Not Starting…

In early 2018, I decided I would start a blog. I was excited. I had plans. I would start, not with 1 blog, but with 2. One year later, 0 blogs. What happened?

Mistakes & Lessons

My failed attempt at starting a blog taught me some lessons. It feels appropriate that my first post is on the mistakes that prevented my posting last year.

Going Big

Mistake: 2 blogs?! Why? I wanted to blog about many topics. I decided to group these topics into 2 logically cohesive blogs. This added an artificial barrier to my success. My enthusiasm dropped as the task felt larger than one I wanted to work on in spare time.

Lesson: Start small. If you love what you’re doing, scale up.

Arbitrary Requirements

Mistake: I set arbitrary requirements. I wanted to have several posts written before I published my first post, I spent hours trying to make the website “pretty”, etc.

Lesson: Requirements are only for essentials. Everything else is nice to have.

Expertise

Mistake: I picked a blogging topic for which I had no expertise. I was interested in the topic; however, everything I wrote was just re-hashing existing knowledge. Neither adding to it nor making it more accessible.

Lesson: Do what you enjoy or are exceptional at. Everything else is a low-value use of time.

Starting

This time, I’m starting simple. 1 blog, 1 post, with future posts on anything I find interesting. Sometimes, starting is the hardest part.