In my last entry, which was intended as a teaser, I outlined a couple of points I would like to cover today while celebrating the 2nd anniversary of this little forge:

What I learned about building routines in the second year of my blog's life
A couple of weeks down the road of year two, I noticed that it started getting a bit more difficult to stick to the I-thought-so-established routine of wake up – meditate – exercise – sit down – write (up or down).
Looking at the chain, I realized that I had tried to use habit stacking: the link between waking up and exercise had been functioning very well for years, and I assumed that building on it would work.
And it did, until it didn’t: one day my exercise would somehow take longer, another day waking up would not be as smooth, then something else would happen…
Even though habit stacking should work in theory, in my practical application it started giving me more like a 50/50 percent chance, which was hardly satisfying. More to the point, it was creating uncertainty, as I started doubting whether I could rely on this process or not.
This is why I decided to experiment and test out “habit sandwiching” (I’m not sure it’s a term, but if it’s not, it should get established). With that, I placed the writing between two well-established routines of “meditate” and “exercise”.
This proved to be very beneficial, and there was a clear sense of one thing leading and feeding into another.

What I discovered about optimizing the writing process
Staring at an empty page not knowing how to start is a very well-known problem. Although I would not claim that I have found a solution, there are a couple of things that prove to work for me quite consistently:

• Sometimes an empty page in a silent room with no distractions is a blessing: you look at the screen for long enough and then something starts emerging. Most likely it’s rubbish. But, to paraphrase Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “I let Rubbish In”. Once it’s on the page and out of the system, something else can follow. Now, I would not say that what follows is (always) gold, but, let’s at least say, it’s less rubbish.
• If the hurdle is too high and not even rubbish is pouring, I induce it with a couple of vigorous abracadabras on the keyboard. This fulfills two purposes: first, the page is not empty anymore, and second, nothing that will follow will be worse, so we can proceed (although, giving it a second thought…) Jokes aside, I suspect there is, indeed, an effect of bringing the motion into the play, which in its turn triggers the thinking process.
• Writing about something you are passionate about helps. In the off chance I am not passionate about what I’m writing, I have found a way to gamify it. I think of a person who would be, and try to make as good an impersonation of such a freak person as I can. I’m not sure how successful I am at it, but the process shakes me up and “triggers” creativity.
• Routines are KEY. I know that I’m risking sounding like a broken record, but “knowing” there is a dedicated and “educated” time for writing sends a signal to my brain that it should start producing something. And the tighter the deadline, the more vigorously the hamster should run.

What skills writing this blog helped me develop
First off, there are a couple of usual suspects here: I have become much more efficient in researching content, in planning topics and themes for months ahead, and I learned a thing or two about LinkedIn algorithms.
With that, I also learned that the gap between knowing about LinkedIn algorithms in theory and successfully applying them in practice is measured in sea-miles.
On top of those items, there was another crucial learning. Writing this blog helped me look straight into the judging eyes of an elephant sitting right on my keyboard and admit a very uncomfortable truth. (Drum-roll). I’m horrible at typing. I’m slow, I don’t use all ten fingers, and “hunting and pecking” would be a huge compliment to describe my “unique” (a.k.a. “backward”) method.
To hell with it – it’s not even “a method to madness”, it is sheer madness.
The real problem is that sometimes a glorious idea would fly so fast through the dim-lit room that my inefficiency in capturing it would make it carry on with its careless journey, looking for some more apt “ideas capturer”.
However, acceptance is the first step in problem-solving, and I started learning the ten-finger method. I’m not very good yet, but every day I’m slightly less bad at it and that’s all I can expect.

To what extent AI has supported me and what I learned about myself with AI
I have never used AI to write blog posts for me – nor am I intending to – but I would be a liar if I said that I don’t use it, and an idiot if I actually didn’t use it.
I do some research with it, I validate some thoughts, I spot inconsistencies and breaks in my logic, I bounce ideas, I look for synonyms and check associations…
On top of that, I use AI for proofreading and translation support (this also refers to emails and other communication in general – after all, neither English nor German are my mother tongues).
Funny enough, when I asked AI what my mother tongue was, this was the answer:

Why a newsletter is still missing
80/20 is a great rule… however, you should be careful where you draw the line between 80 and 20.
Two years ago, when I started this blog, and two and a half years ago when I started the website, I deemed the newsletter function to be nice-to-have, as it seemed too much at the moment to take care of all data protection aspects, but also of interfaces and some form of CRM.
This taught me an important lesson I’m sure I will ignore many times in the course of the rest of my life: define the target state, prepare for it and evaluate whether your future self will be up to reopening the topic.
However, the experience of this blog has taught me something else: committing to do something in public (even if it consists of two people and a dog, as might have been the case when describing my audience on day one of the blog) works wonders.
With that…

What’s next...
I commit that this blog will get a newsletter functionality before it turns three, and we will be able to look at some statistics before it turns four.

Other than that – expect a LOT about routines and totally unrelated subjects. This is a promise I’m more than comfortable to give.

Cheers! Have a great start into the week!