The blog just reached the 100th post on the 4th of November 2019. It’s a good opportunity to take a moment and reflect.
The start of an achievement
I started the blog in October 2016 and wrote about 9 blog posts until the beginning of August this year (2019).
The objectives were multiple:
- Create a platform to learn about the blogging ecosystem
- Re-Learn how to create, develop and maintain a website after many years without practice
- Share my experience in my areas of interest (productivity, personal and business development)
- Write about the subjects I am learning about to better understand them myself
- Write about the things I want to remember in the future or to share with friends
The first articles were not published often, were long-form articles, trying to follow good SEO practices. It required several hours of research and writing. The time I didn’t have much of.
Since August, every day a post was published. Inspired by Seth Godin’s approach to ship, the goal was to express my thoughts or opinions in a shorter, more natural way.
I made it simple for myself. No need to write an SEO-optimized 2500 words article on highly targeted keywords.
The idea was to write about a subject. It didn’t need to be perfect. It just needed to ship at 8 AM the next morning. Some were longer than others.
But eventually, without one day missing, 90 days later we reached the 100th post.
Learning to express ideas
The main lesson learned of this experience is that when you have to deliver, in addition to all your other activities, your voice is rawer.
It removes the inhibition of the fear of publishing poor content, or things we’re not confident about.
It forces us to take ownership of our words.
I know that I will change my mind about many things I said. We learn every day and approach things differently.
The point is to take a position today about what we mean.
I strongly believe that we need to share our ideas. They are like flowers, they need to pollinate to create even better ideas from other people.
By sending them into the world, the good ones evolve or grow, the poor ones get challenged so we can learn.
We have a beautiful platform to share values, and influence positively others which we need to take advantage of.
Maintaining a streak?
The idea is not to publish blog posts to maintain a streak.
With time, we tend to forget the initial aim of the blog. We focus on new projects, and it becomes slowly a burden.
Will I continue posting on that 7 days schedule, I am not sure. I may prefer to express myself on other company projects, develop the website with new sections, training, longer-form posts.
The important is to enjoy the process. The pleasure to write to share an idea with a friend.
Continuing to prove yourself you can do it, or reprioritize projects?
There is also the aspect that we post to prove ourselves or someone a point. We may become a burden to continue because of the ego that needs to express its importance by the length of the streak.
However, the truth is that other interesting projects may arise and require additional focus.
I have many ideas, many projects to pursue, and I may not keep on spending the same amount of time on the blog for some time.
I believe the brave thing is to reckon which projects require the most attention and ruthlessly cut the other ones.
Focusing on one thing or exploring different fields
One question which I keep pondering is the dilemma of focusing only on one thing, giving up the rest of the activities, or exploring different disciplines for which we are curious.
In the first case, focusing on one thing is the sure thing to master a skill. The 10000 hours mark is sometimes used to express how many hours it takes to master a skill. Working 35 hours for 48 weeks, it takes just under 6 years.
Dividing this by more than one discipline, it becomes clear that it will be hard to master any one skill during a lifetime.
On the other hand, life is about exploration, testing new things. Things that do not have anything to do with one another, but that may connect somehow.
Steve Jobs was famous for bringing the calligraphy course to the first Apple computers.
Other entrepreneurs mixed two different skills to create a business.
I tend to follow a middle line. The 80/20 of mastery, trying seriously to learn as much as possible, without ever achieving mastery, but decent enough.
Let’s see where all of that will bring us.
If you have followed me during this journey, I thank you for your support. I’ll appreciate your feedback very much: what you liked, what you’d like to hear me talk about, what could be better.
If you think one of your friend’s would like it, please do share that post.
Looking forward to the next chapter. See you around.
