How to Write Posts Like This Every Day

Last night at dinner, someone I admire a lot asked a question I receive quite often: how in the world do you write a useful post every single day? I’ll tell you my answer, though I’ll save you some time and say there’s not exactly a secret.

To Write Daily, Write Daily

However, that title is also the secret trick of it. People mistake “writing” to be the act of pushing these keys down in a pattern until I reach a certain number of words. Writing is a lot more than that.

Every day, I think about things. Writing is the expression of thinking. I’ve told subscribers to my real newsletter recently that I am committed to writing 10 ideas a day every day. Sure, I miss some. But I keep that appointment more than not. What are the 10 ideas? It varies all the time, but quite often, they’re post ideas. Why?

Because I always have something I’m thinking about, noodling on, and want to share in ways that I hope you find useful. So, that’s the first way to write every day.

Be a Useful Complainer

Humans love to complain. We wish we didn’t, but boy oh boy, we can sure gripe. The difference is that I turn mine into posts where I try to find something helpful in the core of my annoyance. If someone does something I think is crazy, I write about it. If someone can’t see the solution right in front of their face, I spell it out for them so they can pick it up off this letter without a one on one with me.

I write for people’s emotions and self esteem quite often. It’s SO easy to forget that you’re important and valuable. The world finds plenty of ways to help you feel down or bad or wrong. Thus, I write to remind you that you’re worth it. It’s a big and important feeling. In a weird way, I complain about the way you put yourself down. You’ll see it snuck into my posts, if you squint.

”Why Hasn’t Anyone?”

One of my favorite stories to tell is about the HubSpot headquarters wayyyyyy back in the day. They bought some of that whiteboard paint that turns your walls into a spot you can write on with dry erase. But HubSpot put it on some of their walls and not others. (The stuff’s expensive. I don’t know. They did it that way. Some walls regular paint and some walls dry erase.)

One day, an excited employee popped the cap off a marker and started scrawling across a wall: “Why hasn’t anyone…” as the other people in the room shouted “No!” You guessed it. They wrote on the wrong wall.

When I saw this during a visit, I said, “You should frame this.” I loved it. (This story is almost two decades old.) I thought wow, what a great question. What a driver of thoughts and ideas. Why hasn’t anyone deployed alternate currencies to drive certain behaviors? (Oh wait, they have !) Why hasn’t anyone made a more ambient way to feel like you’re in the office instead of just Zoom? (Oh wait, they have !)

It’s a great way to be able to write every day.

Seek Collaboration and Participation

The final way I’m able to write every day is that I CRAVE interaction with you. I love when you share your thoughts. Sure, press the like button, but leave a thoughtful comment? I’m over the moon. It fuels me to keep looking for new ideas that might help. I write for you. There’s really no reason I should be doing this every day on this site, except that I want YOU to see it and interact with it.

Thus, I write every day because I want to hear from you when a piece moves you.

Can YOU write every day? You’re going to tell me it’s hard to find the time. This took me 22 minutes. I bet you’ve allocated that time to something else. Maybe you don’t need to write every day. But you could.

Chris…