Writer’s block only blocks one way, not all of them

My decision to start properly writing on LinkedIn was inspired by two things:

1. I've always been passionate about writing and seeing as I'd published a book, written plays and successfully run my own music blog, writing from a career point of view seemed like a logical next step.
2. The second point, more importantly, was to make sure my personal brand was represented on LinkedIn and that people got a closer idea of who I am in real life. On a recent call with my friend Samir Sayed (who's on a mission to save the world from bad PowerPoint) he mentioned that my overall persona outside of LinkedIn is much more outspoken and flamboyant than it is online. The more that LinkedIn becomes our digital CV I feel it's important to make sure I use all the tools at my disposable to portray myself in a more three dimensional way here.

To get the ball rolling I posted about my intention to write, putting myself into the mindset of "Now I have to write, I've made this public!" and as I had a few potential topics in mind I included an unofficial poll at the bottom. The topic that won was “Connecting your Passion with your Work” so I started working on it immediately! However, much like Mark Corrigan working on Project Zeus I realised, in hindsight, that even though I’d done a lot of writing I hadn’t really ended up with anything of substantial value.

Seeing as my background is mostly artistic, writer’s block was not an unknown phenomenon to me and I’d found an interesting way around it which goes against most productivity philosophies:

Focus on something else entirely.

In practice this meant that when I’d have dry periods in writing music I'd shift my focus to writing plays or short stories or vice versa.

If all else failed and I was still struggling to get my thoughts or ideas on paper I'd write about not being able to write!

What I've done here, I guess, is combining both ideas into this post but it’s genuinely leading up to a point being made, I promise.

The initial roadblock of the Passion article not coming out the way I wanted postponed the pursuit to portray my personal brand in an effort to find my footing and get that specific article to a point where it was presentable.

The topic is one I’m very passionate about and one about which I believe I have a lot to say but for whatever reason I found myself rambling on and not getting to the point.

I then got a quick one-two punch from life, in the best of ways.

The first one was the aforementioned call with Samir who reminded me of what I already knew, I just needed to start! Just post something and I’ll be halfway there!

Then, the next day, I did a presentation at work where I spoke about my “why”, what drives me as well as diving into my dreams, goals and aspirations (more on this in a later post) and although I've done this many times before I had a sudden realisation of not only what I wanted to write about but rather what I needed to write about before anything else: Mental Health and the awareness thereof in a business environment.

As soon as I decided this the words started flowing out and this time, as opposed to the Project Zeus-esque fiasco around the original article, I actually got it to a point where I felt compelled to post it.

From there, the inspiration couldn’t be stopped and I drafted an outline for 3 other possible posts and articles.

I was well and truly back in the game!

“Connecting Your Passion With Your Work” will come, I promise you that, but for now, I’m just happy to be writing and I hope you are happy to be reading, but feedback is welcome as always.

So, to finish off, my question to you, fellow writers of LinkedIn, is how do you conquer writer’s block?