Laura's Learnings

Documenting my life

Tag: blog

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Blog update – The new normal

July 18, 2022 / / 0 Comments

After a break, I have started uploading consistently again, with one new post per week for almost three months now, for a total of 10 articles since May (and a grand total of 25).

An update on the blog and how it’s going is a great way of documenting the process and what I’ve learned, precisely in the spirit of the blog itself. Here are some of the things I learned and observed during these first months, in no particular order.

First steps – just start!

The initial setup of the blog includes several things: the choice of the host and the domain name, using WordPress, and figuring out how plugins work. These are just the first few things to do. Everything was new and I don’t think I’d ever heard of the word “self-host” before toying with the idea of having a blog myself. There was a lot to learn, but thanks to online resources and discussions with a friend in the same position as me, it was all sorted (or at least in a good enough position to start posting and experimenting). It’s exciting and fun, as well as scary.

Seeing progress

One of the things I mentioned in my first post on the benefits of publishing frequently and regularly is that, especially at the beginning, you can measure the progress made. This has definitely been the case for me. I can already see the improvements made and the things I have learnt along the way, simply by practicing more. Specifically in terms of writing, post structure and formatting, as well as idea presentation.

A new identity

I realized that making progress on my blog had become part of my routine. I didn’t see it as a “job” or a chore, but just “something I do”. It has become a habit and something I look forward to and expect. This is linked to an identity change: I see myself as someone who has a blog and maintains it regularly.

Always learning

There are always new things to learn and I am just at the beginning! I have:

  • read several articles on different topics
  • researched technical aspects of having a blog
  • looked for tips and discussions by those who have more experience
  • made some changes to the html/css code

You never know

Some posts which I was particularly proud of and excited to share had fewer views than others. Viceversa, some posts which I wasn’t sure would be interesting to many people were received better than expected. It’s a good reminder to not get too attached to your ideas and beliefs. And to experiment and try new things because you never know what will come from them.

Connections

One of the advantages of having a blog is that it gives me the chance to connect with people and to discuss new topics with my friends. I have been talking about the ins and outs of blogging with one friend in particular (she also has a blog). By sharing posts I think my friends will find interesting, I have also had wonderful chats with them on topics that might not have come up otherwise. I also have been discussing this with a fellow blogger online, and it has been pretty cool to learn from her and exchange ideas.

Although not strictly connected, via sharing my posts online, they have been seen by thousands of people across the world and many (for a beginner, of course) have written to me to say some of my posts have helped them, which is really amazing!

Better at observing things

I have noticed how much more I have become able to notice small things and focus on observing my life from a different lens. I will look for opportunities to reflect and learn, noting things down when I think I can write a post about them. The idea of documenting my life is broad enough that it allows me to go in any direction I want and by being more mindful of my life I have been able to post consistently for three months and I have many other topics in mind

Closing thougths

Overall, I am very glad I decided to create this blog! It’s been really fun learning new things, writing down my thoughts. I’m happy to see the progress and keep documenting my life. It has also given me the opportunity to have a lot of interesting discussions: the blog itself or a specific article can be great conversation starters with friends and family. The most unexpected thing was this identity change and “new normal”, after only a couple of months.

On to the next six months!

How to get out of a rut

June 2, 2022 / / 0 Comments

As a few people have noticed, I have not been consistent with posting new articles on this blog lately. I must say that I have made significant progress in other areas of my life and I am very proud of it, and it’s natural to shift priorities from time to time. In the previous post I discuss a few reasons as to why I stopped posting.

In this article I will go over what I have done to get myself out of this rut, if you will. Only time will tell, but I think I have identified a few key points that have been helping me lately. Of course, please be mindful that every situation is different. In this case, this blog is a personal passion project of mine, so the stakes are low and I know I enjoyed publishing the first articles.

