You might have heard about the highly effective product placement strategy that’s cleverly designed to place the ad within a movie or a series to capture the attention of its audience.

Medium is no different; it makes use of the same strategy.

What is unique about Medium, though, is that it promotes itself using its app, and honestly, that’s a brilliant strategy to attract more people.

How Did They Achieve That?

You sign up as a Medium member, and you are intrigued to read articles from ordinary people.

You relate to the writer’s stories, and when you keep following an author, you feel connected to them.

It’s a similar strategy to that any of the social media apps uses. But wait, let’s not jump into comparing Medium to a social media app. Medium isn’t like most other social media apps, and I will explain later why I say that.

Anyway, a lot of people who read are also equally interested in writing. And if you are one of them, you get motivated to give it a try.

You get inspired by other writer’s stories and start penning your views and thoughts on a topic that’s close to your heart.

After a lot of debate, you finally gather the courage to hit Publish. You get a few views and reads, a few claps and comments, and these give you an adrenaline rush (much higher than even your workout routine).

Now you write a few more articles, add a few publications, get curated, and slowly start seeing a few cents. Yes, that’s what you almost always see in your first month, unless you are a published writer already and hiding in your closet.

You do your research on Medium — what exactly this platform is, what works here, how much money writers earn, what writing styles should you adopt, and a million other questions.

Over time, you slowly better your articles. You invest in other apps, such as Grammarly, ConvertKit, MailChimp, your blog site, etc.

And before you even know it, you are officially a part of the ecosystem.

When you create a new social media platform, it’s easy to attract new users but challenging to sustain that. Remember how Google+ and Myspace failed to captivate their audiences.

However, Medium has been steady in attracting new users (mostly readers) who then convert to writers, and the cycle keeps continuing.

It Has Grown Organically

Writers create content and socialize it with their friends and family. They share their articles on various social media platforms, thereby encouraging others to check out Medium.

The Friend Link feature has been very cleverly designed so that an author can share this link with their friends and followers, even if they aren’t subscribing members. Soon, these non-subscribers are intrigued to read more and become subscribers.

Thus Medium’s subscription base grows organically because of the writers who create content and bring more people to their platform.

It is now seeing not only more subscribers but also higher percentage gains every month since early 2018. More than 50,000 writers publish their stories each week.

Medium attracts people from all different streams: professors, politicians, porn stars, students, retirees, veterans, etc. For anyone who has a compelling story to tell and knows how to tell it, Medium helps in delivering their story to the right audience.

While it optimizes its algorithm for engagement, just like any other content generation platform, what sets it apart is the human intervention.

In essence, a small in-house team of curators scours the platform to give the readers a selection of excellent stories customized for them, based on their interests.

However, the economics behind these apps remains the same.

Let’s try to understand what works for Medium and what makes writers and readers stick to it.

It Isn’t Twitter or Instagram

You can share your experiences, life stories, insights and opinions. You aren’t micro-blogging, and you aren’t restricted to 140 characters. It isn’t about the photos either — the images on Medium are just to add colour to the black and white text. Unlike other apps, these photos are mostly stock images. The main focus is on the story that the author wants to convey, nothing else.

Stephanie Georgopoulos, an editor in Medium, when asked for her comments on Medium being called a long-form Twitter, said she doesn’t agree that it’s like Twitter, where people spew venom at the drop of a hat while hiding behind their digital identity.

Writers on Medium are more thought-provoking and insightful.They write stories that you can’t find elsewhere and inspire millions of readers each day.

It Has a Different Revenue Model

Medium doesn’t promote any ads on its platform, which also sets it apart from the mainstream social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The no-nonsense interface and its subscription-based revenue model have helped it grow its subscriber-writer base.

They are similar to some other digital media subscription businesses, like the Time or The New Yorker, or even Spotify and Netflix. They sell content on subscription, however, what distinguishes them is that they rely solely on subscriptions (no advertising).

Most of all, it pays the writers. For every $5-subscription fee they earn from members, they return a part to their writers.

The only other social media site where you can create content and get paid is YouTube.

