How Easy It Is To Write Daily

As I write this sentence, the time reads 2:43 AM. I began crafting this post at about 11:00 PM, almost 4 hours ago. I have considered about 6 topics to make the post about; I have taken short naps to strengthen my idea muscles and I have completely written out 3 blog posts in my head before choosing to post this.

image: englishlife.uz

Writing daily is not as hard as you'd expect. Once you've been able to successfully force yourself to write daily for a month, it becomes a habit you'll find a little hard to break out of. Noticed that I said I have had a couple of short naps between the 11:00 PM and 2:43 AM? Ordinarily, before I became addicted to writing daily, any nap I intend to have during that time period will inevitably turn to a sound sleep. But now I find it impossible to sleep until I have written my one blog post per day. No matter how tired I am, the sleep just won't come. That's how powerful a habit can be. It almost takes over your life.

My first blog post idea for today was on how to setup Microsoft Excel to automatically query a MySQL database. I had done it this week for one of the companies I consult for, to automate the weekly reports that takes hours (sometimes, a whole day) to make. But yesterday, I had to redo it on a Mac. In fact, 2 Macs: a MacBook Pro laptop and a Mac Mini desktop. I had to rely more on my intuition than Google. Everything I found online pointed me to buying a $35 software, no one shared how to do it using free software. After working intensely for about 3 hours I figured out how to recreate the automated report on Mac and strongly wanted to share the detailed steps with lots of screenshots as my blog post for today. It's the easiest kind of article to write, no creative thinking required and takes just about an hour to craft. But I decided not to write it. Most of my blog readers aren't interested in MySQL. So I had to come up with another blog post idea.

The next blog post idea was on "Creativity". How putting yourself under all sorts of pressure forces you to be very creative. Everyday I run the huge risk of disappointing someone: a prospective client, a blog reader who has sent me a mail or a past client who is asking for help. And on top of that I always have not less than 2 jobs I'm working on. I give priority to my current clients (present jobs) and my daily blog post, before squeezing out time for other requests. I end up sleeping between 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM daily. There's no day that I feel like I didn't do some urgent work, even Sundays. But all these daily pressures have forced me to very creative and productive. Everyday, I feel myself growing: learning and doing new stuffs.

And there were other blog post ideas, including this one. So writing daily is not a struggle for want of ideas but a struggle for what idea to pick. Once you've made it past the first few weeks of writing daily and the desert part of that period when you couldn't just come up with an idea of what to write about, life becomes much easier You will not only begin to have daily writing ideas but lots of ideas per day, and selecting the best of those ideas will be you new daily problem.

Some days I choose an idea that requires very few words. Like I did yesterday. I am not good at going beyond the point. Once I feel I have made the point I aimed at I try to end the post. So picking the best idea has never been about picking the one that would help me generate the most number of words. It is about picking the most engaging idea I have that day. Even if it ends up being a technical one. Today I was able to come up with ideas I preferred to the technical one I had, on some other days the technical one wins. In all, writing daily is easy. A lot of people do it and that's enough evidence that it's not as hard as you think.