Hajjar Awesome!

The phrasing of the title is because of English August, a book I read long ago, and still remember very fondly. And it’s sort of a pat on the back for myself because I completed a thousand posts on EFE. Well, strictly speaking this is post number 1003, but let’s round it off to an even thousand today.

My friends and colleagues, past and present, will be happy to confirm that there are few folks lazier than me, and I’ll happily admit to it myself. Which is all the more reason to celebrate this, because to keep this going for a thousand posts over five years is an achievement of sorts for me.

We started this blog on a whim sometime in June 2016, my wife and I, without having a very clear idea about what was to come of it. I started off, as I almost always do, with a large amount of enthusiasm, and as with everything else I do, said enthusiasm petered out soon enough. But since June 2018, I’ve been fairly regular, averaging about a post a day.

There have been periods of radio silence last year, and the reason is that I went through extended bouts of “but what is the point?”. Not jus the point of writing on the blog, but doing anything at all. It was that kind of a year, and I will not beat myself up over feeling that way, and about breaking my streak. Excreta, as the poet says, happens.

And there have been periods of radio silence this year too, but the second wave was devastating for all of us. We have all suffered losses, immediate family or extended. But for all of our sakes, let’s not dwell on that anymore. We’ve all had enough of it.

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What have I learnt from writing these thousand posts?

1. As David Perell pointed out on Twitter recently (as have others), if you take care of the quantity, the quality will take care of itself. Some of my posts have been atrociously bad, some have been about me trying to find my voice, and a lot have been of fairly middling quality, at best. But there are some that I am genuinely proud of, and remember very fondly indeed.
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   My learning has been to show up (almost) everyday, without fail. It doesn’t matter if people read what I have written or not, comment or not, share or not. The writing is its own reward. I may have said this before on these pages, but if you’re a student reading this, please: write. Or make videos, or Instagram posts (or stories, or whatever one calls it), or tweet, or make a podcast. But put your work out there, and that regularly. Trust me, it does wonders for you.
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2. I haven’t bothered with measuring anything. I don’t add identifiers to outbound links, I haven’t installed Google Analytics, I don’t do affiliate links, and I don’t advertise anywhere. I try to respond to whatever comments folks put up, whether here on the blog, or on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you have written a comment and I have not responded, my apologies! I have also automated the sharing of these posts on Facebook, but I (quite literally) haven’t logged in to Facebook in years.
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   My learning has been that quantifying stuff is strictly optional. I write everyday (well, almost), and even that is not a measure or a requirement. It’s a choice. Who is reading this, is the readership going up over time, which social media site drives the most traffic to my website – I don’t know any of this. And it doesn’t really matter. I just write.
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3. Writing these thousand posts has made me painfully aware of how little I know. Nassim Taleb has made famous the concept of the anti-library, and in that sense, writing on this blog is a daily reminder of how much remains to be read, learnt and written about.
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   My learning is that writing is a humbling experience, and that becomes truer the more you do it. And that’s a good thing! Think of it this way, you don’t write to show how much you know. You write to understand how much there remains to be learnt.
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4. I don’t schedule my posts too much in advance. The most I’ve ever managed is a couple of weeks or so, and that because I was due to go on vacation. Otherwise (and this includes today) it is a case of get up, arm yourself with coffee, and think about what to write. That has its disadvantages, because an unmarinated blogpost doesn’t acquire the depth of flavour it could have otherwise. But it also has its advantages, because I am the kind of person who works best when panicking a little bit about upcoming deadlines.
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   My learning is that habit formation is a real thing, not just management speak. If you do something for long enough, it becomes a habit, but better – it becomes a habit you’re unwilling to break. And you end up finding the time one way or the other to keep at it. And that, in and of itself, is worth it.
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5. The more I write, the more I remember stuff I’ve written. This is not a statistically valid observation, and I haven’t analyzed it, but I do think that I increasingly link to posts I’ve written earlier. I don’t say this to show how much I’ve written in the past, but to explain that I’m able to “connect the dots” better. I now understand better how what I’m writing about today can be thought of as an aspect of something I’ve written about earlier (or vice versa). My understanding of the world, such as it is, is definitely better than it was earlier. That’s a healthy profit right there!
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   My learning has been that writing is a way of teaching myself to think, to see the larger picture, and to make connections between topics that I would not have otherwise. And for that reason, I highly recommend it. It is not for me to say if I have become a better writer. That is for others to judge. But I can think better for having written these posts, that I feel (mostly) certain about.
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6. I wanted to celebrate the thousand posts by coming up with a book based on on what I would have called some of my best work here. I even spoke about this with some of my friends and students, all of whom were very kind with their encouragement. But on reflection, the “could’ve been a blogpost instead” argument was much too strong to go up against. A book ought to be a book, not a vanity project.
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   But spinoffs is a good idea, I think. And for that I would like your help. What can I do more of? Less of? Add a weekly podcast that reflects in greater detail on what I’ve written that week? I’ll happily admit to not having the faintest idea about where I’ll find the time, but that’s one possibility. A day of the week dedicated to book reviews? God knows it’ll force me to read more books, and get better at writing about them. What else? Please send in your suggestions, and I really do mean that.
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7. I don’t have any desire to turn this into a newsletter (Substack, or Revue, or anything else). One, because I’m lazy. I can’t bear to think about the nightmare of moving over into another system and all of what that entails. Plus, WordPress, which is where this is hosted, is just fine by me. Except for the new block editor style they have. I loathe it, and it is far too buggy for my liking. But I’ve gotten used to it now, and I’ve quite literally adopted the way I write to its idiosyncrasies, so why invest in changing now? (You want examples? Those little “..” signs that you see throughout this post are there because I don’t know how to introduce spacing between points otherwise. Pah.)
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8. I cannot tell you about the number of people I have gotten a chance to meet and work with as a direct consequence of this blog. Students, professors, folks from the corporate world, people who work in think tanks, research organizations, and more besides. I often tell students that putting your work out there is a great way to build out your network, and I don’t say that without basis. It quite really is true. That ought not to be the reason to write, but it is a positive externality spillover, and a very welcome one. I’ve built my community as a consequence of writing this blog, and I am very thankful for it.
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9. There are opportunity costs, of course. Those never go away.
   1. Maybe I could have written more academic papers? I don’t necessarily want to, and I’ll explain why in a blogpost one day, but I certainly could have.
   2. Maybe I could have read more books? This one hurts, because I really could have, and I really would have wanted to. But I think the takeaway is becoming better at time management. In other words, do both, but sacrifice something else in my day. Meetings. I would love to “sacrifice” meetings.
   3. Made more podcasts? Learnt a new skill? Made more videos? Traveled more? Again, I think the answer lies in learning how to get better at becoming more productive.
   4. So a promise to myself (and I’m old enough, and perhaps cynical enough, to already come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably end up breaking it): read more books, create more podcasts, make more videos, and attend less meetings.
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10. Thank you for reading! I hope to do this for years to come, and I’m grateful that you have chosen to read whatever it is that I put out on these pages. If you have any feedback or suggestions for me, I would love to hear it. Again, thank you very, very, much 🙂