I have written about my journey on Medium so far, and how I earned my first-ever $826 from a single article. It has further strengthened my belief in the entire system.

Also, they are very transparent when it comes to earnings. They give you insight into who’s earning on Medium, what the maximum potential is for a single article, and what the maximum earning is for that month. Medium publishes these payout numbers to all writers participating in the Medium Partnership program each month.

Conclusion

I am no expert in this field, but from what I have learnt so far, Medium very cleverly uses its subscriber base to grow its business. Offering a level playing field for writers (most of whom are not published authors elsewhere) it has given us a platform to express and earn.

It’s a business model that thrives on a win-win strategy. Everyone gains — readers, writers, editors, publishers, and Medium themselves — by consistently growing and generating quality content. History has shown us that a mutual benefit approach helps to accelerate growth, provide employment, and promote creativity.

By Oct 2019, Medium had paid out more than $6 million total to 30,000 writers. Developing an app that can then self-promote itself through its readers and writers is pretty clever.

Medium’s business model is designed to serve writers and readers. That’s it. For more information, read “How Medium Works With Writers” by Siobhan O’Connor.

Till when will you remain silent?

You get ignored, your arguments not valued,
They say you don’t have much skin in the game
Oh, Kiddo!, You are just an amateur, You have just begun.
They think they are the stalwarts,
They have seen it all and they know it all

Only if their thoughts weren’t so shallow, their values so hollow,
let’s be real — who is the real novice and who the wise, after all!
Your ideas get dismissed no matter how fresh, offbeat or creative,
no doubt they use the same old lens, the same old narrative!

Till when will you remain silent?

Your work gets taken away, tossed and turned, twisted and churned
presented to some old, some new, some fools and some ‘Who are you?’

Some get applauded, some get acclaim, some make me realise what I earned
But some remain as beautiful packs and some give me those Monday blues

Till when will you remain silent?

You get those snarly eye-rolls if you ask too many questions or considered ignorant if you ask too less! When do you stop getting judged?
You get manipulated ever so often you don’t even realise when it started and where it ends, everything is hazy and confusing. Why do I care so much?

Till when will you remain silent?

You struggle to join the dots; you run from pillar to post
You get the back story and make sense of those annoying jargons
Why you’d ask? Because let’s be honest — no one likes easy, no one likes plain
All the more if it’s run by all Jacks and critiqued by a Jane!

Till when will you remain silent?

You still wake up, gather all your might, get your mind right and go through the grind. Day in and day out, months pass by and years follow suit
Year after year- You complain a little, learn a little and grow your kind.

You realise the system is broken and ruthless
You criticise for the better, but you get told ‘Everything’s fine’
You wonder what is ‘truth’ and what ‘lies’ anymore. When they defy logic, miss the obvious, care for none and not a dime.

Not anymore and not for long

Don’t remain silent

Don’t lose that hope and definitely not that intent
The world has just begun and it’s only 2000 years old and we have a billion more to go
Kindle that burning rage and collect all those powerful thoughts — the war has just begun, and there are a million battles to be fought!

The pen is mightier than a sword
Fight with a pen and slay with your word
Just,
Speak up, Speak right and Speak now

I am no expert to answer all of those questions but I would like to share my perspective, especially with this plethora of content being generated daily.

So if I have broadly categorised content into two buckets – 1) Entertainment 2) Informational – Even in this category, there are broadly two subcategories – ‘topicalish’ and ‘know-how’ ones. This article dives into this specific category of content which presents a problem and offers a solution sometimes.

The solution is not common or unique to the creator. As a consumer we know that too and might have heard it in some format previously, but what differentiates a creator and consumer is the fact that the former makes a conscious effort to organise their thoughts and observations into a beautiful storyline, rewrites it a million times, proofreads it, edits it, formats it and then publishes it.

So let’s appreciate the fact that content creation isn’t easy. It requires a lot of dedication to let the creative juice flowing in exploring an everyday topic and make it interesting to sell it to the audiences.

However, does that mean the creator knows the solution and has this all-encompassing wisdom to solve all your problems?

Nah! They are just keen to share something that has worked for them, and they believe it might help others. And some of them are sometimes just recycling their old content to keep their numbers up, keep the eyeballs glued to their content and make some income.

