On November 28th, 2019, I started an experiment of blogging daily for 100 days. I had been listening to many podcasts/books by Seth Godin. He chall...
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Such an awe inspiring story!!
Being a college freshmen, it is hard to blog.
But you sir are doing this stuff as a father with having a full time job is even more tough!
Than you for your wonderful story. It motivates me to do more!
Wow, that's amazing. It didn't even cross my mind to write a blog post when I was in college. I told myself false stories that I didn't have anything to share or contribute.
I see you blogged today on dev.to too. Very cool! I have no clue what you're talking about since I don't do frontend dev. It sounds smart. 😂
Keep it up!
Bro you are trolling me!! haha!!
I would love to become a devops dev in near future.
Loved your story!!
Pay attention here, guys and gals :-) Timeboxing (the calendar thing) is the best invention ever to get things done. You just don't have time for distractions. Your time is planned in advance already. Henry Kissinger comes to mind: "There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
Great post Facundo, thank you!
I recently started my blog mainly to improve my English, being forced to write more often. There are four articles published so far and it has been an interesting challenge... difficult but rewarding. I'm trying to maintain a consistency of one article per week... I can't even imagine one per day!
Hi Darlan, if you're able to do it weekly, good for you, I couldn't do it. Before I tried to blog daily, I wanted to blog monthly. I never reached my goal. For me, it was a mix of perfectionism and procrastination.
So, sometimes I explore extremes to find balance. In other words, find the edges so I can tell where the middle is.
Great read!
I had a similar experience in the very early days of the rapsberry pi being released I made a personal blog to house all of the "how to fix this problem" issues on the pi I was having.
It covered everything from moving from SD cards to external drives through to setting up mono for c# development on the little pi.
As you found, it was slow and for me to start off with. I wanted a single place to go to and read very simple and to the point instructions on what needed to be done to get X or y problem fixed along with some exception cases for certain versions or common issues.
About 3 months after trying to blog a couple of times a week I noticed all the external traffic coming in. Infact the surge in popularity spurred a new post about moving from hosting wordpress on the pi to compiling static pages with Jekyll.. another banger of a post which surged activity even more.
It was super fulfilling to see comments flooding in and all the cross linked posts coming from external sites and stackoverflow. As with you, I found my style, no bull simple instructions.
Eventually I got far too busy with life and some family illnesses resulted in me leaving the blog to decay. Your post has got me thinking about kicking this off again though. The satisfaction of seeing some of my posts being discussed in online meet ups and on presentation slides from hackathons really kept my motivation going.
Wow, that's really cool. You're inspiring me too 😂. First, maybe I should enable comments on my site so that it's easier to interact.
Second, I've had this side project of creating a Kubernetes PI cluster on my list for a long time. It'd be to experiment with advanced deployment practices in a hybrid cloud setting (with Azure).
What's your site?
I don't know what I'm looking for yet, maybe inspiration. Thanks for sharing!
What a great read! I was recently thinking about blogging more frequently, so I loved reading your experiences. I currently publish one article each week alongside a YouTube video and they are almost always in a "how to do" format that you mention. I might need to look into adding some opinion based articles in between and hope that doesn't stretch me too thin.
Thanks Aleks, your latest blog posts look amazing. I wish I had the time to go make a video along with them too. Also maybe... I'm making it out harder and more time-consuming than it really is.
Here's an example of a opinion-based article on my blog.
Seth's blog is nothing but opinions and he blogs daily. It could be useful to check out his blogs daily for a couple of weeks to get the feel.
If you want to keep it more practical, here's an idea - you could do more "behind the scenes" content since ideally you already have the content to show. Examples:
Thank you Facundo, those are some excellent ideas and resources! I'll keep my eye on both yours and Seth's blogs.
To be fair, my process is reversed - most of the time I start out with a project I want to build, do a video around it, and then do an article based on the video. But, there are definitely things that don't warrant their own video which would fit nicely in a more condensed article format.
I will think about it and see if I can make it happen. I am definitely optimizing a lot of what I do along the way. I started writing/recording pretty recently, and like you said - the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Yeah, regarding your projects, that makes a lot of sense. When I said "projects", I didn't mean side projects. I assumed that you were a freelancer/consultant for some reason and what I was really meaning was "client projects."
Your process on starting with the video makes sense and I might give it a shot in the future.
Goodluck!
Hey Facundo,
Can't believe I haven't seen your blog around, I'm currently on a 250+ streak already.
And it's so much fun for my like you know people get addicted to gyming, I got addicted to blogging.
It's like you state sometimes even easier to blog about it, then to explain to just 1 person.
What I'm wondering, did the result only came AFTER you stopped? Or did you have high views during the time as well?
Another Q: Why did you not continue?
Hi Chris! Wow, I'm really impressed 🤯. You probably haven't seen me around because this is my first dev.to blog post 😊. In my world, I don't run into dev.to articles that much so I've never been active until now.