Go back to the why

The first thing to do is to reflect on your motivation for why. In my case , thinking back to the reasons for starting a blog in the first place, what I wanted to get out of it and why. This concept is something which is well known and it could seem obvious, but it’s not always easy to remind ourselves to check in with our why. In some cases you might even re-evaluate your core motivation and reasons for doing a certain thing and start going a new direction. This could be as extreme as deciding to quit/pause the project altogether: I think this demonstrates a lot of perspective and bravery and will allow you to focus on higher priority things. Or will find that a reminder of the initial goals and motivation is what you needed to fuel your next steps – great!  In any case, you know what you want now, where to focus your energy, and why.

For me, the first article published is conveniently titled Why am I starting this blog?. Reading it back and thinking about it was a good reminder of why I started the blog and how I believe consistency is key. So I decided to get back into the swing of things and really focus on the blog in the upcoming weeks.

Another thing to do is to talk to a friend or family member, as this can help evaluate the situation from an outside perspective. They will be able to offer their point of view and support and theh can help you figure out your next steps.

Get clarity 

When a task feels daunting, I stop and reflect. Often I find it’s overwhelming because I am unclear on what the different steps are and how I can break down the project into smaller tasks. In this article arguing if motivation is what we are missing, I quote James Clear

Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action.

This can happen without you realising. It’s usually good to take a step back, realize you don’t need to go from 0 to 100% in the next hour or day, but you can anyway make good progress, that will compound. 

In my case, I saw “restart blogging” as a huge task of publishing weekly posts for months in a row, sharing the content on different platforms, planning articles in advance for when I went on holiday and so on. Of course, these are all separate tasks. I don’t have to have months worth of articles ready by tomorrow. I can set up some time to share the content. All this was now not an overwhelming project, but a series of activities to plan and tick off one at a time. 

Plan

Once you know what you need to do, it’s important to define when you are going to focus on different things. I think having a strict schedule works in some cases, depending on your personality and the task at hand. But even if you prefer to be inspired in the moment, it’s useful to block your calendar to ensure you will dedicate this time to this project.

This is also helpful because it means you have a default response for what you will be doing on Tuesday evening, for example. No need to think about it, it’s already been decided by past-you. It could sound weird, but it has worked for me in the past.

Track

I find that tracking my progress is motivating, as I can see what I have accomplished already, how much effort I have put into something and the results that came with it. I suggest writing it down using either a notebook or a digital tool. I usually pair this with the plan I do every week as part of my weekly review (which I had also stopped doing, unfortunately).

Enjoy the journey 

You decided to work on this project for a bunch of reasons, which are now clearly defined, as per point 1. This is something you want and hopefully like to do. Of course there will be parts of it that will not feel easy or interesting, but it’s important to try and enjoy the journey as much as possible. And appreciate what you are doing and accomplishing along the way.

For me, I had forgotten that I actually enjoy writing. I like focusing on something which is challenging but not extremely tough and seeing the progress made. Writing helps me think and connect the dots. It’s tiring but also relaxing, in a way, because you are forced to put all your attention on one thing. Link to Deep Focus and Astronaut book.

For other parts of this project which I might find less interesting, I can set up a timer and challenge myself to complete a task in 25 minutes. I can make myself a coffee and eat something while chipping away at whatever I need to do. I can go to a café and sit outside in the sunshine for an hour, before seeing some friends. 

You can buy yourself something you wanted for a while as a reward for completing a big and challenging task.

Find ways to make the process fun, if it isn’t already, and appreciate it!

Find pockets of time

Hopefully you’re having fun and enjoying the process most of the time.  In the moments when you are not enthusiastic about a specific task, you will probably be able see progress and this will be motivating. So much so that you will start to look for time in which you can work on these tasks that build up your project.

It is 22:06 at the moment, I have just finished an online class and I felt slightly tired and could have easily started putting on my pjs and spend the rest of the evening on my phone. Instead I know I want to write this article and get back on track with this blog, so I opened Notion and started working on this draft instead. And now that I’ve started, I am actually enjoying it.

