In April 2018 when this idea of Xperian struck, I decided to write for the first time in my life. Creating value is hard and it needs a lot of thinking. To keep the thinking on, I searched for tools that can help in the process. I found that when I wrote some notes to self it helped. But I did not have the discipline to polish the language, finish the sentences properly, not tying the knots for cogency, scribbling things down etc. Basically there was no discipline and no responsibility to deliver the thought beautifully, so I decided to share my notes-to-self to the entire world in a public account. By committing to this social responsibility, I took it really seriously and I did a decent job. All said and done, whenever I want to pen down my thoughts and share it to the whole world it was (and is) scary. I do shiver putting this out🙈
For starters, I time-boxed my writing to one pomodoro (25 mins) and I had a routine of writing 1300 characters in LinkedIn. That is the post limit set by the platform. It was just nice. One thought in one pomodoro everyday. In this box, I authentically shared my voice the way it is. No frills. No images. No marketing around it but just sharing thoughts everyday. The only goal was ~200 words / 1300 characters of an authentic thought of that day. I kept this routine. I was consistent every single day.
By doing this for a year and half, I truly saw the power of compounding in front of my eyes. At the end of 18 months, I had written almost 100,000+ words. That is equivalent to two books. I was pleasantly surprised by the results of doing one little thing every single day. I didn't have any agenda. I didn't pay attention to followership, views, likes, shares etc I just wrote everyday diligently. All good and bad that came out of the writing, I received it gracefully and I was grateful for all the kind words from the readers. Organically without any push from my end, the followership increased by 3x in just 6 months.
The premise of all writing is, it is notes-to-self. If it can help others, it is a bonus. The focus is to share a POV (point of view) around a topic, concept, subject, issue etc. Slowly our marketing folks at Xperian started getting greedy and asked why write only in LinkedIn, why not in twitter, why not use substack, why not medium, why not insta, why not our blog blah blah blah... I knew a disaster is brewing in the form of greed.
The minute you write for a variety of channels, you need to worry about the content type, the tonality, focus etc. When I shared this difficulty, marketing folks told me, just one piece and you can repurpose for the rest of the channels. In the past 6 months, I tried sincerely. I did adapt. I was flexible. The problem is I could not focus and I could not keep up with the demands of the various platforms.
A year and half ago my friend and colleague Arjun Phlox gifted me a timeless piece of software. The note along with the gift was "my friend, this is my little gift and a nudge to make you write more and think more and here are your credentials for Karthi's blog". He handcrafted the blog site in one weekend using Webflow and gifted me. Looks like over coffee I had mentioned to him about my intent to write regularly and for life.
As a typographer his crib was more around how all the blog platforms out there suck with readability etc. He wanted to craft a beautiful reading experience for people. He poured his heart into it and crafted every single detail. I loved the design direction and the minimal aesthetic sense he put into it. It spoke to me at various levels. The gift is very close to my heart. The only reason I could not use the gift is, it became a burden to manage many platforms and one site on top of that along with your day job. I crumbled and totally stopped writing in between. The beauty of 1300 characters was taken away from me by me in the name of variety of platforms and algorithms. The focus shifted and writing drifted. I didn't feel good about it inside me. So I decided to do something about it.
After a long and hard thought process, I figured out the focus must be all about writing. All other distractions to be removed. So I decided write in one place and chuck the rest. I chose my blog site for that and if I have time and energy will share some snippets. The rationale behind choosing my site is:
I don't have to worry about timezones and social media feeds.
I don't have to worry about days I write and days I don't.
I don't have to worry about the number of emails that will spam the reader's inbox.
I don't have to manage too many places to keep up with the thoughts.
I don't have to worry about what topic to write on and is it appropriate for this channel etc.
Above all I don't have to (and don't want to) worry about likes, views, shares, subscriptions etc. Never have and never will.
I am consciously removing all the barriers that are distracting the beautiful routine and focusing on the core. That must be just writing and hence a dedicated site.
I designed some meta topics for life so that my cognitive overload is much reduced. Writing clears up thought clogs and it helps you think better. That is all matters at the end of the day! It is a great de-stressor for me. If I made you hop on to my site consciously without any automatons (subscriptions, comments, likes etc), it is a deliberate act. Your attention is priceless and that is enough. I don't want anything more from my readers. Gratitude.