The results started to trickle in towards the end of the experiment. I was really focused on following the rules. I did not want to chase views/likes/thumbs up for vanity.
After the 100 days, I asked my wife what she thought if I kept going. She nearly had a conniption. Up to that point, I didn't have a morning routine and I was just fitting time into my day to get a blog out. It was really tough for her.
I realized that if I wanted any chance of publishing any content in a cadence, I'd have to make it sustainable. So, I started to work on a morning routine. It took time because I had to do other things like going to bed on time and that meant sleep training my daughter and hire a cleaning service to spend less time doing chores.
After I had a morning routine, I used it to do things like running daily for 100 days, learning new things, getting a bunch of certifications, and other things.
Then my second daughter was born. I had to start all over with the routine, finding a new sleep schedule, etc.
Right now, I have about 1-2 hours each weekday to do something personal like blogging, learning, side-project. That's sustainable for me and my family.
I'm curious, do you blog on top of your day job? Or do you blog during work hours?
Also, is daily-dev-tips.com/ hosted on hashnode? It looks great. You're doing so many things I want to be doing. Amazing! 👏👏
Hey yes fully got you,
I started in lockdown, so it was easy was just using my "travel time" to blog, so didn't even notice it.
By the time I had 200 articles, my Fiance thought I would stop, but when I told her I want at least 365 she was shocked.
For me it's still "free-time" since I haven't gone back to the office, but also have to admit the weekends can be killing and not talking holidays to not-publish as well.
So possibly after this year I'll stop doing weekends and holidays.
But definitely want to keep up with the habit.
Let's wait until we are married and even consider kids, I think my tone will be different then haha.
Also, my blog is an eleventy self hosted blog, I do repost to hashnode and dev.to.
Thanks!
Awesome! I am sure it has been asked, but can you talk about the logistics? How did you build the blog? Are you cross-posting? How are you getting traffic to your blog? Trying to do something similar (personal blog and cross posting) but a little slow-going. Wondering if you looked into Hashnode. Great post btw!
Hi Moneer,
I did not promote my blog. This very blog post is the first time I'm shining a light on my site. Most of my traffic has been coming from Google searches.
I am not cross-posting yet. I have aspirations about it but I have limited time and I put the focus on creating content first.
I learned about Hashnode last Friday. It looks cool. It might have saved me a lot of time I spent on creating my own website.
For the site itself, I use GitHub, Netlify, and Netlify CMS. The site is created with Jekyll.
Did that answer your questions? Anything else you want to know?
Excellent! That answers all my questions. My site is very similar in terms of the tech stack. Now I just have to write more! Keep up the good work and thanks for the inspiration
Thanks, very inspiring!
I like writing a lot and have been writing for myself for last 4 years. Recently started publishing as a blog.
I was wondering, have you ever experienced the impostor syndrome? If yes, how did you overcome it? I have collected 30+ topics for future articles but I often feel reluctant to write about on those topics.
Hi, I suffer from impostor syndrome.
TLDR; if you're having impostor syndrome, ask yourself "am I misleading someone?" If the answer is no, then continue.
I heard once the idea that if you're pushing hard enough, you will feel like an impostor.
For example, if I were to blog about using React the "best way" then yeah I should feel like an impostor... I am not a front-end dev world-renoun expert.
But if I were to blog about, "My experience using React as a backend developer" then I will probably still FEEL like an impostor because I don't know React well but it would be authentic since I would be talking about my experience. People reading will know the context that I am a backend developer.
Another example, I could have titled this article, "how to jumpstart your blog to thousand of views" but it didn't feel authentic because I don't consider myself a content marketing expert.
Hope that helps.
Facundo
What CMS do you use? I see you posted about going wordpress -> Jekyll but is that where you decided to stay?
I want to get away from Medium and just stick to writing posts with MarkDown. I'm trying too find out the most dead simple way to do that. Dev.to seems like a promising place to post but I'd like to have a backup on my own site sometime.
Hi Raymond,
🤔 I didn't start with Wordpress. I never used it. Maybe I misspoke somewhere.
I found the _dev.to _writing experience to be amazing.
I started with Jekyll over three/four years ago and I sunk a lot of time into it. I spent a lot of time modifying its default theme to make it what I want. I was never satisfied with my front-end skills, so then I bought a Jekyll theme. I've tweaked it since.
I've considered cross-posting this post to Medium before. Why do you want to get away from Medium? I'm curious.
With Jekyll, I use Netlify and Netlify CMS. Netlify CMS is really simple and the editor is very bland. I write with markdown, but it is a little quirky.
Here's a starter for Netlify, Netlify CMS for Gatsby
github.com/netlify-templates/gatsb...
Gatsby is similar to Jekyll but based in React instead of Ruby.
