Happy Wednesday! I went for a walk here in NYC just before dawn today and it was so revitalizing. The weather is getting nicer, the city I love is continuing to show its resilience in the face of the pandemic, and the hope of spring is in the air. The walk was exactly what I needed. Of course, I did see a group of cops and EMTs collect a fully naked dude and put him in an ambulance while he cursed and wagged his dick at them, but that’s just NYC for you 🤷♂️
One of the pieces of feedback I’ve gotten from the few people to whom I’ve mentioned this newsletter is that a daily posting schedule is “aggressive”. That’s a kinder way of saying “unsustainable”, or even “crazy”.
(Pedantic aside: when I say “daily”, I mean every weekday. Ain’t nobody got time for all my habits seven days a week.)
They’re not wrong. But I’ve gone through several periods of publishing daily in the past, and I’ve found a few tricks that help:
Publish the right things. Most of what I’m writing doesn’t require a lot of prep time. I’m not doing interviews or heavy research, it’s mostly just sharing things I’ve learned or found useful.
Record your post ideas. I use Evernote and each post idea gets its own note where I jot down everything I can think of that will help me write the post later. I’ve added 40 notes in the last 19 days.
One idea per post. I’m still working on this one. Most things I write about could be an entire book on their own. It can be tough to find reasonable boundaries of a singular idea to make it both short and complete, but that’s the goal.
Write early. I write early in the morning, when I’m freshest. It’s an amazing feeling to publish something awesome by 9a. I feel like I could do literally nothing else and that day was still productive.
Reduce friction. I’m writing these posts directly into Substack. No copy-pasting, no formatting issues, no keeping track of what has been published and what hasn’t. Just write, edit, and hit publish. This also means that when I open the “New Post” editor here, my brain immediately jumps into “write and publish” mode.
Listen to one thing on repeat. I know it sounds crazy, but this is some kind of weird superhack for me and many other writers (h/t Ryan Holiday). You can use a single song, a single album, a movie, whatever. I’ve been using the same song for years (no, I won’t tell you what it is) and I’ve racked up hundreds of plays, maybe even thousands.
Write to someone specific. My favorite writing hack to get unstuck is to write to a specific person. Think of one person who needs what you’re trying to write, and then write “Dear {Name}” at the top. Tell them what they need to hear.
Keep it short. Typically, my daily posts have fallen in the 500-1000 word range. I think that’s still probably too long (more later).
Write fast. Write hard and fast straight through, without stopping to re-read or edit. It’ll be terrible (at first), but that’s OK. Just get it down and then revise.
Be gracious with yourself. Accept that every post won’t be perfect, but that’s OK. You’ll get better with practice.
All that, and yet…
In spite of all the tricks above, publishing daily ultimately hasn’t stuck for me. I think the longest stretch was about six months, and there were some stressful days in there, as well as some posts that simply weren’t up to par that I published anyway to keep the streak going.
So why do this again? Aren’t I just setting myself up for failure?
Perhaps, but before we jump to that, it might be worth asking why it never seems to stick, and whether we can tweak something to fix that.
And in keeping with the spirit of “one idea per post”, I’ll tackle that tomorrow!
Much love,
Ryan