Another thing I noticed is that sometimes it’s easy to fall into the “it’s too late now, what is the point” trap. Something had gone wrong at 10 am and now the whole morning is ruined. You couldn’t go for a run because it was pouring outside and so you lay on the couch the whole day. Or, in this case, I had a class until 22 tonight, so the rest of the evening is gone. In some cases it’s good to have a buffer between different activities and time to reflect, relax, do nothing. But I find it’s incredibly easy to dismiss a portion of thr day because of something else that happened or will happen around that time. In these cases it’s useful to remind ourselves to find pockets of time and take advantage of this, since it all adds up and you will feel satisfied in the end.

Get in the flow of things 

I find that the more I leave a task and procrastinate it, the more difficult it seems. Once I start, instead, I often find that it is not, in fact as tough as I imagined it to be. The weird thing is this happens also related to activities you already know. I have been writing this blog for months and I liked the act of writing, elaborating my thoughts etc, but it still seemed so hard to start again. Probably I’d just gotten out of the habit. I have noticed just how simpler it feels once you are back in the flow. As mentioned before you start looking for opportunities and your perspective shifts. One thing leads to another also in terms in inspiration and ideas, topics to discuss and things to share. When writing one thing I think about another topic that could also make a good article and so on.

I hope you can take some of these pointers if you are in a rut – I know I will come back to it if needed 

Why I stopped posting

May 26, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I have not been publishing new blog posts. To be more precise, I have been procrastinating publishing new blog posts. 

Using this as an example, I will try and unpack a few thoughts on the topic, related to perfectionism, progress and habit building.

Perfectionism

Probably the main thing that is stopping me is this: I am trying to make sure everything will go smoothly from now on. This means no more lengthy breaks, always sharing on social media, continuously thinking about new topics and ideas to share or things to document, just to name a few things. I am waiting until I have enough drafts, ideas, knowledge to feel fail-proof.

Making sure everything is perfect from the beginning is generally very difficult. In reality, publishing a post is the key action. The main thing is to write something I am proud of and hit publish.

  • For some aspects, the marginal gains are usually small after you are 95% there – it’s only through experience that you can have significant improvements, in my experience. 
  • In other cases, there will be things you can’t control or things that change for various reasons, so there is no point in worrying about those and procrastinating.

Progress not perfection

As mentioned above, in hindsight there will always things I could do better and I’m sure I will look back on the first posts and find ways in which they could be improved, once I have more experience and knowledge.

Having a blog means I am able to document the progress, but this is possible only if I actually publish. This is actually one of my main goals for this website.

As the quote says: “Done is better than perfect”. I always strive to do my best, but I like this saying because it reminds me that the real improvement happens through repetition and continuously challenging yourself to learn from your mistakes and move on and create something new.

Break it down

If I think about maintaining a blog, a bunch of things I need to do come to mind. I find this can feel overwhelming because you somehow think you must to everything at once. In reality, each task is a separate thing and recognising that you don’t need to do everything right now is simple yet effective, and it can be easy to forget, especially if you are trying to pick a project back up.

Keeping up the habit

Another reason why this now feels so much harder than a few months ago is that I am not in the habit of writing and, especially, posting, anymore.

I used to write new posts on Saturdays or Sundays, then publish them and sometimes share online. It was something I “just did”, it was part of my weekend routine and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. I still really like writing and taking a moment to reflect and share my thoughts.

Although this is a specific situation, this applies to many other scenarios: meal prepping or eating healthy, exercise, doing a weekly review, etc. It’s important to not lose the habit, or starting again will be more difficult.

This is why yesandyes suggests to have so-called “bookmark habits”, i.e. simpler versions of your usual habits that you know you can do no matter what. This way, you are sure you don’t lose that muscle memory you can’t keep up with the “complete” habit for a while. For example, Sarah, the author, will make her bed even when staying in a hotel on holiday. 

In summary, I am happy I tried to dig a bit deeper and I thought about how I can help myself, now and in the future. I will probably come back to this post sometime in the future. 

Why I think the most common advice for beginners makes sense

November 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

The most common advice for beginners is “quantity over quality”. The important thing to do at the beginning is to focus on sharing many new articles, rather than working on a draft for a month, trying to make it perfect.

