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Just hit publish

Picture by Victor Rodriguez ↗ Opens in new tab

Writing blog posts is not easy. In fact I find it difficult. I have days were I can write a well researched blog post in a few hours. And I have days were I don’t feel like writing. Or I want to add one more thing but don’t know how to speak my mind. So this is a reminder to myself: just hit publish.

Table of contents:

• Why publishing blog posts is hard
• Make ugly things, it’s better than nothing at all
• There is no bar
• Just hit publish

Why publishing blog posts is hard

When I write a new blog post, I’m always under the impression that everything I write needs to be 100% true. Well researched, tested, checked again, whatever. I don’t want to write about stuff I haven’t tried out to the fullest. I want to know what I’m talking about.

But in most cases, this kind of perfectionism is holding me back. It keeps me from publishing. It keeps me from finishing blog posts. It’s such a big hurdle. Everytime I think about adding the final touches to a blog post, I’m not capable of producing the mental effort that would be necessary.

That’s why my column for “almost finished blog posts” in my notion document gets longer every week. And unfortunately I found no way yet to change that. Then I stumbled over two blog posts, that made me change my perspective on this for quite a bit.

Make ugly things, it’s better than nothing at all

The first one is Make ugly things ↗ Opens in new tab by Srishti Mehrotra. It’s got the perfect subtitle:

I can apply the main points she’s talking about 1:1 on my struggles with publishing blog posts. In her article she writes about wanting to be perfect, wanting her work to be perfect. And also having a hard time to achieve great work with this perception. Because this often leads to procrastination and to zero results.

She describes herself as someone who strives for perfectionism. I’d like to add a direct quote of her article here, because I can imagine a lot of people can relate to that:

“As a result, I take forever to get started, and even longer to finish — especially things that matter to me most, the things I can’t afford to mess up on. And, guess what… end up doing precisely that!”

To escape this vicious circle she started an ugly sketch bock challenge. Her goal was to draw at least one ugly drawing a day. And this actually turned her into a person who can kickoff creative work easier then before.

It took off the pressure, because the goal was making something ugly, not something perfect. It gave her more confidence, she favored quantity over quality which in the end led to more quality.

There are a lof ot learnings and insights here I could apply to my blogging process. Write more. Do Not try to make it perfect. Assuming that writing more will lead to publishing with better quality. Sounds great!

There is no bar

The other blog post that changed my perspective on writing blog posts is There is no bar ↗ Opens in new tab by Chris Coyier. It's more like a small note, a gathering of thoughts rather than a long blog post but it asks the right questions.

“Why do people have a hard time with that publish button, even on ready-to-rock personal sites?”

“We’re not shootin’ for the Pulitzer over here […].”

He talks about how everyone profits if you put out that thought you want to talk about. Rather than to wait until you have the perfect words for it. He suggests to stop overthinking and just put it out there.

Just hit publish

So these two blog posts, and also other ones like Just put stuff out there ↗ Opens in new tab from Matthias Ott reminded me about the most important thing about blogging. My motivation to write. It’s to document and share my learnings.

And this doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be on here. That’s the main goal. So I’m trying to write everyday for just a few minutes, I will not try to make it perfect and I will just hit publish.

I hope you enjoyed this post and learned something new. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me via Email ↗ Opens in new tab.

If you want to support me, you can buy me a coffee. I would be very happy about it!

I wish you a wonderful day! Marco