For What Purpose Do I Write?
A reminder for my future and present self when I’m visited by the devil of resistance.
Asking myself “why” I do something is powerful. There are various questioning techniques like asking myself “why” three to five times to get deeper into the underlying beliefs. The purpose is to find the first principle for said belief.
But I also find asking “why” to have a “leading” element where I’m asking for a reason to validate the action or behaviour. A natural bias I have is to defend an action to get closer to being “right” compared to first asking “how was this stupid?”
An alternative I’d been experimenting with has been asking ‘what’ and getting specific. But what I believe to be more insightful might be to flush out all thoughts related to the belief or idea. The historic beginnings, influences, desire, and the like.
And so, it started with how…..
How Did I Start Writing Weekly?
I can’t pinpoint it exactly. It’s rather similar to the ‘What came first? The chicken or the egg?’
In past conversations, I referenced the moment in a coffee shop when a mentor from my consulting days said I should write a book. I didn’t know what I’d write a book about so I decided I’d write about my self-development experiments every month.
Writing was already a habit. I had years of writing daily journals under my belt. My job as an investor incorporated lots of writing for my research reports as well. So, I already had years of putting my ideas and thoughts down on paper.
A part of me considers how I enjoyed writing short stories in high school. I had even won an award for an essay competition on female role models where I wrote about Mother Teresa. But maybe that’s just desperately grasping for straws in the past.
I’d also been an avid reader and one could argue that avid readers become fans of authors and that entices them to dream about writing a book of their own in the future. But I was not struck by an immaculate idea for some 300-page content. A blog was easier for me to start.
From what I saw, the writers I admired held to some kind of schedule. Warren Buffet had his annual letters, Howard Marks had the quarterly letters, Seth Godin had his daily blog…. Farnam Street’s Shane Parrish, James Clear, and Tim Ferriss had various weekly schedules.
I had started monthly to make it easy for me. The basis of habit formation is the ease of the task. But alas, I could not overcome my ambition and overconfidence so it soon became weekly. Though, I think to listen to Seth Godin urging everyone to get in the habit of publishing daily played a factor.
I can’t confidently say a weekly schedule was 100% intrinsic… it was most likely copying/emulating others I respected…. and giving into some internal desire to be “overachieving”.
Is It All For a Book?
I would be lying if I said I had no aspirations of writing a book. It’s there. But it’s no singular focus. It’s like a bucket list item. Something I’d like to achieve someday. But something I’d like to do well at. For example…. I had heights… but if I were to skydive, then I would do it in Dubai or somewhere in Australia. My definition of “doing it right”.
This stops me from venturing into this kind of project to self-publish some half-baked idea on Amazon. Better to not start what shouldn’t be done at all.
I’ve seen how the founders of Basecamp wrote Rework by compiling their blog posts or how Tim Ferriss wrote Tools of Titans by compiling learnings from his podcast episodes so… it presents such an option for me as well. Not committing to that being the intent but leaving that open as an option keeps the dream alive.
What’s To Gain From the Practice?
Why… for the wide range of skills and possibilities of course! At worst, I’d be working on the skill of writing, and at best… it could lead to a creative business: The media platform of my dreams.
If someone were to run every day without much programming or skills development, he would probably improve from the start point. I believe the same could be said for writing. At least for me, since I’m starting at a pretty low point so… any improvement is pretty good.
But, it’s more than the creation of something tangible.
It’s a process for thinking, as I’ve highlighted on the main writing page. I think it’s the process of unloading my beliefs and thoughts to make room for more ideas. It’s a documentation process for all ideas, some creative and some not, to expand on a few that might be worth further attention to form the beliefs of myself at that point in time.
In a world that continues to be devoid of ‘thinking’ as people clamour for conveniences and automation, writing may be one of the few practices that force me to think.
But what’s the goal? Do I need to measure performance/improvement?
Do I Need a Goal To Have a Deliberate Practice?
Various performance psychologists speak about the need for deliberate practice. The most common mention is probably Anders Ericsson’s research of the “10K Hours” rule.
That’s not how I write though. I don’t study Mark Twain, Thoreau, or Emerson on proper writing techniques. I could…maybe I should? But I don’t.
I don’t have a team of editors and proofreaders (probably made obvious for frequent readers). One could say it’s a sign of laziness and neglect. I won’t deny or defend my position on that. But the underlying reason for that is…. it isn’t a priority at the moment.
It’s probably true that I am not optimizing my improvement by neglecting the details and forms of deliberate practice. But what is more important than producing one immaculate essay is to get in the practice of writing 1000s of essays. That’s my belief. It’s not a simple quantity vs. quality tradeoff because I don’t want to say my essays lack quality. If they did, then I wouldn’t publish them. However, I do believe doing just enough quality work while maintaining the momentum of writing is important. I think the fact that I’ve been editing and reviewing this even after I published it is proof that I do care about quality…. to some degree. *Little self-pat on the back*
So, how will I know if I’m improving? It’s not like there is some quantitative mark like powerlifting where I can see myself getting stronger with more weight lifted… What becomes the goal?
To be a professional.
Steven Pressfield’s Professionals vs. Amateurs & Resistance
In the War of Art, Steven Pressfield depicts Professional vs. Amateur in the following way:
“The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro, it’s his vocation. The amateur plays part-time, the professional full-time. The amateur is a weekend warrior. The professional is there seven days a week.”
The way I see it, the amateur does not stick to a writing schedule. The amateur is the guy I see who goes to the gym when his weekends are free. Not the one who trains 4, 5, 6… even 7 times a week consistently for years.
I’m not saying I want to be a professional writer in that aspect. I don’t have to make money from writing. But rather, it’s to take on a mindset of being a professional. I’m an amateur when playing poker in random cash games on weekends but I’m no amateur strength athlete. It’s all in the mindset I give myself.
But being a professional requires me to show up even when I don’t ‘feel’ like it. In the last 10 years, there were plenty of times I didn’t feel like training at the gym but I did. I went to the gym on crutches after my knee surgery or trained my cardio after breaking my collar bone. I showed up each time.
This would be the “resistance” that Pressfield speaks about, the force that stops me from progressing. All the distractions, the self-doubt, and all kinds of illusions concocted by the mind that’s stopping me from showing up.
Being a professional means I have to complete the work despite all the shit that may come in my life. Though it may have started because I enjoyed writing, it goes much further than that. This doesn’t mean that the process needs to take on the dreary negativa of “work.” Oh no, I think the continued challenge while fighting resistance is to keep the act as being pleasurable and fun. It can be tricky when on a schedule…. but that’s also a requirement in fighting the resistance.
It would be awesome if my writing would lead to making a living off of this in the future. But writing is only one component. I’m in the practice of developing the self. Writing helps clarify my thinking while on this journey. But it’s a crucial component of becoming a professional who dedicates his life to the pursuit of human development.
This is why I write every week. Because that’s what it means to be a professional on this journey. It’s because I’m not on some hobby trail. It’s to remind myself by sticking with it every week that this is the vocation in my life now. A journey with no answers and clear paths. But one that I’ve chosen to embark on as a professional.
Disclaimer - I’m writing this for myself. For my past, present and future self. Much of what I write is my opinion. If it somehow ignites agreement in you then great, I’d love to hear about it. If it sparks disagreement in you, don’t reach out because I don’t care for it. There always are obvious exceptions and the flawed person in me hasn’t considered them all.