Maintaining a practice of continuous writing — how do you keep going?
This week I had the pleasure of speaking to the lovely community of product managers at the Department for Education, about working in the open. I shared my experiences of writing about my work on the internet, why I think it is such a vital skill for us as practitioners and as teams, and the how to overcome the various barriers to getting started.
In the Q&A someone asked me — how have you kept going over 6–7 years? Surely there must have been times where it was difficult? I gave a brief answer on the call, and this is my longer response now I’ve had time to give it more thought.
Have there been times when it’s been hard or I’ve felt like giving up? Absolutely.
Nobody sails through 7 years of their life without challenges in their work, their personal life, their health, their relationships etc. If you looked back through my body of written work (good luck, it’s scattered across the internet) you’d find multiple gaps. Sometimes I’ve needed to take breaks because of low energy, or family needing me, or because I’ve been working on things that are sensitive and I don’t know what I’m allowed to say. The one thing every break has had in common is that they have eventually ended, and I have returned to writing.
11* things that have helped me to keep my writing habit going:
1. Automatic reminders. I am not someone who sticks rigidly to a schedule of writing, yet I have a weekly reminder in my calendar on a Friday afternoon. This means that every Friday I have to make a decision whether to write or not — and I allow myself to choose ‘not’ quite regularly — but it means I don’t let weeks or months drift by without a post.
2. Recognising that the primary benefit of my writing is for me. I treat writing as an exercise in self-reflection and documentation, not a branding exercise. I write because it helps me, and if anyone else benefits then that’s a bonus. I put my writing on the internet because it’s the easiest way for me to find it again (Google is always going to be better than my filing system).
3. Giving myself grace to take breaks. Sometimes I need to stop, and that’s fine. I don’t punish myself when I miss a week; thankfully I write because I choose to, not because it pays my mortgage, and therefore there is no-one holding me accountable to a posting schedule other than me. I’m following in the footsteps of others here — I appreciate seeing other bloggers taking time off, and either writing about what they’ve been up to on their break, or not. Nobody owes you an explanation for a break, but I do appreciate people’s honest accounts of the challenges of maintaining some kind of persona on the internet over a sustained period of time.
4. External validation and the digital community hype culture. I am fortunate now to have a reasonably sized regular audience (10s rather than 100s) and whenever I post I get some kind of reaction. The online community of digital/data/design folks has been extremely generous and encouraging to me since the outset, even when I was writing with very limited experience and a clunky writing style. The feedback I receive is almost always positive, but I do get negative critique too, and I try to approach this with curiosity and be thankful that someone has taken the time to tell me something that would improve my writing or my practice.
5. Mixing up the format. I get bored quickly, and you’ll rarely see me post more than about four editions of weeknotes before I switch up the format. I return to Sam’s post on weeknotes styles often, and have tried all of them at some point. I also use different media for different styles of content, depending on what’s on my mind: I have Bluesky for in-the-moment ideas and thoughts, and Medium/LinkedIn for longer form, more thought through material.
6. I make it easy for myself by writing about what’s on my mind right now. I don’t force ideas to appear or constrain myself to particular topics or themes, I just write what’s on my mind in the moment. This allows my writing to remain pretty fluid as I’m not overthinking the topic. This post is a perfect example: normally I’d be writing weeknotes on a Friday, but I’ve just sent our team weeknotes so I’m not feeling very inspired on that topic, therefore I’m writing about something else that’s come up this week.
7. I don’t force my writing style; I write how I think. When I look back over my earlier writing my style was more florid; I think I was insecure and trying to show off my command of the English language. Nowadays I prefer a more informal, conversational style that’s honest and shows my personality.
8. Identifying myself as a writer. Over time I’ve built myself a reputation as someone who writes. This can be helpful as it adds a little healthy external pressure — for example, if I’ve been to an event or given a talk and not written about it yet, someone will usually give me a friendly nudge.
9. Limiting the things that hold me back. I don’t edit my drafts very much and I don’t maintain a personal website. I focus on small, regular releases of content rather than beautifully edited essays on a personalised infrastructure. I know that over-editing and tinkering with fonts/pictures/domain names would slow me down, so I just don’t do those things.
10. If I’m on a break and I want to restart I lean into natural ‘trigger’ points throughout the year. New Year, birthdays, September ‘new year’ feeling, end of the year, first day of each month: there are a few key dates where we naturally feel more reflective. If I’ve stopped writing I’ll usually find some energy again around these times of year, and restart with a post looking back or setting goals for the next period.
11. I’ve worked out some tricks that help me when I have writer’s block. Your mileage may vary; these are some things that work for me:
- Putting a timer on
- Spending 5 minutes writing ideas on post-its notes and then arranging them into a narrative
- Changing my font colour to something more interesting than black on white (purple is a particular favourite)
- Dictating thoughts into my phone voice memos instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper
- Writing bullet points if I don’t have the energy to summon full sentences
- Keeping a list of potential blog post ideas in my phone notes for inspiration when I’m lacking ideas
- Using prompt questions like this reflection postcard from Satori Lab
- Moving away from my desk to another space in my house or going out to a coffee shop
- Asking a question on Bluesky and crowdsourcing ideas
- Going for a walk
*It was a nice round number (10) and then I thought of something else. Who cares, there are no rules here 😊