As a consumer, it is essential to understand these subtleties to consume responsibly and not believe everything that is being told or rather sold to us.

I consume a lot more content than I create and so I can reasonably distinguish an honest write-up from the mass click-bait production that adds no value to the consumer. They are either repetitive or superlative or overly enthusiastic with seemingly fake energy.

Don’t get me wrong that all content creators are the same, there are quite a few whom I admire, and they inspire me to show up every single day. They are original and have a powerful message to deliver, but not all of them and not always.

And it would be wrong to assume that people who create content would always have the right answer. They might have this one popular blog or vlog or post or story, but that doesn’t mean the rest shall always follow suit. Some are going to be worth your time and some not so much.

In essence, as a consumer of a lot of content and also someone who creates content, here are a few suggestions that I think as a consumer we all should do to uplift the entire cycle of content generation and consumption.

As a consumer, what you should do?

• Like, share and subscribe responsibly. A lot of it is just clutter or ramble. But if you do watch this garbage and share it, that’s more of what we shall get. Understand the difference between good content and great content. And I don’t need to define bad content – that’s easy to understand. But good content is something that has a few good points, is clear and the effort put in by the creator visible. Great content is where you can connect with the creator, understand the sentiment behind the content and resonate with their thoughts. Appreciate when you see a great content – for a vast majority, that’s their source of livelihood and those rare masterpieces are not generated every day. So be a connoisseur of great content. You’ll get more of what you like – it’s the law of nature.
• Be respectful – So coming to the bad content (and there is plenty of that), be respectful when you don’t like something. It’s okay to disagree or write a comment that explains your resentment but be polite and respectful to the creator – It is easy to comment, difficult to create
• Judge the article by the use of its messaging and not by the clickbait headline that made you click in the first place.
• Ever heard of content recycling. Yes, that’s true – Sometimes content creators recycle their content in different packaging, be smart to be able to distinguish that so you don’t prey victim to their strategies.
• And lastly, cut them some slack and don’t believe in everything that someone says because you liked this one article/video/post that they had created. They have their share of ups-and-downs, and probably at times some of their content is going to be shallow and wouldn’t cut the mark.

1.Coffee
I love the caffeine addiction like million others because it literally wakes me up. So I normally take my morning cuppa coffee almost 2-3 hours after I have woken up, and trust me this period is the most dreaded part of my entire routine. I dread it because I feel as though I am a zombie that is just physiologically performing, but for all other reasons, I am quite dead. And seriously, I would hate it if someone were to schedule an important meeting that requires a lot of thought process.

However, if this same discussion is to happen after that caffeine shot, I am not just ready, I am in fifth gear baby – My thoughts are stimulated and I am ready to solve all problems. Bring it on – Let’s solve world hunger. Now that’s an exaggeration, but you get the drill – the ideas are flowing easily, I am excited about the meeting, asking all the right questions, connecting dots, absorbing the information, actioning my emails. I love it. Sadly this is the coffee speaking and not my coherent self – is that okay? I don’t know but I honestly don’t care either. Coffee is my poison and to hell with all those articles about ‘why coffee is bad for your health’.

What I mean?

Find what stimulates you on a daily basis and use it as your source of motivation – caffeine, sugar or even some wine

Why you should try it?

Everyone needs an instant boost for motivation.

You got to have some vices to be able to have some voices.

Said I

2. Travel
Now what I just described above doesn’t hold good if I am on a vacation mode, because suddenly I have found a new stimulant – the vibe of this new place I am in, the people I would be meeting, the things we would be doing, it’s all exciting in itself and it is stimulating enough to not require a coffee. I wouldn’t mind one but I shall be fine without one. Also, the brain is very aware of the new surroundings and absorbs a lot more information than in the normal course of the day. The newness of the travel triggers a lot of thoughts and ideas which are so different and unique – it just opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. But travelling is an expensive affair to get that dose of motivation. So, what is the other alternative? The idea lies in the reason itself.

What I mean?

