2 Secrets To Building A Writing Habit That Nobody Talks About

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

In late 2016 I decided to write every weekday for a month.

Against all odds, a 23 year old boy managed to follow through on developing a writing habit.

And I did it without one crucial ingredient..

A writer’s group to keep me accountable.

That begs the question.

How?

How on earth did I build a writing habit without an accountability group, daily writing templates, and a big influencer to hold my hand the entire way?

I hope you can feel the sarcasm.

Honestly, I did it by lowering my expectations all the way down to the dirt-crusted floor.

I was happy to get ten views on a blog post.

And luckily I saw some initial traction on Medium that inspired me to keep going.

Sometimes all it takes to build a writing habit is a shift in mindset. Where someone else might’ve gotten angry to get “only” 24 views, I was ecstatic. Thus when they inevitably quit from frustration, I jumped for joy and wrote five more posts.

All because I had a different mindset.

I want to share with you the principles of this mindset today.

Lower Your Expectations To The Dirt-Crusted Floor

Have you ever gotten on your hands and knees and put your cheek against the floor? With one eye parallel to the tile or carpet or wood?

If you ever do this, you’ll start seeing all kinds of nasty stuff.

Dust bunnies, crumbs, maybe even some blood or something.

I don’t know.

The point is, the floor is a disgusting place. Good, I want you to lower your expectations all the way down there.

I want you to be happy to get a single view.

Especially if you’re a beginner.

Here’s a newsflash: The internet owes you nothing.

You could have the greatest story that anybody has ever heard, but it could get 0 views because you wrote a headline like “Musings from a nomad”

It’s a miracle you get to share your story with a potential global audience anyway.

My advice is to act like it instead of get angry when you don’t go viral with your tenth blog post.

All You Need Is To Believe That Growth Is Possible

There’s two parts to this.

1. Lowering your expectations.

2. Believing.

A big reason I developed a writing habit back in 2016, and wrote 1,000 blog posts after that, was that the views I did get gave me hope.

I wasn’t getting a million views in my first month — in fact I’m pretty sure I got about 1,000.

My second month I got 3,000 views, though, which encouraged me that growth was possible.

Sometimes all we need is to know that growth is possible.

A lot of this comes down to choosing the right platform.

A few years ago I took 80 creators through a daily posting program on LinkedIn.

We had a 75 percent participation rate, meaning 75 percent of our “LinkedIn Sprinters” developed a writing habit.

Those are bonkers numbers, considering the average online course has a 13 percent completion rate.

Why did they do so well?

Sure, they got 1–1 attention from me, templates, and we built a great community that supported one another..

But I think a big reason they developed a writing habit was because they were seeing results. They were actually seeing 500, 1,000, and 5,000+ views on their posts.

LinkedIn, for those who don’t know, is an incredible platform to gain new followers, views, and to become a thought leader.

Taking these creators through the program reminded me that there’s a huge component to building a writing habit that nobody talks about:

Seeing results.

Feeling like you can actually do this. When we’re beginners, and we’re seeing big writers going viral, it’s hard to imagine we can do the same.

But once we get 30 likes on a LinkedIn post, for example, we start to believe a little bit.

And that belief can take us through some dark days where nobody pays attention to us at all.

Because we know, at the very least, that it’s possible.

So my advice to you is to lower your expectations and to see any good result as a reason to have hope — as a reason to believe.

Because if it was possible for an un-special 23 year old kid to build a writing habit and command a size-able audience online, it’s possible for you to do the same.

Get my free 6-day course ‘How to get 100 subscribers on Substack in 30 days’ right here. Let’s keep real writing alive together.