What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
Today marks the last day of my 30-day writing challenge. It seems fitting to reflect on these past 30ish (yes “ish”—I did skip a few days) days, discuss what I’ve learned in the process, and what I’m looking to do moving forward.
What I’ve learned
Lesson 1: I enjoy writing daily, but I don’t want to publish daily.
Part of the reason I did this 30-day challenge was for accountability. I wanted to develop a public writing habit, and I also wanted to see if I would stick with it. I also wanted to overcome my imposter syndrome, kill my fear of publishing, and reduce my perfectionist tendencies. In turn, I hoped I would discover whether I really enjoyed writing enough to keep going with it.
I’ve found that every day, I want to write. And I enjoy doing it. Often I’ll have different ideas (more on this later) racing in my mind, and writing is a way for me to clarify my thinking around those ideas. It helps me learn how much I really know about something (and often I discover I know less than I thought I did. It also lets my mind wander and stay curious. This is the creative part that I enjoy.
Writing is really hard, though. Those who write know how grueling, demanding, and strenuous the process can be. At the beginning, I was excited by the idea of writing each day. Any new idea was on the table. Free-flow writing was natural. It was like a honeymoon period of a relationship. Then—boom. The newness started to wear off. I started to meet some resistance when writing. Some ideas I would want to write about I couldn’t quite bring together in a few hours. There were a few days where I pivoted what I published from what I had started the day writing about.
Often when I would sit down to write, I’d find it much easier to just write what came to my mind. But what came to my mind sometimes was nothing profound, or in the worst case—nothing at all.
I did realize I enjoyed when it got hard. The challenge was fun. All things in life eventually reach a point when they get difficult. But honestly, when some things get hard, you don’t really love it; you don’t really want to keep going. It’s like the relationship after the honeymoon period. That’s not how it is with writing. I enjoy the challenge of trying to find the right word. I enjoy the challenge of trying to connect a few seemingly dissimilar ideas into something meaningful. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make people think or make people feel something after reading a piece.
Nonetheless, writing fatigue became very real. Towards the second half of the thirty days, I started feeling much more resistance to publishing. It wasn’t a resistance towards writing. It was more a feeling of wanting to take a pause. This means some days it took me longer to write what I wanted to, or some days I just didn’t want to publish. And I think that’s okay.
Lesson 2: Perfectionism still exists, but deadlines are net-positive
Persistence is an incredibly valuable skill. I took 33 days to publish 30 posts, but I pushed through it. On day 18, when I missed a day for the first time, I considered labeling myself a failure. In the past, I may have stopped a venture like this in my tracks, right then and there. However, I realized it was better to just hold myself accountable, share with my readers that I missed a day, and continue marching forward. A positive attitude goes a long way. One of my readers reached out after that, noting that he enjoyed the piece and the commitment, and encouraged me to keep going forward. While there were bumps along the way, I am proud that I was able to keep writing and keep putting something out there.
If I could go back in time, I wish I would have been less hard on myself to write something I felt was up to my own level of expectations rather than just publish a post or publish a piece daily, even if that was something smaller. It could have been a piece centered around something I had read or consumed that day, or a piece briefly discussing a meaningful quote or article. Instead I often tried to work around my perfectionism within the confines of the deadlines I had set and within the rules I had arbitrarily created. That’s the funny thing about human behavior—when you are wired a certain way, it is very difficult to unwire that behavior. Perfectionism is still perfectionism, regardless of the constraints.
However, I will still say that daily deadlines have been net-positive for me. Max Nussenbaum wrote a great piece on why he focuses on Quantity over Quality, and I largely agree with his logic to help overcome imposter syndrome. Simply put, if I had imposed no deadlines, and I didn’t force myself to publish daily, I honestly may have only published one or two of my articles in the same time period because I would have held it up against a ridiculously high standard.
Publishing thirty times has been a huge win for me. Have all thirty of my pieces been fantastic? Absolutely not. Some of my pieces have been subpar. In fact, if you ask me, I would say I was nervous publishing all but a few of them, because almost none of them met that crazy high standard. But I’ve gotten positive feedback on many more than two of the pieces, which means the deadlines have allowed me to publish more quality posts than I otherwise would have. This means the deadlines are net-positive.
Lesson 3: I enjoy writing about different topics. Voice is more important than Niche.