Find one new thing in your day – take an unfamiliar route to commute, a new grocery shop, ditch Netflix for a book, try a different recipe to experiment, a phone call to an old friend, anything. The only thing you’ll have to be mindful of is not to overdo it. Keep it consistent – one new thing, each day.

Why you should try it?

Small changes, doesn’t take much effort but doing it consistently would make a big difference over a period of time.

3. Fear
I think this might hold good for everyone but the reason it features in my list is that I have a really low attention span. I can transcend into several different spaces at the same time while still listening to you in that very moment. A bewildering mind is more focussed on the environment that instigates fear than otherwise. What I want to say is the fear of the unknown, fear of uncertainty or fear of misjudgement all lead to a heightened awareness in that situation. For e.g., if you are giving a speech and you fear you will be judged for your opinions, your awareness levels hit the ceiling. Again fear is just one of the many emotions that acts as a powerful stimulant for activating those brain muscles – there is anger, trust, disgust that all stimulate thoughts. But fear is powerful because of the chemical reactions that take place in your body causing a fight or flight response. It is amazing how the brain could process these million thoughts in a few seconds and decide on what to do.

What I mean?

Find your real fears and I am not talking about the fear of enclosed spaces or reptiles and ghosts. I am talking about those bigger things that would keep you awake at night – unaccomplished goals, directionless career, failed relationships, mid-life crises, mental health issues and use them as motivation techniques.

Why you should try it?

Fear is a powerful stimulant if you use it the right way. The zeal to fix what is broken will help to steer life forward.

4. Workout
You might know that workout is an excellent stimulant because of the endorphins that it releases and that sets you up for the rest of the day; it charges you naturally and is an excellent way to be physically and mentally active. Now that isn’t anything new but what I want to mention is knowing the optimum level where this happens is important. To explain it better, I usually workout in the evening and I vary the intensity. If it has been a moderate routine I would be energetic enough to complete my daily chores faster and sleep better. However there is a catch, if I were to up a notch and do a hardcore workout, I would be flat out or my endorphins would touch the ceiling and keep me awake the whole night. So yes, the lesson is ‘do not overdo it’.

What I mean?

Simply put, workout in any format you like – sport, dance, gym, swim, walk, run or crawl – but move your body and do it consistently. Trust me that consistency is the most difficult part, so embed it in your daily chores.

Why you should try it?

It helps you physically and mentally. Physical fitness helps in better stamina and those endorphins, my, they are an addiction too. You’d understand if you have experienced it.

5. Intellectual conversations
Oh yes, it is such a rarity these days and especially in certain social circles. We have become so superficial and seldom talk about those real issues or be vulnerable enough to share our deepest worries and fears. Those long meaningful conversations with friends, the healthy debates on the economy or politics of your country (and I don’t mean the rant or poison we spew on social media), the life stories of how far we have come and where we want to go. These are the moments which are so rare these days that if you experience them, you should treasure them because they stimulate the thoughts that matter – not just on social media but in real life and also because they impact the circle of close friends and family.

What I mean?

Have real conversations instead of those superficial ice-breaker talks. Listen. Listen to what the other person has to say and respond with an open mind.

Why you should try it?

There is nothing else that would stimulate your thought better than this one. We as human beings are social animals and thrive on what people around us have to say, do, wear and these conversations give us plenty of insights into their world.

6. A powerful message
Be it a wonderful series such as ‘When They See Us‘ or ‘OJ Simpson vs The Public’ or an interview by Michelle Obama or a Ted Talk by someone who talks out of their experience and knowledge it stimulates a lot of thoughts. This is the work that is presented in 1 or 2 hours but it takes a lot of years hard work to create the art that inspires. So a powerful dose of someone’s life experiences is a great stimulant, especially when you can’t live each and every life – you see, you learn and you grow from what others have to teach you. On a lighter note, every-time I see something brilliant I would want to pursue that profession. Not just the fancy ones even something as bizarre as a busker or a boxing professional.

What I mean?

Make wise choices when it comes to the content you consume – Don’t fall for the clickbait content, instead select something more meaningful that you can draw inspiration from.

Why you should try it?

