It’s A Wrap

What I learned from writing a post on Medium every day

You’re thinking — like for how long bro? One year?

No only one month I’m afraid.

I tell you, at times I was waiting for words to come that didn’t and in others, words flowed so freely I couldn’t type fast enough. Here’s what I learned in over the thirty days of June:

01.

Constraints of any kind work wonders but when you want to get on with your day and take a hit-publish-mindset each day it feels different. That’s code-speak for you to start to give fewer shits about a lot of things.

02.

Time was by far a better strategy than words. When training for marathons they often say switch up the miles you’re trying to hit and just run for a given period of time — say 2 hours. I gave myself max an hour to write an article whether it was 30 words or 3000. Worked wonders.

03.

I repeat myself. A lot. Remember in high school when you would try and say the say things in a lot of different ways on an essay. And the word ‘redundant’ would be written in red. Oh, maybe that was just me? Well, I still have to make an effort to be less redundant many many years on.

04.

Finding images is not only easy — it’s fun.

05.

Going on a long bike ride before writing was one of the best ways to get the mojo going.

And with that, I’ll leave it with a top 3 of the articles that felt the best to write (creatively for me) and those that performed best (as evaluated by the number of claps )

Most Fun to Write:

Balm for the Soul
I’m not Languishing
Digital Sabbath My Ass

Most Claps:

10 Books that Change My Life
Mondays and Fridays
Desperate Times Call for Fluid Measures

Folks also like this one but it was adapted from something I had already written so…kind of doesn’t count. What I’ve come to after this exercise is that what I find most rewarding creatively is separated from analyzing. To keep with this intention I am going to write every day in July but spare you the anguish of my half-cooked articles. Instead, I’ll try pen and paper, long-form emails, letters, and yes — Medium drafts.

Before I started this exercise I had so many drafts it made me cringe. I’m down to 175 and feeling pretty good about it.

And now that’s officially a wrap.

Thanks to anyone who read, clapped, or shared. I wholeheartedly appreciate it. We also wrapped the SHAPE of WORK program —join our next cohort here.