I Accidentally Took The Whole Summer Off
Inconsistency happens. One way to be more consistent: focus on quantity over quality.
Posted 09-23-24
Hello! … and Welcome to this week’s weekly installment of a weekly newsletter that hasn’t been released for 12 weeks.
Oops.
My bad.
But here’s the beauty of the coaching mindset: we can turn everything into a teachable moment. Every misstep I take, every shambolic tumble from the wagon, is an opportunity to help - and annoy - my friends, family, and mostly anonymous internet subscribers (…you’re welcome?)
Yes, I am frustrated with myself for having straight-up vanished from Substack since June 20th, 2024. But when I feel the urge to sing the blues over lost momentum, I melodramatically press my index finger to my lips:
SH! It happens!
There’s only one solution to The Case of The Missing Weekly Newsletter: Bugs Meany stole it, great job Encyclopedia Brown! WRITING A NEWSLETTER. Which I’m doing right now. Very meta, right? (Follow me on Meta)
Beating myself up about not having written a newsletter is not part of the solution.
I’ve been busy. The summer was crazy - good crazy - but crazy. The start of the school year has been overwhelmingly disruptive to our family routine. But through all of that, the truth is inescapable: I could have made time to post every week, but I didn’t.
Note this nuance: I didn’t say I could have written the greatest post of all time each week. While I always intend and hope to provide you quality content / entertainment / information / eloquent wordplay / dad jokes, if I get hung up on writing something so fantastic you fall out of your chair, the most likely thing I will make is NOTHING.
I suspect this is what happened over the summer. With limited time and a bonkers, routine-less, fun agenda & travel itinerary - great ‘problems’ to have - I allowed my hang-up around always producing something great trap me into never producing anything at all.
So, here you go: SOMETHING.
Now, you may be thinking (as am I): Hey, Chris, this is not the most scintillating article I’ve ever read in my life. But that’s not only fine, it’s kinda the whole point.
I’m taking my own advice, lowering the bar, and breaking my slump, by sitting down at the doggone desk, typing this, and posting it.
Through my 12 weeks of absence - during which you were worried about me, right? - I received My Official ADHD Diagnosis, which was, like… ‘duh.’ One of the things this helped me with was finally allowing myself to realize I need to fully commit to using simple systems and tailored goals to manage my ‘neurospicy’ brain.
If my goal for this Substack were to write 52 amazing articles a year, I will be totally daunted, write and re-write and edit and re-edit in Draft Mode forever, you will read absolutely nothing, and I will have to refund my myriad(-ish) paid subscribers.
If my goal is simply to Write And Publish An Article Every Week, then I just need to set aside and protect the time needed to write, edit, and publish each week, without obsessing about perfection.
I’ve known for many years that I do better when I set short-term goals with time- or quantity-based boundaries, versus longer-term goals focused on quality. I am naturally oriented towards producing quality work - sometimes to the point of perfectionism - so I need to trust that when I produce in quantity, quality will come. Despite knowing this about myself, I have always tried to shoehorn myself into these big, grandiose, quality-based goals because: Achievement (?)
The only way to get better at anything is through consistent practice, but somewhere along the way I got caught up in the idea that I needed to produce Only Perfect Work. I have a pretty strong hunch, in my case, it relates to childhood experiences and programming - a topic I’ll dig into in a future piece.
So here’s my promise to you: I won’t ever write the perfect article. (My bad.) But each week, I will write and publish an imperfect one. (You’re welcome.)
And after all, if I had any lingering doubt in my commitment to weekly posts, posting this sure puts me behind the 8-ball!
Hello! … and Welcome to this week’s weekly installment of a weekly newsletter that hasn’t been released for 12 weeks.
Oops.
My bad.
But here’s the beauty of the coaching mindset: we can turn everything into a teachable moment. Every misstep I take, every shambolic tumble from the wagon, is an opportunity to help - and annoy - my friends, family, and mostly anonymous internet subscribers (…you’re welcome?)
Yes, I am frustrated with myself for having straight-up vanished from Substack since June 20th, 2024. But when I feel the urge to sing the blues over lost momentum, I melodramatically press my index finger to my lips:
SH! It happens!
There’s only one solution to The Case of The Missing Weekly Newsletter: Bugs Meany stole it, great job Encyclopedia Brown! WRITING A NEWSLETTER. Which I’m doing right now. Very meta, right? (Follow me on Meta)
Beating myself up about not having written a newsletter is not part of the solution.
I’ve been busy. The summer was crazy - good crazy - but crazy. The start of the school year has been overwhelmingly disruptive to our family routine. But through all of that, the truth is inescapable: I could have made time to post every week, but I didn’t.
Note this nuance: I didn’t say I could have written the greatest post of all time each week. While I always intend and hope to provide you quality content / entertainment / information / eloquent wordplay / dad jokes, if I get hung up on writing something so fantastic you fall out of your chair, the most likely thing I will make is NOTHING.
I suspect this is what happened over the summer. With limited time and a bonkers, routine-less, fun agenda & travel itinerary - great ‘problems’ to have - I allowed my hang-up around always producing something great trap me into never producing anything at all.
So, here you go: SOMETHING.
Now, you may be thinking (as am I): Hey, Chris, this is not the most scintillating article I’ve ever read in my life. But that’s not only fine, it’s kinda the whole point.
I’m taking my own advice, lowering the bar, and breaking my slump, by sitting down at the doggone desk, typing this, and posting it.
Through my 12 weeks of absence - during which you were worried about me, right? - I received My Official ADHD Diagnosis, which was, like… ‘duh.’ One of the things this helped me with was finally allowing myself to realize I need to fully commit to using simple systems and tailored goals to manage my ‘neurospicy’ brain.
If my goal for this Substack were to write 52 amazing articles a year, I will be totally daunted, write and re-write and edit and re-edit in Draft Mode forever, you will read absolutely nothing, and I will have to refund my myriad(-ish) paid subscribers.
If my goal is simply to Write And Publish An Article Every Week, then I just need to set aside and protect the time needed to write, edit, and publish each week, without obsessing about perfection.
I’ve known for many years that I do better when I set short-term goals with time- or quantity-based boundaries, versus longer-term goals focused on quality. I am naturally oriented towards producing quality work - sometimes to the point of perfectionism - so I need to trust that when I produce in quantity, quality will come. Despite knowing this about myself, I have always tried to shoehorn myself into these big, grandiose, quality-based goals because: Achievement (?)
The only way to get better at anything is through consistent practice, but somewhere along the way I got caught up in the idea that I needed to produce Only Perfect Work. I have a pretty strong hunch, in my case, it relates to childhood experiences and programming - a topic I’ll dig into in a future piece.
So here’s my promise to you: I won’t ever write the perfect article. (My bad.) But each week, I will write and publish an imperfect one. (You’re welcome.)
And after all, if I had any lingering doubt in my commitment to weekly posts, posting this sure puts me behind the 8-ball!