How To Start: Writing as a Designer
A month ago, I tackled one of my main fear. Create and share things from my head. 15k words later, still fighting, but I have the keys now.

It has been years I’ve pointed this, but still in the incapacity to deal with. But trust me, I’ve tried.
Anxiety was at its peak level since I consume a lot of content from smart people and feel dumb.
Even, I’ve experienced success from a piece of content: a “Must read articles” medium post help me gain thousands of awesome people on my community, even landing a dream first job. So I know deep inside that I need to double down on it.
This is resistance in full effect.
Then I remembered when I’d encountered resistance in my past, overcome it, and had success. Boom: Weight-lifting.
The analogy between writing and training was so clear. To meet my goals and have results, I need a brain-dead plan to follow, the right tools, and forming a habit around it.
I’ve created an excuse to write: creating a course on what I know best, Starbucks was my gym, a keyboard my dumbbell, and I can’t skip a writing day.
Resistance is still there. But now I’m fighting, with the correct weapons.
Want to know more about them to start your inner battle, too?
Find a system
To be able to write that many words, I needed to lower the barrier to entry: what I’ve done every day for years seems easy.
In my case, in designing AI-assistants.
And I needed to be in autopilot mode if I need to research too much or brainstorm about a post idea: welcome back resistance and game over.
My system was to create a course to document everything I know about this particular subject. And I encourage you to do it too. It’s easier than you think.
After putting down a rough outline, I’ve started my “tour de chauffe.” A warm-up if you prefer. Like in every workout routine. For me, it was a long-form article for each part of my course, 7 to be exact. Each piece is here to promote the course and help me to get my thoughts right.
Then, I’ve started to write my course script.
Don’t go to a gym without a plan. Since lifting weights are counter-intuitive, you don’t want to allocate cognitive charge when you’re in a gym; your brain needs to execute without questioning but focus your effort and its execution.
Every gym beginner is searching on the internet for the best workout plan before hitting the gym. Don’t expect to have resulted in writing if you don’t find yourself a plan.
The lousy news is there’s no killer plan to have a writing “6-pack”, but the good news is that you have the perfect idea in your head, you just have to dig it.
Ask yourself: on what subject in have almost-unlimited things to say at this moment? Can you write 100 things now on that subject?
And then plan a sprint: a logical sequence of writings pieces that will build momentum. It can be a sequence of blog posts, a course, a series of podcasts scripts, daily journaling.
Remember, if you can’t find three things to say about something, you’re not experienced enough. Lower your ambition.
Find a platform, a medium.
When I think of the operational part of writing, I was overthinking. Ok, like every aspect of my life, to be honest.
Where to publish? Do I need my .com? on which device? In which language? How to illustrate them? What about research? Spell-checking? And other +200 questions to answers.
To them, I’ve repeated a dozen times: what’s the simplest way to do it?
Written form, in English, on Medium, on my iPhone with a keyboard that I can have every-time on my bag. No excuse.
Limiting yourself to the strict minimum allows you to give you room for self-gratification when hitting milestones.
I got a premium Grammarly plan weeks after my first posts. It gives me even more, publishing confidence, so I highly recommend it.
“Yo, but my audience…”
Your main objective is to write, not be read. So don’t invest too much thinking about optimizing. Build real estate now; you can relocalize it later, repurposing even.
So no matter on what form you’re creating, a subject you’re writing, the platform you’re publishing. You’re doing the hardest; you can be selfish.
Let’s return to the workout metaphor. I’m sure you know someone that hasn’t lift a weight but has invested in the full equipment — looking like a living Nike Ad. This is resistance in full effect, a form of procrastination, and the sign you’re not allocating your mind to do the right thing.
Doing a push-up is easy to write on our day and age. Pen and paper, your iPhone, your crappy personal computer.
It’s simple, but not easy. Focus on making it easy before optimize it.
Form a habit
Habits are cheat-codes. It distinguishes successful people from random ones. Sounds harsh?
Being able to deconstruct your days, weeks, months, or years by identification, excellent and bad habits is the way to go if you want to have an impact on yourself and others.
If you want deep inside yourself to write, you have to build a habit around it. Signals around you will give you countless reasons to not do it; patterns will provide you with the mental strength to ignore what your dumb part of the brain wants you to do without knowing it. It’s automatic.
I don’t want to dig deeper into this topic. Still, I’ve found that the best way to implement a good habit is to have a clear motivation and don’t let yourself another choice that to execute the previously designed plan with the minimalist framework and toolset.
I’ve personally replaced something well implemented into my routine by this new one. For years I went to the gym every workday — Alarm ringed at 6 am, everything is ready, I’m out to the gym no matter the weather, the sleep deprivation — It was a big thing for my whole lifestyle. And I decided to quit weight lifting, to emphasize and give me chances to succeed in this new activity.
So same schedule: Awake at 6 am, and an hour later, I’m the fanciest Starbucks in town (near Opera) for 2 hours of writing.
It doesn’t matter if I write two or 2,000 words. If you wake up early to get to a place that serves crappy and over-priced coffee, you’ve already won — no matter the input. You won’t have abs the first months of working out, don’t expect to be a great writer in the same time period then.
I don’t know for how many time I will keep this freshly adopted habit, how resistance will take form in the future. But I’m fighting.
Tomorrow I’ll be there, same spot, same setup. I am adding words after words. Clearing my mind, document my learnings, reflecting on my journey. Fuck, where’s my biceps?

