Every week I make time for a retrospective on my writing process to reflect on learnings, wins and areas of improvement. Here's what I wrote down for this week:

What went well?

• I'm using Parkinson's Law to help me reach my goals. Work expands to fill the time given to it, and publishing a piece of writing every day for 30 days certainly limits the time given to the task. It's resulted in less sleep, less perfect writing but faster feedback, iteration and learning.

• I broke through this invisible barrier in my head that I can't DM a total stranger. I've made a real effort to connect with people on twitter whose writing I genuinely enjoy and have met some really cool people that I would have never met otherwise.

• I've started to openly talk about my personal newsletter, which has led to some growth. I was hesitant to post about my newsletter because I don't want to shill my stuff to people, but it's helped me find those who are genuinely interested in the topics I write about.

What could have gone better?

• Being disciplined about time boxing my writing to the mornings. Having to finish writing at the end of the day by the next morning gets tiring. It's hanging over my head all day.

• Build a backlog of articles so that I have some breathing room. It would give me some space to reflect, research and enjoy the process a bit more in the moment.

What are my next steps?

• Schedule a time boxed session to write and stay within that timeframe. I think it'd be useful to create a much shorter time limit than what I actually have so I have some time to think.

• Brainstorm 2 ideas and outlines tomorrow.