Man, I have always thought of writing blog posts, I always start the early on weekend, write for a few hours or well most of the day, and stop at a point. And that's it never get back to it. I just realized reading your story that I haven't written more than 8 blog posts in the past 4 years. It's hard to blog but reading your motivation, I will for sure get back to writing weekly at least.
Thanks for sharing, awesome stuff.
It is hard! But, the more you do it, the easier it gets. You could start by breaking it up into 30 minutes each day so that you don't feel like you have this burden on the weekends.
Here's some inspiration:
jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers
This is really an inspiring post. About two years ago (October 2018), I wanted to dive deep into the technologies I was working on. I am a person who needs to refer his notes even now and then. Therefore, I came up with an idea of "digital notes" where I can document my thoughts and I started my own blog.
I started documenting everything I was learning on my blog (redquark) in a "tutorial" flavour. After writing three or four posts, I started to feel I am getting more understanding of the topic and this was really helpful (even in landing a job). However, I used to share them on my LinkedIn and Twitter 😃.
Through that blog, I came in contact with so many people from the same field and we constantly communicate over emails. It's fun.
This is also I would like to suggest to the freshers that if they are looking out for a job or trying to learn something then they should seriously consider blogging. It does help a lot.
I have heard about different challenges like 100 Days Of Coding, 100 Day Of Algorithms etc. but 100 Days Of Blogging is a first 😃. Your dedication towards this goal is really commendable and inspiring. More power to you.
I like your blog, looks nice!
And I agree, I learned a lot by trying to explain something. I often don't know what I don't know until I try to explain it.
Thanks for the kind words! 🙏
Great post! Love the motivation!
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for writing this I needed to hear it! I am more inspired to make blogging a habit now. (Also it's very sweet you working while your baby daughter hangs out napping 🥰 ) Great stuff.
Haha, thanks Noel!
Great post. I started publishing blog posts in July. I only publishsh 3 pieces per week but I learned more and have new ideas. Thank you for sharing
Good for you. Glad this post helped.
Publishing 3 pieces a week is a serious accomplishment 🌟. For the record, right now, I am not blogging daily or at any cadence. I am using my morning routine to work on other things.
Sometimes, I find it is hard to complete a piece
Yeah, I know that feeling really well. I don't think it ever goes away.
I recently learned that many famous book writers write every day. They focus on the act of writing first, then worry about editing it.
jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers
very nice post!
I love the "rules" of your experiment.
Thanks Jen. Me too. I think those rules pushed me down a very different path.
Really great post, thanks for sharing!
Thanks Peter!
Loved the goal-based approach 👏🏽
Thanks! Putting the focus on hitting the "publish" button taught me a lot!
Question on the timeboxing / calendar stacking: What happens if you set an hour for your task & it doesn't get complete in that hour? Where do you find the time to finish said task?
I love this question and I am resisting the urge to write you an entire blog post 😅
TLDR: I update my calendar many times a day.
When I have a thought like... "This is going to take me longer than the time I carved out" then I have to the calendar and I try to carve out more time. It's going to force me to move other things around like:
For things that I don't know how long they will take, you can schedule a re-occurring time. For example, checking your email/Twitter/dev.to account. In my last job, I had a lot of emails and it's impossible to know many emails I will receive in the future. So, I had a 30-minute time-slot twice a day to check my email. I barely get emails now, so you won't see it on my current calendar. But, you will see that at 4 pm every Friday I will play Starcraft with friends. It's really refreshing to have a re-occurring fun time/date night/hobby because it removes the burden of trying to schedule it.
But, there's so much more I want to say... because this only works if you stick to your calendar. For what it's worth, in the beginning, I felt like I was failing at it all the time. Yes, it's really true that we developers are really bad at estimating.
I gave in to the urge. Sorry about the mini blog post, but after all, there's an entire book on it 🙃
This is awesome and very inspirational! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
This is really inspirational! I just started writing for the first time. Writing is hard, but it's so much fun and rewarding too!
Thanks Vincent!
Really Beautiful blog spot!. As someone who has tried sharing my knowledge through blog post in the past and failed. I hope to get it this time. Thanks for sharing
Thanks and good luck! 😊
Awesome read, enjoyed every bit of it. Thank you very much for this detailed post!
Thanks!
Great post Facundo, very interesting.
Wow the best post I have seen so far about the 100days challenge experience.
I think I'm starting one :D
What do you use as your blogging site? Do you host it yourself, pay for a service, or just some free site?
I use GitHub for version control. I use Netlify to deploy, host, and DNS. I love Netlify. I also have Netlify CMS to help me add content easily to my static website.
The static website is Jekyll. I started with Jekyll well over 2 years ago. I bought a theme that I have tweaked over the years.
Without Netlify CMS, I used to add a blog and run
jekyll serveto "develop" my post. I quickly realized this was not going to scale after I started blogging daily, and I added Netlify CMS which ultimately let me publish from the back of Lyfts 😂