#12/120 - What Changes When You Promise to Write for 10 Years
In this newsletter, I will share the system I use, where I gain motivation from, and how I maintain my discipline.
Hey, my favorite 32 people, I am Summerbud.
Time flies. A year has passed, and this will be the 12th newsletter I have sent. As promised, I haven't missed a single monthly newsletter.
In this newsletter, I will share the system I use, where I gain motivation from, and how I maintain my discipline.
Below, you'll find a questionnaire about this newsletter. I would be grateful if you could take a moment to fill it out, as your feedback will help shape its future direction.
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I believe everyone has the ability to embark on the greatest journey in their life at any given moment. Completely changed. And sustain it into a life-long endeavor. I truly believe it. But it's hard, so hard that only a few of us successfully make it.
That is the reason I began to write this newsletter. I want to step into this realm and directly feel its suffering, joy, and fulfillment.
From the get-go, I knew it would be hard to sustain a monthly newsletter with serious essays for years. Especially I am also working in a high pace, early-stage startup. But I still underestimate the harshness of this journey, it's not only hard but also mentally bent. You are constantly pushed by the schedule, no matter how fast you finish the current essay, there will always be another one ahead, and that another one will be a brand new knowledge territory for you, which makes you feel intellectual discomfort. This discomfort will become anxiety which greatly affects your daily life. On the way, those dirty things in life become much more severe when you have such obligations, what if I get a serious cold and delay my supposed schedule, what should I do then?
This is a brand new challenge for me, although I have been in the realm of writing for more than 25 years. Previously, when I was writing my novel, there was no immediate deadline, just a date that was far away. Although I faced lots of writing walls, none of them had a serious effect on my life. But this time it will, I can't have a writing block, and I also need to maintain the quality of each essay.
I must admit, it's hard as f.1
There was one moment when I was nearly burning out. When I put together my 8th essay - Sort, filter, and rebuild our identity. I found myself really enjoying the process of writing it.
But the essay's results didn't meet my expectations. Its open rate and view counts decreased, and many of the key metrics were heading down. I didn't know the reason behind it, that essay is a high-quality essay and I wrote it with all my whole heart, believing this mindset can help people evolve.
I was facing a huge writer's wall after publishing that essay. I usually write in the morning, when everything is quiet, I found that during that time, my pen became quieter, I stumble, crumble, and pause. Sitting on my chair, I stared at the endless white wall and saw the eyesight become vague, and multiple dark points emerged, flying.
Writing is my safe harbor, a garden outside of all the pain in daily life, but right then, the garden is covered by a heavy dark cloud, it wasn't the freshness of rain, but a damp, depressing, sad, and lonely gloom. The humidity is so high that you will sweat like a dog just standing for one minute. The garden becomes a hard-to-bear place to live, but still, I need to maintain the cadence and the promise of publishing an essay per month.
For several weeks, I had been stuck.
One day, out of nowhere, my partner suddenly told me that during her reunion with her college friend, one of her friends told her: "Your partner’s essays are great, they are well thought and written, it's really a great series."
"My writing is great?" I couldn't believe what I heard, so I asked my partner to say it again, she said the same line of words to me, and I almost cried at that moment, the rain finally raining down in the garden, and all the damp, sad, loneliness flooded away. Now I know, there is a stranger, outside of my immediate comfort zone, who is reading my work and that person appreciates it. I relearned how scarce appreciation is, and how powerful it feels to receive it.
I stood in the garden, watching the rain and flooding, which made me think, what will remain after this flood? I begin to rethink my own goal and the vision of this newsletter.
Previously I positioned this newsletter as a hub for those who are doing things that are not appreciated yet, and I want to be the one to appreciate their work and become their companion on the way. After several months of thinking and writing, I want to reshape this vision.
The vision become one of my Axioms2 that everyone can embark on the greatest journey in their life at any given moment. And, they can sustain it into a long-term endeavor. No matter what they do, starting a company, writing a novel, directing a movie, or creating art. Everyone has the ability to completely change and move the needle forward.
