Dear reader,
This post was not meant to be fascinating, however I do hope it may be valuable to you in some way.
It sure was very valuable to me.
Why?
Because to get anything done, you have to start. And that’s what I am doing now with this article – I have started. The idea is as simple as that.
Before you discard it as outrageously obvious, let me explain.
The process of writing an article
Say you have to write an article. These are the following steps:
Decide to write an article on the subject X.
Actually write the article.
Publish the article.
That’s kind of it. However, this was an unfairly simplistic process. In fact, it looks a lot more like this:
Decide to write an article on the subject X.
Research a bit
Research a bit more
Sometimes research a lot more
Jot down some notes
Decide on structure
Decide on length
Decide on media (will there be anything proprietary there, e.g. some awesome graph you have created yourself?)
Do keyword research (if you plan to do any SEO)
Actually write the article.
Open a Word file and start writing the article
Write the first draft of the article
Wait for a day or two
Read your work and edit it
Give it to someone else to read it, if you have that luxury
Finalize the article
Publish the article.
Upload the body of text somewhere
Optimize it visually (e.g. bullet points, lists, etc.), or for SEO (e.g. add media, don’t have more than 300 words under the same heading, etc.)
Hit publish
Surely, I am definitely missing some steps, but that’s unimportant ‘cause that’s not the point.
What’s the actual point?
As you probably noticed while reading, I was already hinting at it a bit.
In the text so far, I have bolded three of the steps:
Decide to write an article on the subject X.
Jot down some notes
Actually write the article.
Open a Word file and start writing the article
Publish the article.
Upload the body of text somewhere
Okay. So each of the three main daunting steps had a fairly easy start.
To start writing an article on a topic you don’t know much about, you need to jot down some notes. This is the bone structure of your piece. If you write down 200 words’ worth of notes… well, adding all the fluff and you’ve got yourself an article… about a 1,001 words long.
But forget about that. Say you are an expert in what you want to say. You’ve said it a million times. You can skip the last paragraph altogether.
Then what will you do? Just open a Word file and start writing.
Really. It is as simple as that.
The text is not going to write itself. Open a file and start writing it.
Here’s the upside of starting
Here’s the beauty of it.
If you write even only 100 words, you will want to write another 100, and then another.
Your thoughts will start flowing. You let them flow, just by opening that Word file. You indicated to your brain: ‘It’s writing time’.
No time to finish it today?
No problem.
Really. It’s even better.
Tomorrow, when you start work, you have already written 100 words. Not only that, you have thought a bit more about the topic. You are in the right mindset for the topic. And you will be for the next week or so.
In fact, if you pick up this beginning one week after starting it, you will probably have a chance five times higher of finishing it. (FYI: One week and a chance five times higher are completely arbitrary numbers based on no scientific data at all).
But there’s more.
If you pick this up one year after starting it, you will still have about the same chances of finishing it. The odds will still be in your favor, just because you have already done something about it.
You have not only set-up the process, you are in the middle of the process already!
You are somewhere on step 2 of a 3-step process.
Does it only work for writing?
Not at all.
Writing was a metaphor which I found useful, since I am actually writing this.
Have to edit some photos? Open the photo editor and add a photo. You are already half-way there.
Have to create a Spotify playlist? Open Spotify, name the playlist and add one song. Easy.
Have to create a financial model? No problem. Copy another financial model (lol, sorry for outing you, financiers), change the name, and enter some of the relevant data for your business case.
You have to realize that opening the software and starting to write whatever means much more than that.
It implies choosing the software, choosing the topic, getting into the right mindset.
And really, you are much more likely to get something done, if you start doing it.
Still outrageously obvious - but now in a new way.
So, what was this article about?
Ah, yes.
I mentioned in the beginning what this article was to me. It was the epitome of the upside of starting.
In this case - starting a Substack.
Placing small importance on this article, I started writing it in the text editor. Probably a bad idea. Actually… awful! I am not even sure if there is autosave. Copy-pasting into Word as we speak to have a backup copy. Done. Now that I have the backup…
What I’ve essentially done with this article was combine steps 1, 2, 3 and create a one-step process.
I did not intend to do it.
But I am not surprised by it.
Because I believed in the upside of starting.
This was purely me ‘freeriding’ on my hype to use the text editor.
And with this, I would like to close this post.
Coming up next on this Substack:
More random stuff
More frameworks
More best practices
Some product promotion
Help on starting an online business
You know my writing style already. Want to read more?
Thanks!
Iliya