I’m reflecting on 6 months(ish) of writing (not including the 3 months(ish) break in the middle).
It starts a bit more ‘personally reflective’ but ends up with actionable insights. The lessons are exciting/useful for others so I’m sharing them.
i.
I started writing because it’s a wise way to facilitate self-expression and the realisation of deeper thoughts.
It can help one understand the full extent of the ideas they are having. It forces me to spend time ironing out the reality of the quick burst of ideas and those giant gaps which my brain pretends aren’t there.
For the past two months, I’ve recorded most of these newsletters as a short episode for my podcast. I usually record it one or two weeks after the newsletter was released.
Nearly every time the process has led to me heavily revising the actual content and realising a deeper understanding of what I was trying to reach with my first attempt.
The act of having to speak it out loud helped me interpret what I was really trying to say. I often found more relevant examples or stories to tie the whole piece together in a better narrative.
Writing up the episode description and coming up with a title became a further step on top.
Example 1
My last instalment on treating your brain like a brain and levelling up its abilities by leaning into enjoyment rather than stress was okay. I didn’t feel that comfortable sending it because I hadn’t worked out how to reach the idea inside me I was trying to get at but I couldn’t work it out in writing.
Only with a few extra thought cycles in different environments did I work out that what I had written was a piece of advice on increasing your output, learning faster and avoiding burnout.
All things I kind of alluded to but hadn’t summarised that simply or necessarily stated.
Example 2
I had a similar process, a few weeks before on the idea that you aren’t the product of the 5 people you spend time with.
I made a much more emotional piece for the podcast. I told a story about my best friend who is nothing like me at all in terms of our work drive or many interests. Yet he really understands and helps me as a person.
The energy he gives me and assistance in relaxing and switching off makes it such an beneficial relationship. Following advice from achievement books and prioritising my network would leave little time for the relationships that genuinely improve my life. That would be dumb.
This story helped tie the whole piece together as a narrative which totally wasn’t in my first email.
Future inspiration
A different topic I alluded to quickly a month ago had a few replies which kind of highlighted that I hadn’t solved the problem I was trying to solve. This inspired pretty much an entirely different series that will be started probably sometime in September. It’s on the fact you are definitely wrong about more things than you even have the capacity to realise. I found some fun ways to find your blind spots. I’m a little excited about it.
ii.
I find the flexibility to just express myself on a newsletter very liberating where I can give the title the thing in my own mind. Recent titles:
These are the labels in my mind. They inspired the idea, as a reader you get to follow my line of thinking.
It allows me to do the first step in a series of thought cycles. I get something out there in a form hopefully worth reading. Polished enough to make a point but also in a slightly raw form.
I found trying to write for Medium with catchy headlines and optimised SEO too much of a task for me to want to take on all at once.
However, taking something I’ve already finished and applying another set of thought cycles for the podcast is works for me.
It is a manageable way to add a second layer of polish as to what the hell I’m actually saying. It’s almost therapeutic, I have some angst from putting something into the world I’m not truly happy with and get to go back and be like ‘hey it’s more understable if you think of it like this’.
iii.
A different article I’m working on is on is the topic of thought cycles and getting the best out of yourself.
Finding work that you naturally enjoy where perhaps you can’t stop yourself applying more brain power is an ideal place to be. My weakness was over-thinking. Re-applied in a different scenario, it’s my strength.
For me writing, podcasting and running around having adventures are more productive than being tied to a desk answering emails and taking zoom calls all day. I’m not blocked from doing the things I enjoy and my mind naturally does its thing. It allows me to be creative.
Ultimately, I am a maker and not a manager. A day applying thought to create new things feels intuitively productive inside me. Telling other people to do stuff or asking for things doesn’t seem to register, it stresses me out and doesn’t satiate the beast inside me that wants to get something done.
Still, I’m finding that even when you enjoy something, you reach a balance where you can’t naturally apply many more thought cycles. You can still get blocked.
It requires changing the environment or putting something out there and getting feedback.
iv.
They say to write a book your hardest task is to just write a first bad draft.
I assume once you have an editor talk to you about the whole thing and help you re-shape it then it becomes much easier to apply the second set of thought cycles and so on.
I’m starting to feel like the current series that I’ve been sending out (based loosely on getting stuff done and finding yourself ) could be tied together into a book after another 5 sets of thought cycles on each section.
(That would include finding some actual science behind everything I’m saying plus some relevant case studies that could be tied into more of a narrative thread.)
Apparently, it’s going alright.
Probably I won’t actually make it into a book. I feel if I keep writing I’ll get to deeper things genuinely worthy of a book.
The point is once you start the bigger things start feeling more in reach.
v.
I’ve concluded that approaching things head-on and repetitively trying to improve them gets boring. Diversity in approaches and smaller goals along the way is more digestible and motivating. This seems obvious now but first, you have to move forwards to be able to look backwards.
Let me say that again but differently.
Hindsight is powerful.
You need to have the foresight to do something before you have any hindsight.
A few weeks ago I spoke about the fact that your best ideas are just a stepping stone to reaching your un-met potential. Something so grand you can’t even imagine it.
It’s totally true.
(to reinforce the point this entire stepping stone concept only happened because I spent time writing. My initial idea was the “don’t finish what you start, start what you finish” title. It was only on the final Sunday re-edit just before publishing where I then had this idea)
If you can just throw things out there you can start to make sense of them as you make them and then in hindsight.
Making a few notes on your ideas every now and then and hoping for them to become a book won’t work. You have to spend enough time getting the ideas to the point of being useful to someone by putting them out there. Perhaps a little raw and unpolished but out there.
You can then start connecting the dots by looking backwards.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
~ Steve Jobs
Final story
If you’ve heard of Mr Beast, he started a YouTube when he was 13. When he was 17 his first viral video happened (he sat for 40 hours and counted to 100,000). At 23 he now has 100 million subscribers and has the 5th biggest YouTube channel on the planet.
He didn’t start with his best work. He has been refining his craft ever since he started. He quickly gets ideas out there. Over time he has built a framework for what works and then uses that to channel his creativity.
His most successful video was his real-life recreation of the Netflix TV show Squid games. A crazy idea with an epic budget and a huge risk of failure.
Currently, it’s had 285 million views.
13-year-old Jimmy could never have imagined it, let alone made it a reality.
It required him to just get the ideas he had out there and cast his stepping stones to move forwards. He built himself a platform for new ideas so grand that only someone with such a platform could do something like that.
With hindsight, it’s easy for us to look at Mr Beast and break down what he’s done.
He was the one with the foresight to just do something.
Ride that idea train of yours.
Don’t get off at the first stop.
You will never know where your ideas could take you.
I truly hope you get to find out.
Please let me know if this ‘reflective post’ was useful at all, or any of your own ideas 🙏
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