A year of writing
End of year's reflections on the blog
As the year comes to an end, it is a natural time to reflect on all of the things I have done. One new hobby I picked up in 2024 was the writing this blog. I’m taking some time to reflect, for my own understanding and also to help out others who might be considering the same.
The decision to start creating a blog was very simple. In January, I had a few years of IT consultancy under my belt, and kept noticing similar repeating patterns that were blocking value for our customers. Every time the issue occurred, I had to find a way out of it with the customer. I was looking to standardize my explanation so that I could more effortlessly explain what was going on and why that was a problem. In addition to this, I’ve always been an avid reader and love research, and was also interested in doing some writing to see the ‘other side’ of this process. Additionally, I wanted to do something slightly uncomfortable to challenge myself, and publishing was definitely that.
My manager was enthusiastic about the idea and so I started writing my first blog. Throughout the year, I’ve aggregated some thoughts that I’d like to share.
Publishing requires courage
I’ve always put all of my blog posts on LinkedIn, to send them into the world. This gives some reach, although not that much as LinkedIn posts with external links are not favoured by their algorithm.
I had gotten comfortable with this as my idea of “publishing” - I was writing the blogs and putting them into the world. However, it soon became the easy way out, posting the blogs on a very general platform where they would garner only a little reach. My manager encouraged me to also spread the blogs on the company Slack. I was hesitant to do this but I knew he was right - if I wanted to make more impact with my blog and get better, I would need to accept potential critique of colleagues. At my employer, we take pride in being (constructively) critical, and I think I was subconsciously trying to avoid that.
However, publishing it internally as well has given my motivation a boost. Quite a few colleagues reach out to discuss topics with me, share it with team members or just read it silently. This is great - I have noticed that the statistics of readers and subscribers going up is very helpful when trying to make the time to write the next post. You do not need hundreds of thousands of readers to make a content creation effort worth it - a few truly interested people is enough.
In the new year I want to expand this further and try to reach more people. This is also a good segue to my next observation.
“Just writing” is not growing
Just because you are writing and publishing posts, does not mean that your audience will go into the thousands overnight. Your audience starts small, which can feel both liberating and challenging at the same time.
Exponential growth was not the reason to start this blog; just writing and publishing already covers my initial goals. Now that I’ve started the blog, though, I’m also interested in pushing it to its limits. Some of that is probably ego, but a bigger audience also means more people to discuss and refine the ideas with. I’m still only a few years into consulting and I know that a lot of my ideas can be improved upon. By writing, you formalize your thoughts on paper, and getting feedback on your thoughts is great.
Growing also requires more activities than just the writing, though. Other than improving marketing, I want to spend some time on making the look and feel of the blog better, create better images, and interact on the Substack platform. I’m excited to dive into this somewhere in the coming year.
LLMs vs. Authenticity
LLMs gained significant attention this year and thus also deserve a mention here. Before starting, I thought about how to use LLMs for my blogs. I wanted to write something that was really mine, but also experience this new technology. And while LLMs are misused in many places, writing is actually something they’re good at, so there had to be some way.
I’ve decided to only use LLMs as a reviewer for my posts. That means I set the topic and provide the explanation and examples based on my lived experiences. Then I requested multiple feedback rounds from ChatGPT to clarify issues in structure, flow, and spelling. I’ve used this feedback to cut filler words and make my writing more to the point. I’m now mindful of this and rely less on LLM feedback. This approach ensures my blog remains my own while benefiting from AI’s editing suggestions.
If I were using an LLM to do the creative thinking for me, I feel like I would have benefitted a lot less from the blog. Editing LLM-generated articles feels like outsourcing the creative core.
One other form of LLM use I have considered is writing a very elaborate prompt that includes all of the points I want to make and examples I want to give, and generating an article from that. I may tinker with this myself, but that is the furthest I would go.
Post types & habit-building
The opinion articles I’ve been writing have been great and I think I can put a lot of my current thoughts into those. However, there are different post styles that came to me as I was working on these blogs. Ideas like explaining a concept in detail (like user stories - there are many explanations but a lot of them are wrong) could be great for variation. Posts that are more reflective about things I’ve done could also be fun and informative (secretly, that’s what you’re reading right now).
Making a habit of writing while life goes on around you is challenging, but worthwhile. I’ve gotten a lot of fulfillment picking up a creation hobby, rather than a consumption or an activity hobby. It’s rewarding to create, daunting to publish, and satisfying to overcome that fear. I’m sure the fear will get less over time. As I was told by a few colleagues before starting: you know you have something of value to share, so just give it a go.
In summary, getting started with blogging has allowed me to get a much clearer view of everything I could do to improve the blog.
The key takeaways for me are:
The step of publishing is vulnerable but the results are usually better than I imagined beforehand
To grow an audience, pair consistent writing with active promotion and engagement
You do not need a huge audience - but having a few interested readers makes writing much more enjoyable
LLMs can support creative writing but I should remain the writer
Writing is fulfilling and offers new perspectives, it is worthwhile making the time for it
I’m excited for 2025, to spend more time writing and figuring out how to make the blog grow alongside my regular work. It’s a fun side project and offers way more variety in work than I initially thought. I wish you a wonderful start of the new year. Are you considering starting a blog or another creative project in the new year? I’d love to hear your goals and challenges—drop a comment or connect with me to share ideas.