Today I fly out of Cayman after a wonderful 17 days. A lot of my regular readers live here and I’ve had a number of people marvel at how I write daily and ask me my secrets.
Well, in over 600,000 words and well over 1,400 daily posts, I’ve actually written about this topic a few times, but today, inspired by Seth Godin, I have another thought to share, and it is about action and improvement through writing.
My post today is inspired by reading a recent post by Seth Godin (also a daily poster), who said:
Then improve it. Then write something else. Repeat this process until you have a post. Then post it. Then repeat this process.
There’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s simply a fear of bad writing. Do enough bad writing and some good writing is bound to show up. And along the way, you will clarify your thinking and strengthen your point of view.
But it begins by simply writing something.
Seth, I agree that a secrete to writing is simple “write something”, but I feel you are still giving readers a “get out”, that they don’t have to publish, to share their writing until their post is “ready”.
For me, I sit down to write every day, then a thought will come to me from listening to someone or reading something or listening or watching someone, then I write something, then I publish it. I may edit while writing my posts (which average only about 450 words), but I then publish, right away.
I then repeated this the next day, and the next. Yes, over time some good writing shows up, over time I clarify my thinking and strengthen my point of view. To me, thought, it is not “write something, then improve it, then write something else, repeat this process until you have a post”, it is “write something, post it, repeat”.
To be fair to Seth, he does often encourage us to “ship it”, to get our work out!
Now, this line of thought then took my thinking to a recent WhatComesNextLive conversation with Ben Ford. The show page is here with links to the video and podcast for the whole thirty-eight-minute conversation. However, today I highlight one of the things we closed with, a discussion around the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Action) method of decision-making and how, at a key level, it is about the Action step. A decision without action is of no real value, you have to act. If you then go into an OODA Loop, take action, then once again orient, observe, decide, act, you can learn and improve so much faster than if you wait to “get it right” before you act, before you hit “publish” on your post.
PS this post took under 15 minutes to write.
To hear the segment of our conversation about OODA, watch / listen on YouTube below, where I take you into the conversation from 18:45 in.