Guess what? I have reached the 30th post of my 30 posts in 30 days experiment. I have never had such a long streak of consecutive days of publishing anything. I like to quickly summarize a couple learning points I picked up during this experiment.
Momentum Matters. Also Scheduled Posts Matter.
There are days when writing comes easy. There are days when it’s hard. There are days when editing comes easy. There are days when that’s hard. There are days when life happens and I cannot get to writing until life allows me the time and space again. Which is why momentum is important. When you have it, I feel superhuman. When I don’t have it, trying to make things work with pure effort feels worse than anything else.
Which is also why, I’m glad I switched to using scheduled posts for publishing. Even though I have less than 10 subscribers, having a commitment to publish at least once a day compels me to meet that deadline. Given the capriciousness of momentum, I cannot rely on it to happen daily. Best to write as many and edit as many, when the mood strikes. Then, I queue those that are complete ready to be released in a timely fashion via the scheduled posts feature.
I cannot recommend enough the power of obeying the part of you which can never be tamed into a reliable worker. By riding on its coattails when it’s on is a fantastic feeling. I’m in fact writing this at 1:24 am in the morning. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was the afternoon nap earlier followed by the gym followed by the tv watching and the big dinner. I don’t really know. The reason doesn’t matter as much as I exploited the momentum when it occurs.
I fully expect to continue using this technique here and elsewhere. I’ll talk a bit more about my future writing plans at the end of the post.
Writing Down Ideas Beget More Ideas for Writing
I actually now have two forms of writing. At least. One is for writing posts. The very same one you’re reading now. The other is dashing off ideas for possible posts when I’m otherwise occupied with other stuff. I may jot down the ideas on a notebook and then revisit them later. Maybe, I’ll even turn them into actual posts. Maybe.
What happens is I noticed I’m generating more and more ideas. The more I actually write and publish in the newsletter, the more notebook-random ideas I generate. The more ideas I jot down in my notebook, the more ideas I have for actual writing and publishing. In fact, I now have about 4 incomplete drafts sitting in the Drafts folder of this newsletter. And I’ve already reached the 30 posts target.
The brain is indeed like a muscle. The more you train it for a certain goal, the more attuned and sensitive it becomes. It just takes longer than our 5-second attention span that social-media-bred minds have. I do recommend a daily frequency for publishing and at least 30 days long too.
What’s Next
And that’s the two biggest things I have learned during this 30 posts in 30 days experiment. If I’m forced to add one more thing to the list, it’s that feeling of “I actually can do this!” To be honest, I have abandoned so many blogs and experiments in the past. If you know me as well as I know myself, reaching 30 posts in 30 days is already a breakthrough. Even though there have been many times I looked back at my published posts and not been too satisfied with the quality.
Yes, I have stated on several past occasions I need to deliberately set my quality bar low so as to meet the daily publishing goal. Still, it bugs me.
Having said that, the end of this experiment and bearing the annoyance of poor quality does mean the natural next step is for me to take on writing better and probably focused under a narrower topic range.
I enjoy using the substack system so much I’m likely to continue with it for the next writing — I don’t know what to call it — experiment. Gig?. Anyway, the immediate need is to focus more on writing for my career goals. I do want to build a successful micro-SaaS business, so I’m likely to engage my newly discovered writing muscles in support of that goal.
What about this newsletter? Well, I did state on several occasions I’m likely to use this place as an ideas room of sorts before I transform the ideas into more mature, established ones elsewhere. I think I will keep that original plan intact for now.
Thank you for reading my ramblings so far. I have received some feedback on my posts and every bit of feedback helps. I wish you good health, good fortune, and great success in your life, dear reader. I will be back. This is not farewell, but it’s definitely a good-bye for now.