- Do
- It
- For
- You
Don’t do it for others. It’s hard to compete endlessly because there’s always more to compete with when you get there.
It took awhile for me to learn this lesson. When I first started publishing articles on Medium, I got caught up in the whirlwind of page views and claps and feedback. Sure, it can be exciting and validating to have engagement from something you produced. But you can’t do it for that reason.
I’m not competing with anyone else. I’m not playing a zero sum game. There’s enough to go around for everyone.
The only person I compare myself to is the person I was yesterday. There’s no point in comparing myself to other people. It’s interesting to reflect on how I felt when I first started publishing articles. It turns out, most people are too self-absorbed with their own problems to care about yours.
Sooner or later if I decide to make a career out of writing, I’ll need to focus on how to make money. I’ll need to figure out how to get an audience and customers and that’s always a scary prospect.
Until then, I’m doing this for myself.