Software engineers can quickly become anxious about deploying new changes.
Each successive deployment brings the risk of something blowing up and blame falling on them. Better to hold off for now.
There is an effective and counter-intuitive solution to this: get them to deploy more often.
A rare event that causes high stress becomes a frequent event that becomes more familiar. Avoiding the scary thing only makes it loom larger, whereas leaning into it forces you to confront the issue and make improvements as you go.
I think this applies to writing too. The cure for writing paralysis is to publish more often. You don’t wait for the right time or the state of mind where you won’t be scared about what others think.
Publishing regularly has many wonderful side effects.
It starves perfectionism of its oxygen by continually shipping imperfect things. It also accelerates your thinking: things clarify rapidly when your finger is hovering over the publish button. That haggard paragraph that survived 3 drafts meets its end. The witty tangent that you couldn’t let go of seems like a painful distraction.
Repeating this process over and over again refines your thinking and improves your confidence.
In my own 90-day experiment, I predict thinking and learning improvements beyond the actual content I’m writing about. Rapidly moving from private ideas to public articles trains your articulation and communication; qualities that lie upstream of any one idea.
I have several books worth of notes in Obsidian. Ideas that possessed me in the moment and then slowly decayed through over-editing. By the time they felt “ready”, the idea had lost its shine and I’d lost momentum.
Publishing sooner is the best way to work with your natural motivation curves, riding the wave whilst it’s still alive for you, and sharing your best work with others. Today.
See you tomorrow.