A few months back, I started working on a post about persistence, how to plan for getting things done, and creating good habits. I thought it’d be a fairly straightforward, short post based on my readings and anecdotal lessons at work and just living.
The more time I spent on it, the more I thought I had to cover other related topics to build up to my recommendations.
It’s been agonizing to sit down and write. Every time I open up the post in Google Docs, I either draw a blank, realize there are other things I want to add, or I’m overwhelmed with how much I still have to write, rewrite, omit or even other resources I want to reference.
Anywhoooooo, it’s still not done. I work on it weekly and started out with a goal of writing 500 to 1000 words on the subject that grew to just under 10k words a couple of months back. It’s now back down to 4800 words, and I’m only half way through it!
I’m probably going to break it down into multiple posts, with the main theme of persistence and building habits running through all of them. There’s a bit about goal setting, dissimilar, I hope, from a lot of other posts out there, as well as general planning vs. taking action.
This is part of what’s holding me from publishing it: I don’t want to just regurgitate what’s already out there. I want to somehow add something to it, even if it’s examples of using the other authors’ recommendations in my life and their consequences.
The joke is not lost on me: the post emphasizes action and getting things done, rather than aiming for perfection, but I’m taking my time trying to perfect the post!
I get it. Ha ha!
But why am I boring you with all of this?
Well, I was reading through my emails and I saw a new post by Tim Urban of Wait But Why blog that opened up my eyes. Tim’s been away from posting anything new for close to three years since he’s been working on a VERY long post about the state of human nature. He learned a lesson in the process: you still need to post shorter articles, even if you’re working on a larger one.
So, that’s what I’m restarting. I want to post something new regularly, while I work on larger posts. It’s kind of funny. This is what Seth Godin recommends and practices too. I hope I’ll be half as insightful as he is. He certainly inspires me to be.
My immediate next post, on this road to the larger one, is born out of a couple of conversations with some professionals: how to come up with blog post topics.
