WRITING

100 Days of Writing: Day 40 — The Rainmakers

Here’s what happens when you get curated on the popular “productivity” tag!

On Feb 1st, 2022, I embarked on a 100 days writing challenge, where I aimed to write one story per day on Medium.

I’ve decided to do a check-in every 10 days. The last one was here. And today, I will give you my progress on day 40.

40 articles

This is article number 40 and I’m writing this on the 40th day of the challenge, which means I’m on track. And I’m so happy about it!

Over the past 10 days, I had only one difficult day, where I could not finish an article for the following day. This was a longer article than usual, and it was well worth it.

Since then I have caught up. And so far, I feel inspired like never before and confident in my capability to reach my challenge.

The Rainmakers

On my last check-in, I proudly announced that I had been published in Better Humans, one of the top-tier Medium publications. I thought it was unreachable and that I had been lucky. But it seems like the editors enjoy my articles since they accepted 3 other articles from me!

One of them was selected for curation in the tag “Productivity”, which resulted in a large traffic spike: 600+ views! On the other hand, the last article that I submitted on the same publication had less than 10 views the first day, although it was selected for further publication as well. I believe the reason is that the curator probably classified it on an obscure tag, or worse: no tag at all.

That’s why now I like to refer to the curators as the Rainmakers. They have the power to give you a large traffic spike. But it’s not systematic. Sometimes, your article will bomb anyway…

Stumbling upon my Medium mentor: Scott Stockdale

This week, I also published on The Happy Human, a small but lovely publication dedicated to positive stories. And it was a happy accident to realize Scott Stockdale, my Medium mentor, was one of the editors.

Scott gave me some great feedback on my article. And this has to be highlighted as few editors spend time on your article to help you perfect it.

If you are a beginner on Medium, Scott Stockdale created a great Medium course on Udemy. Without this course, I would not have been able to progress so quickly. It has great value for the price, so I recommend it.

Finding a new accountability buddy

On the last check-in, I announced I would get a new accountability buddy to help me stay consistent and productive on this challenge. And I’m happy to announce I found one!

To protect his privacy, I will refer to him as John. John is a 17 year old Vietnamese. And I was pretty surprised because although he is very young, he already knows quite a few productivity techniques.

He also has excellent English, and I love his enthusiasm. We agreed together to stay in touch via Telegram during the course of the week and to have a weekly Google Meet check-in.

I will also speak more about accountability buddies in the coming weeks as it is a subject I love.

Medium Partnership

As I said on my last check-in, I have been rejected from Medium Partnership Program. This is because I live in Mauritius, a country that is not part of the eligible countries for this program.

However, I wrote them an email to try to negotiate. The main reason why they don’t accept some countries is that Medium pays using a payment system called Stripe.

While Stripe is not available in Mauritius, it is available in France. And I do have a bank account in France since I am French and I am working remotely for a company based in Paris.

I hope this is going to work. And as a general rule, I think it’s a good habit to refuse to take a “no” for an answer.

My statistics

Now let’s see my statistics.

First, the story stats:

The 30-days views doubled again since the last check-in, which feels great!

This is mostly due to the traffic spike I got by being published on “Better Human” and curated in the “productivity” tag.

For information, the article that was responsible for the spike was this one: Focus Hack: Plunging Into Your Work

And here are the stats on it:

As you can see, there were 642 views on this article in 3 days, which for me is huge!

As you can see in the screen capture I have also framed in red the section titled “Your Reader’s Interests”. This section is important as it helps you figure out the related topics. This is how I realized that it had been curated using the “productivity” tag, which means everybody going on the homepage of Medium and clicking the tag “productivity” will see my article.

It’s also the first time I had some results in the “Your Reader’s Interests” section in one of my articles. Usually, this section is blank as you need to get enough traffic to get it filled.

Now let’s see the audience stats:

Nothing outstanding here as I only got 45 more followers in 10 days. But it’s nice to have met the 200 followers threshold!

In an effort to improve on these stats, I will need to read more fellow writer articles and comment on them. Although my main focus is on writing, it’s an activity I enjoy since it makes me discover new styles of writing and make new friends.

