Lessons Learned After 100 Medium Posts
The Forrest Four-Cast: December 2, 2016
Earlier this summer, a Tim Ferriss podcast with Seth Godin inspired me to start writing more. Specifically, this comment from Godin sparked the call to be more creative: “Everyone should blog every single day. If you are in public making predictions and noticing things, your life gets much better [by doing this].”
The project launched on Wednesday, August 17. I’ve tried to write four paragraphs every day since then. I’ve missed a few days since then, but mainly kept to the routine. In fact, Friday, December 2 marks my 100th total post.
To the prediction from the podcast, is my life better as a result of this routine? In a lot of ways, yes. I like the increased daily structure that this project has encouraged me to embrace. Moreover, the structure of writing has led to a more organized approach to other aspects of my life — which I think has led to more productivity.
I also get a kick out of tracking page views, page reads and page recommends. Brainstorming new strategies to try to build these numbers plays to my competitive nature.
What still surprises me is the indirect relationship between writing time and what resonates most with readers. For instance, I spent a considerable amount of time writing about how SXSW 2017 will cover cars of the future — but this column didn’t get too much traction. By comparison, the most popular thing I’ve written in the three months on this site covered the role of events like SXSW during the Trump presidency. Writing this particular essay didn’t take more than 20 minutes, but the urgency of the subject matter was compelling. The takeaway here is that passion and personal reflection creates much more value than objective analysis.
This writing project has also led me to explore Medium much more fully than I ever had before. The more explore, the more I am inspired by the awesome creativity of this community. I still have a long long way to go before I reach the impressive benchmarks a lot of other writers have set on this site — but inch by inch, I’m getting there.
As always, the journey itself is more important than the end destination. As the stretch run in planning for SXSW 2017 gets busier, finding bandwidth to produce this column will likely become more difficult. But, all challenges are good challenges — and I’m excited for what I will learn about myself over the next 100 posts.