You probably do and so this one is a no-brainer why you should watch healthy inspirational content. Luckily we don’t have to find it in the documentaries or art films anymore, it has become more of mainstream commercial content these days.

7. Do nothing When I have a lot going on, doing nothing helps to compartmentalise those thoughts, to think clearly and stay focused. And I wouldn’t let social media or Netflix or calls or anything for that matter ruin that space and time – because as someone who loves to write this time is precious for me to think about what I want to convey in my writing.

What I mean?

I mean – spend at least 10 minutes in the day by doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am not sure if it is meditation, I am no expert in that field, but just start by staring the ceiling, what say?

Why you should try it?

Yes, when you do nothing sometimes you are doing a lot more. By giving yourself time to process everything that is happening around you you get rejuvenated. And I am not saying to fall asleep. I am saying to be conscious of your thoughts

It’s your day, your thoughts and your actions!

Now I do as I preach or rather preach only what I really believe in. So I took a day out of my weekend, which normally constitutes cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, Netflix and meeting friends. It bore me, this routine. I just don’t enjoy going in cycles day in and day out. I want to break free. Haha – seems like I am singing right now. Oh, yes! I am, Lyrics are the best source of inspiration. They sum up your thoughts and feelings in this lyrical composition that sticks so much better than any writer can ever connect with you. ‘I want to break free’. Anyway, so I stepped out and did what I always wanted to – write, read, listen, and just enjoy life my way. Here is what I did:

So Melbourne has this ‘Emerging writer’s festival’ every year around June wherein they have various events, conferences, workshops around story telling, writing professionally and publishing/editing – so I attended to one of these sessions and get some insights from some published writers. The topic was 5*5 rules of writing. Now I am no professional writer and don’t know if I want to take it up as a profession, however I want to hone some writing skills for my blogs and what better way than to learn it directly from some of finest published writers to kick-start my journey as a writer. I shall write a separate piece on all that I learnt from this session in another article. But in a nutshell that’s how I started my morning, with some inspiration!

“You don’t need to know everything in the beginning, you just need to start”

– Toni Jordan

After some food for thought it was time to fuel the belly, so I headed to this nearby cafe and can definitely vouch for their coffee. One thing I have learnt while choosing a cafe/restaurant is that choose a cafe with ratings of 4 and above for a satisfactory experience. You will cherish the food, service, and ambience of that place and shall set the ball rolling for the rest of your day. So that was the next 45 minutes of me time or rather tummy time.

Now , it was the time to find a place where I can peacefully write with no distractions and whilst I would have loved any outdoor setting – it was not possible in this cold dreary winter days when the temperature drops to a single digit. So I thought what better place than a library. 

So I come to this library, a masterpiece in architecture and find my hideout place. Meanwhile I was thinking, when you have access to such facilities, why not take full advantage of it? So, I got my setting that I had needed – a place full of books, young and bright minds, quiet environment (not that quiet actually with all the visitors, but still better than most public places) – now is the time to begin the work

I started with writing some of my unfinished articles, planned for the forthcoming weekends, thought through some bigger agendas and spent some time reading this book that I had picked up from my office library and had never opened it till then – remember my habit to procrastinate and how I am trying to break through that habit – will write a follow up on that as well in terms of how I have fared so far, some common pitfalls, techniques to overcome them, etc. Anyway, by now I had almost spent 5-6 hours on this. Trust me the focus that I had was unparalleled. I would never have been able to achieve so much in probably next 2-3 weekends because of all the distractions and inexplicable black holes of time.

Anyway now that I had done most of what I had set out to do, it was time to return home. Now I had not planned for this, but when I stepped out of the Library, I saw these bunch of Sudanese students protesting for democracy and I loved the energy they had, the cause for which they were protesting – close to my heart and the leader who gave the speech had a sense of confidence that gathered a large crowd that you can see in the below picture. It left me with a smile.

The rest of my away day was just usual, spent time with my husband watching something over dinner and discussing our day. But this to me was a perfect day – doing the only thing that matters the most to you.

You will have never have more of the finite resources than you do now

This is more of an extension of my previous article ‘The art of procrastination’. I have had two realizations ever since. 1) You need to steal time for things you love. 2) get away from your to-do list if you have been maintaining one.

