Today marks the second week of publishing as part of Ship 30 for 30.
When I signed up for Ship 30 for 30, I thought the central part of the course would be publishing an atomic essay each day. I didn't realize that this would be the smallest part of the work next to keeping up with lectures and Circle discussions, responding to comments on my essays, and reading others' essays and engaging with them. And this class is a relatively small portion of my daily commitments.
So Ship 30 for 30 quickly became difficult to keep up with for reasons I didn't expect.
Here are five ways to avoid overwhelm:
Remember, the focus is noise over signal. Iterating and "getting good" will have their time, but that is not now. For now, we should focus on consistency and diversity.
Beware perfectionism. The Pareto principle tells us ~80% of our results will come from ~20% of the causes. Perfectionism may keep you focused on the last ~20% of the results without realizing that the diminishing returns may demotivate us into stopping altogether.
Lower the bar. Constraints inspire creativity. If you're at the end of the day and have no ideas, you could even publish something like:
Here's how to write something when you have no ideas
I HAVE NO FRICKING CLUE.Watch out for limiting beliefs. You may have come into Ship 30 for 30 thinking you'd be writing about X, Y, and Z. Don't be afraid to create a new path. The new path may discover hidden treasure and, at the very least, prevents you from losing steam.
Start again. And again. If you missed writing essays, reading essays, or responding to other shippers, that's okay. You can let that go and start again. There's no need to catch up. Today is a fresh start.