What it takes is a little courage to speak your mind (or foolhardiness, depending on how you look at it). For myself, I'm juggling a lot of different things in my life right now, so I always make sure I "clock" myself. Believe it or not, a lot of the posts do not take much time because I'm ruminating on a lot of these topics all the time. Once it comes down to translating it into prose it often just flows out of me really quickly. I find that commenting & responding to comments is much more time intensive because I don't have "canned" responses and I have to fire up the brain and let it to process for a while before I can offer something cogent. One reason I often don't respond to really intelligent and incisive comments is that I don't have to the time to think and reply.
Your guess is also my guess:) Maybe having a very high IQ enables one to type lengthy, well-thought-out blog entries, study, read for enjoyment, have lovers, etcetera, all in an average day? Maybe they've got their laptops w/ them even when they're queueing up in a store?
Or, maybe, just maybe, these bloggers aren't telling us the whole story. Maybe they're way, way ahead of us & simply aren't letting anyone know. Maybe they've got broadband cyber-brain web-connections going already, so all they have to do is just *let the mind wander* stuff &, BooM, it's there, a new blog entry! It certainly seems like that sometimes. It's inexplicable;-]