I Blogged Every Day for a Month -- Again
Today marks the final day of my second month-long blogging challenge. The first was in August last year. This one, in May, felt different – but just as transformative.
Here are my takeaways.
The grind is real – and it teaches you
I have a few jobs to do, with different hats to wear. I also have a family. So, blogging almost always happened late in the evenings.
Some evenings I had not even thought about what to write until 9pm-10pm. Then I had to find a topic, write, and publish. It was stressful and felt like a grind. But this taught me something important: grind is everywhere.
If you are a marketer, you grind to get leads. If you are a developer, you grind to fix bugs and run chores for housekeeping. The examples may change, but the grind stays.
If your job never feels like a grind, maybe you are lucky. But maybe not. Grind, in some form, is inevitable. The real question is – how do you face it without burning out or dropping the ball?
I wanted to quit around Day 15
I distinctly remember telling myself: “Enough. This is too stressful.” But I kept going. It was doable – and I am glad I resisted the urge to quit.
Streaks help with accountability
There is something motivating about not breaking the chain. It is visual, tangible and slightly addictive in a way, and I hope it is in a good way.
Constraints trigger creativity
Do not get me wrong – I am not claiming to be a creative person.
But a daily deadline forces you to think faster, write leaner, and sometimes take unusual angles. That is a good thing. Constraints are not limits – they are frameworks.
More about constraints in a future post!
It is possible to write a blog post in less than 2 hours
It depends on the topic, the depth, and how prepared I am. My motivation was twofold:
- The key is to just start.
- Not every post needs to be perfect, long or deep.
And it worked for me. I wrote some posts in under an hour, and mostly in less than two.
Quantity over quality
That perfectionism kept me from blogging for the longest time. The August exercise helped me to overcome that. I was told that “quantity leads to quality”. That might sound counterintuitive, but it is true.
As an old drummer, I can tell that the more you practice, and the more grinding the practice is, the better you get.
Why should writing be any different?
My motto was: just hit publish. Not everything needs to be perfect. So, I learned that letting go is a skill that needs to be practiced too.
Writing helps me learn
Often, I catch myself saying, “Wait, is that even true?” It made me go and verify lots of things this month.
I suppose that this is normal: writing requires clarity and clarity requires learning.
Crossposting revealed what people actually read
I post to dev.to and Hashnode. Over time, I am starting to understand which posts resonate and which do not.
I also have a clearer sense of what I enjoy writing about.
I now have a content archive
A month of blog posts is not just a streak – it is a body of work, regardless of quality. I can build on these or turn them into something more later.
I showed up for myself
In the end, this challenge was a commitment to myself. I kept that promise. That builds confidence and internal trust – something no metric can measure.
What next?
After my first challenge, I told myself that I should write occasionally, which I did not. That was a mistake.
Now, I should really try to keep the momentum going.
Thinking of trying your own challenge? Start small. You might just learn more than you expect.