Completed My Blogging Challenge

Today marks the end of my monthly blogging challenge. I wrote a blog post every day for a month. Here is how it went and what I learned.

Motivation

I am not a social media user. I do not have a Facebook, Instagram, or a TikTok account. I have an X/Twitter account, but I do not use it unless a friend shares a tweet with me. I use Reddit for my occupational interest, but I do not post there.

About a month ago, a good friend of mine challenged me to write on a daily basis. He knows me well, so he went easy on me and suggested that it can be anything: Blog post, tweet, Reddit comment, etc. I accepted the challenge and decided to write a blog post every day for a month.

Confidence Through Obsession

Why did I accept the challenge? In particular, why did I choose to write a blog post which is more involved than a tweet or a Reddit comment?

Let's side track a little bit. Take a look at the following piece of code:

const startedAt = "2024-01-01";
const finishedAt = "2024-01-31";

Simple, right? Not for me:

1. Variable names are not of the same length, therefore they do not align.
2. The alphabetic order of the variable names are not the same as in their meaning: s comes after f, but startedAt date is before finishedAt date in the calendar.

I remember the day when I figured this out:

const since = "2024-01-01";
const until = "2024-01-31";

I felt so accomplished as if I had solved a complex problem. I know it is silly, but it is what it is.

What does it have to do with the blogging challenge?

Firstly, I am usually obsessed with small and insignificant details. So, I knew that I would be stuck anyway. Might as well, be stuck on something that I can be proud of if I succeed and have a better excuse if I fail.

Secondly, I have continuously challenged myself in the past for various things. I have failed in most of them. But the ones I managed to complete made significant change in my life.

So, I decided to channel my obsession to positive and significant things, hence the blogging challenge.

Difficulties

At the beginning, I knew that the challenge was difficult for at least two reasons:

1. Write and publish something that I know is not good enough.
2. Find time to write every single day.

I was right. It was even more difficult than I thought.

The major difficulty was not about finding time. It affected my night routine causing me to sleep late and wake up relatively late (about 6:30am, still early for most people). But it is OK, I managed it.

The actual challenge turned out to be the anxiety of:

1. publishing something that I am embarrassed of (as anticipated), and
2. trying to figure out what to write about.

1. Dealing with Embarassment

The invitation to this challenge came with a disclaimer: Quantity over Quality. So, embarrassment was not hypothetical, but expected. I was ready to deal with it.

Everytime I felt embarrassed about a post, I reminded myself of this anectodal fact: The main reason that I could not finish my PhD studies (not one, but two) was not publishing my research. Yes, I did not have much time because of my entrepreneurial adventures, but I could have done it if I had published my research without worrying much about "quality". Indeed, prior studies, research, articles and proficiency exams are all delivered when I was poor of time, anyway. So, I failed to finish my PhDs only because of anxiety, not because of time.

Another thought that helped me was to remind myself that nobody cares. Most people do not even know me.

So, I doubled down in this respect, and I almost never read my blog posts before publishing them (I am reading this one now). I did not use a spell checker, grammar checker or AI writing assistant. At some point, I even disabled GitHub Copilot when writing my posts.

2. Finding Topics

I have a few hobbies, but I am not an expert in any of them. I no longer engage in political discussions. But I am a programmer by profession, and a life-style entrepreneur by choice. I picked "hacking" as a topic and wrote about it everyday.

I sometimes picked a topic that I had no idea about, such as using diagrams library in Haskell. I learned a lot from these posts.

Outcome

First of all, I completed the challenge. This is a big win for me.

Secondly, I started developing some heuristics about writing. For example, I now have a better idea about how much time it takes to write a blog post of a certain length and complexity. I can anticipate better when I am cornering myself with a wrong topic or flow of thought.

Thirdly, I have a better understanding about audience. Nobody knows my Website, but I cross-posted my blog posts to dev.to and Hashnode. I even posted one of my posts to Haskell subreddit that was eventually published on Haskell Weekly. If the post is "fun to read" --- as a friend has put it --- it can get traction even on expert topics. If it is too general, it gets traction only on popular topics.

Lastly, I managed to get about 1,000 reads on my Website, 1,000 reads on dev.to and 200 reads on Hashnode in a month. I did not manage to engage with audience, but I am happy with these numbers. If somebody would ask me before the challenge, 10 was as much as I could hope for, and 10,000 would be no different than 10 as I had no idea about the magnitude.

Conclusion

I am happy that I completed the challenge. I have learned a lot, too. Going forward, I may not write everyday, but I am planning to write regularly, hopefully in a form that is more engaging and useful for others.