(Last Updated on Apr 6, 2024)

This is part two of my story on “How I Overcame the Resistance to Writing”. If you directly landed here, you might need some more context – go check out Part 1 here. 

Done with Part 1? Let’s move on and see what was the thing that made me overcome the resistance to write.

I spoke earlier about arriving at an “identity” which is reinforced by the habits we inculcate. When I did this exercise, I was a bit too ambitious and took up way more than I could handle. Each habit was given a 2-min version which had to be done everyday that was eventually meant to make it a regular habit.

While I could not really follow through with the plan, just having the whole thing written and detailed in that manner helped. Over time, I got more and more comfortable with various aspects of the habits and started fitting into the identity. Bottomline: be clear in your head and internalise why you are doing what you’re doing so that you don’t come up with excuses for not doing it.

You would have read this line many times on the internet – do things for yourself and not for others – that is the key to being fulfilled. Sounds nice, right? But super tough to execute – how can you do things again and again if there is no external validation? Well, that’s where the identity part comes into play once again. If you have clearly decided that you are going to write for 20 mins every day or every week and ship your output, then you don’t need to worry about anything else. Unless of course, you are doing it as a source of earning – which will completely change the game. My objective was definitely not to make money out of writing, but to keep the habit alive.

I’ll also use this opportunity to address some of the main questions that kept annoying me whenever I sat down to write.

Q: If there weren’t enough people reading what I was writing, then what was the point? Who was I writing for?
A: This can be answered only with some other questions. What exactly is “enough people”? Is it 5? 10? 100? 1000? Why do you want to reach so many people? If I can’t really control who reads my blogs, the only thing I can control is that I keep writing consistently and improve my skill. Each of my blogs gets around 100 views – I feel that is massive external validation. What would be my cutoff? Probably 5-6 – basically my family! 

Q: Long form writing is dead. No one has time to read an article for 7-8 minutes at a stretch.
A: I used to think this very strongly and it is true. But what changed my mind is Youtube. There are plenty of popular Youtubers out there whose videos are, on average, 20-30 minutes long. That is not short-form content by any means. What makes it work is that the content is engaging and even though you may know the end, you still want to stay to experience the journey. While I’m not sure of similar examples for blogs, I believe there is a space for articles which may take up to 10 minutes to go through.

Q: Should I adapt to the social media format and write tiny bits?
A: Again, the answer comes from Youtube. Creators who were good at long form content tried their hand at Shorts and many failed. There is also the thing of whether you enjoy making those bite-sized reel-like content and does it do justice to what you are trying to create. If the answer is yes, then go ahead by all means. For me, the whole “posting on social media” was a huge overhead. That’s the main reason why our Instagram handle didn’t really pick up even though we had some good content – we weren’t consistent enough, we weren’t putting enough reels and we were not piggybacking the trends.

Q: If there was no “success” at the end of the road, then what was the point of all this?
A: Once again, how do you define success? Is it the readership numbers? Is it money? Is it a book that is published? Or is it consistency? Define that and work towards it.

Having reached these answers over two long years of rumination and deliberation, I finally felt like I wanted to write just for the sake of it. Seth Godin talks about the “lizard brain” in his book “Linchpin”, which puts up the resistance – I felt like I was winning my war over the lizard.

I decided to document my Uzbekistan trip and keep shipping blogs till I completed that trip. I really enjoyed the process. I continued the momentum and completed my blogs of Kazakhstan, Turkey and Prague.

Some blogs did well in terms of views, others were quite average. I noticed how dramatic headlines got more people to click – which shows the nature of social media. I felt perfectly happy not having to manufacture drama and “clickbaity” titles for my blogs.

I learnt some new things along the way – for example, featured thumbnail pics. I brought my Photoshop skills to use and designed a template for each blog’s featured pic. That was a lot of fun!

Now, I look forward to my writing slot every week – usually early in the morning on a Tuesday or Thursday (days when I don’t have to waste time commuting to the office). I feel like I am “creating” – something that I can look back one day and be happy about. 

Here are some other models that have shaped the way I go about my writing:

• Eating the frog – a productivity technique quoted by Mark Twain, it basically says that one should identify a challenging task and do it first thing in the morning. Some advantages – your mind is fresh in the morning and you get the dopamine boost to stay more motivated during the day. I have my own little twist to this – while I do the challenging task in the morning, I simplify it by rushing through the outline of the blog as bullet points. So, the actual mental workload is concentrated to 10-15 mins. The remaining time is used to flesh it out.
• Parkinson’s Law – it is the concept that work expands to fill the time given to complete it. The further away your deadline, the slower you will move. The solution? Keep short deadlines and focus on putting the best possible output within that time. The objective is not perfection, it is to complete the task.
• Always keep shipping – a concept I picked up from the book “Linchpin“, you will only learn and make progress if you keep “shipping” your products. This is somewhat related to the earlier concept where you focus more on meet your timelines rather than keep chiseling away till you get to the perfect product. You can always put out a minimum viable product (MVP as they say) and keep upgrading it as you go along.

I don’t have any goals for how many subscribers I should have etc. All I am wishing for is that I keep putting out as many blogs as possible and share my ideas with the world – hopefully inspiring some of you to travel, explore the world and bring out the best in you.

In any case, some external validation does not hurt – hit that subscribe button before you go – it’s free! And do leave a comment, I love reading them!