Just Click Publish
I have a serious problem. I am constantly weighing all my thoughts against the probability that someone will want to read them. I go through each day coming up with a number of potential blog posts, many of which are still incomplete in my drafts. However more often than not I follow through with my plan and without any second thoughts I do it: I click the publish button.
It’s a behavior that I learned while writing AllFacebook. People always asked: how do you come up with so many blog posts? The real question is: how many thoughts do you have each day that aren’t shared? How many experiences do you go through? These thoughts and experiences are human. They’re what connect us together. I can’t say that I’ve ever been on the street interviewing hookers to find out what it was like, but James Altucher has. It was a truly human experience (and an extremely unique one at that).
I finally came to realize some of the reasons that people read the short snippets of text that I was producing: they want to escape, want to learn, want to be entertained, but most of all they want to know that they aren’t alone or that someone else is sharing in the same experience they are having. Or even better: that we’re having an experience that someone else wants to have, and as such they come to learn what it’s like.
Whatever the reason is, writing helps me and others to connect. In today’s world the barrier to connecting with others is non-existent. You can look someone up on LinkedIn, message them on Facebook, connect on Twitter, write a blog post about them, whatever. The future belongs to the master communicators and the best way I’ve found to learn how to communicate is to practice it obsessively. That’s why at the end of the day I follow my urge and do it: I just click publish. I’m hoping you do too!