Milestones in My Writing Journey: 33 Articles and Counting

Writing online has been a great journey so far and I definitely want to continue. It’s a fantastic way to express thoughts and ideas, and it’s open to feedback from readers and fellow writers. Over the last few weeks, I’ve written 33 articles.

In this piece, I want to quickly go over what I wrote about, what went well, and what didn’t work out.

Photo by Sebastian Pereanu on Unsplash

What I’ve written so far

I am an avid reader with interests in personal productivity, management & leadership as well as technology.

With starting my online writing journey I decided to also write about these topics - I aim to share the insights I’ve collected in my academic and corporate career.

I’d subdivide my articles into three categories:

• Articles summarizing the learnings from my reading
• Articles to share my methods & approaches
• Articles about my journey

Learnings from my reading

The topics of my articles were mostly in the category of productivity. At first, I wanted to write summaries of books I’ve read and I did that. Here are some of these articles:

• One of my first articles was a summary of my learnings from Getting Things Done by David Allen.
• I also wrote an article on The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and posted about habits - combining my learnings from The Infinite Game and Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek as well as Atomic Habits by James Clear.
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann is one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time and there are so many insights in the book that I decided to write a three-part series on the book. In part one, I write about 11 cognitive biases Daniel Kahnemann addresses and in part two I discuss how heuristics affect our decision-making. Finally, I summarize my 9 core learnings from the book in part three.
• In one of my last articles in 2023, I summarized my learnings from Designing Your Live by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and condensed them into a 6-step practical guide to designing a life you love. I followed it up with a short article on how to choose your career.

Furthermore, I enjoyed curating lists of books on the topics of productivity and management: I started with a short list of books for highly productive people and continued with a list of productivity books for managers. Each of the articles got its successor: productivity and productivity for managers. I also curated a list of my top 33 books and wrote about my reading goals for 2024.

Sharing my methods & approaches

While writing about the learnings I made during my reading was great for getting started, I also started to share productivity methods and approaches I apply myself.

• To me, a core element of each productivity system is knowledge management. My first article about that dealt with how to remember what you read. I followed this up with an article on how to remember in the digital age - so not only remembering what you read but also how to remember visuals and information from audiobooks or podcasts.
• During my years at university studying industrial engineering, lean manufacturing was very much indoctrinated - I mean yes, lean is a great strategy to be effective while staying efficient in your use of resources. I wrote two articles on how you can use the methods of lean to increase your personal productivity: with the first one summarizing the core principles of lean and the second one adding additional methods.
• How to write smart notes is a crucial skill in the quest to improve personal productivity. I’ve tried out a lot of different approaches, like the Zettelkasten method myself and I’ve learned that it is very important to engage with your notes. These days you cannot write about notetaking without addressing the Second Brain - to me writing progressive summaries is a great way of optimizing your notetaking and building your personal knowledge base.
• Productivity is also about time management and managing your energy levels throughout the day. In an article, I delved into the early bird mentality and why I think it is wrong.
• In our busy world stress seems somewhat omnipresent and it has some kind of dichotomy: we wear it as a badge of honor (being stressed = being busy = being important) but also know that it comes with certain health risks. In an article, I shared why I think stress is not inherently bad and how I’ve learned to embrace it.
• Productivity is also a lot about psychology: how to make the most out of your energy throughout the day, build good habits, and don’t fall for cognitive biases. Understanding them can help you in overcoming huge challenges and not fall for sneaky strategies such as the decoy effect.

My personal story

Writing can be a great outlet for your thoughts and even be some form of meditation. I very much enjoy sharing bits and pieces of my personal story in my online writing:

• I started sharing my personal story within the productivity realm: what I’ve learned about productivity and which methods I use.
• At Medium I had the opportunity to introduce myself in an “About Me” article.
• In my career, I had the opportunity to see both worlds: academia and the corporate world. In an article, I summarized my 9 core learnings from transitioning from academia to the corporate world.
• After I transitioned to the corporate world I had the opportunity to take over the responsibility of leading a team at the young age of 29. Leading a team means taking on (and crafting) your role as a leader. What helped me was learning more about the different types of authority and leadership.

My learnings after publishing 33 articles

I read a lot

I’ve always been a reader, but my writing journey made me read even more.

Before I began writing online, I started exploring the world of online reading, and I still do. It’s like strolling through a treasure chest when I browse through vast collections like Medium. There are tons of fascinating nuggets waiting to be found and appreciated.

I’ve already learned a whole bunch.

I learned a lot

I didn’t just learn from the articles I read. I also figured out how to create a web page for my blog and found places to publish my articles online, like Medium, Substack, and my web page.

Writing and publishing online has been a great way for me to get better at English and improve my writing.

Improvement in writing

When I started writing online, it was a bit tricky because English isn’t my native language. I used some uncommon words, and my grammar wasn’t always perfect.

However, I believe I’ve gotten better.

I’ve picked up new words, and thanks to some helpful readers who left comments, I’ve learned where my wording was off or when I used the wrong tense. I’ve also gotten better at organizing my content and making my articles short and simple.

Best and worst articles

I’ve figured out what kind of articles attract more readers. When I look at the stats on Medium or my webpage, the articles that get the most readers share a few things: they’re personal, not too long (around 3-6 minutes), and they have a message that readers can learn something from.

On the other hand, I found that articles with only plain facts (without a personal story), ones that are too long (over 10 minutes), and with vague titles don’t attract many readers.

My most successful articles are:

• Why the Early Bird Mentality is Wrong
• Top 7 Books for 2024
• 9 Learnings from “Thinking, Fast and Slow” You Can Apply in Your Day-to-Day Life
• Taking It Further: 5 Additional Lean Approaches for Personal Productivity
• From Ivory Tower to Corporate Tower: 9 Learnings from My Transition to the Corporate World.

My least successful articles are:

• Remembering in the Digital Age: Insights for Text, Audio and Visual Info
• The 8 Faces of Leadership
• The Decoy Effect

In my upcoming articles, I’ll concentrate on sharing personal stories that are shorter (around 3-6 minutes) and I’ll ensure the titles are as clear as possbile.

Metrics

Metrics are like a guide to see which articles people like and where they spend the most time. They help me choose what topics to write about. Without metrics, I wouldn’t know which articles were the “best” or “worst.”

But, there’s a downside to metrics too. Imagine putting your heart into an article, and no one wants to read it—that can be disheartening. It can also lead to being too focused on metrics. In my early days on Medium, I checked my stats multiple times a day. If I didn’t get “enough” views and reads, it got frustrating.

But, I’ve learned not to let metrics get to me too much. I write for fun and to learn. It doesn’t matter if some articles aren’t super popular, as long as I enjoy creating them. Every person who reads and comments on my articles is just a bonus - thank you for your support!

Why I want to continue writing

For me, writing is like a calming meditation. After a busy day, I love grabbing a cup of tea and just jotting down my thoughts.

I enjoy crafting articles. Sometimes, I write about the challenges I faced that day. Other times, I summarize my thoughts on a book I just finished reading.

I’ve always dreamed of writing a non-fiction book. By continuing to write online, I aim to improve my writing skills and eventually compile my articles into a book.

Thanks for sticking around till the end. If you’re already a writer, kudos – you’re doing something fantastic. If you’re not, I highly recommend giving it a try. Writing is a great outlet and can be quite meditative, at least it is for me.