I started my first blog over a decade ago, and I’ve written well over 300 articles since — but the vast majority of those were published in the first 3 years. I’m writing this article to publicly commit to making an effort to get back into the rhythm of blogging (maybe not that often, but at least consistently). And I wanted to impart some wisdom along the way.
Back in My Day…
It’s actually quite mind-blowing to think just how much time I spent researching and writing during those first years… it was legitimately like a 2nd full-time job. The fact that I pumped out an average of 2 or 3 well-researched articles every single week is just crazy.
I remember coming home from work everyday and immediately scouring the internet for news stories, just-released scientific papers, etc. I would think about everything I read in terms of what article I could apply the information to. I had hundreds of stories in my mind, always thinking of combining stories into one larger article, or splitting them up into more bite-sized chunks.
There’s so much I learned from this process, including what readers care about, how to organize your thoughts and communicate them effectively, and what topics got the most comments. (Of course, I didn’t write about celebrity gossip or my random opinions… maybe that would have provoked even more responses; but at least I have insight into more scientific/educational topics)
Advice: At least for new readers, the headline of an article is like the thumbnail on a YouTube video… it’s practically more important than the content. That is, if the readers don’t get past the headline, it doesn’t really matter what the article says, because they’ll never even see it. I think Medium does a decent job of reducing this issue, but this is especially true for blogs without such a well-integrated publication ecosystem.
Why Things Changed
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I stopped blogging consistently because of a lack of time.
A few years after I started my blog, I started feeling career pressures. In the last decade, I have completely changed careers several times; and every time, I felt like I was playing catch-up with my professional peers. Therefore, I had to spend less time blogging and more time focusing (and catching up) on learning about my new craft.
I am so fortunate to have discovered user experience along the way, because it was the first of my dramatic career changes which actually utilizes virtually all of my past experience. So I knew for many years that I wanted to get back into writing, but I wasn’t sure when it would be good timing to start again.
But now that I am finally happy in my current job (…it took a long time to get here!!), I feel that it’s finally the right time for me to make the effort again. I have big plans for the future, and blogging is at the core of all of it.
More advice: Blogging teaches you well; so if you ever want to learn something well, you should take notes on it in an article format. Whether you actually publish it is not so important… but you should write them as though you will publish. This will influence how easy-to-read you make your notes; it will force you to summarize your notes, synthesize ideas, and communicate effectively.
Looking Forward
As I said, I have a lot of ambitions for my career (i.e., beyond my day job), but it has to start from somewhere. I know exactly what I’m getting into regarding my writing, because I’ve done this before, and I know the pitfalls and how to avoid them. However, I am also interested in starting a YouTube channel, which is completely new to me.
Actually, I did make a few (maybe 3) videos many years ago, but I stopped because of major hardware issues (both visual and audio), and the fact that editing was too time-consuming and boring. Both of these problems are an issue I’ll have to still deal with; but in both cases, the technology has improved a lot since then… so I am really just crossing my fingers here.
I am aiming to come out with at least one video before the end of this month. I am embracing my lack of experience, with a beginner’s mentality and an open mind. And for writing, I am probably going to start with just one article a week, until I get back into a rhythm.
Final advice: Don’t let the feeling of “not being ready” stop you from doing something. You’ll “become” ready once you get that experience, not the other way around.
The Bottom Line
My old blog is basically “retired” (though the articles are still readily available for reading), but Psynamic is here to stay for the foreseeable future. I want to talk mostly about design, psychology, and business; and I’m aiming to provide insight that other people simply aren’t.
