I'm Stopping to Publish Daily

On January 9 I started writing an “atomic essay” every day. I was challenged by a group of peers in the Nevo Network to do this for 30 days straight (excluding Fri/Sat).

I planned ahead and made sure I had some topics to write about so I would spend time writing, not thinking. And that worked for the first week.

But as the second week started, I noticed that I had more trouble coming up with things to write about. I would find myself at midnight (guess what time I’m writing this) racking my brain or trying to find inspiration on Twitter for what to write about. I realized that I don’t have the credibility to write deeply on anything daily or the passion to write daily on an issue I’m devoted to solving.

It got to the point where I was writing about things that don’t need to be written about, things I don’t know about, don’t care about, or all of the above.

But the internet doesn’t need more of that.

I don’t think that by pushing through to the end of the 30-day challenge I will reach some sort of epiphany and suddenly be addicted to writing and have a “voice”. I’ll just have wasted time. My time is better spent trying to make my life more interesting. After all, the tweets, articles, and books we love the most are from people who did that first.

Another reason I’m stopping? I try to respect other people’s time. I hate the feeling of clicking on a headline only to find out the article was a total waste of time. I don’t want people to feel that about my writing.

I’m still going to set aside time to write - I enjoy the habit, but I won’t be publishing daily. I will give myself enough time to think and write clearly. If the original goal was 250 words a day, I will aim for 1000 words each week. But in one article, not five. And just like any product I launch, I want to be proud of every post I publish. So if I don’t feel like what I’ve written is at least good, I simply won’t publish it or I’ll work on it until it is worthy of your time.

See you in the next one.

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