I recently came across an article from a guy who has very interesting thoughts about how to generate a skill. He’s specifically concerned about how to become better at writing, and explains how lots of writing is not enough to become a good writer.

This is something I’ve struggled with too. I’ve been a blogger for many years, but always oscillate between writing a lot and not writing at all.

Let’s think for a second about the mind of someone who writes a blog. They don’t think about money (blogging rarely becomes a serious business), they don’t do it to sell anything. They just think they have something inside and want to throw it at the world. Blogging is an act of ego, it’s about what one thinks of himself, and as such, it must be perfect.

A blogger cares a lot about what others think of them, which is exactly how one becomes a perfectionist. As a perfectionist, writing is an uphill battle: bloggers end up spending many hours on a single article, most of which is just reviewing and editing.

In his article, my blogger makes really good points about how you can’t just write an article and thoughtlessly publish it. Our mind has different levels of focus, and keeps working on a task even while we are not actively doing it (this is 100% true by the way), so he suggests to let articles «marinate» before publishing them.

I agree with these ideas, but I think it’s counterproductive for someone who still in the habit forming phase. Caring too much about how good an article is will make us dread writing it, and thus kill any chance of forming an habit to write.

Unless you really want to be a professional writer, I think blogging must be, first of all, for ourselves. A self-care act, even. Perfectionism is how you end up dreading the task: just thinking about the things I need to get right to publish a really good article makes me not want to write ever again. And it’s absolutely impossible to create a habit if you start by dreading the very same habit you’re trying to create.

To me, the whole idea of «letting articles marinate», is also a perfect recipe for failure. At least at the beggining. If you really want your articles to be better the first step to improve is to avoid dreading the task. Just write, forget if it’s good or bad, it will become better with time.

As we keep growing, we will start structuring the text better, making less mistakes, and improving. We might also start spending more time on each article if we grow an audience, it’s much easier to spend time on it if we know there’s people who care about and are waiting for it.