Reasons to Write 📝

#productivity #career #writing

Note: This first blog post is a reminder to myself as to why I have decided to write a blog. I hope it's helpful to other people here also!

I have been meaning to start writing a blog for some time and finally this is the first post! My SMART goal is to publish a post every other week. My reasons to write are:

👶🏻 For my past self: To share things that I have learnt with the developer community, especially when I tried to find an article to help me and didn't find exactly what I needed.

👩🏻‍💻 For my present self: If you cannot explain something, you do not understand. Although it's uncertain who actually said this this quote definitely resonates. I learn better when actively taking notes and trying to explain things rather than simply reading. I hope that by explaining to others, I also benefit myself indirectly.

👵🏻 For my future self: As developers we are constantly learning, and only a finite amount of information can actually fit into a single brain. I want to write so that my future self can refer back to what I have written and easily relearn what I had learnt in the past.

I've made a conscious effort here to have the goals focus on myself and what I can control (known as process goals), rather than who or how many people read my posts or other "success" factors, because even if no one reads what I write, the writing itself is worth it.

If you're interested in even more motivational words, I was super inspired by:
to finally start writing and define my "why", and

A Dozen Ways to Make Time

Practicing Developer ・ Jan 14 '20

#productivity #career

to actually make the time to do it (this post was written in the small moments of my week in between doing other things).

Top comments (6)

Corey McCarty • Feb 3 '20

I recommend that you write bits of material down whenever you can, and keep a list of post ideas. I write my posts over a number of weeks and revisit them periodically. If I do manage to write through in a single sitting then I come back and review it with fresh eyes. I also keep a list of my bad habits to help me focus on cleaning them up when I'm reviewing. Below is my post to discuss bad habits so that we can help one another to write better.

Writing Pitfalls

Corey McCarty ・ Feb 1 ・ 1 min read

#blog #writing #discuss #watercooler

Erica Tanti • Feb 3 '20

Thank you for the insight into your process! I already have a todo list of posts to write but hadn't thought of starting multiple and having the opportunity to look again with fresh eyes.