120 Seconds on Writing
How I use writing to identify my interests
I started my writing “career” in January 2020 to improve my writing skills. This is just my 10th article, and there is still so much room for improvement.
From time to time, my brain produces ideas for new articles. The average lifetime of those ideas is a few seconds. This is how long my brain needs to evaluate the concept.
During the evaluation process, my brain runs on autopilot. In most cases, I am not able to explain why I dismissed the idea. It takes effort to figure out the exact reason(s).
A few minutes before I wrote this article, I was wondering where my writing is heading. I mean, in general.
Will I end up covering a particular topic — a niche? Or should I focus on more personal writing, like a blog? Should I write on topics that I already know, or should I explore new areas and cover those?
Why do I even bother? As long as my writing improves, the content shouldn’t matter too much, right?
If that is the case, why does my brain dismiss all the ideals that could turn into articles? Is there a subconscious goal?
Instead of overthinking this topic, I decided to let my ideas flow and use the written output to answer the questions above.
The underlying hypothesis: Autopilot evaluation will do a great job considering many different aspects that I consciously or unconsciously care about.
So from now on, I am adding a second goal to my 2020 New Year’s Resolution.
- Goal — I want to improve my writing skills.
- Goal — I want to figure out what I am most interested in.
I will increase my goal from 12 articles to 60 articles. The end of 2021 should be realistic.