Force Yourself To Hit Publish
Your Life Will Change for the Better
Although I had begun publishing on Medium a few months before losing my job, it wasn’t until after losing my job 40 days ago that I began taking this whole “ work for myself” thing a bit more seriously.
I have found great power in jumping into content creation. Whether it be writing, filming YouTube videos, creating social media ads, or working on graphic design for an upcoming website, there is always something that needs to be crafted, made, designed — or created.
This has been a gratifying experience, and not because of the money it has made me.
36 days ago, I would have considered myself a normal person.
But now, I am a full-time creative solopreneur.
I didn’t decide to leave my employment and do this.
I had been deliberating on pursuing entrepreneurism for a while before losing my job.
Oddly, I think this path chose me more than I chose it.
And I am glad that it did; here are five reasons why:
1. It Will Flex Your Idea Muscle
Producing content on a fixed schedule will force your creativity to be ramped up.
After all, where will these ideas for creation come from?
The answer is your idea, muscle.
If you haven’t heard of your brain having an idea muscle, well, then now you have. And it does. James Altucher coined the term, a millionaire entrepreneur and New York Times Bestselling Author.
The concept is simple. The ability to develop your brain's ideas is an exercise, much like any other part of the body.
To prolifically come up with good ideas, you need to exercise your idea muscle.
I call it your creative muscle.
Your idea muscle is either fragile, somewhere in the middle — or you’re innovating humanity's next biggest solution to humanities (insert world problem) due to your best ideas.
The good news is that this part of your brain can and should be improved with frequent exercise, whether you consider yourself a creative entrepreneur or not.
If you want to:
- change the world
- come up with something innovative
- create, design, and manufacture trendy new products
- make a lot of money
- perform well in your workplace
- solve big problems for the world
then being able to generate great ideas is what you need.
To one extent or the other, the things listed above were achieved because of someone with a strong idea muscle.
2. You Will Find Your People on The Internet
This may be the most powerful reason to create content on the internet for various reasons regular.
Find Your Voice
I'm not too fond of those words. They signify the somewhat annoying (yet beautiful?) process any artist/creator goes through.
Before embarking on this journey, I thought that phrase was ridiculous.
Finding your voice? What is wrong with you? Don’t you have a voice already?
I see more clearly now that it takes time to develop your writing style, how you write, and of course, bouncing around your topics of interest until something clicks, and you say, that's me.
Your either familiar with this process or not.
If you’re not, then it’s time to get started.
Along the way, you’ll figure out your style of doing, how you do it, and why you do it as well.
It’s important to keep these in mind.
Finding Your Audience
The benefit that follows clarifying your voice and message is that your work will resonate with a particular group of people on the internet.
That is if you are consistently providing value to a certain group of people. If you’re doing this well, you will reach your people. Your audience.
If you’re doing it extremely well, your people will find you.
Think of it as making new friends who love and adore you for who you really are, if you're keeping it real and authentic — which takes practice for anyone.
Being real and authentic could be the personal barrier you need to break to tap into your true potential.
Successful completion of finding your voice on the internet and also finding your audience means:
- You get to experience the joys of self-discovery.
- You get the privilege of helping others change their life with your work.
- You build and discover new meaningful relationships with others similar to you.
If that doesn’t sound like a meaningful and fulfilling life, then I’m not sure what you’re chasing.
3. You Could Change Someones’ Life
Tim Denning is one of the most successful and prolific writers on Medium and the entire internet. One of the premises he keeps in his head when writing is this,
Dare to Change The World With Your Work
And while cheesy to some people, it’s mindsets like that separate Tim from other Joe Schmoes on the internet.
I’m not saying your work should impact hundreds of thousands of people.
But if you could bring meaningful value and positively impact someone's life, a way that springs them into action and a new journey for themselves — I promise you will sleep better at night.
Focus on changing just one person's life with your work.
If you do that, the rest will fall into place.
4. You Will Learn Applicable and Transferable Skills
What I’m really referring to is all of the obstacles you will face along the way, forcing you to learn new skills to achieve whatever is it that you’re doing.
Anytime you begin something new, you will need to learn and grow with the process on the way up to achieve a higher goal.
The fun part about producing content daily is that in the beginning, it will appear that you're focusing on creating only one thing.
But during this process, you will find that if you become fluent in one thing, then that skill could be applied to a different industry or area of expertise.
Eventually, your skills and abilities will compound over time, making you a full-blown expert in that area, even if you didn’t initially intend for that to happen.
For example:
Let’s say you want to become a good writer. Once you develop your writing enough and have built up an audience and portfolio of work:
- you could begin offering copywriting services for larger businesses or corporations.
- You could offer ghostwriting services.
- You could begin expanding the platforms on which you publish your work.
- You develop and create a high-end writing course and advertise it to your audience.
If you followed the example above, you would ultimately achieve much more than simply developing your writing skills.
You will have learned:
- Basics of digital marketing
- This includes SEO, running digital ads, e-mail campaigns, etc. — and setting those systems up.
- How to do competitor research in your niche
- How to communicate as a professional/learn the lingo within your marketplace
You get the idea. And I am not saying you have to do all of that. But that could be the sort of positive upward spiral you take, with any creative content or entrepreneurial endeavor you embark upon.
And should.
5. You Could Turn It Into a Business to Make Money
This seems like an ideal circumstance, right?
Turn you, your content, words, ideas, your creativity, your art— into an income.
How awesome would that be?
The good news is that you can, and you should.
I’m not saying that it’s easy or an overnight process or anything— but it’s definitely something to ponder upon.
Wouldn’t you like to make an income on your own terms and become your own boss?
Of course, you would!
And you can!
It’s the internet age, and you can do just about anything if your willing to put in the time and effort required.
Which will be a lot. But it will be worth it.
The End
And there you have it.
Five solid reasons you should be producing content daily, from someone who’s been practicing the art the last 36 days straight.
I’m not saying I published a piece of super valuable content every single day. But when I wasn’t hitting publish on either Medium or YouTube, I learned how to do either or even better.
There are benefits to be reaped if you decide to be and take action.
Only you can bring the who to the table to be judged by the world.
What do you want to create?
