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.

How To Spot A Fake Expert

I just heard someone say: “We’ll, they wrote the book on the subject, so they must really know what they’re talking about.”At first, this sounds right, but remember that we’re in the Information Age?What they really meant to say was “they wrote A book on the subject.”Everyone can publish.No one is standing over any author saying “these facts aren’t solid,” or “what does the rest of the field think?”One of the most important core values you can have, that will move you forward in a healthy trajectory is thinking for yourself.Be skeptical.Unless the book has been reviewed by other expert peers and accepted into the field as a cornerstone of knowledge, then it’s simply opinion or observation.This grueling review process is called scienceNo one wrote THE book. They wrote A book.And isn’t it funny that all our K-12 librarians seem to have lost their jobs over the last 10 years and suddenly we have a fake news crisis?

2 Minute Action

What's a primary source?What’s a secondary source?How does the scientific method work?Knowing these will help you become a learner.Being a learner is the only way to adapt and survive in a constantly changing world. The same goes for your work.Stay the same and your work will dry up.Learn and adapt, and you earn the possibility of success.

Anyone Else Trying To Do This and Failing??

The 5 E's.The 6 Step Method.The Secret Formula that will 5x your output.

We're all looking for it.

This collective search is the definition of a "market;" a group of people simultaneously in need of a service or product.This means that we are subject to headlines and programs and blogs and online courses that promise big, life-changing results.I've done it on both sides; as a producer and as a consumer.But you already know the truth.You know when you get that funny feeling in the pit of your stomach that squints and says: "this is too good to be true."Because it is--and you're right--almost always.So how do we get tricked into more online courses and products that make big promises that we never implement?Here's the hard-to-handle truth: we don't trust ourselves. We may have built a track record of big dreams, hopes or a string of half-started projects. So if this is our data, why should we trust ourselves?We could be wrong. This lack of confidence in ourselves leaves us open to influence.

But remember:

Big, hairy audacious goals are made up of lots of little, achievable tasks.It's only after we conquer these small things, and build a new track record of success, that we'll trust ourselves with the big stuff.Then we'll have more confidence in that little skeptical voice that's trying to tell us something important!Trust is built with others the same way it is built with ourselves--yet, most of us are completely clueless.Everyone is starting with the big stuff and failing when the REAL secret is to start with the small stuff.Small, daily, relentless actions."Publish a book" is a big goal, so it's not a small task.But "call 5 publishers" is an achievable, measurable goal."Write a book" is a big goal, so it's not a small task."Write a blog post" is an achievable, measurable goal.Big goals are not checkboxes. You can't do it in one move. They're made up of small, achievable, measurable tasks.

2 Minute Action

What's a big "someday maybe" project you've had on your list?What's a smaller, achievable task you can check off in the next 2 minutes?Is it an email to a friend? Is it a sales call to a supplier? Is it a Facebook Live video asking for critical feedback on your work?Start there. Don't plan everything else out. Just do that, today. Once you do that, the next step will become more clear--and you'll have the momentum of success to move you forward.This is building trust with YOU and you've got to start before you can see the ending. This is the difficult, invisible stuff that stops us from making it.But you know better.