Lessons from Publishing 200 Articles this Year

At the start of the year, the goal was daily publishing.

At the 100-day mark, I lost momentum. I stopped publishing daily. I started publishing whenever I felt the urge. Whenever my motivation was high.

I rationalized my way out of daily publishing. I used every excuse in the book.

Here’s what I learned from publishing just about 200 articles between Medium and Twitter:

1. You can’t count on motivation. I was motivated until day 100. Then the habit slowly, but surely, started dying. I reduced output to twice weekly. Then weekly. And on and on. Motivation is scarce. Relying on something this scarce is asking to fail.
2. Schedule time for writing. I had more control over this routine than motivation. The hardest tasks should be reserved for the mornings. At least in my experience. If writing was the first task I completed, the rest of the day was a breeze. Other than working out. I exercised first.
3. The act of writing IS where the value is. Transferring thoughts to a written medium is valuable. This is how I attacked overthinking. Overthinking results in zero progress.
4. Develop your favorite problems. Consume media with a bias towards your favorite topics and problems. Produce essays in the same way. Because I wasn’t interested in everything, I was able to discard many topics that were interesting, but didn’t fit my criteria.

1/30- October 2022 Cohort

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