My First 30 Days on Medium
One month ago I set out to build a new habit into my daily schedule. It goes something like this:
Write at least 300 words or publish at least one article every day.
I’ve tried and failed with this sort of goal a few times. In January 2016 I quit my real job to be a freelancer. And one goal that came with that transition was to publish two articles a week during two three-hour writing sessions.
That habit quickly died as I won a few more jobs than expected.
This time I feel like I know more. I figured I could make a few adjustments to my daily process and make this habit stick this time. Because:
- Goals tied to time are difficult to make last. A three-hour writing session twice a week was a great idea in theory, but it fell apart and soon as I had people bugging me all day every weekday. This time the goal is about the content (a reasonable amount of content) and the actions, not the time spent at the task.
- It’s easier for me to get things done early in the morning. I’m usually up somewhere between 5:00–6:00 and until my wife gets up around 7:30, it’s quiet. No emails, texts, or Slack messages. No distractions in the house. I had been using this time to perform my least pleasant tasks, but this time I’m taking a new route. This quiet part of the day is where I’m sticking my new writing habit. Before I can even think about work and what’s going to stress me out later, I have Medium pulled up and my head is roaring, digging to put out the next article.
The habit I began earlier this year was in a space called The Polymath Lab (which will be a dead link eventually). This lasted for a few months and I had a body of work of which I was pleased.
I had used my own space because I’m stubborn. I didn’t like WordPress, I didn’t know about Medium, and I know how to build blog sites. So I built my own. And I shared every published article to Twitter and Facebook.
By the end of March I had written everything I would for The Polymath Lab. And the numbers that month were about 350 pageviews. I honestly was happy with that. I knew it would increase as I continued to write more. But the habit broke and it only went downhill from there.
I’m forming this new habit in Medium’s space instead of my own. After the first two weeks, I was doing better than I was at The Polymath Lab. But I wasn’t sure how that would pan out.
Now that I’m at the end of my first month, I can tell you the transition to Medium was the right move. In my first 30 days I have received 743 views. Now, look, I know that’s basically a normal day for established writers, but I’m not one of those people (yet). I’m only just getting (re)started.
The point is that by adjusting my habit and switching to this more social platform, I tripled my readership in my first month on Medium. (350 pageviews was really more like 250 when you remove home, search, and about pages from The Polymath Lab’s analytics).
I made a good choice to use this platform, and I’m interested to see where my numbers go from here.
Thank you for being one of my early readers!
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