I was enjoying the fruits of my labor last year on Medium, then something changed in the algorithm, earnings tanked, and so did my motivation.
I told myself I wouldn’t let my motivation be guided by earnings, but hey, I’m only human.
That led to my two dumb problems, which led to inconsistent writing. And now I’ve solved them. Thankfully, they’re easy to fix. See if you have them too.
This one writing rule gave me a slap to the face.
Before I get to those problems, I recently wrote an article called 22 Seriously Useful Writing Rules (From A Writer Who’s Made Boatloads of Money), and there’s one tip that stuck out to me more than any others.
It’s one that I know well, but apparently have forgotten.
It’s the one that helped me be successful on this platform 11 months after I joined. It’s also the one that I’ve been struggling to do because of my two dumb problems.
It’s writing rule #2, “Volume wins.”
For whatever reason, hearing this from Nicolas Cole, the creator of these rules, gave me a little slap in the face. It was the reminder I sorely needed.
And I have a feeling you may need to be reminded of this too if you’re one of the many people I see who has lost their motivation to write. “Why should I put in so much effort when I only get peanuts back?”
There are many reasons why, but we’ll get back to that a little later. First, let’s talk about the two dumb problems that led to my demise…
Problem #1: Not writing at the correct time
Talking to AI about all my problems helped me unlock this one.
Just writing this out helped me understand where I was going wrong. I was trying to do most of my writing in the afternoon when everything and everyone needed my attention.
(In fact, I’m finishing this article up in the late morning, and my husband’s already come in to talk to me twice. The good thing is, I don’t need to be in the flow since most of the writing is already done.)
Claude solidified it for me:
Then I realized I’m an idiot. I have the perfect time to write.
I wake up mega-early because that’s just how my body works, so I have a beautiful chunk of time in the morning when the entire house is quiet.
This is what I’ve started doing this week, and it’s been working perfectly. I can finally concentrate on writing and get into the flow when I sit down.
Sometimes all you can do is write in short spurts, depending on your schedule. But if you can dedicate 1–2 hours when you don’t have anything else going on and no one is around to interrupt you, you will see your productivity increase 10x.
And when you can concentrate fully on the task at hand, problem #2 will be so much easier to solve.
Problem #2: Not writing enough
Going back to the “slap-in-the-face” moment, volume wins. And you can only create a lot of volume if you write a lot.
What happens when you don’t write enough? It’s not just about making money. There are two more important issues:
- It kills your momentum.
As soon as you get out of the habit of writing, it makes it harder to write. Not only does it kill your momentum, but it kills your ideas, too.
Because the more you write, the more ideas you get.
Once piece of content leads to ideas for the next piece of content. A comment on an article leads to the next article. A highlight gives you another idea.
Consistent writing creates a web of ideas that overlap with each other. Once you stop writing, the web is cleared and you have to start over from scratch, making it harder to get the momentum going again.
2. It reduces your chances that something will take off.
Most of the time, your articles will sit there like dead weight. It’s just how it is. But the more you put out, the more chances you have for something to catch on with readers.
Please don’t take this as advice to put out a bunch of low-quality junk just to get your reads up. That’s not the point. The point is to write a lot so you get better at it.
Every time you sit down to write, promise yourself you will put your full effort into it.
That doesn’t mean your writing has to be perfect. (Mine never is!) It means that you try your best to make your words flow, to help solve a problem for your reader, and to put something out that you can be proud of.
If you do that, some things will begin to take off. And every once in a while, you’ll even hit a jackpot. But don’t write to try to hit the jackpot (because that’s never guaranteed). Instead, write because of this…
“Why should I put in the effort?”
I see it all over the place, and I’ve even had this thought myself:
“Why should I put in the effort to write when I don’t get anything back for it?”
This doom-and-gloom “woe is me” thinking will keep you stuck right where you are. And you know what? You might put in effort and get nothing back for it.
So what?
The effort should be for yourself.
You do it because:
- It’s fulfilling and satisfying to turn your thoughts into a coherent message.
- It allows you to take ideas and merge them together to create a new perspective.
- You get to practice your skills so you can get better and better over time.
- You figure out what you like to write about.
- You figure out your writing style.
- And volume wins!
Medium doesn’t promise success. Nor does any other platform. That’s all up to you.
But…
The more you write, the better chance you have of something taking off into the stratosphere. It’s happened to me several times.
So why not try? If you never write, you’ll never have the chance to win. In the meantime, enjoy the process of writing.
If you do that, the money will likely follow. Maybe not even from this platform. Maybe it’ll be from a future client who sees what you’ve written. Or maybe it’ll help your newsletter take off. Or maybe you’ll get boatloads of affiliate sales.
You just never know…
(And that’s part of the fun of it all.)