30 days of blogging
Starting today, I’m committing to publishing a blog post every day for 30 days. It’s a little experiment I’m taking action on based on my recent podcast inspirations to see what impact it has on my life.
I expect most of my posts will be far shorter than this one. I’m not sure how many people will read this or how I’ll feel about it at the end, but it’s been a personal thing I’ve wanted to try out for awhile now.
TL;DR
- Podcasts have got me thinking a lot, yet I rarely take the time to write those thoughts down
- I heard a specific podcast that told me to blog post every day
- I have a ton of notes on my phone and computer with little life tidbits (including a few titled ‘blog post ideas’)
- Existing social media outlets aren’t structured well to get those thoughts out in the world
- I’m into life experimentation (taking something to the extreme for a period and then adjusting afterwards) and this is another version of it
- I’ve done this in the past with diets, doing yoga for 30 days straight, not drinking for 30 days, focusing on mud runs for a year, living in another country, getting rid of social media (no longer have FB), currently focusing my energy on a startup, etc.
- I suck at writing, and I like overcoming fears and discomfort
- Posting these publicly forces me to complete my thoughts even when I don’t have all the information
- I hope the exercise will help create meaningful conversations between myself and others, or just between others without me
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I’ve been on a big podcast kick lately. I had been listening to a decent amount of podcasts before, but about a month and a half ago two people in my life got me going deep down the rabbit hole – Mel and Chengappa. I’ve listened to nearly 50 podcasts in the last 1.5 months now.
I met Mel at a spin class and she introduced me to Rich Roll, who quickly became one of my favorite podcasters. Rich Roll is one of the most acclaimed and listened to podcasters out there. His mission is to help inspire people to “Unlock Your Best Self”. He talks with amazing guests on all things fitness, nutrition, spirituality, self development, and more. He’s great. Mel also shared some good reccos of episodes on Tim Ferris and Joe Rogan’s podcasts. Our text conversations back and forth about the podcasts were novels. I love it when you meet a stranger who has an immediate positive impact on your life and becomes a friend.
At the same time, Chengappa and I, who have been on a constant journey of self development for years now, started a 7 day new podcast a day ‘challenge’ switching off on who finds the next one. Suffice to say, it’s lasted much more than 7 days. It has been a great way to stay close with Chingy who’s at business school in Berkely while I’m in LA, and more recently spending time in Boston. He also has introduced me to a great set of podcasts. I’ll save my full podcast list for another post since I have at least 29 more of these to go!
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. It was a recent podcast episode that Chengappa sent me which convinced me to start this: Seth Godin on Tim Ferris. Seth has written over 7,000 blog posts (!!) and is a serial entrepreneur. In the podcast Seth argues that everyone should blog using a public medium every single day. He believes that reading someone’s blog posts can make you feel immediately closer with that person, I agree.
“If you are in public making predictions and noticing things, your life gets better…are you able, every day, to say one thing that’s new that you’re willing to stand behind? I think that’s just a huge, wonderful practice”
Seth Godin
It wasn’t only this podcast that made me want to go along on this blogging journey, it’s really a culmination of many things: deep conversations I’ve had with amazing people, podcasts I’ve been inspired by, tons of notes I have written in my phone, and the fact that writing has always freaked me out (more on that in a bit). This podcast was just what pushed me over the edge – it caught me at the write time (pun was not intended, but I think I’ll keep it).
Now, I’m realistic – I’m not going to be able to commit to blogging every day for life, like Seth Godin. But what I can do is try out a little experiment for 30 days.
In the startup world we run experiments all the time to see what works and what doesn’t, then adjust the next iteration. It’s all about taking action though – careful planning is good to an extent, but taking action and iterating always leads to faster development. That’s why Mark Zuckerberg’s mantra has always been ‘Fail Fast’.
We should be doing the same types of experimentations in our personal life too. Ever go on whole 30 or any other diet? Try turning off social media for awhile? Start a new exercise routine? We all have different reasons for doing these things, but in the end there’s some goal of self improvement. In an optimal world, we recognize that these are experiments where we learn the positive and the negative outcomes of going to an extreme. Then afterwards, based on those findings, adjust life structures to find the best balance – adopt the positive aspects without sacrificing things we realize are important.
Take the example of deleting social media apps from your phone. Perhaps, like so many others, you are uncomfortable with the amount of time you spend on your phone and how every time there’s a little bit of downtime you start scrolling through your Instagram feed. So you decide to stop using social media for 30 days. Throughout that process you may realize you’re more in the moment, you take time to breath instead of just taking your phone out, and you were able to accomplish a task you’ve lacked to focus on. But you also realize you felt like you missed out on seeing aspects of other people’s lives, didn’t get invited to an event, and weren’t in the loop on an inside joke. (Or maybe you just started scrolling through the LinkedIn feed instead and realize that your phone truly does have ownership of you, ha).
At the end of the process you have a reflection period and decide that while you want to cut down on social media usage, you don’t want to completely remove it from your life. So then a better structure for balance in your life may be to only look at Instagram on the web, download it and delete it when you want to check it, or set app limits on the phone.
The point being, the whole process of experimentation and iteration leads to positive momentum in your life. Jack Dorsey is a great example of approaching life in this way. I highly recommend his interview on Rich Roll’s podcast – his habits are incredibly interesting and it’ll also change your perception of Twitter’s goals.
So I’m embracing the experimentation logic and going to force myself to sit down and write every day for 30 days. At the end, I’ll see how it worked, see how I feel, and adjust my cadence from there.
Finally, I don’t love writing – I honestly have an insecurity about it (I’m a numbers guy, c’mon!). However:
- Whenever I share my thoughts I feel better
- My favorite feeling is being on the other side of a barrier overcome (I’ll write more about this related to my exercise obsession)
I’ll have to overcome my insecurities with writing, the barriers of avoiding distractions while I write, publishing my feelings to the world, and being okay with imperfection (like not fully researching a topic I write about). While all of that makes me a bit scared, it makes me excited too.
So here I go! Happy reading.
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