Today as I was scrolling through my substack feed, I came across this post which is very timely and relevant to me:
It’s the first in a series covering three steps to help form a habit around writing. The three steps are:
Why you’re publishing: Setting goals for your publication
What you’re publishing: Formats, style, and templates
When to publish: Setting your schedule and building a habit to do the work
If I’m going to be doing these exercises anyway, I may as well bring you all along for the ride - give a bit of insight into my thought process, as I discover it for myself…
So this post is going to be tackling that first step: identifying why I’m publishing and setting goals for my publication.
Why do I want to write?
First things first, I need a more definitive answer for why exactly I’m writing here. In my first post in this write in public every day series series I wrote:
There are a few things I'm hoping to get out of this:
Force myself to get back into the groove of writing
Increase my public profile as a professional (I will share all my posts on social media)
Improve my mental health during this challenging situation
These things are still true, and form part of the why. Number 1 is a bit of a tautology - I want to write because I want to get back into writing… indeed.
Number 2, Increase my public profile as a professional, definitely still applies. I am job seeking right now, and anything that helps me get on people’s radar as a person they want to hire is a good thing.
Number 3, Improve my mental health, also definitely still applies. There is an element of cartharsis to writing, not even just writing about deeply personal stuff - just the act of spilling everything that’s going on in my brain onto the page helps.
Okay, good start, but I was writing in public before I started this challenge - so why was I doing it then? Well, I think it’s closely related to number 3 - although I didn’t realise it at the time. I just enjoy writing, and getting ideas out there. I think I have thoughts and ideas that are worth sharing, even if it’s just with a handful of people. I have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy working with and learning from people more experienced than me - and now that I have a little bit of experience, I want to do the same for someone else.
Lastly, I find the prospect of sharing my ideas in public pretty daunting - the idea of exposing myself to the kind of criticism I see online is a little terrifying. I want to try and get past this, that is, to develop a thicker skin for criticism - constructive or otherwise (I have a plan to write about this soon).
Cool, so this all sounds pretty good to me. Sounds like I’m mostly writing for fun, with a little bit of building a community in there. On to the next thing.
Who am I writing for?
Who are you? At the time of publishing this, you are probably a friend, or family, or perhaps a colleague. Looking to the future though, who do I think will be most interested in the things I have to say?
In my first post I outlined topics I planned to talk about:
Things that interest me relating to software quality and delivery practices
Career-oriented topics (imposter syndrome, mentorship, motivation)
Personal life-oriented topics (work/life balance, video games)
The first two are I think geared towards software developers looking to expose themselves to new ideas and ways of working. The third set of topics is a bit of a wildcard, although there is a decent overlap between software developers and gamers, so we’ll see how that goes…
So I’ve got a who, now I need a why. Why will readers return to my writing?
What does this group of readers need more of?
Maybe they are thinking that the way they build software could be better, but they’re not quite sure how and need some ideas.
Maybe they need reassurance that not everyone in tech is a galaxy-brained genius - a lot of us are just pretty okay at what we do, but trying to be better.
What’s the change they desire?
Maybe they’ve introspected and seen a need for personal change that will help them be a better developer
Maybe they would like to see things change at a team level, but they’re not quite sure where to start
What’s the problem they could solve together?
We’re all just pretty okay developers, sharing ideas we think are good - and looking for feedback.
So to summarise, readers will return to my writing because… I share some (hopefully) new and interesting ideas. I am relatable, I’m on their level, but I’m also looking to grow myself and to help others grow. Fostering a community of feedback and growth.
Sounds good. On to the next thing.
Setting goals
The last exercise for this post is to set some achievable goals for myself. I’m going to timebox these goals to the end of my write in public every day challenge. Given the who and the why I’ve already established, here’s what I’m thinking:
Gain 5 followers and/or 3 subscribers that aren’t people I already know personally
Miss no more than 1 day of posting in a row while doing the write every day challenge
Miss no more than 5 days worth of posts total while doing the write every day challenge
I think number 1 seems reasonable if I can keep up the posting schedule. Number 2 and 3 are maybe a bit loftier, we’ll see how long I can keep it up.
This has been an interesting exercise for me, helping to contextualise this whole writing thing for me. To reiterate, I am following along with this series on forming a consistent writing habit
If the next post in the series makes for interesting writing, I’ll keep it up, otherwise I’ll move on to a new topic.
See you in the next one.