Being Consistent & What Have I Learned

Being Consistent & What Have I Learned

ยท

6 min read

I recently attended the Hashnode Bootcamp session by Aman Mittal about how to write consistently. For the past 7 days I have been practicing just that. I'm going to share how I have accomplished this and give you tips so you can be consistent too.

Lets break my experience down...

I personally focused on working on my featured post with a publisher (Offerzen) and working on some posts for my blog.

Day 1 ๐Ÿ’ก:

I set aside 30 minutes and managed to gather all my thoughts of posts I can write. I stored them in Notion being my tool of preference. Now I do not have to spend time on ideating what to write about but rather focus on writing.

Day 2 ๐Ÿคฏ:

I set aside 30 minutes to work on my featured post for a publisher. I realised that 30 minutes was not enough time to get into a flow state and I needed to research more and to surround myself by the elements within my topic.

Day 3 ๐Ÿ“š:

I set aside 45 minutes which I spent researching about hosting platforms and drafting pros and cons for my featured post.

Day 4 ๐Ÿ“ผ:

This was a day with low motivation so I spent about 45 minutes watching a few YouTube videos and making notes of how developers can create their own online portfolio at a low price.

Day 5 ๐Ÿšจ:

Oh snap! A Hashnode Bootcamp task was due... I was so absorbed in my feature post but when I saw the discord channel light up I knew what had to be done. I thought of a topic and created a quick and easy post based on my experience. Tip: Writing about your own experience takes a lot less time to write about as there is no research or facts to reference. It's your story but you just have to keep your right hook (value add) in mind when creating these experience based posts.

Day 6 ๐Ÿ”—:

I was out to the groove and now needed to switch back to that feature post. I took about 30 minutes to gather all my information in Notion and link it to the outline I had drawn up in the previous week. Its so awesome to have everything in one place so you can link everything up.

Day 7 ๐Ÿ”Ž:

This day was a little different. My friend asked me to review their thesis chapter. I figured hey, I can learn a thing or two from collaborating with my friend and so I spent over an hour reviewing their written work. I made 60 recommendations and what was really fun is that we share similar writing problems. It was extremely valuable exchanging writing tips and analysing our bad writing habits. No regrets!

Today is Day 8 and I am writing this ๐Ÿฅณ.

Lessons I learned

  1. You need to just make time everyday. It doesn't matter when but as long as its on your todo list and you carry it out with intention, you will get to it within the next 24 hours.
  2. Not all days are super productive and that's okay.
  3. You do not need to write to be practicing your writing skills, sometimes helping someone edit their work teaches you more than writing.
  4. Research and linking your findings is part of the writing process. Do not discount this as not writing as it is essential to create a meaningful post that is worthy of being featured.
  5. Don't compare yourself to others. Try various writing techniques to be consistent and use the one that works best for you. In fact it may even be a hybrid of two techniques.

I hope the lessons I have shared help you be a more consistent writer. Personally I think I will write 3-4 days a week as its clear on two of the days my motivation was a little low, but I am glad I have done this as I now know what works for me ๐Ÿ˜.