I have been struggling to write regularly for quite some time. I wanted to write more, publish blog posts and I’m even dreaming of writing a book in the future.
As usual I am procrastinating this activity a big time. Until today. I finally feel confident in my ability to write, to write several times a week and to stick with it for some time.
I have the feeling that I recognize myself. I have been there before. It is a feeling where all the conditions are met and you are ready. I had that feeling when I started running almost every day. And it worked, I still run several times a week ten years later.
There have been a number of reasons for me to write periodically for me. But looking at my website I struggle: 10 posts in 4 years. Better than nothing, maybe.
So, the reasons:
- writing forces you to shape your ideas
- publishing ideas makes it easy to share them
- publishing ideas makes it easy to archive them
- others can see what you know
- writing itself puts you in a great state of flow
There could be more reasons but this is enough. Each item on this list is great in itself.
Why am I confident now?
Now what are the conditions? Why do I feel confident, that I will be able to write consistently?
- I have a stable work schedule, and especially being able to start with my day early in the morning, which is a great time to write.
- I have a lot of ideas. Every week I tell myself to write about something.
- I have some confidence that it will be worth it. This is a classic problem—everything has already been written on the internet—so why should I bother.
- I have a publishing workflow. Write markdown, commit and push. Easy, isn’t it? My favourite editor for writing at the moment is Obsidian with vim keybindings. I like the semi-wysiwyg way of writing markdown. I also already write markdown notes several times a week.
- I believe I know enough English to express the ideas I have in mind.
Only time will tell if I will be successful. But I already have a few people to thank:
About the importance of blogging and owning your content I have learned from Scott Hanselman.
From Swyx I have learned about learning in public and being curious about various web technologies.
I have studied some ways of writing in a more aproachable way, e.g. on writy.io by Maedah Batool.
And most recently I have read a great article about writing from a leading Czech frontend engineer Martin Michálek on https://www.vzhurudolu.cz/prirucka/psani.