My skip-level manager frequently encourages the team to focus on impact over activity. This contributes to a culture of trust and psychological safety that I greatly appreciate.
I have my own internal motivation and internal drive to be productive and to be seen as productive, but the appearance of productivity doesn’t actually help anyone or produce any value that lasts.
It’s way too easy to appear “busy” without actually producing anything of value.
It’s also too tempting to focus on things that are easy to measure, or to stubbornly check a checkbox in order to be able to say that you checked it.
I want to be able to say that I did something that mattered, not just that I did something.
Not every day will be a day of great impact, and that is okay.
How does this apply to writing?
Not every blog post will have deep insight. But I do want each day and each post to be useful in a non-zero way, non-negative way.
I hereby give myself permission to not publish a blog post every day. I write in order to serve, and while I may derive some benefit for writing for myself, I don’t want to publish something that I don’t think will be helpful to others.
But I also give myself permission to publish posts that are not perfect. I don’t have to be an expert in order to share what I’ve learned. I don’t have to know more than each of my readers in order to be helpful to them. Just expressing an idea in a different way may be helpful to someone.