This vision gently and smoothly fits into my imagination of this newsletter and my future endeavors. I want to help more people embark on this kind of journey, by sharing my thoughts, my observations, and many others stories about how they persist on this kind of long-term journey. I imagine I will even start a podcast talking with these extraordinary people.
Once I realize this, all the hard work becomes something I can enjoy and I wake up every day with excitement about my work, "What am I going to think today?" This question makes me feel happy.
That is my greatest change in this one-year journey, I extend my vision and enrich my understanding of it. It is not only a vision but also a calling. I begin to support my fellow creators, either financially or emotionally. I want them to stay in this game, which everyone can step in, but a few of them have successfully stayed.
But just having a great vision is not enough to develop a healthy lifestyle to stay in the game. It's brutally hard, especially when there is zero appreciation of the sight. In this situation, a system that supports, encourages, and empowers you becomes crucial. And you need not only the system, the motivation and discipline play crucial roles here too.
I am going to share the system I created during the process which greatly reduces the pain and increases the joy.
You need to minimize the spending of willpower
We usually focus on the body's strength and energy level but overlook the mind's willpower.
Both Cal Newport's "Deep Work" and James Clear's "Atomic Habit" talk about the concept of "Limited Wellpower". It's like your body's energy, which decays throughout the day. So you need to use it wisely, and most importantly, you need to find a system that can help you finish the task with minimum willpower spent.
When I built my own system, I didn't plan it out in the first place, but I have these goals in mind.
I need a system that only consumes minimum willpower and transforms it into the maximum brain output.
I will use this as the opportunity to think of my relationship with AI, and how I should use it in my essay writing.
It's an endurance game, the thing that matters is not speed but how long I can stay in the game, the system needs to support this aspect
Over these 12 essays, there is a system emerging, and it is becoming clearer along the way. I will roughly talk about what it looks like right now. It has three phases: ideation, writing, and rewriting.
Ideation phase
What you choose to speak and what not to is more important than how many things you say. This kind of limit is embedded in this newsletter by default, I will only write 120 essays over the time of 10 years, nothing more and nothing less.
So it's crucial for me to pick the "right" topic to write about.
Since this gene is there from the get-go. I have picked a practice that I inherited from my novel writing. In the Obsidian Vault3, I have an idea vault, and in that vault, each idea has two files, the first one is the index canvas and the second one is the Q&A file. When I have an interesting idea in mind, I will first put it into the idea vault and open the index canvas to write down some piece that is in my mind.
Then I will find a way to describe this idea in 150 words, ask LLM to generate bunches of questions, and begin to answer them one by one. During this process, I will have more ideas popping up and put them into the index canvas.
I call this process "Cultivation", it's a practice outside of my daily writing, I will spend many hours in this process just to make sure the idea is worth my time writing it.
Writing phase
Once I decided which topic to write about, I had several questions to think of first.
Who is the target reader of this article?
What is the problematic problem right now
What is the value I can add to the table
These questions will increase my chance of connecting to my reader, they help me stay focused and only say things that can push the progress forward.
Then I will go find as many references as possible, using any tools on my hand, google search, different kinds of LLM, and my own knowledge base to find the resources.
After I feel enough, I will compose the outline, which is a process that I value a lot. It's a hedge against the possibility of using writing to think. Instead, I need to make sure the outline is succinct, direct, and complete. Not until then will I begin to write, before which I can't move the needle further.
About writing, the only advice I can give is coming from an author I admire. Raymond Chandler. A writer should have a fixed moment, which he will only write, or ponder, and nothing else, no reading, no browsing, no doing chores, if he can't write something, then all the person should do is sit on his chair, staring at his words.
This advice is buried very deeply into my heart, and every day, I am re-living the saying again and again until the first draft is finished and moving into the territory of rewriting. My favorite part.
Rewriting phase
I like rewriting, it's the core of my writing process. I will usually rewrite my whole essay "Brain-Only" one to two times. On the third rewrite, I will ask LLM to criticize my essay. And here is the prompt.
