Overcoming friction, gearing up for #Blaugust

The trick to having a blog that you update consistently is to make it as easy to post to it as posting on social media. Remove as much friction as possible.

In practice, you can't really make it that easy: on social media, you don't have to worry about formatting or thinking of a title for your post, for example. But there are ways you can trick your brain.

Even when I was using bearblog, I didn't write my posts directly into the post box, because if my internet connection is unstable (as it often is), clicking the "save draft" button would sometimes result in lost work. I would use an android markdown editor called Quillpad. It auto-saves at all times, so it made it easy to add to a blog post without worrying if I needed to quickly put my phone away. I could jot down some thoughts at work, on the bus, standing in line, etc.

Recently, I switched to using obsidian, because Quillpad lacks one feature I recently found myself wanting: a word counter. With as little extra time as I have during the work day now, I wanted to make sure I didn't go over 250-500 words. Switching to obsidian introduced some other issues, though.

First of all, it has a bug where it can't properly copy text. When it's time to move my writing from draft to blog post, I copy all the text from the app and paste it into a draft on my website, then add the final touches like tags and footnotes. With obsidian, when I long-press the screen and choose "select all", it doesn't actually select all the text. It just selects whatever's on the screen. I have to scroll down and finagle the little selector handle to get it to select the rest of the text, and that thing's always been a pain in the ass. Sometimes when I move it, it de-selects text that has already been selected and I have to start over. Writing on a phone sucks, but editing on a phone is a nightmare. When I thought about opening obsidian to start a blog post, all I could think about was eventually having to endure the ordeal of copy/paste. "Forget it," I would tell myself, "I'll do it later, when I can use a computer." And of course, by the time later arrives, I don't feel like writing anymore.

Another way Quillpad reduces friction (or more accurately, facilitates momentum; but they're the same thing) is by showing the drafts for blog posts I've written previously as soon as I open it. This makes me feel like I'm not starting from a totally blank slate every time I open the app, that I'm building on something. Even if I'm not looking at my blog directly, I'm still seeing the collected fruits of my past work, and it encourages me to do it again.

Obsidian, on the other hand, keeps notes open in "tabs", like a web browser. Like web browsers on phones, these aren't actual tabs, but are represented by a number at the bottom of the screen. I can tap the number and see previous drafts, but having a bunch of open tabs stresses me out, so I usually close old drafts to keep the number at 1. When you close a draft, it goes to the shadow realm. What a momentum killer! All my hard work, buried inside a software abstraction!

Finally, and this isn't strictly Obsidian's fault, but when I switched apps, I decided I wanted to use the spot on my home screen previously occupied by Quillpad for something else. So any time I wanted to write, I had to swipe up to bring up the full app list, and type the first few letters to launch Obsidian. This is the same amount of friction as launching Subway Tooter, my fediverse app, so I'm equally likely to open that instead. I have no long-term memory or object permanence, I'm a simple creature reacting to signals as they intrude on my blissfully empty default brain. My only hope of having a lasting positive impact on my life is rewiring the system so the more beneficial signals reach my brain in the shortest amount of time and with the smallest amount of effort. That's it, that's the whole ball game. Anyway, Quillpad has returned to its slot on my home screen.

To make sure I don't write too much, I'm basically only writing for the first hour I'm at work, and my lunch break. Even that first hour would've been more like 30 minutes, but I found a time-saving technique for one of my tasks that gives me a little extra time.

Here's my dilemma: I'm assigned about 125 new work product units a week; so as long as I complete 25 a day, I won't fall any further behind. It was touch and go for awhile, but since finding the time-saving technique, this is a number I can comfortably hit, even needing to do 2 jobs as is currently the case.

This won't allow me to get caught up, ever. I'll be treading water indefinitely. However, if I really knuckle down and grind, I can get about 35-40 WPUs per day, gradually closing the gap and inching closer to "inbox zero". It would be really nice to have a buffer in case anything happens; for example, sometimes I have to participate in pointless trainings and meetings that greatly diminish my output. Sometimes one of my other co-workers is out and I have to do three jobs, at which point I can only do 15-20 of my assigned WPUs per day, and will gradually fall further behind—so far behind that there are potential legal implications for my organization.

Now, there's an argument to be made that this isn't my goddamn problem, that they should hire more people and make sure there's redundancy; but not being my problem is no guarantee that they won't make it my problem. I've been fired from jobs for less. So I'm pressured to push myself as hard as possible and burn out because I live on the knife's edge of precarity. It's a wonder I engage in any creative output at all.

Sorry that part was kind of a bummer. Here's a cool moth I saw.

Anyway, I'd better figure out how to cut through the friction and post every day, because #Blaugust is coming up. I posted for 100 consecutive days in 2022, so I know 31 days is possible. I need to review my past work for inspiration. I wrote some good stuff during those 100 days! And some total garboleum! But if I wasn't forcing myself to think about writing every day, the good stuff would've never entered my brain. You can't just sit around waiting for ideas to come; you have to cultivate a certain mindset that makes your brain receptive to ideas. You have to accept that some of it will be garboleum, that for flowers to bloom you need both sunshine and dirt. I wish I didn't keep forgetting this.

Hey, my #100DaysToOffload challenge happened to overlap with #Blaugust. I wish I had known about #Blaugust at the time, I could've won two challenges!

...just kidding. Of course, I wouldn't be cheating anyone but myself. I just signed up for #Blaugust, which is even more of a commitment than signing up for #100DaysToOffload, the process for which is to declare "I'm doing this now." #Blaugust is an actual community, with meta-goals and multiple awards you can win. It encourages collaboration, mutual engagement and group morale-boosting. It sounds like a lot of fun. Please let me know if you're doing the challenge too. Let's make some garboleum together.