As someone with a decent amount of ideas but not a lot of published writings, I notice I have a few things blocking me from writing more:
Writing taking (me with my current skillset and behaviors) a long time, and being very busy
Good writing taking a long time; not having internalized various methods of making writing good; needing to look up and reflect on such methods while writing, which is a very slow process until those methods are internalized
not wanting to waste people’s time with low quality writing
noticing that if I do iterate on a draft, I do (at least feel like) I am learning about writing and making progress in my abilities. So spending a long time on a draft doesn’t feel like wasted time. But it also doesn’t produce output, so reward is low.
not wanting to “dilute” my account with mediocre posts compared to a few posts that have seen much much more effort and with which I’m much happier / more proud.
I do enjoy the few times I have simply taken 20min to write a draft without the intention of publishing it. Those have usually been helpful in shaping my ideas.
This doesn’t really relate to your posts but it came to mind and I guess your post incentivized me to write more, resulting in this comment
Writing taking (me with my current skillset and behaviors) a long time, and being very busy
Same here. I’d add that it is much better to have uninterrupted time to write, because if I have to stop, go to work the next day, think about dozen other topics, and then return back and try to continue, I have already lost my original context—the only way to get it back is often to rewrite the article from start, but then there is a risk of running out of time and being interrupted again.
not wanting to “dilute” my account with mediocre posts
I wonder if a good blogging platform could solve this by making a distinction similar to “personal / front page” on LessWrong. Even something simple like marking your own posts as first class / second class / third class (roughly corresponding to: front page / personal / shortform), and displaying the lower-status posts using a smaller font on the front page (with an option to show/hide the lower-status posts) could accomplish it.
Another thing that blocks me is thinking that I should blog about X, when I wish to spend my time thinking about Y. It would probably be better to blog about Y instead. Sometimes this is a problem because I publish “X, part one”, and then procrastinate on writing “X, part two”, while I could have written “Y” and “Z”.
As someone with a decent amount of ideas but not a lot of published writings, I notice I have a few things blocking me from writing more:
Writing taking (me with my current skillset and behaviors) a long time, and being very busy
Good writing taking a long time; not having internalized various methods of making writing good; needing to look up and reflect on such methods while writing, which is a very slow process until those methods are internalized
not wanting to waste people’s time with low quality writing
noticing that if I do iterate on a draft, I do (at least feel like) I am learning about writing and making progress in my abilities. So spending a long time on a draft doesn’t feel like wasted time. But it also doesn’t produce output, so reward is low.
not wanting to “dilute” my account with mediocre posts compared to a few posts that have seen much much more effort and with which I’m much happier / more proud.
I do enjoy the few times I have simply taken 20min to write a draft without the intention of publishing it. Those have usually been helpful in shaping my ideas.
This doesn’t really relate to your posts but it came to mind and I guess your post incentivized me to write more, resulting in this comment
Same here. I’d add that it is much better to have uninterrupted time to write, because if I have to stop, go to work the next day, think about dozen other topics, and then return back and try to continue, I have already lost my original context—the only way to get it back is often to rewrite the article from start, but then there is a risk of running out of time and being interrupted again.
I wonder if a good blogging platform could solve this by making a distinction similar to “personal / front page” on LessWrong. Even something simple like marking your own posts as first class / second class / third class (roughly corresponding to: front page / personal / shortform), and displaying the lower-status posts using a smaller font on the front page (with an option to show/hide the lower-status posts) could accomplish it.
Another thing that blocks me is thinking that I should blog about X, when I wish to spend my time thinking about Y. It would probably be better to blog about Y instead. Sometimes this is a problem because I publish “X, part one”, and then procrastinate on writing “X, part two”, while I could have written “Y” and “Z”.