Publishing for 90 days straight
my next endurance event
2 days before April dawned, I decided to publish something every day, for the next 90 days.
I’m 8 days in. You can see all the posts here. I have to write Day 9 after I send this out. It’s been exhilarating so far. Ask me again in 50 days time.
On top of that, I’m also reviving my social media presence to share these ideas further and wider. After I quit nearly all social media in 2021, I’m starting from scratch in many places. So please help a guy out and follow me on X, Bluesky (X’s sweet cousin) and Instagram.
I’m summarising the best of these daily writings each week in this newsletter. I thought this was kinder than showing up in your inbox every morning. That said, if you want to follow along each day, there is an RSS feed. I’ve not even set up an email list for the daily writings yet, but if you’re interested, then reply/comment and I’ll make it so.
On Day 1, I talked about starting this project:
So I’ll be publishing something every day this quarter. I feel inundated with ideas and I’ve had so many of them languish under writing roadmaps and prolonged editing. I also want to push the boundaries of “what I write about” to essentially include anything that goes into my daily notes in Obsidian. That feels terrifying right now, but I’m excited to push the boundaries.
I explored the strange origins of this desire to share, featuring an economist and a grief counsellor:
These words stirred something in me and I started journalling. I found it interesting to reframe what we deem unacceptable in ourselves as a kind of loss. What do I hide or feel is defective?
The next question was: how do I give these parts of me a voice?
My North Star in these daily writings is to follow what’s interesting to me, and I reflected on why what’s interesting is so interesting:
To follow what’s interesting is to trust your sense of salience. Salience is an exquisitely complex way of pulling meaning from the world. It’s fast, yet utterly personalised. A lot of it happens beneath your awareness. You don’t know all the inputs and you never will.
…
I think of it as building a philosophy from the bottom up. It stays open and panoramic in the short-term to create something bold and holistic in the long-term.
I’m sharing all of these writings on my personal website, which is nearly 20 years old! I explored why, but the long and short of it is: content ownership, SEO, algorithmic immunity & creative freedom.
In 80/20 writing, I hijacked an idea from running (going well, thanks) and applied it to writing:
80% of my writings will be frequent, lower intensity notes. These will be guided by my sense of salience, rather than any agenda. And I’m avoiding the grey zone of mid-length essays that take a lot of effort with little payoff.
The act of publishing every day is a potent cure for many things writers struggle with:
It starves perfectionism of its oxygen by continually shipping imperfect things. It also accelerates your thinking: things clarify rapidly when your finger is hovering over the publish button. That haggard paragraph that survived 3 drafts meets its end. The witty tangent that you couldn’t let go of seems like a painful distraction.
Repeating this process over and over again refines your thinking and improves your confidence.
I extended this to make the case that publishing every day is a full-body workout, ideal for writers, founders and freelancers. One daily routine that trains all of these skills at once:
Every day I have to:
Write, knowing something has to be online in the next hour
Delete, because there’s not enough time to fart around with every idea
Access the courage needed to continue to share, even when I think I’m a worthless slug
Refine my metaphors so that people “get” my ideas
Refine my structure so there’s some narrative flow
Give the piece a good title, so people are intrigued
Run through my publishing loop, from writing in Obsidian to migrating it into Hugo to viewing it on the Internet
Repurpose the content according to different social networks; emphasising productive takeaways in some places; personal reflections in others
Stay disciplined on social networks, so I can do this all without developing intense misanthropy
Engage with people who are interested in my ideas, understanding what calls to them and what they want more of
Overall, I’m proud of the quality of writing so far. It’s a lot of work, but I refine the process each day. The rate of learning is high and is its own form of motivation. Getting to share something I thought about yesterday, 12 hours later, is a wonderful feeling.
See you next week.
p.s. I still have one coaching slot available for April. If you’re hovering in a twilight zone and want to take the next leap forward in work, let’s talk!