It's been a while since I've done one of these celebration posts.
The last one was when I wrote 500 tech articles, and that was back in August.
I write every single day. Yes, Saturday/Sunday included.
People tend to think I joke when I say I do.
But this blog is my legacy, and if you go through it, you'll see it's not a joke.
I want to spend some time to state the why of this challenge and how far the blog has grown. In the end, I'll dive into what to expect 😏.
Why do you write every single day?
This challenge started on 19 March 2020, and to be completely honest with you, it feels like it was last week.
This was the mark of the first lockdown in South Africa. You know the ones that resulted from the Coronavirus.
Because of this lockdown, I didn't have to travel +/- 1,5 hours a day. That's quite a lot of time.
Enough time to learn something that's valuable for me.
At this point, I had a semi-abandoned lifestyle blog, which I enjoyed writing, but it just took too much effort.
So at that point, I decided to write small byte-sized technical learnings.
I bought a domain, which, funny enough, was the reason to start this daily journey: daily-dev-tips.com.
Well, I guess I have to do it daily now.
I'm not one to focus solely on one topic.
Web development is what I enjoy and do in my day-to-day job.
I'm not only working in React; I use other excellent tools in my job.
So that decided the "what".
"Byte-sized development tips" (Highly focussed on web development)
How do you do it?
So many people ask me: How, how do you write every single day?
And it's not that hard. It's about forming habits.
It turns into going to the gym, getting dressed in the morning, or having dinner.
All things you do because you programmed yourself to do them.
I wrote a detailed article on consistency and how to come up with ideas effortless.
You might also like my article on how I spend my 19% free time.
And if that's not enough, I'll even tell you the secret to my writing process.
What have you achieved?
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an old article where I wrote 100 articles, which sparked an idea to do somewhat of a comparison between the two.
| 100 articles | 700 articles | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| days from start | 100 | 709 | +609% |
| newsletter subs | 54 | 1142 | +2014.81% |
| visitors | 4.5K | 378K | +8300% |
| avg time | 44s | 44s | - |
| 826 | 9253 | +1020.22% |
The big thing about this table is that you can grow a lot this time!
People like to believe there is a cheat to getting this number, but let me break that bubble: there is not.
You have to put in the hard work and make it happen.
Note: Of course, these are only vanity metrics, and while they are fun to see, they do not even mean anything.
What matters most to me is some of the fantastic emails/dm's/etc I get from people saying they learned something, that they have solved an issue or that I inspire them to write.
That's what matters to me.
What to expect in the future?
I mentioned this before, for 2022, I want to have an unbroken streak of one article a day.
In 2021 I took a nine-day break when I got married, but this year should be an entire streak.
You can also expect a completely new version coming out soon!
As I'm writing this, I'm hoping to launch it with this article, but I might be a bit ambitious there.
Furthermore, I hope to have some cool engagement and collaborative works with other amazing people.
And of course the thing you can expect most from me:
Daily tips to help you and me grow every single day.
(Image by James Clear - Atomic Habits)
Even if we grow 1% a day, we are unstoppable in our growth.
Conclusion
Writing every day has changed my life in many ways:
- It landed me an amazing job at daily.dev
- made me grow by at least 1% every day
- I'm meeting so many cool people every single day.
Besides these apparent wins, it helped me become a better English writer. (Disclaimer: still has lots of improvement).
It allowed me to learn about some fantastic products out there.
And I even became a Prisma ambassador.
Thank you for reading, and let's connect!
Thank you for reading my blog. Feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter and connect on Facebook or Twitter
Top comments (45)
I still don't think, despite hearing it, people realise how incredible 700 posts in 709ish days actually is!
I literally called you a unicorn in my article yesterday 🤣
Incredible commitment and I am looking forward to 13 December 2022! If I got it right that should be a major celebration day of 1k articles, a feat few achieve in a lifetime never mind in less than 3 years.
Out of idle curiosity (it is a vanity metric), have you passed (or how close are you) to 1 million words? I just think that sounds kind of cool, "author of over a million words" as a tagline / bio!
Oh damn, I should actually write a script to count my words, never done it!
Possibly very close to that.
And indeed 1K articles is just next level crazy when you think about it!
Thanks for your support Graham 🙌
Haha "author of million word" i love it. I've read your article this morning it was awesome :)
Thanks so much Amrin!
And yeah, the author of a million words is something that just has that "ok, that is impressive" feel to it (even if word count is a useless metric! 🤣)
I must admit I left behind.
This is what I have got in my blog.
epsi-rns.gitlab.io
And this is my other blog as well.
epsi-rns.github.io
Wow that is massive as well!
Well done 👏
Thank youuuuu...
Sounds crazy but amazing results. I also share things daily on LinkedIn from last 3 years and man the results are just mind blowing. I got so many opportunities and awards just by writing stuff daily. I have 25k followers now on LinkedIn and in a day I received 8k subscribers to my newsletter I created. Yes, you are right when you say how writing changes our lives:)
Thanks for sharing.
Wow that's very impressive well done Pavan! 💖
This is super inspiring!
I have subscribed to your articles and your articles on React and JavaScript have helped me numerous times!!
I liked how you spoke about numbers and that you not to fall into the trap of metrics. I used to be stuck in this endless loop, and lately I have realized that huge number of views or not, it matters that I'm writing articles first for myself and then to help with people in the community who might benefit from it!
Keep rocking!
Thank you. Looking forward to reading more articles from you!
Yeah I think once you focus on writing for yourself or at least for progressing yourself the metrics really don't matter.
Thank you Bharati! 🙌
Amazing and Congrats Chris 🎉.
You are inspiration for me💯.
Thank you so much!
You are actually a open source inspiration to me!
Thanks Chris🙂
But for me inspiration and motivation for contributing to Open Source projects came from Eddie.
And Technical Writing inspiration from you😄
Impressive, posting EVERY friggin' day, it really sounds intimidating ... I salute you, I'd never even contemplate it myself, absolutely lacking the discipline for that!
It's actually some kind of relaxing to do now, and nerve wrecking to not do it (if this makes any sense)
Yes it does, I get it ... once you're in that state of mind then it becomes compulsory, "must do" (but in a good way).
100% lovely feeling to have 💖
A stunning achievement, doubly so when you see the quality of the content. Well done.
Thank you Mike!
Glad the quality does not dissapoint
Huge congrats! 700 posts is indeed an amazing milestone. Fascinating journey! 👏
Thanks Sahan!
It's been quite a challenge, let's see till how far I can get
700, you are crazy Chris 🤪! Congratulations for the achievement and your followings growing quite impressively.
It feels like i'm crazy sometimes
Congratulations Chris 🎉
People who invest that much time to create good content deserve a lot of followers and success in general.
Thank you Michael!
Appreciate these kind words