What I Learned After a Year of Writing Weekly Articles

This article was my last weekly newsletter for LinkedIn a little over a year ago. Let’s see if it holds up.

I started an article series a year ago, and completing a full year was the internal goal that I set for myself. Most weeks were fun and quick to write, while a few weeks felt like it took a root canal to find something interesting to put down on paper (yes, metaphorical paper. I know these are pixels, thanks analysts).

I thought about ending the series with a recap of every topic that I’ve already covered, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Instead I thought I would share what I learned after a year of writing weekly articles. I find the best way to truly understand something is to teach that topic to someone else. Hopefully some of these thoughts will be relevant to you. If not, then you can let me know with a DM. We’ve gotta stay in touch somehow, right?

Here we go. Things I learned over the last year (in no particular order):

• Don’t name your article “Get your Phil” if you go by Philip. Stick with something that won’t cause future confusion, like “White Noise” or “Philip’s-head is screwed up”.
• That you can always come up with something to say, even if it’s not gold. Yes, even you, the one over there doubting yourself. When in doubt, just start talking. Eventually it will be something relevant to the matter at hand. Unless you’re a recently minted MBA who feels the need to remind everyone of that fact. In that case you probably won’t make it to a point during your ramblings.
• Jokes on a deadline are either less funny or more offensive (but hilarious) than you intended. For example, I wanted to post the line “Happy Father’s Day to all the mofos out there” in an article, but I talked myself out of that joke. The missed opportunity still haunts me to this day.
• Think carefully about your audience before you spend time putting a bunch of easter eggs into an article. Metallica references only work if your readers listen to Metallica.
• Most people either don’t notice, or are too polite to point out your typos. People who seem happy to point out your typos are not your friends.
• It took me most of a year to figure this one out but LinkedIn is not a good space to improve your writing. There aren’t many actionable metrics to know what to change, and it’s a total crapshoot if readers will decide to hit the like button or not.
• On the plus side you will have a core group of people that like everything you write, regardless of its quality, that will mean the world to you (Thank you to my lovely wife, my wife’s contacts, family, college friends, amigos from CROSSMARK, Frito-Lay, IRI, Neighborly, and everyone I’ve met through my LinkedIn network).
• Writing a short blurb for a company newsletter is a great way to build name recognition. Those of you who are wondering how to stay relevant and visible from home — think about writing a little something on your Teams or Slack channel once a week to lift spirits. You’ll need to keep it going for a while until you lose the “guy/gal who’s trying to be funny” reputation.
• Your coworkers will see you in a different light once they get to see you create something that’s not work related. It’s easy to put people into boxes for easy classification, and surprising when they demonstrate that you made their box too small.
• I realized I was a selfish consumer of entertainment. I hardly ever liked or forwarded interesting content once I was done reading. We live in a world of social capital, and the best way to keep your favorite creators creating is to tell others that you enjoyed their content. Liking and reposting things is like throwing a few bucks in the creator’s guitar case. I promise I’m not fishing for compliments (since this is the last scheduled article and all). If it helps, think of it as the “take a penny, leave a penny” bowl. Liking something is a small sacrifice that helps people in the future.
• Along those same lines, I learned that just because fewer than half of the readers like an article, it doesn’t mean that the article was bad. I had to break myself of the habit of thinking that no response meant people hated what I wrote. They still might have hated it, but that’s not my default thought anymore (most of the time).
• You can become a better writer simply by writing down any thought that happens to fall out of your brain. If you don’t believe me, check out my first dozen articles compared to the last dozen. What, I said better writer, not funnier writer.
• Don’t edit until you’ve run out of ideas to get down on paper. There will always be time to clean up your typos and dangling participles. Your idea is like a $100 bill in a hurricane — grab it and put it in your pocket before it’s snatched away.
• That the people you love will only tolerate you trying jokes out on them for so long before they start automatically agreeing that something is funny to shut you up (Thank you for being a good sport sweetheart).
• Writing is more fun in a group setting, regardless of how amusing the topic might be. There is always a way to have fun in the process, if you look hard enough.
• You can do something every week by thinking about how much it would suck to quit now that you’ve come so far. I encourage everyone to read this article about Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity hack. The idea of building a chain really resonated with me, and even the idea of breaking the chain once it gets pretty long is an excellent deterrent to quitting.
• It is definitely possible to over-edit a thought to death. I’ve lost track of how many good jokes have died the death of a thousand cuts from multiple edits. Sometimes good enough is good enough.
• Funny business terms always get the best response rates. When in doubt, pick on the common pain points. That’s also a lesson from stand up comics — what is the deal with airline food, right, Jerry?
• Tough lesson to learn — that you can write an eloquent article full of advice that just doesn’t get followed. Especially after someone likes the article and then immediately makes the exact mistake you just warned them about. You have to reiterate the same message over and over again, with no guarantee that it will ever be accepted. It was a pretty sobering and mildly disheartening insight for me.
• Of course, that usually made me want to step up my game next time — more examples, more humor, more anything to get slightly more of the advice to sink in.
• You will get busy and writing will become a chore. Power through and you will eventually finish. Be proud even if it’s not your finest work. You still created something new that’s out in the world.
• Then again, sometimes the deadlines inspire the dumb ideas to float to the surface and get a chance to shine (micro vacations anyone?). It turns out that there are no bad ideas to write about, there’s just bad writing about those ideas.

The number one lesson I’ve learned (which is for some reason last on this list) by writing these articles is that they’ve become a weekly reminder that what we do for a living is not who we are. We’ve somehow fallen out of the mindset that work/business can be fun, just like everything else that we decide to do. If you believe that working is supposed to be awful, then that will turn thinking about making work better into a chore that no one wants to do (annual reviews, anyone?). Poke a little fun at tradition. Liven up how we talk about the thing that pays for most of our lifestyles. Practice thinking conceptually so you can escape from any ruts you might be stuck in. Just take a freaking day off already. Don’t forget to breathe.

And if all else fails, and you don’t know how you’ll get out of your current situation, help someone else. It doesn’t have to be a whole production, just help a little. Helping others is why I started writing in the first place. Just do what feels right to you. Even if it’s pun-laden advice posted online once a week. It just might make someone’s day better. I know it helped mine.

-Your friend

Philip J. White