On November 8th, 2017 I started writing daily blog posts. I took three days off publishing for a hiking trip in July, but other than that I’ve posted a blog post every day, which makes today day 365.
Writing daily was not an audience building strategy for me or a way for me to come up with content, it was a selfish challenge. I, of course, hope that people read what I write and get something out of it, but the reason I did it was completely focused on me.
It was a way to test my discipline, commit to thinking, and practice writing. It was a way for me to think through ideas and document the things I was working on. It was a way to process my experiences into lessons I could use in the future.
As far as that goal, writing for a year has been a big success. I fought with a lot of resistance and came out on top 365 days in a row.
Here are the lessons I’ve learned from a year of blogging:
A year goes by quickly
I’ve done a 30 day and a 90-day blogging challenge before, and both felt like challenges. Doing something for a year is a long enough time frame that you don’t think about the end often. Writing daily just became a given. A daily habit; not part of some specific challenge.
Momentum matters
When you get to day 300 of a year-long project, no matter how much you feel like stopping, there is an incredible weight of momentum to it. There were two times when I went to bed without blogging. Both times I remembered, got up and blogged. There were a ton of nights where it was late and I just wanted to sleep. If I didn’t have a daily commitment I wouldn’t have written anything on any of those nights. I don’t think writing blog posts at 11 pm is a good strategy for producing high-quality writing (or for mental health in general), but this project was less about writing and more about discipline.
Ideas are as important as writing
Coming up with ideas to write about is a big part of the challenge of daily blogging. Over the last year I went through a number of weeks-long stretches where I had all sorts of ideas, then I would hit a rut and go through weeks feeling like I had nothing insightful to write about. What is funny is that many of the less insightful or inspiring posts from my perspective were ones that ended up getting republished elsewhere and connecting most with others. Having to write something daily is a great incentive to come up with novel ideas and the best thing I’ve found for coming up with ideas is drinking coffee and going for a walk. Stockpiling ideas on the weekend and them writing them out on weekday evenings was a lifesaver over the past year.
So what now?
I’m going to stop writing daily for a couple weeks, see how I feel, and decide on a new personal challenge for myself. I feel excited about the idea of creating some longer form posts that go deeper, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I decide to start writing daily blog posts again.
If you want to check out some posts from the past years are my five most viewed blog posts:
- Amazonlandia
- Stuck on Your Hero’s Journey
- My Favorite Evil Corporations
- 4 Lessons From 4 Yeas of Podcasting
- Why Businesses Hire
And here are a few of my personal favorites:
Why Humanities Degrees Are More Valuable Than Business Degrees
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