Medium writing experiment (so far)
As I’ve written previously, I’m in the midst of an experiment to drastically change my personal habits. One of the habits I’m trying to achieve is publish every day. Write something of substance and put it out on the internet. And, from David Kadavy’s advice in How to Write a Book, Medium is a good place to do it.
Results have been mixed so far. Here’s a list of problems and pain points I’ve encountered.
First, not finishing every day. Sometimes I start on an idea that’s too big to complete in the available time, or requires more thinking. So it sits in the drafts folder, where it may or may not get completed later.
Second, getting sucked back into the internet dopamine chase. Another habit I’ve been trying to achieve is staying off of social media. As I think I’ve written in public (I’ve definitely journaled it), “Don’t read the comments is good advice, but don’t write the comments is better advice”. Comments, and the likes and responses they attract, are a dopamine hamster wheel. So I find myself idly doomscrolling Medium, looking for articles to read, getting sucked into articles that outrage me, commenting, and getting into spats. Ugh.
Third, it’s negatively impacting my book reading. I started out this experiment with the intent and practice of reading hard books in the morning. But time spent on publish-writing (as opposed to journal-writing) is time not spent reading, to the point that there have been mornings where I didn’t read books at all. The upshot is that trying to publish every day is interfering with other habit improvements.
Fourth, I wind up on my Mac rather than my iPad for this. I tend to prefer the iPad for intentional writing, but the Medium client for iOS blows chunks for writing, compared to the browser interface.
Thinking about it, part of the problem is that writing is a less predictable and more time-consuming exercise, and I simply don’t have enough time for it in my newly established morning routine. I wind up with 1.5–2 hours most days before my dayjob begins to do me-stuff. I could counter this by getting up even earlier (I currently target 6–6:30am), but that would mean going to bed even earlier (I currently target 10:30pm). I don’t think I want to do that. Getting just another hour in the morning would have me in bed at 9:30 most nights, which would strongly impact my ability to have social time with friends in the evening.
Another solution is not writing for publishing at all, or confining it to evening times. But I’ve also learned that consistency drives productivity, and daily habits make me far more effective. Evening writing would put it directly at odds with my development time for Mixonance, my side hustle software project. Evenings are for coding.
I could also time-box my publish-writing, spending a consistent amount of time on writing whether or not it leads to publication that day. This would help keep it from turning into a slog to finish, and reduce how it cuts into time for other things.
At any rate, things are not working as well as I like. I’m not getting the consistency I want, and it’s interfering with other habit changes that matter. I need to make this work better.
