Blogging

The past 1.5 years of blogging has brought me immense joy and several lessons. It’s great to have an outlet for your own creativity and something to work on outside of the daily office hours. Like I confided to a good friend of mine: it made me feel alive at times. Small as it is, this little project of mine has made my life better and taught me the lessons, including the following:

It takes planning and effort to do the leg work

A research-oriented piece obviously demands a lot of reading, note-taking, planning, quoting, data-retrieving, data-processing, data visualization and writing such as this piece on Delta’s partnership or this on Delta’s effort to deliver stellar customer experience. Content that deals with a company’s financials requires a painstaking retrieval of data from the company’s financial statements. Some firms do a better job than others in releasing numbers in a user-friendly manner. Nonetheless, it is an ordeal to retrieve data and store it properly. Below is my Google drive that stores financial data of a few companies.

It’s tricky to overcome the “this is nothing special. Many talked about it already” mindset

“Why should I write about this? What would make what I have to say unique?”. Those are the questions I sometimes asked myself. The doubt delayed and at times killed the writing completely. I was trying to look for something unique or at least not talked about enough. The task is not easy. The Internet brings down barriers to information and allows everyone to voice his or her opinion. Unexplored topics come in short supply. Fortunately, I came to a realization that there are hundreds of books about just a certain subject, whether it is Civil War, World War II or Winston Churchill. I can build on top of the ones that came before me and add my own voice and perspective. It made the whole process easier. Plus, if you don’t have to write for a living, remember the whole thing is for yourself first.

It helps to identify sources of interesting and reliable information

It helps tremendously to get inspiration online. In addition to my friends and news outlets such as Hacker News, Wall Street Journal and companies’ SEC filings, Twitter has been a great source of ideas and materials. As long as you identify a few great Twitter users as inspiration, the platform is a gold mine for folks that cherish personal development. Some of my fav folks to follow include Horace Deliu, Modest Proposal, Neil Cybart and Ben Evans.

It is hard work to deliver great content consistently

Writing is already hard. Writing well is harder. Writing well consistently is much harder. There are days when the creativity juice abandons me. There are days when I don’t have any idea to write about. Plus, other commitments in life can stand in your way. To be able to write well consistently requires constant reading, constant exploration, insights, if possible, and a lot of hard work ranging from preparation, processing, visualization and the writing itself. Since I started to blog more often, I have had a whole new level of respect to folks that make a living out of writing. Not only do they have to do the hard work, but they also must overcome sporadic writer blocks and lethargy to honor the commitment to subscribers.

I still have a lot to learn about writing and delivering great content. I am willing to do the work and looking forward to continuing to do so in the future.