Why I Publish Bad Blog Posts
Yes, I’ve written bad blog posts and published them.
For any of you who follow me or read my blog, this shouldn’t be a surprise.They can’t all be “War and Peace.”
The thing that’s difficult isn’t writing good content and publishing it—it’s publishing work that’s not that amazing.
It hurts me sometimes if what I write doesn’t feel massively inspiring, insightful, unique, or actionable.
The goal is to get to a place of consistent, high-quality output.
That can’t happen without publishing the bad stuff along the way.This is not a cheap, disguised excuse to pump out crummy content—that would be deliberately cutting corners to reduce the effort required.That would be consistently low quality.Seneca said something like: “in order to know and understand good wine, one must drink a lot of bad, even terrible wine.”I think you get the point.If you want to be great, you have to forgive yourself for not being great right at this very second and understand that you’re going to have to be embarrassed for a little while as you figure it all out.
2 Minute Action
Publish something today.Perform the speech that’s not quite ready yet.Implement a new lesson plan that’s almost all the way there.Unless you’re a brain surgeon, the risk of failing isn’t that high.Go for the gusto, today.
The Part of Perfectionism Everyone Struggles With
If I’m being honest with you, writing every day is hard.
Especially considering the parameters I gave myself.
Each post must:
- Be in my own voice
- Have my unique viewpoint
- Be quickly digestible
- Be actionable
When I committed to writing every day, I realized that this was big.
Coming up with a fresh concept, in my own words, that was easy to consume, and that also demanded a discrete action that could be achieved in 2 minutes or less is a pretty difficult challenge.
So, what happened?
Sometimes posts didn’t go out at the right time. I travel a lot so timezones have messed with my automated triggers that send out emails and tweets.
Sometimes I am finishing my workday at a weird hour and I’m exhausted—but I still have to write. It’s painful.
Sometimes I miss typos, fail to get the point across or make the post too short to really communicate the point.
Basically, I fail a lot.
And however much I fail, it feels like I’m failing 10 times that.
The point isn’t to make it perfect. Well, at least not today. Or tomorrow.
The point is to constantly approach the upper limit.
The point is to ride the asymptote of improvement as far over to perfect as I can.
The only way to do that is by writing, reviewing, adapting, testing, getting feedback, and writing again.
The other part is to accept that people are going to criticize what you’re doing, especially you. In fact, you are often your own worst critic.
This is the case for writing and it’s the case for everything else.
There’s no substitute for consistently doing the work.
And you’re not allowed to beat yourself up.
2 Minute Action
What’s something that you’ve been meaning to improve in your life?
- Exercise?
- Marketing your brand?
- Motivating your volunteers?
- Energizing your students in the morning?
Here are some things you can do right now in 2 minutes or less:
- Do burpees for 2 minutes straight. If you can’t, do 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off.
- Send out an email to past clients and ask them to write a testimonial for your brand.
- Pick a measurable outcome that volunteers can see. If they can see how well they’re doing, they are more likely to improve.
- Google “fun facilitation exercises” like “rock, paper, scissors, posse.” You have the whole internet at your fingertips.
What To Do When Your Work Sucks
It’s true.You’re not always going to perform at your peak.That’s the thing about peaks.It’s the next thing, after the peak, that’s the most important, though.It’s what you do when you are no longer at your best.Guess what?
Here’s the unpopular and kinda scary answer:
Do it anyway.Unless a lot of lives are riding on your success rate being 99.99999999%, I’d say you’re probably among the rest of us who have to deal with imperfection being a larger probability.I have plenty of mistakes in my blog posts. I have them on my website and on Medium.I’ve done some pretty mediocre TV interviews, and I’ve put together some crummy Facebook ads.I’ve done some pretty ugly work in front of a lot of people.But guess what? I’m still alive, I still have an ambitious career, and my output is still relentless.The peak is the peak. Great job getting there.But now it’s time to talk about the dip that comes afterward, the most important time to focus on.
2 Minute Action:
When was the last peak you had?Could be work, personal, whatever—that’s not the point.What happened after the peak, during the decline?What might you do differently this time?Let me know in the comments what your strategies are for rebounding and recovering. We can bring these strategies to the Facebook group and talk more about implementation.For now, today, take 2 minutes to hit the “send” button, publish the articles make the call, or whatever it is.It’s up to you to take responsibility for your ups and downs. No one else is going to do it for you.