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Discussion on: How to keep writing?

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yoric profile image
Yoric • Edited

You've already posted articles and tutorials, and even have a blog, gratz for that (I bet not even 10 % of developers went that far).
One of the great motivation is to post articles that are actually being read, and dev.to has a vibrant community for this. It's even possible to double post here and on your blog.

My advice to keep writing would be first and foremost to write something useful to you. To cement your knowledge while learning.
It takes time as you said, and if you don't feel its usefulness, then it's normal to quit.

About me, it's the opposite, I was on a 9 to 5 job before and couldn't block the time to write. Now that I am free, I'm starting to go for it.
By the way, I realize having a regular job should not stop us from learning and improving. Don't sell 10 hours of your daily life for a salary if you feel stuck and not growing.

Recently I discovered a minimalist management list tool, Workflowy, that is both light and easy to use. It works better than OneNote so far for me (to put down ideas, articles to be written, articles and books to read...). Probably thanks to its "infinite bullet indentation" features, that makes it unique to organize our thoughts.

I also recommend using a timer app like Toggl. It helps to become more mindful of what we are currently doing, and how much time we put into it.

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ardennl profile image
Arden de Raaij

Thanks for the kind words, to be honest, this is v129 of me trying to blog, haha. I always create myself a new blog, start writing for a few months and then it slowly dies down, good intentions and all.

I have been slightly more consistent with Dev.to, as I know things are being read a lot more and it generates traffic to my own site as well.

And no a regular job shouldn't stop you from writing, but more often than not my 'off-time' is better defined when I work for an employer than when I freelance, resulting in less time working on side-projects, etc. Ideally I'd write these articles during worktime and have the rest of the team benefit from them as well. Unfortunately that's not always possible though.

I use Todoist and it has been stellar for organizing this kind of stuff, but I'll have a look at Workflowy as well (I'll put it on my to-do list 😅). Oh and I already use toggl, it has helped me greatly with prioritising the things I actually want to do.

Thank you for all your suggestions!