How Posting 25+ Words Daily Changed Me

On January 1st this year, like many of you, I reflected on my year and set a few resolutions. One of those was to write daily. I quickly failed on follow through. The first week I wrote a few things, even published one of them, and then decided it wasn’t worth it. My posts weren’t going to be good enough.

This has been a common theme of the last 5 years for me. I want to write. But, I’m worried that I will be dismissed as amateur. Or not good enough. Finally, in June of this year I read “Mini-Habits” by Stephen Guise. The key concept in the book is to make your habits small. Aim to do 1 pushup instead of 25. So, being fed up with not publishing anything, I set the following habit goal: “Publish 25+ Words on Facebook Daily”. I happen to be tracking my goals in Evolution 2, where it looks like this:

This is me hitting my 90 day goal yesterday.

Once the tracking device was set up I published the first post:

The response was positive and I was encouraged. It turns out that this was just a preview of what was to come. 90 days later I am still surprised at how much good posting daily has done me.

There were ups and downs. Early on I missed one day of writing (Day 6) due to a fever. One day I wrote just 29 words in the form of a song lyric (Day 8). But soon I hit a groove. I slowly built up a backlog of ideas and was knocking out several hundred words in 15 minutes or so every morning.

I glimpsed what it could be and felt super encouraged on Day 10. That was the day I wrote a post titled “Marijuana is Bad”. This ended up being my most reacted to post of the entire 90 days (60 including likes and comments). It also set the tone for the conversations to follow and encouraged me to share more.

Most of the comments on the post were disagreeing with me. It was amazing. I replied to every single comment acknowledging concerns and providing what I hoped was a measured counterargument. In the process I learned more about what I actually thought about the topic. By forcing the discussion I learned more about my views and more about other options for viewpoints.

To do this I set a few rules for myself in responding:

1. I would respond to every comment that I felt I didn’t agree with.
2. I would itemize their points and reiterate their argument in a way that the poster agreed with my characterization of their point of view.
3. I would then attempt to address the root difference between my and their point of view.

This was revolutionary. The conversations that resulted were genuinely informative.

Once I figured this out I was eager to share more. To share more half-formed opinions so that I could think them through further. So that I could discuss them with others and come to better conclusions.

This process has made me realize that keeping ideas in your head is worthless. It’s better to share. Even if you are wrong. Even if people will ridicule you. It’s still better to share. To see the reactions that people have to what you’re saying. To evolve your ideas.

The very people that I thought would dismiss me, my friends, loved it. (As far as they tell me.) Every person I’ve spent time with me over the last 90 days mentions that they like what I’m doing with the posts. Even people that don’t react to the posts on Facebook but do read it.

So what are my recommendations to you?

1. Publish as often as you can. This is applicable to every field. Get feedback as quickly as you can. Way before you think you’re ready for it. Dealing with the feedback will make your work much better. If you think you aren’t good enough yet, publishing is the best way to get better.
2. Be methodical in your arguments. Don’t be emotional in your response to criticism or disagreement. Try to find the fault lines. The disagreement points that are causing you and your discussion partner to see the world differently. If you can address those you will create much better work.

And so, I’m going to keep writing. It gives me benefits, it shares ideas and it starts new discussions. Follow me on Medium or on Facebook to see the posts. Join the conversation. Let’s define our ideas together.

PS. Here are some stats on what I wrote about and how it was received:

Words Per Day

Words per day gradual increased.

Reactions Per Day (Reactions = # of likes + # of comments)

Reactions per day went down, people might be getting sick of me.

Controversy Per Day (Controversy = # of likes + # of comments * 2)

Controversy per day is also down. More evidence for the getting sick of me hypothesis. :D

% of Total Per Topic Category

Looks like I spend too much time on World Order and too little on Behavioral Economics and Donald Trump for my audience.

Top 15 Posts by Reactions

Top 15 Posts by Controversy

If you’re really interested all the source data is viewable here.