Writing

Sometimes you just need to be asked

I’ve always appreciated the spontaneous answers that pop out when people ask me questions. It leads to responses that it’s hard to manufacture on your own.

But it was rare. You’d have to wait for an interview, some client work or a thoughtful friend to show up.

Until now. Open your AI of choice (I used 4o in this example) and share an idea you’re interested in. Tell it to ask you 4 questions.

Undistractability is a superpower

I recently saw this popular note on Substack:

90% of writing is:

When you do these every day, strong writing is simply a byproduct.

It resonates with my own experience: when I tend to my physical movement whilst intentionally engaging with ideas and people, the writing flows naturally.

But “blocking the internet” strikes me as a unique point.

Publishing every day is a full body workout

When designing a workout programme for someone time-constrained, you focus on compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups at once. These exercises work the full body through a small number of movement patterns.

Publishing each day is a full-body workout for anyone looking to improve their craft and create something new.

Every day I have to:

These are a lot of different skills.

Deploy your writings every day

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.

80/20 writing

A popular approach to running is the 80/20 philosophy, popularised by Matt Fitzgerald. It says that runners improve most effectively when 80% of their running is at low intensity, with the remaining 20% done at higher intensity.

This approach recognises the value of high-volume, “easy” runs and aims to avoid what’s known as the “grey zone” of training. These are runs that are too hard to be easy and too easy to be hard. Research shows that this way of training provides limited aerobic benefit, whilst contributing significantly to fatigue. It’s a poor return on investment.

Why what's interesting is so interesting

On Day 1, I said I would be writing about what’s interesting to me.

Maybe this sounds a little trite. If you write online, there is often an expectation to mould your writings into short, punchy essays, layered with hot, contrarian takes.

But following what’s interesting is deeper than this.

To follow what’s interesting is to trust your sense of salience. Salience is an exquisitely complex way of pulling meaning from the world. It’s fast, yet utterly personalised. A lot of it happens beneath your awareness. You don’t know all the inputs and you never will.

I'm publishing something every day in Q2

I’m going to be publishing something every day in Q2.

I made this decision about 48 hours ago and I’m writing this half-way through Day 1. I don’t know whether I’m including weekends or not. There are lots of unanswered questions.

I’ve been writing a lot more this year, particularly on LinkedIn, and across two newsletters. The momentum has been building.

Several things happened recently:

Tyler mentioned in one interview that Substack often becomes too personal and full of emotion. It encourages longer-format, original reflections and discourages people from being editors of other peoples ideas. I bristled at first, but it brought me back to the original model of blogging: writing whatever you want on your own quirky website. I did this for years as a teenager and I loved it. Here I am again.

Winter holidaying in Cwmystwyth

I needed some time off. As part of an effort to spend less and explore more of what’s around me, I booked a week away near a village called Cwmystwyth in Ceredigion, Wales.

It’s easily drivable from Bristol and I also have friends a little further North, near Machynlleth. I picked it as I wanted to be somewhere remote, near mountains and running water. Check.

Airbnb near Cwmystwyth
Airbnb near Cwmystwyth

Cwmystwyth is a small village nestled alongside the river Ystwyth, which flows all the way west to Aberystwyth. Cwmystwyth literally means “valley of the river Ystwyth.” It sits in the middle of the Cambrian mountains. It is the exact centre point of Wales, according to Wikipedia. This is also West Wales, so it’s pretty wet.

I’m back

It’s been nearly 2 years, but I’m back writing again.

What happened? Well, I cofounded Almanac with some very smart people, and then this year we raised $9m in seed funding. Which was great news, but of course, also the reason I stopped writing.

Things are no less busy now, but I would like to share more thoughts, spurred on by so much of what is happening in the world at the moment: racial violence, global pandemic, political polarisation and an increasing intolerance of open discussion.

Learn more and blog better with Readwise

My Kindle is one of my favourite gifts from my wife. I resisted the idea of an electronic reader for a long time, but after seeing Gina use hers on holiday and at home, my curiosity grew.

Besides the convenience, a big selling point for me was highlighting—being able to select and save passages from what I was reading. I rarely read without taking notes, so being able to save and review notes digitally was an irresistible proposition.

Write your worries down

Too much of our time is lost struggling with painful feelings that we cannot express.

We try to move forward, try to put up a good fight, but there is something malign and pervasive colouring our mood. It drains our energy, saps our motivation, but remains out of sight. It’s uncomfortable, but even more important than that, it’s unclear.

Whether fear, worry, sadness or doubt—it is this lack of clarity that keeps us feeling stuck.

Hit the button

When you start writing its natural to obsess over the quality of what you share. You’ve read good writing—and this is not it. Your words look feeble and forced. Better to postpone your noble endeavour until you are worthy.

Here’s the underlying belief: these words aren’t good enough to publish, yet. I’ll keep going until they are. Procrastination, recalibration.

Here’s the truth:

It’s not about the right words; it’s about using your voice.

Why you should be writing in Markdown

It’s time to break the tyranny of note-taking apps and blogging platforms: write your online content in a universal language that encourages flow and keeps you focused on the content.

When you’re writing for the Internet, you want to be able to save and move your writings around as easily as possible. You don’t want each new app loosing bits of your formatting. After you’ve published your words, you don’t want them locked into that one particular presentation forever, right?

Organising your blogging with Trello and Sublime Text

Organising anything with Trello is a joy:

You might use Trello to manage projects, weddings, holidays… but a blog?

Why to choose Ghost for your blog

2021 update: I no longer use Ghost to power this blog! But I still think it’s an outstanding project and that the company are pioneering many practices that should be more widespread. I still frequently recommend it to others. Alas, the nerd in me got hooked on blogging via writing offline and committing changes through git. This blog is now powered by Hugo.

Up until now, every time I wanted to start writing I’d expend 97% of my energy thinking about how I could build a blog, which features I want, testing fonts, browsing themes and saving colour schemes. The remaining 3% went towards some writing. It’s the curse of being a developer.

6 unfounded fears about writing & publishing online

It’s been five months since I launched this blog. I’ve written 14 articles, generated a whopping £2.68 in Amazon referral fees, and built a staggering 19-strong subscriber list.

But I wasn’t an overnight success. It’s taken me a long time to get to the point of publishing these posts. For years, I amassed notes and shared nothing. I was held back by a multitude of fears that pin most people down when they consider sharing their creative work.

What do I write about?

My writings tend to revolve around a few reocurring themes:

© Dan Bartlett 2025