Fear, momentum and thinking in public, my learning from writing 52 blogs in one year
This blog covers microdosing discomfort, building confidence through repetition, what I learned from writing 52 blogs in one year
If you just want the practical learnings, jump to the sections marked with the little brain/learning illustration half way down
My biggest learning is obvious, you won’t be brilliant straight away, theres as Ira Glass says ‘a gap’ but to bridge that you have to start…
Start the blog, drawing, dance class, the first 1K run, the first length, the singing lesson, code club, prototype, conference talk, first bit of tough feedback, workshop facilitation… what ever you want to stretch into…
Start
Yes, my top tip is… just start
“Energy follows attention. Wherever you place your attention, that is where the energy of the system will go.”
Otto Scharmer Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
Reading back over the blogs I wrote in early 2025 I realised how much of my initial energy and attention had been swallowed by worry.
Worry over the fear of failure, AND fear of failing in public, what about the judgers, the trolls and tw*ts that come out like keyboard warriors to TAKE YOU DOWNNNNNN, what if I wrote something wrong, to spicey, what if I lose my job???? ….. Yep I spiralled quick
Irony incoming, my entire learning philosophy is built around learning through action, I bang on about iteration, reflection, learn by doing, thinking through writing, Tiny Habits was basically my bible at one point. I was all about getting out of your own head and into the world….. but not with my writing, that was something I did, but hid in folders in folders in the basement of google behind the filing cabinet of life.
I was blatantly putting all my attention into what I was trying to avoid instead of what I was actually trying to build…..Confidence, connection and creativity in my written words
“If you can overthink the worst, why can’t you overthink the best?”
BUT WHAT IFFFFF we thought more like this?
BOOOOM lets do this
One drawing a day
I did admittedly have a bit of a headstart, I started a project where I lettered one thing a day. Not because I thought it would become anything huge, TBH it was to encourage my students at the time to stop just thinking, and start thinking AND doing…. It was meant to be a few months in line with their final projects, a few months turned into 13–14 years… I am still going.
Some are decent, some are trash, some took hours, some took five minutes while half watching rubbish TV, but the important bit I learnt was the rhythm of it. Showing up over and over again changed my relationship with making things. Plus by throwing it out on insta daily it shifted my relationship with putting things out into the world.
“In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors, you should do three things. Stop judging yourself. Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors. Embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward.” B.J. Fogg, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything
52 blogs and admittedly a tiny vom in my mouth
Last year I decided to do something similar with writing and set myself the challenge of writing 52 blogs in a year. One a week-ish. The ‘Ish’ being the important word there. Sometimes I wrote two, occasionally none, and at one point I realised it was December and thought “ohhhh frick” and panic-wrote three in a week (not my best). But I got there.
The challenge wasn’t really about productivity, again it was about building my confidence.
An academic researcher when I worked at the uni had knocked my writing confidence quite hard, I let one person’s lofty comment crush me. I still wrote constantly, notes, reflections, weird little idea dumps in Google Docs, things I used to think through work or life, but I NEVER shared them publicly, or more importantly asked for feedback. The writing stayed hidden in folders in my secret google basement, instead of existing in the world with actual humans looking at it, kicking the wheels and stretching my thinking.
So the challenge was less “can I write?” and more “can I tolerate being SEEN writing?”
Writing and posting my first public blog nearly finished me off…. I took hours finessing it… and I mean HOURS
But I wrapped myself in the comfort blanket of Marshall Rosenburgs quote
“Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.” and hit post ( admittedly did a lil vomit in my mouth as I pressed it)
I had done my best, if they came for me in a nasty way that was about them… not me
That did not stop my brain instantly convincing me that an invisible panel of judges was about to descend from the ceiling, Craig Revel Horwood cackling at me and holding a zero points, they’d publicly announce I was intellectually fraudulent and should probably return my laptop immediately.
No one did, in fact, most people were really kind.
