Writing in 2017
Learnings from a year of writing and 27 published pieces
Reflecting on my first concrete New Year’s Resolution was simultaneously illuminating and convicting. Earlier this year, I made a commitment to write once every two weeks in light of quite a few conflating changes: (1) moving to a new city, (2) starting a new job, and (3) and beginning a new chapter of post-grad life.
We’re closing out on the rest of 2017, so how’d it go?
Wins and Learnings:
On average, I posted every 14 days with a final count of 27 pieces. But there’s a strong asterisk given how I front-loaded the majority of my writing in the beginning of the year. Admittedly, the last few months have been particularly spotty. Here’s how the numbers stacked up:
Taking a more qualitative look at what I’ve learned since my original call to action,
Along the way, I hope to flesh out my personal perspective and voice on matters at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and product along with my musings on faith, purpose, and life/world events.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how writing has stretched me beyond each of those specific topics. It’s become a wonderful creative outlet, an open space for existential questions, and a thoughtful catalyst for much more intentional connections.
It also spawned a wonderful writing project with the inimitable Emma Townley-Smith and a real-life social experiment: local peer-learning community for fellow product managers in our respective cities of SF and Boston.
Reflection <> Expression
When I first started blogging on Ghost in 2015, I was riding a wave of writing momentum from GRE essays and a desire to open-source my class notes as a notetaker for a few courses. Earlier this year, I had a more focused and renewed commitment for switching over to Medium:
I hope that writing in a more public manner will cause me to be more accountable to my writing goals and shift my writing style to be less reflective and more expressive.
Most of my writing pre-2017 were introspective snapshots at different transition points, mainly for safekeeping and reflection. This year, I set out to establish a more expressive model of writing to hone how to package past experiences and a POV in interactions with others. Along the way, I’ve discovered more of a gradient in the reflection <> expression equilibrium. In particular, I’ve come across two particular sweet spots in (1) articulating personal reflections into practical revelations and (2) constructing an actionable POV inspired by a personal topic or recent experience.
Data + Observations
Of course, one of the most concrete things Medium gave me were tools to more concretely measure reader engagement.
- Most Read: By a wide margin, my personal/practical revelation on connecting with others had almost twice the amount of reads as the next top reads on medical school and a co-authored piece (with Alex!) on Slack and Long-Distance Relationships. I suspect some sort of change in the Medium recommendation model (since my piece on connections was posted shortly after Medium’s transition to claps) might have played a factor…but can’t point to any particularly salient reason.
- Read-to-View Ratio: Unsurprisingly, my shortest piece Why PatientPing also had the highest read-through rate (82%). Most pieces were in the 60–70% range with the exception of my most well-read piece — a (29%) outlier that may be linked to an unexpectedly high rate of email/IM/direct link referrals (probably a mailing list vs. a bunch of people DM-ing the link)
- Healthcare vs. Product: In general, my pieces on healthcare have significantly lower readership, though similar read ratios (~50–60%), when compared to more product-oriented pieces. Given that my work and professional network skews towards folks at the intersection of both healthcare and product, it’s not terribly surprising to see that the two pieces in that space are also in the top 5 most read pieces of this year.
- Shortest drafting time: Medium doesn’t directly measure this, but one of the pieces that essentially wrote itself (under 2 hours vs. the average 5–6 hours I usually take) was a post on the personalization of content. It was a continuation of a real-life conversation and I remember a number of thought-provoking sound-bytes from that chat which helped lay the seeds for a pretty quick draft.
The Highlight Reel
Some of my favorite pieces from this year (in no particular order) were:
- Is Personalized Content Good or Bad for Society? This was inspired by a real-life conversation, and I want to make a more earnest attempt to capture and continue some of thought-provoking chats like these.
- Why Product in Healthcare? This has become more or less a guidepost that helps remind me why I do what I do. Though its unclear if this is the sort of work I will continue to do over the long arc of one’s career, it’s become a formidable anchor during my first year out of school and has laid the foundation for even more learnings about this space.
- Faith + Entrepreneurship: This was another piece sparked by real-life conversation and though it’s not my first faith-based piece, it’s the one piece that I share whenever conversations in the context of work-view and my Christian worldview come up. I’m looking forward to seeing a newly-edited version of the piece next month in Vox Clara.
- The Jordan Year: Written shortly after turning 23, this was a cathartic and convicting piece that helped me pinpoint some of my largest misconceptions and gaps about joining the professional workforce. Admittedly, I continue to wrestle some of the topics I identified in this post but realization of these tensions has helped me come a long way since writing that piece.
Looking to Next Year
This year, writing started as more of an experimental exploration than an intentional investment. As I look to next year, I can’t imagine another more inspiring way to build conviction and clarity. However, I’m not sure if Medium is the right place for all of the writing I want to do. I want to invest more time next year to process internal questions of vocation, calling, and identity, but look forward to sharing more as my thoughts and learnings crystallize.
I believe writing is one of the most powerful tools we have to articulate meaning, purpose, and curiosity. We humans write not just to communicate but to connect with each another.
So however you happened on this post, thank you for reading and for sharing this connection with me. Wishing you the very best and a Happy New Year.
