'Why is it so hard for really smart people to write well? One of the reason is: they have 20 years of bad habits.' That whole clip from Larry McEnerney is really worth a watch. Every time I watch it, I instantly get the urge to jump here, write and publish. And yet, while I contemplate the idea of writing and publishing every damn day for so long, I still never succeed to implement it in my life.
I did feel already - a few times - how writing helps your thinking. About writing. Going through the Lonely Writers Club lately was the kick I needed. I've rarely published that many times in my life since last Sept. I realised though: for every post I hit 'publish' I'm drafting 10x more. On every kind of topic. It's just that I look at the world surrounding me, I start to think 'things' and I add them on my notes app, or create voice notes, or send them to my partner on discord etc. I often wonder: why don't you publish these nuggets of 'thoughts' as they come?
Maybe that's why I fell in love with twitter in the first place; or tumblr before. This was an easy way to write, think, publish, meet. The thing is: the platform itself has never been set up to last. That post resonated so much. I can't agree more with Andrew's conclusion:
I'm going to look into setting up an RSS reader for myself and start hunting for high quality blogs.
And finally, I will be redirecting my micro-blogging energy that was previously wasted on Twitter into actual-blogging energy here.
I highly restrict my daily time on social media. And I'd love to write here every day. Thinking out loud is blogging. I came across logging again recently. Think of it as 'journal entries made public'. I enjoyed Dean's 6 lessons from 21 months of logging:
I’ll even admit that I consider my logging practice to be more important than my practice of publishing essays.
It reminds me the hacking scene from The Social Network 'while simultaneously blogging about the whole process'.
Let's try and see where it goes. Next step would be to celebrate 20 years of daily publishing on this blog.
Who would have guessed that after twenty years Tyler and I would still be writing Marginal Revolution! Thanks especially to Tyler, we have had multiple new posts every single day for twenty years! Incredible.
Here's a list of daily writer/ blogger/ logger I proudly read through my RSS reader - they're kinda OGs to me; or at least, they inspire me:
- Jason Kottke - 'founded in 1998, kottke.org is one of the oldest blogs on the web. [...] and covers the essential people, inventions, performances, and ideas that increase the collective adjacent possible of humanity.'
- Dave Winer - 'this blog was started in October 1994. It's the longest continuously blog on the Internet.'
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Seth Godin - 'for more than thirty years, I’ve been trying to turn on lights, inspire people and teach them how to level up. This blog has been appearing daily for more than a decade.'
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Barry Ritholtz - 'called the “blogfather” for his long-standing finance weblog [...] the site has been covering everything investing-related since 2003'
- Fred Wilson - 'i write something here every weekday and sometimes on the weekends too. I’ve been doing that since September 2003. I hope to keep doing it as long as I can write.'
- Joanne Wilson - you can find in the archive a very beautiful post titled 'turning 42' and dated on Oct. 4th, 2003
- Henrik Torstensson - a 'fresher' one. 'I spend about 15 minutes writing a blog post, as that constraint allows me to post every day (that is my goal).'
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Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok - 'Marginal Revolution began in August of 2003 and there have been new posts daily since that time.'
On that topic, this discussion below between Tyler and Rick is a MUST-listen. There are way too many things to unpack. It’s about society at large. At some point I thought about sending this to all my family members with a comment like: ‘if you’d like to understand me more, here’s a good start’. I agree with the way Rick introduced this episode:
Tyler Cowen is one of the top thinkers in the world: the thinkers’ thinker.
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Objet du jour
The one and only 'luxury pen' I own. A proper Montblanc I received as a gift for my 18th birtday. Relationship recorded with Objet.
