Big Lifts Can Be Small Lifts

I wrote two pieces this week, both on the note-making methodology I use called "zettelkasten." The first one, "I just finished reading a book and took lots of notes. Now what?," I wrote in bed, on my phone, while doing a bunch of other things online, while at the same time chatting with Becky. This one made a bit of a splash and got me on the front page of Hacker News for a couple hours. This translated into roughly fourteen thousand views in a single day. 

The second post, "Folgezettel is Not an Outline: Luhmann's Playful Appreciation of (Dys)function," was much more involved, and I worked on it on-and-off for about six weeks. This made almost no dent whatsoever, despite, in my mind, being the more crucial of the two pieces.

Now, productivity gurus will tell you that this proves that your quick, light-lift, throw-ups are where you should be spending your time. They are easier, require less mental bandwidth, and, being "shot from the hip," are more relatable. 

This is also part of why I dislike the productivity scene so much.

Here's my experience of the pieces themselves:

The Quick Piece

• This was written off a comment I made on Reddit. In other words, the reason it was so easy to write, was because I repurposed a Reddit comment I made for an essay. I love doing this.
• In the end, it spurred a lot of negative comments on HN, because they had no idea where the piece was coming from, and thought I was being ideological (I wasn't)
• The bump in reads (14k) led to maybe six new newsletter subscribers and about the same number of new Twitter followers (Six!)
• Because the piece is more a brief "how-to" it might be useful over the years to some, but will probably fade very quickly

The More Involved Piece

• This piece was written over a six-week period, but because I write many pieces at the same time, and keep very good track of where I leave off, really took six writing sessions of probably no more than one hour each (six hours max).
• I enjoyed the process of writing this piece.
• This piece made more or less no dent in the zettel-sphere, but for those who did read it, gave a number of a-ha moments, and may have fundamentally shifted their perspective about a particular aspect of the practice.
• Because this piece was not widely shared online, it's hard to know if I got any new followers or subscribers. But, I know for a fact that I cemented a few "true fans."
• Because the piece reframes one of the core aspects of the zettelkasten practice, it has the potential of staying relevant for years to come.

My Takeaway

• I'm a writer, which means I write. I write lots of different content that takes many different shapes and involves many different kinds of lifts. 
• Likes and shares do not necessarily lead to much of anything.
• You never know what pieces will land, how, for whom, and to what end.
• Diagnosing "best practices" based on what it takes to write a piece (quick one-offs or longer investments) is a terrible way of knowing what's worth your time.
• If you have a system in place that allows you to sanely work on many different writing projects at the same time (I can teach you how), then big lifts really ain't that big. And, it allows you to write in whichever way you need to for any given project at any time. 

📦