Not because of laziness or lack of willingness to put a lot of effort into each post. On the contrary, publishing more posts arguably requires more hard work, given that you have to come up with more ideas, go through the manual process of finding a title, adding a nice image, and other things that go along with hitting “publish”.

Why focus on quantity?

The best way to improve is through practice. You can spend hours researching different topics and how to guides, but it’s only when you actually do the thing that you are confronted with problems to solve, things that need to be improved and questions you didn’t know you had.

So, we want to focus on practicing as much as possible.

white space

Publishing imperfect posts can feel really scary.

But hear me out!

Especially if you are a perfectionist, here are my thoughts on the topic and what made me decide to hit “publish” sooner rather than later.

white space

What does not liking something mean?

The good thing about recognizing that something you made is not as good as you wished, means you have an idea of what you would like. You can see that there is a difference between where you want to be and where you are. That is normal and it’s a good sign! It means you can appreciate the nuances and recognize what your ideal is.

Now, knowing something isn’t perfect does definitely not mean being able to also know exactly what needs to be done to get there and have the technical ability to do so in a brief amount of time.

POV: give yourself many chances and document the progress you make

The less spoken power of creating often is that doing “the thing” every day or every week means you will have another chance tomorrow or next week. So there is less pressure for each one to be a masterpiece (or any, really).

If one post has a typo or is unclear? I get to post another one next week, where I can show my progress! If I were to post every four months, it would make sense to expect a top-notch, extremely well-produced and polished post with tens of academic articles as references. If I post every week? Everyone will see the progress and I will know I have made improvements over time, simply by looking back at the history of published posts.

Nobody instantly knows how to do everything, and I think there is value in doing things, analysing where they could be improved and working on that. By posting often you get to showcase your progress.

Experiment

On top of getting in the reps necessary to improve, another advantage is that it allows you to build a larger “bank” of posts, forcing you to come up with different ideas, topics and you will become more creative and experiment in many different ways.

This will give you a larger sample to be able to know in which direction to move forward: what did you like the most? What drove the more interesting comments? With which post did you learn more new things? Which topic was more fun to write about? It’s only by having tested out different things that you can collect enough data to make a decision.

Not everything is set in stone

Also, an important thing to remember: in most cases, there is the possibility to go back to something and correct it or edit it. In a blog, of course. But in many other life situations. Even in professional environments, sometimes more than one “final” version is shared if there is an update or correction needed. In this case, I think that by documenting the process and sharing the imperfect results you will learn faster and improve even more.

Summary

This is why “quantity over quality” makes sense to me as the top advice for beginners, especially because it gives you the chance to learn by practicing hands-on.

In my case, I am aware that I am a beginner and that my knowledge/skills are limited. So, I will try my best to make all my posts as good as I can, but I will draw the line and aim for one post per week. This means that I will “have” to publish even if I am not 100% satisfied with the results. As I mentioned in my previous post, this blog is a challenge for me and a way to learn more, so constructive feedback is welcome!

Why am I starting this blog?

November 8, 2021 / / 5 Comments

Since this is my first post, I want to share my goals and what I hope I will achieve, learn and discover through this project. I’ll keep it short, so here goes:

  • document my life, to have a catalog for my future self to look back on, keep track of my thoughts, books I’ve read etc
  • share my thoughts and learnings, as it might be helpful for someone else or it might prompt a discussion or a suggestion of something I might like. The topics I will write about are broadly related to trying new things, exploring and improving my life. In the About section you can find out more about me
  • connect with like minded people, who are interested in a mix of things I like
  • become comfortable with being uncomfortable: sharing things publicly and putting myself out there does sound like a challenge
  • learn how to do things better, be it by being self-critical or because someone points something I could have done better or differently
  • have a different/new topic to chat about with my friends and family; not only about the content, but about the project itself
  • challenge myself to find something to write about, to try and observe things through this lens
  • be consistent, by posting regularly (although there will probably be exceptions)

As you can see, a big part of this project is related to connecting with others, so please leave a comment sharing what you are interested in and if there are any blogs/podcasts you think I should look into.

Cheers!

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