Learnings from writing 100 newsletters | #101

Why did I start writing? How did I overcome the fear of writing online?

Dec 15, 2023

Every Friday, I share my process, thoughts, stories, ideas, and weekly recommendations. We're a community of 150+ curious people reading these newsletters.

It has been a great journey of writing newsletters. I still remember I was just settling in Delhi 2 years ago and I started writing newsletters. I remember I wrote about 15 to 16 newsletters before I published my first newsletter on 5th November. Last week I published my 100th newsletter and in this newsletter, I want to share 10 things learned from writing 100 newsletters in the past 2 years.

#1 Consistency is the key

I have posted the newsletter every Friday except for a few days as I couldn’t write. But I have been very consistent in most cases. I have learnt this from Nussier Yasin, a.k.a Nas Daily, that consistency is very important. He never missed a single day posting his videos on Facebook when he had started his 1 minute long videos for 1000 days series. He kept making videos every week.

Consistency is very important for growth too. When you do a task again and again and improve your mistakes, you achieve growth.

#2 Found my voice on the internet

Before starting my newsletter, I had a lot to share, but no audience. I read a lot of books, consumed a lot of good content and wanted to share my learnings with someone. I was making videos on YouTube but wanted to write somewhere.

I was very active on Twitter and I saw a few of the people I followed writing newsletters. I thought it was a great idea to start a newsletter.

I was able to share my learnings with others through newsletters and share knowledge.

#3 Could help others

“What may seem obvious to you, but it is very new or surprising for others.”

I was learning a lot of things, meeting new people, going to meet-ups, reading books, etc, and I thought what will be the point of sharing my learnings in the newsletter?

But Austin Kleon in his book ‘Show Your Work’ said you don’t need to be a genius to share what you know. An amateur is able to teach a lot better than a genius can do. This is because a beginner knows what is beginner’s mindset and they are very experimentative, whereas genius a fixed to one thing or mindset of what works for them.

#4 How to Write

Every time I wrote newsletters, I made a lot of mistakes. Those mistakes helped me refine my mistakes and improve my writing. I was writing in public, so my readers helped me by pointing out my mistakes and giving constructive feedback. That feedback helped me improve my writing and structure my writing.

#5 System Structuring

Anything you do, you need a system. A system to track your progress, process, wins, losses, etc. It helps you be organised and track what you do. Writing a newsletter, or rather making content, I have a whole process on Notion.

You can make a system for yourself wherever you want. A tool is not important, managing your system is important.

I made a video on how I write newsletters. It’s an unlisted video, so click to see how I write my newsletters.

#6 Document your progress

I have done internships, made content, and met a lot of people and I have documented every learning and mistake in my second brain in Notion. Then I share some of the learnings in the newsletter.

Documenting really helped me as I could refer to my old notes and mistakes and learnings.

#7 Serendipity

The meaning of Serendipity according to Google is “The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”

David Perrel says that it is a state of mind and it fuels progress and pushes us in great directions.

Writing online helped me a lot other than just making my writing better. By writing online, people could discover my work and know who I am. Since I was regularly sharing my updates, I was able to meet new people and get opportunities.

You don’t know but if you do something regularly, you can get a lot of opportunities.

#8 Clarified my thinking

Writing is not just about communicating with others, but also communicating with yourself. It will help you connect the dots in your mind. When you write down your thoughts or ideas on paper, you actually get to see them in front of your eyes and you can work on them easily. Also, we forget a lot of things if we try to remember a lot of things.

I take all the notes written, either on a laptop or notebook. In most cases, I start by writing the notes in my notebook and later I take it in Notion. This helps me carry my notes everywhere.

#9 Done a lot of research

I met Manish Pandey at an event in Delhi and I told him I make content on YouTube and Newsletters. He gave me one piece of advice about creating content- research a lot before you say anything on the internet. I do a lot of research before I speak anything so that whatever I say should be research-backed and people should trust me. People are very smart and can judge whether you are saying correctly or not.

In my process of creating content, I have researched a lot to make the content. Due to that, I have learnt new things. That research helped me explore new dimensions. Every new thing I learnt, that got connected to something new research and that loop continued. It’s like connecting the dots.

#10 Helped me be more creative

There are many definitions of creativity. It can be art, video creation, speaking, writing, dancing, etc. Creating content helped me be more creative and explore writing. It would not be fair to neglect YouTube, but making videos is amazing too. Learned how storytelling works and how to be creative.

These were my learnings from Writing 100. Newsletters. The journey was amazing. If you wish to start online, who is stopping you? The lack of ideas or the lack of experience? There are many resources which can help you write. Start writing and you will figure out how and what to write. Just read the first few newsletters I wrote. You will laught at it, but will help you a lot.

Weekly Recommendations

See all the precious weekly recommendations here: weeklyrecommendations.super.site

READ

Being smart is not about having more facts, but having knowledge as a tool is. Charlie Munger calls these mental models. More mental models mean you have more ways to solve more problems. Here are twenty-five thinking tools that will make you smart: Read Here
Life is full of puzzles and problems that we have to work through one piece at a time. Creativity helps to solve the puzzles. Here’s how: Read Here
Any work you do, do it as if you are playing a game. It will help you to make the work very interesting and adventurous: Read Here

In this together,

Pranav ✌️

Reach out anytime! Email or DM me and I'll read it all and reply too.

My Email- aninquisitivestoryteller@gmail.com

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