Practising in Public

I haven't written my newsletter in almost 2 months.

Sometimes, I feel like I don't have much to share at times, and I've been a bit hectic recently - I just got out of self-isolation as a COVID Close Contact.

That being said, I finally came to my senses that the feeling of "I don't have good stuff to share" is nonsense. I just started writing, so naturally, I need feedback from readers to see what resonates and what does not. I could give lame reasons why I'm not working hard on my writing, but ultimately there are no two ways about it: if you really care about it, you need to make time for it. You don't see parents not feeding their children because they're busy at work, do they?

Feedback is valuable. Not receiving feedback on your work is naive practice. To achieve mastery, you need to do what Anders Ericsson, in his book Peak (book summary coming soon), calls deliberate practice.

Feedback is so easy to get these days, but it's a bit scary: you need to practice in public.

• Justin Bieber played the guitar on the sidewalk before he was even a teenager.
• Ed Sheeran played songs on the London Underground before he signed with a record label.
• The Beatles - played six nights a week at a strip club in Hamburg, Germany, before they became a hit.

It's clear how important practising in public is.

That being said, I'd like to commit to sending my newsletter more consistently publicly. The reasons are twofold: improve the quality of my writing by getting feedback from others, and to improve the quality of what I'm reading as well - I can't share something boring and not insightful!

To keep me accountable, should you catch me not keeping up with my schedule of at least one newsletter every other week, ping me, and I'll donate $5 to your charity of choice. I'm putting my money and skin in the game, and hopefully, that'll improve my writing and reading.