Green Where You Water It

At the start of this year, I set a goal for myself: publish 26 blog posts in the first quarter.

The idea came from looking back at the previous year. Over twelve months I had managed to publish about that many posts anyway, but they were scattered across the year. Part of me wondered what would happen if I focused and front-loaded that effort instead. What if I treated writing with more intensity and simply pushed to see what I was capable of?

Now that the quarter is ending, I have a much clearer answer.

I Don’t Care What They Say, Quality Suffers

The first thing I realized is that quality inevitably suffers when output becomes the primary goal. That sounds obvious but many people out there push the idea of putting out subpar work because it’s giving you practice. I strongly believe you can practice in private.

Let me caveat that: if you’ve seriously given it your all and you feel depleted by the end of of it (but in a satisfying way), then yes publish to get that practice in of publishing and getting feedback.

But if you haven’t given it your all and you’re just slapping something together to get it out the door, then no, by the love of God, please do not publish, it’ll make you feel like trash. Because not only is the post not good at all, but it’s also not something you can say you’ve put work into. Something about using up your creative juices makes the thing worth it.

When you’re trying to hit a deadline every few days, there isn’t always time to go as deep into a topic as you’d like. Some posts become lighter than intended. Some ideas don’t get the exploration they deserve.

And when you care about writing well, that can be frustrating.

Looking back at some of the posts from this quarter, I can honestly say I’m not proud of all of them. A few feel rushed. A few feel shallow. I take pride in my work, and seeing something published that I don’t fully stand behind is uncomfortable.

Sending those posts out into the world didn’t magically cure my perfectionism either. If anything, it confirmed that I still care deeply about quality. There are posts from the past year—written when I was simply thinking and exploring ideas—that I like far more than some of the ones written during this push.

But despite that frustration, this challenge taught me something valuable.

Noodling Around Has a Purpose

What I used to think was “wasting time” was actually filling the well.

There were long stretches last year where I felt like I was just noodling around with ideas. Reading things. Thinking about topics. Starting notes and abandoning them. At the time, it felt unproductive. Looking back now, I can see that those periods were quietly building the material that later became posts I was genuinely proud of.

Not all of that time was productive, of course. Some of it really was procrastination. But a surprising amount of it was part of the creative process.

Grateful for the Routine Though

Surprisingly, this challenge gave me was a routine. (Or I guess not-so-surprisingly, I guess, since most people would know that to achieve a goal, you’re gonna need a routine, but I honestly didn’t think about this going in.)

No matter what else was happening during the week, I committed to working on the blog on weekends for at least four hours each day. Often it ended up being more than that, but four hours became the baseline.

That simple rule did something powerful: it removed the question of whether I would work or not. The time was already reserved.

Even if the posts weren’t always as strong as I wanted them to be, the routine itself is something I can build on going forward. I can still work on the blog maybe 4 hours every weekend (I used to do 4 hours maybe every other weekend before this challenge), but I’m not required to get a post out until I feel like it’s good and ready. (Obviously when you’re just starting out, you’re going to have to just force yourself to get one out, so deadlines at that point is necessary, but not if you’ve already been doing it for a while and posting is not the issue for you.)

At least the habit is now established, and habits tend to outlast motivation. So for that, I’m immensely grateful. Hey, maybe I’ve figured out the secret to establishing habits for myself. Set a goal, go intense for a while so you’re forced to set up a good system in order to survive & conquer. World domination, here I come.

The Chance Experiment Was Kinda Nice

Because the goal was simply to publish consistently, I allowed myself to try things I might normally avoid. One example was prompt-style posts. I had always suspected they weren’t substantial enough for the type of writing I like to do, but I tried them anyway.

They didn’t work.

But that’s useful information. Now I know, and I can move on without forever wondering if I should write that book of 500 absurd story prompts. (No I shouldn’t. It would be a colossal failure.)

Dopamine Realignment!

Doing this finally taught me how to wait to post. Meaning, I’ve finally learned how to create a buffer of posts.