You need to be creative with time

In this article, I will focus on the first aspect alone.  You will always have a lot of distractions in life. Ask a stay-at-home person and they would say that all of their time just gets lost in some black hole. You cook food, clean stuff, do the laundry, ready the kids, watch some television or check the social media accounts and the day is over.

However, if you are working full time you just suddenly make time for an 8-9 hour job, where did this time come from? It is simple, all the other activities just get squeezed into the routine somewhere. So that means for all working full-time professionals, we all have approximately 16-18 hours over the weekend for ourselves to pursue our passion and do what we like. Easy, right? Unfortunately, it’s not quite what happens. So what really happens? 

Well, broadly two things occupy your time entertainment and routine household stuff.

Normally the hangover from the entire work–week would occupy a huge mind space, and you ought to unwind a little. And when accessing content is super easy in today’s times, it is difficult to restrain ourselves from reaching that remote. And let’s be honest a little Netflix doesn’t hurt, eh? Let’s find out.

And what about all of those numerous mundane activities that you had pushed throughout the week? It suddenly finds its way through your to-do list and into your chores time. Buy groceries, return that pair of shoes that didn’t fit well, call the maintenance guy to fix that piece of shit that’s broken – you get the drill, don’t you? It’s just a never-ending cycle of things that demand your attention and if you don’t pay much focus your time just gets sucked up by the black hole which we define as procrastination.

But is it you were just being lazy, not picking up your passion over your routine, not prioritizing things or we just never realized the concept of being caught up in the whirlwind. Or we realized, and we never did something about it because hey, I have read all these motivational blogs and stuff but I can’t really deal with it right now and I am just living off one day at a time.

Now I truly believe a lot of us will fall in the latter not being aware of what we want or perhaps how we want to pursue that goal. And probably I don’t know it all either, but I try each day and I evolve and when I feel I have succeeded a little, I share. And I get it, it need not always be a side hustle or about starting your own business, it can be about playing that guitar or rather simple just read the book that you always wanted to or the backyard garden that you wanted to nourish or just bizarre things like contributing on your Google account or reviewing the restaurants you have been to. Anything really, anything that brings you joy.

So I will share two techniques that have worked for me.

1) Prioritizing passion over routine

Trust me you shall always have enough and more routine things in your to-do to focus on, but do you wish to waste time on troubleshooting those or do something more satisfying – your choice – if cleaning house gives you the satisfaction then that’s all right too. Whilst everyone loves a clean house, remember that everything comes at a cost and prioritizing that over your passion might cost you a lot – not in terms of money but in terms of emotions. Just close your eyes and imagine yourself on that deathbed – do you want a clean house or do you want to be reminiscing the memories of the great things you achieved. The choice is yours.
P.S – Also cleaning the house is a metaphor for all things routine, so don’t think I am against cleaning or something, I love doing it but I just realized that I love something else a little more. So I am okay with a few undone dishes and clothes, but not okay to let go of the weekend, and the weekend after the weekend not writing or publishing my blogs.

2) Steal every iota of time, every second counts

When I said earlier you got to steal time, what I meant was you literally have to find time in bizarre stuff – while taking a shower, your thoughts are running wild anyway, probably think of how you can optimize the day to get the most out of today. So you decide on taking a break from your workout routine; there it is your one hour. While in between meetings, if you get this great idea, write it down, discuss it with someone. See if you can finish your work earlier in the day and leave early that one day of the week every week. See if you can do something early morning, if you are a morning person. I am not, but if you are there are a lot of benefits in doing this. See if you find the time during the commute.  While the vegetable is cooking or when you are waiting for something. There is ample time, it just isn’t packed in a beautiful box and presented to you. You just need to ingrain these in your routine practices. And soon you will have ample time. Also, if you binge-watch Netflix, here is a small tip.

While you are watching your favorite show, just towards the last 10-12 minutes, try to context switch to think of what excites you more, what was pressing on your mind since morning, start doing it or if that’s not possible, start thinking about it or start researching on it – trust me, you will not want to continue the next episode even if it ends on a cliffhanger.

