Ship30for30 has been awesome - I have never written and published so much and I am thrilled.

Last night, however, as I passed the halfway mark (round the horn, nautical analogy ...sorry), I realized that I was also only getting half the benefit. I've been writing a lot but thinking far less - I need to do more thinking.

Writing and thinking as a virtuous cycle

Aside from the short stories, the balance of topics I have written about so far were already live cultures.

I have spent time, sometimes a great deal of time, thinking about the concept and refining it by exposing my ideas to the real world, calibrating them against founder conversations, investor conversations, articles, etc. This thinking process has been greatly enhanced by my personal use of Roam Research, which I love using and has been the subject of several #Ship30 pieces by @philmorle.

The process of systematically capturing and refining thoughts and external stimuli into ideas and subjecting those ideas to the stresses of real-world calibration is vital, hugely satisfying, and frustrating beyond measure.

I fell off the think wagon first, and then fell off the write wagon

As I tried to pen my most recent piece, I realized that I was scraping the bottom of my 'well-formed idea' barrel, and I didn't like the hollow sounds I was hearing.

The timing here is fortuitous because I am heading off on a 3-day hike, out of the coverage zone of the modern internet. Weather permitting, this will be a most welcome refresh and provide plenty of reflection time to build some solid hypotheses to try & strengthen or smash. It will also mean 3 days of not posting, and so technically a broken streak of 16 daily publications

Ah well, failure is just a stopping point on the way to success.

Think and ye shall write

I am not doing #ship30 simply to be a #thinkboi (thanks @rpethe) but to help develop and refine my thinking through the forcing function of publishing regularly.

A short break at the mid-point will hopefully get me back the that virtuous cycle of thing->write->think