A funny thing happens as your expertise grows.
You get to a point where you know too much.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s rooted in a truth:
When you know how to optimize something for success, it’s hard to do it any other way.
But sometimes unoptimized ways are more fun.
Or more creative.
Or more interesting.
This optimization trap has happened to me with blogging.
I’ve published hundreds (maybe thousands?) of blog posts over the years and got pretty good at doing so.
I know how to create value in posts, focus them on actionable advice, and package content to attract and serve a specific audience.
I’ve even taught my approach to others.
But…
The more I mastered blogging, the less room I gave myself to do it any other way and the less space I gave myself to explore or just have fun.
(Btw, when I talk about optimization I don’t mean for search engines – I mean for readers and results.)
This feeling has been amplified recently.
Because after 6+ years publishing at least one blog post a week, I hardly published any this year.
I’m afraid to look at how few posts I’ve published, but I’m about to go check my articles archive to find out.
Please hold…
Six posts.
Yikes.
And most are repurposed Twitter threads I wanted to capture before they vanish into the black hole with every other tweet more than a week old.
For context, I published 25 posts in 2022 (here were the most popular) and 40 in 2021 (here were the most popular).
It’s interesting my blogging production has shrunk as my skill at it has grown, but that’s not all that’s going on here.
My waning blog production is a (mostly) direct casualty of the launch of my podcast and YouTube channel.
It wasn’t accidental – it was intentional. (Sort of.)
I believe when you take on a new project, you need to remove an existing project to make room for it – if you don’t, you wind up on the fast track to burnout.
Here’s my deeper take on that approach.
As the saying goes, “You can do anything you want, you just can’t do everything you want.”
So…
When I started to publish a weekly podcast, I gave myself permission to step back from publishing a weekly blog post.
I haven’t abandoned writing – I still write a daily newsletter, tweets, and LinkedIn posts each day.
But…
I miss blogging.
Not just the optimized, actionable, valuable posts I published the past few years, but also the free form, rambling, run-on sentence, exploratory posts like the one you’re reading now.
There was no outline for this post.
No value promise in the headline.
It’s won’t go viral, get me clients, grow my email list, or make me sales.
And it serves no specific purpose other than to flex my writing skills, share something on my mind, help me clarify my thoughts, and…
Maybe have a little fun.
I don’t know if you’ll enjoy reading it or find it useful (my typical content goal), but it doesn’t matter.
That’s not really the point of this one.
It’s not for you – it’s for me.
That’s something I haven’t written in a LONG time.
And it feels good.
A few notes about this post…
As with most things I create, this one didn’t come out of nowhere.
A few specific things I consumed lately inspired it:
I watched a couple episodes of David Perell’s new How I Write podcast and his conversation with Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution resonated with me.
You can see how much they love blogging, the fun they have, and the freedom they feel in their writing.
I also watched Tom Critchlow on Paul Millerd’s podcast and while their conversation wasn’t specifically about blogging, Tom has a huge passion for blogging and it was interesting to hear him talk through the crossroads he’s at with his current work.
And finally…
I recently decided to reduce my podcast to twice a month as opposed to weekly.
I haven’t officially announced that yet (though I guess I just did), but it will happen starting in October.
That decision – combined with the episodes I already banked – means I only need to record two more episodes this year.
It’s one of several changes I plan to make with how I operate and they’re each designed to open up space for myself.
(More to come on that in a future blog post maybe?)
I’ve been shocked to see how immediately I’ve felt the impact of those decisions (in a good way).
The space they’ve created has no doubt led to my renewed interesting blogging and the fact I’m about to hit publish on this…
My seventh blog post of the year.