Nov 16, 2020

Just start

This past summer, I experimented with starting a blog. My goal was to write one piece per week for 12 weeks. What I ended up with is half that output and a decision that blogging often wasn’t for me. I am now deciding to blog daily. So what gives?

I’m currently reading The Practice by Seth Godin—a book about shipping creative work. Section 28 titled “Toward a Daily Practice in Service of Your Identity” has this paragraph that has inspired me:

Blog every day. It’s easy, it’s free, and it establishes your identity long before the market cares about who you are and what you do.

So that’s what I’m doing. Some days the work will suck. But that’s the point of the practice. You don’t wait for inspiration, you commit to it daily no matter what. You do the work and you ship it.

But if I found it impossible to commit before, how am I going to commit now? Easy, I need constraints. Here are my constraints to make blogging daily possible:

1. I only have 30 minutes to publish: 10 minutes to think, 10 minutes to write, 10 minutes to edit
2. Text only, no GIFs or images

These constraints will save me from perfectionism and make it possible to commit. See you tomorrow.

- East Northport, NY