2. It’s important to schedule time to focus on the goal. Like many people, much of my week is consumed by work, errands, meals, sleep, and exercise. There’s not a ton of “free time” floating around all week – I wish there was. Blogging doesn’t just happen on it’s own, I have to actually carve out time from my schedule to write. If I’m lazy, nothing gets done by magic. Sometimes I have to choose between sleeping and blogging.
3. You need to show up. This is more important than actually scheduling time, this is when I actually show up at my computer, sit down, and write. I have to commit to writing, but then I have to show up AND write AND hit publish. It’s not real until I hit publish.
4. It’s good to let other people’s success inspire you. Letting others inspire you is the opposite reaction of envy. Envy = bad. Inspiration = good. There are SO MANY great writers out there writing. Every day I stumble across another good blog (and dozens of not-so-good ones). So I have a choice – I can tell myself that everyone else is already writing good stuff, or I can get energized by the opportunity to share my own writing with the world. And I have learned so much lately by reading other people. But my reaction to the success of others is a choice.
5. You have to start something to figure out what you need to learn. You really can’t predict what you need to learn, because before you’ve started, you don’t know what you don’t know. After you’ve started doing something, then you know what you don’t know, and then you have to go make yourself better at it. Before I started blogging, I didn’t realize there was an skillset around good post titles. But in fact, some people are better at writing titles than other people. That’s something I’m trying to learn.
6. You have to start something to get feedback from other people. People can’t help you until you’ve actually put something out there in the world.
7. You have to start doing something in order to figure out the difference between good quality and bad quality. For me, I had to do a couple months of writing before I could figure out which blog articles really got me energized and which ones felt flat. Some blog ideas really turned into great articles, and others just never got off the ground. But the more I write, the better I can distinguish the differences between good posts and less good posts.
8. By practicing something, you get data about what’s working. And what’s not working. By data, I mean real information that is useful feedback. For me, I can track how many people are reading my blog, on which days of the week. If I want to get really detailed, I could experiment with publishing at different times of day, with different length posts. But I couldn’t get data until after I started publishing.
9. The more I write, the more I want to write. And the more writing ideas I find every day. I’ve taken to carrying around a leather journal that Mad Dog gave me and I have literally been writing down writing ideas every day. It’s true that the more attention you give to something, the more that part of your life expands. The more I write, the more writing ideas come to me, because I’m paying better attention to everything. These days, everything can be a potential writing idea.
10. The more I write, the more credibility I gain. Now I’m walking my talk, and I’m starting to establish a track record as a blogger. Until I started blogging, I was just someone who talked about writing. Now I’m writing. And that feels good.
Writing this post reminds me of the wonderful verse by the poet Antonio Machado:
“The wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.”
Whatever you want to do in the world, whatever you want to accomplish, or whoever you want to be, you need to start. Start now. Do something, anything, to get you started towards your goals. I guarantee that siting here right now reading this, you don’t yet know what you don’t know, you don’t yet know what you need to learn, you don’t yet know where you will struggle or where you will succeed. But you can’t know any of those things until you start.
Start now.
4. It’s good to let other people’s success inspire you. Letting others inspire you is the opposite reaction of envy. Envy = bad. Inspiration = good. There are SO MANY great writers out there writing. Every day I stumble across another good blog (and dozens of not-so-good ones). So I have a choice – I can tell myself that everyone else is already writing good stuff, or I can get energized by the opportunity to share my own writing with the world. And I have learned so much lately by reading other people. But my reaction to the success of others is a choice.
5. You have to start something to figure out what you need to learn. You really can’t predict what you need to learn, because before you’ve started, you don’t know what you don’t know. After you’ve started doing something, then you know what you don’t know, and then you have to go make yourself better at it. Before I started blogging, I didn’t realize there was an skillset around good post titles. But in fact, some people are better at writing titles than other people. That’s something I’m trying to learn.
6. You have to start something to get feedback from other people. People can’t help you until you’ve actually put something out there in the world.
7. You have to start doing something in order to figure out the difference between good quality and bad quality. For me, I had to do a couple months of writing before I could figure out which blog articles really got me energized and which ones felt flat. Some blog ideas really turned into great articles, and others just never got off the ground. But the more I write, the better I can distinguish the differences between good posts and less good posts.
8. By practicing something, you get data about what’s working. And what’s not working. By data, I mean real information that is useful feedback. For me, I can track how many people are reading my blog, on which days of the week. If I want to get really detailed, I could experiment with publishing at different times of day, with different length posts. But I couldn’t get data until after I started publishing.
9. The more I write, the more I want to write. And the more writing ideas I find every day. I’ve taken to carrying around a leather journal that Mad Dog gave me and I have literally been writing down writing ideas every day. It’s true that the more attention you give to something, the more that part of your life expands. The more I write, the more writing ideas come to me, because I’m paying better attention to everything. These days, everything can be a potential writing idea.
10. The more I write, the more credibility I gain. Now I’m walking my talk, and I’m starting to establish a track record as a blogger. Until I started blogging, I was just someone who talked about writing. Now I’m writing. And that feels good.
Writing this post reminds me of the wonderful verse by the poet Antonio Machado:
“The wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.”
Whatever you want to do in the world, whatever you want to accomplish, or whoever you want to be, you need to start. Start now. Do something, anything, to get you started towards your goals. I guarantee that siting here right now reading this, you don’t yet know what you don’t know, you don’t yet know what you need to learn, you don’t yet know where you will struggle or where you will succeed. But you can’t know any of those things until you start.
Start now.
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