I am writing this post ahead of schedule. I have a bunch of other posts ready to go and this one you’re reading right now is being seriously written on Mar 14, 2026 (I did notes prior to). But is slotted to release on Mar 29.

I’ve never done that before. I think setting the 26 posts a quarter helped me focus and want to write more every weekend just so I could hit that goal.

Because it was so intense and stressful at times, if I got a post done ahead of time, I tried to write more so the future me next weekend will have less work to do. Then the goal became, how much can I get ahead now so I can stop doing this? (It’s kind of similar to the calendar method of budgeting.) How early can I hit my goal so I don’t have to keep worrying, working on only one thing and have more flexibility in my life and schedule?

Writing ahead of schedule and having publishable posts ready and scheduled is the one thing I really wanted to be able to do. I’ve never done it before mainly because I never had the patience. If I’ve worked on the post, as soon as I’m done, I preferred just publishing it to get a dopamine hit of getting it done. Now I moved that dopamine hit up to when I’ve made the publish-ready and scheduled it. I’m so grateful this experience taught me that. And next weekend, I can get back to noodling around!

I Will Never Do This Again, But If I Do…

I now know how to approach it more efficiently from the start. The challenge forced me to create a structure for how I spend my writing time. Over the weeks, I naturally settled into a rhythm that works surprisingly well for me.

First, I give myself one focused block of about 1.5 hours to work on something I genuinely care about. A deeper piece. Something thoughtful and substantial. These are the posts that require multiple sessions and often take several weekends to finish. They’re slower to produce, but they feed my creative energy.

I also dedicate another 1.5-hour block to exploratory thinking. This is where I dump ideas, sketch outlines, and see what topics might be worth developing later. Sometimes those notes become future posts. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, it helps me understand what I want to write about next. And sometimes if an idea pulls at me, I’ll start writing it in this block of time.

Then I switch to working on something that can actually be published that weekend to meet my self-imposed deadline.

When the next weekend arrives, I can repeat the process and start again with the larger piece that’s slowly developing. Then I review the exploratory notes from previous sessions. If something sparks, I expand it. If not, I run another brain-dump session. From there I move into drafting something publishable, and finally editing, polishing, and posting.

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s a rhythm that seems to work.

The Real Value of This Challenge: Learning How I Actually Write

Perhaps the most important realization is this: the real value of this challenge wasn’t the posts themselves. It was learning how I actually write.

What’s Next?

I’m going to go back and strengthen some of the posts from this experiment.

Normally I don’t go back to a post once it’s been published unless I’m adding something meaningful. Because I used to write my posts to final stage before. During this challenge though, I left a lot of depth out. Some of these posts contain ideas worth developing further, and I’d like to see what happens if I give them the time they originally deserved.

In a strange way, this challenge showed me two opposite truths at the same time.

Writing quickly helped me establish discipline and routine.

But the writing I’m most proud of still comes from giving ideas the time they need to grow.

Now the goal is to combine both.

Some possible options I might try out:

• One post a month
  That’ll give me time to spend most of the month exploring ideas privately. Taking notes, outlining posts, collecting ideas. Then during the last week of the month, I’ll choose the strongest idea and finish it. This works with my natural “noodling → clarity → finish –> stepping back to take pride in my work” process.
• The Seasonal Burst Method
  Two intense writing weeks where I produce several posts, followed by a rest period where I just read and think.

Closing Paragraph (Season Finale for Q1)

Looking back, the most valuable thing this quarter gave me wasn’t twenty-six finished posts. It was a clearer understanding of how I actually work as a writer. I learned that I need time to explore ideas before they become something meaningful. I learned that routine matters more than bursts of motivation. And I learned that sometimes experimentation — even when it produces posts I don’t love — is still useful because it reveals what does and doesn’t fit my voice. The next phase won’t be about pushing output for the sake of numbers. It will be about using the routine this quarter built and giving the strongest ideas the time they deserve. If the first quarter was about discipline, the next one will be about depth…but in other projects. Like the story I’m working on. 🙂