When I first started my writing, I was so obsessed with trying to find a niche, and I found it really difficult because I would enjoy talking about and learning about and writing about various things. I now realize this was clearly just an excuse to avoid getting started writing. Sure it may limit your audience or your ability to monetize long-term, but in the short term, it’s all about getting in the reps and writing consistently. Who cares what you write about? Much of my writing thus far has been personal writing, and I’ve also covered sports a few times, but I’ve also done television, and book reviews, and mental models, among other things. I actually like this a lot more because I’m a generalist at heart. And some of my readers have said they enjoy this, too, because they get a better sense of who I truly am.
Some topics are easier to write about on a daily cadence than others. Personal writing comes more naturally because it is often what I’m feeling or thinking in the moment. Arguably, this can make it the best writing, and some of these pieces have been the ones I’ve received the most positive feedback on. However, I haven’t written about other interests of mine because I struggled to write about them when only having a day’s time to write. I’m working through a few pieces at the moment on topics including personal finance, education, humor, and product management. It’s clear I want to write across different topics, and I want to continue doing so as part of this newsletter.
What I’m Looking to do Moving Forward
Goal 1: Improve my writing by getting more feedback
I’ve been able to develop a habit and cultivate an itch for writing daily, but I don’t want to publish daily. Instead, I’m looking to reduce my publishing cadence, and instead leverage the resources I have to get feedback on my drafts, so I can start publishing more polished, revised work. I am thinking publishing two times a week will be a good balance, but I am going to figure out what works best for me over the coming weeks. I will be transparent with all of you, as one of the goals with this is to also publish on a more reliably consistent timeframe. Depending on the cadence, I want to figure out which days I will publish, and then begin to publish on the same days at the same times.
Another area I would like to improve upon is structuring my writing. As I’ve been writing more, I’ve gotten better with regards to writing habits, idea generation, and researching. And while I’m not the best storyteller, I’ve seen gradual progression in this area. However, I still struggle with structuring my writing, and in particular, choosing what to include, where to include it, and when not to include well-written, but writing that is irrelevant to the purpose of the piece.
How you can help: If you are reading this, I would love any and all feedback from my writing thus far—specifically, which topics have you enjoyed the most? the least? What was your favorite piece? least favorite? If I could change any one thing about my writing or the newsletter, what would it be?
I would also love any critical feedback on my writing style, my writing structure, my storytelling ability, grammar, or anything else!
Goal 2: Focus more on my personal brand
Marketing myself is something that I’ve learned is super important, but also something I struggle with immensely. This is true in the context of writing, but it goes beyond that as well. Putting myself out there has been something I have always needed an extra nudge with. Now that I’ve started to build a writing habit, I want to work on incorporating writing into my personal brand. This means marketing and leveraging my writing in different ways, and it likely also means writing a few pieces that are more intentional based on my audience or based on my personal brand.
What do I want my personal brand to reflect? This is a question I’ve struggled to answer in the past, but I think it’s a critical one. I want to spend more time thinking about questions like this and, in exchange, that might mean spending a little less time writing.
Goal 3: Start thinking about growth and distribution
So far my writing has been shared mainly with my close friends and family, and with my followers on Twitter. However, there are definitely other growth and distribution channels I have at my disposal that I am not taking advantage of. I want to start thinking about how I can start using these new channels to better showcase my writing. As Balaji Srinivasan says,
Product is merit, and distribution is connections.
I am putting in a good amount of time into my writing (the product), and so it would be beneficial to me if I put energy into ensuring more people are reading it (the distribution). Additionally, I want to make sure I am leveraging the channels I am already using to the best of my abilities. Even amongst my friends and family, there are those I can reach out to to subscribe, and there are ways I can better utilize Twitter as a resource for sharing my work than I have been so far.
On that note, if you are reading this, and you aren’t already subscribed, please consider subscribing to the newsletter. And thank you for reading—I truly appreciate it.
If you are already subscribed—thank you so much! And thank you for following along and supporting me on this journey. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider liking (tapping the heart on) this post, and sharing it with a friend or two.
Congrats on 30 buddy!!! Proud of ya!
Definitely resonate with building the personal brand. I've talked to writers & podcasters about how they built up their 1k fans and it's been a mix of releasing experiments (writing) and talking with users (Clubhouse / Zoom meets) to get a sense of what to write next. It also helps to have collaborators.
Would be curious to hear about what you've been up to since May!