Seth Godin on blogging

I recently listened to an interview with Seth Godin in which he comments on why he blogs every day and why he believes everyone should.

” If you know that tomorrow you have to say something about something you noticed, about something that might help someone else, about an opinion you have that might stand the test of time, you will form those opinions, you will notice those things, you will invent that idea.”

I think this is true of any discipline. Whether it’s writing, business, photography or design, the medium becomes a lens through which we begin to see the world and whether you notice the different hues of a sunset, the subtleties of a sans serif, or the ways in which social cohesion plays out amidst a pandemic,

He goes on:

“And if day after day, week after week, you leave this trail behind of thoughtful examination of your world, you can’t help but get better at whatever it is you seek to do. And if as a byproduct other people read it and trust you more, that’s a jackpot.My goal is not to have more readers, my goal is not to sell more books, my goal is to be trusted in a way that I can make the change that I seek to have happen in the world. “

For me, this captures the importance of showing up every day and why quantity trumps quality. The story that best illustrates this is the one about the ceramics class that is divided into two groups.

Group-A is told they will be graded on the combined weight (quantity) of their semester’s work. Whereas, Group-B is told they will be graded on the quality of their final piece of work.

Come grading time it turns out that the group that focused on quantity also had the highest quality of work. They had been busy churning out work and learning from their mistakes and gaining a sense of mastery of their craft. But the ‘quality group’ had spent their time theorising and trying to plan out their spectacular finale that by the time it came to grade their work, they had little to show for their efforts.

There is something to be said for time and experience. Oftentimes it’s better to focus on progress over perfection