My secret sauce

As usual, let’s check in on the habits I had in mind while starting this challenge:

Developing consistency and motivation

• I will develop a habit of writing for one hour each morning when I wake up. I’m still doing it, still using the same technique of creating the first draft in the evening and editing on the following morning.
• I will do calls with my accountability partner to help me stay focused on my goals. I’ve started to do it since this week. My accountability buddy is very passionate about productivity, so we get on really well together.
• I will actively participate in various writers’ communities — currently, I’m part of the Write Useful Books and ILLUMINATION slack workspaces. I did participate a bit in the ILLUMINATION slack, but not in Write Useful Books, I need to improve on this one!
• Other than that, I struggle a bit these days on my rule to brainstorm 10 potential titles before deciding on the final one. I’ve written some large, important articles this week, so it’s sometimes hard to find time to follow this discipline, although it is a crucial one in my opinion.

Finding inspiration

• I will read medium articles and follow interesting writers that I enjoy. Still a bit behind on this one, but I think I’m improving a bit.
• I will read a book each day for at least 30 minutes. I published the article on the book Contagious. I’m now reading The break out principle by Herbert Benson.
• I will do daily walks in nature. Yes, I did that again, but I missed 2 days.
• Other than that, I lately started the habit of starting thinking about the articles I plan to write one day before I write them so that the ideas can better incubate in my brain.

Avoiding burnout

• I will do meditation or take a nap each morning after publishing my daily article. Right now, what I do is wake up early to polish and publish my daily article, and then I sleep a little bit before I start my main job.
• I will do vigorous exercise during my walks in nature. Still doing it! I’m actually getting quite good on burpees and I’ve also managed to do 60 push-ups in a row.
• I will write articles in advance. I gave up on the idea of writing shorter articles. And I still don’t have any article in advance, but I could fix that I think.
• Other than that, I’m still drinking a lot of water each day (3 liters) to help me reduce bad stress effects on my stomach, and I’m pretty happy with the effects.

Ensuring I write quality articles

• I will never publish an article the same day I wrote the first draft so that I can edit it properly. There was one exception to this rule over the last 10 days. But apart from this article, I kept the practice. I also noticed it is worth reading the article drafts several days after you write them to get the best results!
• I will use Grammarly to spot my grammar mistakes. Still using it! Still using the basic Grammarly option.
• I will practice writing exercises, such as studying my favorite authors and reusing their writing plans. Not doing it. But I plan to pay closer attention to the articles chosen for further distribution in the tag productivity. Also, I like Tiago Forte’s in-depth style of writing.
• Other than that, I’ve started to take notice when some writers use some efficient expressions, maybe I’ll be more deliberate on using these kinds of expressions in my writings.

The 10 posts I wrote since the last check-in

Lastly, here’s the list of stories I wrote since the last check-in in case you’ve missed them:

31. Contagious: 6 Ingredients for Exceptional Word-Of-Mouth 32. Practical Memorization: Part 1 — Memorizing Everything With a Memory Palace 33. 12 Reasons Why Introverts Are Amazing 34. Deep Insights: 7 Books That Caused a Mini-Revolution in My Life (not published yet, submitted to The Startup) 35. Focus Hack: Plunging Into Your Work 36. Liquid Goals: Why It Helps to Make Your Goals More Flexible (not published yet, submitted to Better Humans) 37. Deliberate Innovation: The Power of Small Experiments 38. Overcoming a Creativity Block With the Malkovich Principle (not published yet) 39. Building Your Personal Encyclopedia 40. (this article)

I also finally published the article: How to Stay Focused at Work Despite Constant Online Interruptions

And here are other articles from before that I still need to publish:

• Friday Evening Hangover — How to Get Productive When You Don’t Feel Like It? (not accepted by publication “The Startup”)
• How Jon Kabat-Zinn Saved Me From Stress and Burnout (not submitted)
• Break Free From Procrastination by Washing Your Hands (not submitted)

—

I hope you enjoyed this article. As you can see, I’m still going strong on this challenge. I’m also glad that a curator has selected one of my articles for further distribution under the “productivity” tag of Medium and the traffic spike it generated! I hope this inspires you on your writing journey 😀

On February 1st, 2022, I’ve embarked on a 100 days writing challenge. This is post number 40.