What Not to Think About While Writing a Blog Post

Writing is not easy. It is a mental challenge to organize your thoughts in a manner that other people will understand. It is also anxiety-inducing–you are taking an action that other people will eventually judge.

What makes writing hard is not the energy needed, like the physical challenge of going to the gym, but the many mental tricks and traps that can guide you away from your original purpose.

To write a good blog post, you need to keep your mind clear and focused, but there will always be tempting thoughts you could follow. If you chose to follow them, guilt and resentment will slowly build up and make it increasingly more difficult to finish your post.

To write consistently without destroying yourself, you need to be on guard for unproductive patterns of thoughts. For me, the four thoughts that most regularly attack my focus are:

1. Other tasks on my to-do list (what I want to do when I’m done) – I usually write at the end of the day before going to bed, so I often start thinking about how much I want to go to sleep instead of focusing on writing out an idea. This wastes time and the allure of sleep gets larger and larger as time goes on, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. I stop thinking about writing to think about something I wanted to do earlier or want to do after and wish that I was already done writing. This makes it harder to muster the energy to finish (or start) the post.
2. How long or short you want the post to be – Thinking about the details of the final post takes you off track from exploring the idea. Especially when you are trying to decide on an idea to blog about, if you have an ideal length in mind (like I want to write a quick, short post) it will lead you away from actually writing. You will waste more time trying to come up with an idea than it would have taken to write out the bigger idea you had at first.
3. How good or bad the blog post is – While you write you should focus on the next thought you are trying to get out. Don’t think about the last one. When you start writing it should be to get the raw material down on paper. Like creating a block of marble that you will later carve down into a statue. Editing is for once you’ve written out the idea, not while you are writing.
4. What other people will think – You should write what is true and decide afterward if it is something you want to put out in the world. Letting other people into your mind is the same as editing while you write, only you are letting others edit.