Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Reflections after 100 Posts

As I was struggling to put together another article for this week, I took a break to step back and plan on what I wanted to do about the article.

  1. delay this article to another day? (who will notice?)
  2. break the article up and write a shorter version?
  3. give myself a break and skip this week?

Instead of any of these, I remembered I have written an article a week for over a year! Looking back, I have about 100 articles on here. It’s been a fantastic journey and I plan on continuing writing an article a week.

This article will focus on my experience after writing 100 articles, lessons, areas I can improve on, and some tips for new writers.

Highlights

  • Other experts have reached out to me to do some cross linking between related articles.
  • I’ve breezed through part of an interview thanks to a series of articles I wrote.
  • It’s so much easier to look up stuff on my own site on a rare topic than to search every other answer site for the one answer I have a ‘feeling’ for. This has happened before and I’m so glad I have codified my thoughts around the problem.
  • I have used my articles as a source of presentations. It’s fantastic to quickly create a detailed talk from my own articles.
  • This site has helped me professionally than I can imagine: People reach out to me, I can codify my knowledge on a topic by writing on it, I can demonstrate mastery to others through my articles, and more.

Humbling & Satsifying

Writing an article is so much harder than a technical feature. There are mountains of decisions encountered each week where there are no clear right or wrong answers. As there is a deadline, I must choose one without perfect knowledge.

Publishing is a fantastic feeling. I never knew how much I enjoyed it until I started doing it regularly. Sometimes the deadline feels so artificial and part of me just wants to skip it, but another part of me knows the satisfaction of getting something done.

Biggest Lesson (so far):

Perfection is the enemy of productivity.

Thanks to this site, I have learned to just keep pressing forward and I am glad I did. I plan on writing weekly.

Also, this site has been kind of like a test suite in a coding project: writing this site feels like a lot of extra work, but when I need the information in the site, I am extermely glad I wrote it and can refer to it!

Areas to Improve

  • HTTPS: Yes, this is a topic for me and I still feel ashamed I don’t have a secure link when others visit the site. Web and security are important topics now, I want this site to keep up!
  • Search: More customized search so I can just stay on the site instead of using an external search tool.
  • Disqus: A comments section for each article!
  • Outline and code articles earlier. Trying to get everything done on my deadline day is just too stressful. I now know I do not want to work like this every week for the next 100 articles.
  • Rewrite articles: not every article I wrote is a gem… but now that I have 100, there’s probably some that needs improvements. Rework old stuff instead of trying to keep having new stuff.

If you see me missing out on any of these areas, call me out on it! Really, I will appreciate you keeping me in check. My ego won’t like those checks, but that will get over the pain.

For New Writers

If you have just started writing, some tips:

  • I publish weekly now, but I did not start on a weekly posting schedule until my 20th post. Until that point, I was infrequent with my posting. When I started to have a regular posting schedule, I got better at finding topics to write about. So don’t be too hard on yourself at the beginning.
  • Keep the site simple and focus on consistently writing content. I know I had a hard time at the beginning, but I’m glad I got started because now I have momentum (and won’t let myself stop posting regularly!) Nothing inspires like a deadline.
  • Find a way to have fun writing. It’s your site so have fun with it. There’s no “right way” to write and publish, well, except consistently. :-)

Conclusion

One hundred posts has taught me a lot and I am looking forward to writing another one hundred!