Structure:

Blogging project, awesome. What did I get out of it?

Made something, a book. Heard from many people added value

Smugness of deliberately optimising I have post on this

Less perfectionist. 10x faster, got if anything better feedback, suggests grossly misallocating effort. Better sense for opportunity costs 2hr = post, small to big. Imperfect posts, but rarely was I aware of the flaws + rarely were the flaws big. Bottleneck is making stuff, not making good stuff

Excitement, really fun project. Sense of making something! Writing post on excitement + really fun project, more surface area. Really important to me. Importance of excitement, taking imperfect idea + running with it, enthusiasm. Built muscle of growth mindset + wanting to fix things

Clarified my thoughts, esp post on teaching, optimisation, altruism, 80/20 rule. Idea of inner & outer optimizers feels powerful

Writing skills?

Doing hard things, trusting in my own competence. Began being scared of ambitious ideas, scared of having nothing to write. Would only start ideas I’d fleshed out in my mind, fuzzy is bad. Later on, busy, said fuck it, and made post from scratch. Insecurity & risk averse, developing skill of committing to something + trusting myself. Eg emotions + friendship

How to do it well?

Separate planning & doing, actually do. Biggest failure mode is that you don’t do it at all, not that you do it badly. Bear in mind throughout.

First step is to make it concrete. Plan out when you’ll write, for how long, what you might write about

Then do something! Start today! Start a blog on Medium (notice perfectionism and option paralysis, just use Medium)

Pick topic, spend 5 minutes writing out structure, vague skeleton (link to this skeleton as inspiration) - plan v do!

Then just write! Stick to your structure, revisit it if you need to, but err against

FAQ:

Idk what to write about? Advice you give people, things you’ve learned, things others are wrong about. Can be technical, can not be technical. Can be niche & specific

Public? Important part is to write, as public as you want it

Original? Meh - optimise this by not caring, your intuitions suck. Hits based originality, different framings, high dimensional space, typical mind fallacy. Illusion of transparency, learning is info compression. Practice, first few things crap

Accountability? Endorse, but to support excited, not replace. Keep it sticky, keep it at the top of your mind.

Conc:

Encourage you to do this too! Good use of time, clarifying thoughts, practice making something. Habit of taking opportunities available, communicating, writing skills. If not this, then some project! Easy to go through life being boring & reactive, make something your own. Autonomy is powerful motivator & component of life happiness, building skill of starting + owning your own projects is key part in your own life. I suck, but first step.