How My Focus on Writing is Influencing Everything
For every year that has gone by, I have written more. You meet more people, attend more meetings, work on more projects and balance more commitments.
To juggle all of those different activities, we communicate with each other more than we did in the past.
A lot more.
It does people a huge disservice. And they don’t even know it.
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Jump-starting 2022
It’s cliche, but I decided that I was going to get back into writing. I had first picked it up when I left my job in 2019 and dove headfirst into the professional world of networking.
My weapons of choice? LinkedIn and a personal blog.
To step outside of my comfort zone and showcase my business prowess, I took to writing. I developed a strong habit of posting 1–3x a day on various industry news. My network was growing.
Eventually, I let it drop off. I got busy with a new job and didn’t prioritize it. One day turned into a week, then a week into a month. Before I knew it, I hadn’t written a blog post for the better part of the year. My writing quality was suffering too. My posts weren’t well structured. I got lazy and would make top-level comments based on whatever was happening in the news.
I learned two lessons during that period.
- It’s easy for the quality of your writing to suffer
- Habits and momentum are extremely important. Creativity feeds more creativity
What Brought Me Back?
I noticed that I was getting dull. Not dull as in unintelligent (you know what you know about business), but I was missing a spark.
Writing had inspired me. You think about things differently when you want to communicate your ideas to others. You spend a lot of time challenging yourself on the message you want to share — It also helps that LinkedIn has a 1,200 character limit per post! Write it tight.
Having your creativity on overdrive is like a drug. It doesn’t limit itself to your writing. It invades all aspects of your life.
The solutions I would see at work changed. How I would interact with other people changed. The way I navigated problems changed.
It was awesome. I wanted that back.
Leveling Up
I do have a vice. I’m one of those people that doesn’t do something halfway. Not all or nothing. I lean to just the “all” part of that spectrum.
There’s a fundamental belief that I hold onto. It has dominated my life.
When I share it, people often don’t understand. I tell them how meaningful it is, so they’re waiting with baited breath. They want to know what wisdom I have squeezed out of life. We all love our lifehacks, after all.
My big idea is this. Most things in life are less complicated than people make them out to be.
That’s it. Disappointed?
It’s significant because it keeps me from letting myself off the hook. By not accepting that I can’t do something, I don’t give myself an exit.
I do it, and if I’m going to do it, I’m giving it everything.
I’ve applied that mantra to writing.
I have read a few books on how to write well (I now know I used to use too many adverbs!). I have dug into the art of copywriting. My current kick is the magical world of storytelling.
Gaining knowledge, stitching ideas together, and figuring out how to incorporate them into my style.
I’ve been investing most of my free time into my personal development.
The best part is, I don’t think I’m any good at it.
I appreciate that for some people, that would be discouraging. Change the frame. With the positive impact I have already seen, what’s waiting a little further down the road?
That’s what’s captured my attention these days.
If there’s one thing you take away from this article, I hope it’s this.
Write. More.
Comments
Post a Comment