Our brain thinks uncertainty is danger
I’ve always loved the work of BJ Fogg and the idea that tiny actions lower resistance, the smaller and safer something feels, the easier it is for our brain to repeat it. I think that is partly why the lettering project worked for me, it stopped being this huge dramatic creative event and just became part of my daily rhythm. The emotional stakes lowered through repetition. Plus I found it a nice way to pass from my working day, a liminal point to transition me into the eve
The philosopher Andy Clark talks a lot about humans as prediction machines, constantly trying to reduce uncertainty and surprise. Which makes sense when you think about why pressing go on anything online can feel weirdly threatening, your brain doesn’t know what will happen next, so it starts catastrophising to “protect” you….. Well mine does
But repeated exposure recalibrates the prediction, no one put me in stocks and threw tomatoes, I lived, ddn’t get sacked and got great critical feedback and a few people found it useful — Whhhhoooop
A few learnings from my experience
Don’t force it
One of the biggest things I learned from the lettering and writing was not to force it when it clearly wasn’t happening.
I’l admit I have tried writing weeknotes repeatedly, they do not flow for me I envy the likes of (honest and full of heart) (love his reflection Qs) and the incredible (RIP) who was also a real inflence to start writing the blogs along with , and they are natrual and thinking out loud (And speaking I LOVEEED Sarahs Pod) … and that seemed to flow better for me, so I stopped forcing the weeknotes and found my own beat
Once I git going some blogs clicked instantly, others felt like dragging my butt over sandpaper. The ones I enjoyed most usually came from genuine curiosity, somebody said something interesting in conversation, or asked a question in a session. A lot of the time I had read something cool or listened to a great pod that poked my brain and started connecting dots. Those became the best pieces because I feel they were alive to me already.
Don’t do it for the claps… I stopped trying to write what I thought people wanted and started writing things I wanted to think through, and it worked for me…
Some blogs ended up practical and tooly like ‘ideation for introverts’ and ‘revolution thinking’, stuff I wanted to get out of my head so I could point to them. Others were more reflective and slightly rambly, like ‘why we need X-shaped people in a digital world’ and ‘not all conflict is the same’, weirdly, the reflective ones often got the strongest response, when I thought they would get the worst, people did not seem to mind the slight unpolished thinking, that often opened up more questions rather than giving answers
Which leads me nicely to….
You do not need to prove you are clever
The first few blogs sounded like I was trying to win an intellectual hostage negotiation.
I fretted over people thinking I hadn’t read, experienced or done some of the things that I could not squeeze in, I over thought about what if they think I don’t know that theory… or what if they think I ONLY know the theory??? What if I miss an angle…. What if, what if, what iffffffffff
At some point I realised I did not need to prove my entire self worth and intelligence every time I wrote 800 words…. I mean who can?
You CAN just write one useful thing, and if someone adds another perspective? Aceseses, that’s the point, connecting and learning, building, thriving together…
Another thing, not every piece needs to look or feel the same. Some people write tiny sharp posts, some people write long thoughtful essays, others illustrate, do talking heads to camera or interview people. Some tell stories. I tried loads and still hop about a bit TBH
Find your way… what works for you, play, experient, find the thing that fits YOUR flow
And if you don’t want to write at all, don’t. Maybe your thing is painting, music, gardening, running weird little community events or building model railways in your shed. The point is not content production, the point is making space for something that matters to you.
“A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never” I loveeee this Elizabeth Gilbert quote I ate it up, I am not ready for a novel (yet) but it helped me get stuff down, violently hahha
Tiny reps, small exposures
I wrote about microdosing discomfort, which you can read more about in this blog save me duplicating Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable….. (Spoiler: you don’t) but I still want to touch on this here as I think its an important one…
The ace thing in reflection was by the end of the year I noticed all these seemingly random pieces had started stitching together, themes kept resurfacing. Stuff like discomfort, learning, systems, facilitation, human behaviour, conflict and confidence.
The dots started joining themselves eventually, and I think I am going to leave you there…
Lets not leap into massive vulnerability exercise or reinvent ourselves overnight. Sometimes growth is just repeatedly tapping at the edge of discomfort until our nervous systems realises its safe.
Tiny reps, to build the muscles of resilience….. Small steps to stop fighting and start flowing… let’s come back to Elizabeth Gilbert to finish this off
“It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.”
Readaroos for youssss
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything BJ Fogg
The Experience Machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l8l4prc-_Q
Ira Glass says ‘a gap’
