{"id":4567,"date":"2019-02-14T17:31:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T01:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eekim.com\/?p=4567"},"modified":"2019-02-14T17:31:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T01:31:57","slug":"thinking-out-loud-and-iteratively-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/2019\/02\/thinking-out-loud-and-iteratively-is-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking Out Loud (and Iteratively) Is Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On January 2, I wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, I only wrote five posts on this blog, my fewest ever. It wasn\u2019t for lack of material, and it wasn\u2019t even because I didn\u2019t have enough time. I did lots of journaling and drawing, I just did most of it in private.<\/p>

…<\/p>

I want to re-adjust…. I want to think out loud a lot more, especially about my work, while also still sharing the occasional personal tidbits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Today is February 14. This is my seventh blog post of the year, which means that after 45 days, I have already published more than I did all of last year. I’m doing great! (I’m not just saying this. I truly feel this way.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, I’m struggling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the personal side (i.e. this blog), I have a bunch of half-written posts and notes. As far as I’m concerned, many of them are almost good enough to share, but that last bit of effort is still work, and I just haven’t been able to get there. I either need to make a tiny bit more space, or I need to re-frame my standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m really struggling on the professional side<\/a>. I have some drafts that I’ve been working on for many months (in one case, for multiple years). I also have some posts that are almost ready to go. I co-wrote one of them with another person, which helped a lot. But I’m also trying to shave too many yaks<\/a>, which is creating a bottleneck. I managed to force myself to publish something last week<\/a>, which was not only relatively painless, but also got a nice response. However, I find myself stuck again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t want to overthink this. I’m doing great right now, and I’m probably not too far from getting over the hump. (Writing this is helping me.) But I’m realizing (to my surprise) that I’m suffering from a bit of performance anxiety. It’s all mindset. I wouldn’t say my audience today is much bigger than it was, say, 10 years ago. In fact, you could make a pretty good, data-driven case that it’s smaller. It’s less about size, more about self-perception, I think \u2014 vanity if I’m being honest. Somehow, it all feels higher stakes to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is all good. It will help me be more empathetic when I’m helping others work more transparently and iteratively. And it’s a good reminder that it’s all about practice. Once I get some more reps in, I’m sure it will all get easier again. Let’s see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 2, I wrote: Last year, I only wrote five posts on this blog, my fewest ever. It wasn\u2019t for lack of material, and it wasn\u2019t even because I didn\u2019t have enough time. I did lots of journaling and drawing, I just did most of it in private. … I want to re-adjust…. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[211,1337,1826,2146,2218,2009,2019],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4cTFX-1bF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eekim.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}