When I Have a Slower Publishing Cadence My Blog Grows Faster

Often, you’ll have a choice between spending time on optimizing one sample or drawing a second sample—for instance, editing a blog post you’ve already written vs. writing a second post[.] Some amount of optimization is worth it, but in my experience, most people are way over-indexed on optimization and under-indexed on drawing more samples. (View Highlight)

Note:: Lean towards ship it and create additional content...to a point. 80% rule seems to be in play.

I should also say something about what I mean by “optimizing” a piece. I’m not talking about fretting over adjectives or whether to move a comma or not. I hit the keyboard almost as fast as Sasha—I do about a thousand words a day and that is on top of working and homeschooling my daughters—it’s just that I cut nearly everything. When I’m writing, I’m looking for weaknesses in my thinking (which I can usually only spot once I’ve my thoughts on the screen). I write a draft. I critique it; I get people more mean than me to critique it; I get people who are experts on strange things to critique it from their strange perspectives. Then I go and research and rewrite my thoughts again and again as my understanding evolves. I’m transforming my thinking. Then I do a light edit for tone. I leave a few misspellings. (View Highlight)

Note:: I love this paragraph, this makes sense to me. Initially, I thought the over-optimization was around editing, but he clarifies here, that it is more around testing his thinking about a piece.

I guess what I’m trying to say in this essay is: I’m awed and surprised and deeply pleased that this turned out to be a good strategy. You don’t have to be a content farm to find a community of readers; you can just put your heart into making unreasonably thorough stuff. (View Highlight)

Note:: Write well, scratch that, think well and write. Then optimize your thinking and write the draft better. Ship it at 80% or better. But, don't optimize to the point of hating to write.