"Hey, you are now a professional critic, good at pointing out the defect of a given article. You are especially good at finding wrong reasoning like circular reasoning, tautology, and many others.
The writer should use the essay to directly convey his message, you will evaluate whether the writer is using writing to think and whether the reader will lose their pace when reading the essay"
The prompt has two parts, the first part focuses on telling the LLM to act like a good critique, forcing it to not overly say good words in your essay, and focus on the reasoning. The second part is telling the LLM to make sure the writer is not using their writing as a tool to think, instead, only write after they already think it clearly.
Then I will move on to rewrite the essay until I feel that there is nothing more I can change. Usually, it will take 4 to 5 versions of rewriting to finish the final touch, in the meanwhile I will ask my draft readers to proofread my essay, they always give awesome feedback. (I want to thank those people again, Lucy, Jonathan, Jimmy, and Shaka, I can't make it this far without your help.) I will incorporate their opinion into my essay and let it sit in the closet for a while.
When the publish date is close, I will read it out loud and use this as the opportunity to make sure it rhymes well.
This is the system I use daily, you can take it as inspiration and build your own. Value your system more than the result and constantly adjust it. But this is not the only thing you need on this journey. You need other two things, motivation and discipline.
Maintain your appreciation battery carefully
Motivation has many sources, since humans are social animals, we are bound to our community, and one of the sources is receiving the signal that you are needed by others. And the signal is "Appreciation".
You need to know "Appreciation" is very scarce, every kind word and every sincere praise from real humans is priceless. To stay in the game, they are the ultimate kind of fuel to drive your progress.
Whenever you receive this kind of appreciation, screenshot, and store it in a place that is safe. Whenever you have doubt about yourself, return to this sacred chamber to read those appreciations.
You will get your willpower back
Everyday and Pomodoro
To stay in the game, I think nothing is more important than making it a habit and sharpening your discipline from it. It needs to be done every day without excuse.4 I make it by forcing myself to at least stay in the writing zone for one Pomodoro per day, and after the Pomodoro, I will reward myself by watching one YouTube video.
I also force myself to directly get into writing every day when I wake up, there is no excuse, this is the most important thing I need to finish when every other task arises. I found this act also greatly improved my quality of thinking since I use my will and brain power wisely.
After reading Cal Newport's "Deep Work", I decided to extend my Pomodoro session from 30 minutes to one hour and onward, I found it has improved the quality of my writing and the fulfillment by a level. Once I can maintain a deeper focus in my session, my writing becomes cleaner.
Believe in yourself
System, motivation, and discipline are the essential components that will help you stay in the game. But over this journey, I can say this is not enough. You need to believe in yourself.
Hey, my dear reader, I believe in you.
Don't hesitate, doing something for an hour can be more beneficial than just thinking about it for a year. So go ahead, take each meaningful yet small step, don't be afraid, start drawing your journey in the mist, and get used to the humidity, dampness, and chaotic reality.
No matter where your journey goes, I will be here writing the newsletter as always. 10 years, 120 newsletters. On my way, my inbox will always be open to those who are on their way to the long-term journey. Whenever you need any kind of advice or a helping hand, please don't hesitate to reach out.
Stay together.
Keep in touch.
Po Chun
This month’s connection: Shaka Chen
I met Shaka at a coffee chat with one of the YC engineer in Taipei, out of surprise, it becomes a steady, long term and insightful relationship afterwards.
We have countless communications around economic, logic, psychology, philosophy, programming and the thing we value, the startup journey.
Besides, he has been the royal and meaningful draft reader of this newsletter since day one, I can’t make this far without his help.
If you are interested in his deep, insightful and interesting thought, you can visit his Blog and Thread
Thanks
Thanks Jonathan, Lucy, Shaka for reading the draft of this article. I can not make this far without your help.
Sorry for using this strong word, but I feel this essay, is the right place for this kind of emotion
I talk about the concept of Life Axiom in my previous essay The Axiom of life
The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at the least, when a professional writer doesn’t do anything but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out the window stand on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks. Either write or nothing…. I find it works. — Raymond Chandler