31 Days to Discovery | A Writing Challenge That Transformed My Perspective and Skills

At the end of January, I accepted a challenge from MJ Patent to tag Logically in a post on LinkedIn every day for 31 days.? I thought to myself "How hard could that be?".?

Today is that challenge's final post, and I wanted to reflect on what I learned from my experience.

A Little Background on Me

In school, my least favorite activities were reading and writing.? I struggled with it, not because I couldn't do it, but because I found it tedious.? Reading was a great way to either instantly put me to sleep or I'd have read three or four pages before I realized I was thinking about something completely unrelated and would have to double back and reread them.? Writing was a whole other issue.? I simply couldn't get my thoughts out onto the paper fast enough so it would just lead to frustration and self-defeat.? Of course, this was before computers.? We were doing everything with pencil and paper.

Today, I've gotten fast at typing, and doing so on a computer allows me to dump all my thoughts quickly and easily rearrange them into something that, I hope, is semi-coherent.? Also, audiobooks have become a great way to absorb information that doesn't put me to sleep making it possible for me to complete around 75 books per year.

I am currently writing a book that I hope to have published by the end of the year. Right now I have around 33,000 unedited words on 'paper' and feel that the book is about 65% complete.

The Parameters of the Challenge

MJ's parameters were pretty simple. Just post anything on LinkedIn for 31 days and tag Logically in the post. There have been multiple people who took it on and are still going strong today. However, I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to challenge myself to post only original content. This meant that if I reposted an article from someone else I couldn't count it. It also meant that I'd be writing at least 1000 words per day.

How It Went

Well, I'm exhausted but I made it. This article is the final one for the challenge. To get a sense of the results I've been tracking a few stats.

Here are the stats.

• Articles: 31
• Total Word Count: 29,434
• Average Words Per Article: 970
• One 6 Part Series
• One 5 Part Series
• Impressions: 12,405 (past 28 days)
• Engagements: 349 (past 28 days)
• Most Active Articles: Related to Leadership

What I Learned

Through this challenge, there are some true takeaways for me.

• I actually enjoy writing. It's great to get my thoughts down on paper. I do this at work all day long, but those are work-related. This allowed me to get my approach to life in general recorded. I can't believe how much I enjoyed it. Until now, writing was just something "I had to do".
• Challenging myself in this way focused me and forced me to carve time out of my day to forget "all the stuff" and just focus on something small. It became almost a meditation time for me.
• I might actually have things to say that can help people. So many people reached out with questions and comments. I was initially concerned that I would receive a lot of negative comments but I didn't receive any. Most people either commented with encouragement or reached out to ask for more details.
• I can't believe how my visibility on LinkedIn has been affected. With my book on the horizon, I've read a lot of articles about increasing social media presence. Since I will likely be self-publishing this is very important. However, in the past 30 days, I've been able to connect with so many great people, I've picked up new followers, and I've found some great people to follow.
• I read somewhere, "If you want to write a book, just commit to writing a thousand words per day and you have it roughed in in a month." I always thought that would be impossible, but now I've done it. Of course, this challenge pulled me away (somewhat) from my book, but now that it's over I can focus again on it.

Conclusion

I am appreciative to MJ for introducing this challenge. I got way more out of it than I expected. Also, I'm going to continue posting my thoughts and articles here. I just won't be doing it daily. So if you don't mind, give me a follow and share me with your connections.

And don't forget to be on the lookout for that book...