That is the power of true passion – you like doing certain things, but love your passion. Now, this comes with practice. You will not switch-off Netflix because I told you to or because you read this article. But you take one small step each day and practice it till you find out what works best for you.

And come on, you love your passion, don’t you? Because that is something unique to you and it defines your personality. And if you don’t really know what you are passionate about just start with something you like – photography, reading, dance, tweeting, singing, something niche perhaps – just start with that and keep doing it, trust me you will find what you are passionate about soon.

We never truly believe in ourselves, I mean there are some over confident assholes who do but I am talking about the other normal people like you and I. Most of us choose the comfortable option even when we know the risk-reward quotient of this other option is way higher than option 1 – have you ever wondered why do we do that? Because we don’t really believe in ourselves. We never fully believe we can do something spectacular, create something magnificent, make it big in our career, until we do.

We aren’t the best judge of ourselves, and so most often we underestimate our true potential and our beliefs. We constantly doubt the outcome of our choices and are too afraid of going the unknown path. And that leads us to the life of an average Joe going through the daily struggles of life just the way it is doing little to almost nothing to change this. 

Coming to my story, I doubted myself too. Should I pursue writing? Should I create my blog? What if no one reads it, what if people don’t find worth in it? What about those millions of books and literature that is already published? Should I check what is already out there? Like there were a billion thoughts and I call these a billion noise that I had to shut down. I just said to myself, I want to write because I WANT TO. There, just right there I had my answer in those three words – ‘I want to’. I want to write because that gives me satisfaction. I want to write because that is my avenue to reach out to you. I want to write because I get to explore my creativity. It was simple.

When you find this purpose, you easily overcome those earlier doubts – so what if there are a million books already written – that would still not solve my purpose, what if no one finds merit in what I write, but guess what I will never know unless I put them out there and let people decide

You see what I mean? Do something because that is what you love to do. And when you do that, you would believe in yourself. Because trust me, you are limited only by your own thoughts. Spread those wings and soar high, the world is your territory or your canvas if you are a painter or your notepad if you are interested in writing like I do.  

Well this is the fourth attempt at writing this article and a zillion thoughts later. I doubt myself in that case – do I really love to write? Or is it just in my mind. Like I literally cleaned the house, then I thought maybe my husband wants to watch our daily quota of Netflix and then I just started cleaning my MacBook like the least important of it all but I did all that so I can escape writing. I don’t know why I keep avoiding it.

Ok, so this is the fifth one and I come back just the next day, which is great. Reason – we woke up and it is a usual Sunday morning and I was going to bury my head in all the routine and we were just discussing on how we can better manage our time over the weekend. To which I said my problem is that I prioritize house cleaning, household stuff before my writing or reading or other personal habits. To which my husband asked me

what is the one thing, which would pain me on Monday morning if I wouldn’t do it.

-Motivational one-liners by my not so philosophical husband

And I think I got my answer it would be THIS, if I am not able to complete this write up I would be quite disappointed. And thus I overcame my laziness or whatever that I was doing to delay the writing. I just took my laptop, wrote the article and there I was done. However I didn’t really publish until almost a month. But I wasn’t really gung-ho on the whole publishing thing, I just wanted to collect my thoughts in one place and really write it down.

And this is the sixth time I actually opened this write-up so I can finish it and only then crash for the day. Did you hear that? As I said it wasn’t the first thing I did today, it is the last and that’s what I need to improve upon. What I have learnt is I need to get better at doing what I want to do the first thing in the day probably after brushing and breakfast. And just do it. And get it out of my mind to be able to cut myself that slack. It’s something you want to love; you aren’t in love with it as of now, but you want to and if you make it a task it becomes one and a burden. So I am far from it being a habit but I am getting a little better each day. And the good thing is I have already published my first article on social media and I promised myself I shall post one each week. I shall keep writing and I need not be perfect about it. It need not be my best article, need not spend crazy hours researching and thinking and rewriting it. I am just going to write it and post it and improve a little every time I do that. Because this way I shall keep doing it and not procrastinate.

So I hope if you read it this far and found my story useful, take a small step and make a habit.