How to Enjoy the Cooldown Phase in Your Publishing Game on Medium

Sit back, relax, and observe your articles compete with each other in your stats and earnings.

December 22, 2020, was the last day of the past year when I published a Medium story in 2020. Before that, I tried various rhythms of writing and publishing here — a couple of stories a day, prescheduling for days and even weeks ahead, and other writing and publishing schemes.

The latest design of my publishing game on Medium was to publish at least one piece every workday. A published piece was either a completely new written and revised article or a reworked and sometimes extended excerpt from my already published books.

I stopped prescheduling stories at some point and haven’t done it until now. One of the reasons why I stopped prescheduling was the following. Writing, revising, and publishing a story — along with creating its headline, subtitle, and searching for the appropriated tags — felt like a level in my “writing and publishing game” on Medium. I didn’t want to postpone finishing the level. I wanted to make the best of it, finish it, and move to the next one.

When I started writing this article both with a pen in a notebook and later typing the parts of it, I was in the cooldown down phase of my “Publishing on Medium” game.

The cooldown phase is important in a sports game like basketball and a video game.

Here is how Wiktionary defines this cooldown phase:

cooldown (plural cooldowns):

1. (video games) The minimum length of time that the player needs to wait after using an ability or item before it can be used again. [Example:] I had to wait for the cooldown to finish before recasting the spell. 2. (sports) The rest period between sets or workout sessions. 3. (by extension) Any rest period between sessions of an activity or event.

The cooldown phase of the “Publishing on Medium” game during the holiday season

The holiday season is such a cooldown phase from work for most of us, especially during current times of lockdown.

I used to resent when I had to stop work I enjoyed — or even the one I thought I was not too fond of — and start a vacation. I continued being creative during vacation and wrote (mostly longhand), as I did for this article. Being creative was recharging and didn't pose any problems. But cutting myself from connecting to my readers and putting something out there in the form of books, blogs, or social media posts felt difficult to bear.

It wasn’t like that this past holiday season. The cooldown phase felt right, and I enjoyed it, not publishing and not marketing my work.

I wondered why and discovered several reasons.

First and foremost was the fun I have while turning my life into games. There were so many other literal and real-life games to play and design that I didn’t have that much time to complain or get upset about missing something during the temporary removal of the usual working routine.

There was another reason closely connected to the one above when it comes to Medium and entering the cooldown phase for publishing here during holidays.

I continued checking my stats and earnings on Medium (almost) every day as I did before the holidays.

Don’t shy away from checking your stats. It is your Medium game’s feedback system. But don’t take it seriously either.

You might have heard many writers recommending not to watch the stats and earnings in the first months or even the first year of writing and publishing on Medium.

The numbers, which are initially stagnating and mostly unpredictable, can contribute to your despair and belief of not succeeding on Medium.

However, the situation changes if you treat your time on Medium — be it publishing or reading — and all the stats, earnings, and numbers of followers, and those you follow, the number of stories on your reading list, as your Medium game’s multi-dimensional feedback system. The stats act even as a real-time feedback system. Every time you refresh, you see the latest numbers.

So your levels could be months or a specific amount of views, reads, fans, and earnings you set for yourself as a goal. And if a goal is too daunting and uncontrollable like views, reads, fans, and earnings, then as the one who turns your writing and publishing on Medium into games, in other words, designs your self-motivational games for yourself, you can define a smaller, faster reachable and more controllable goals. An example of such a goal could be the number of articles you publish every month or the word count you want to write every day or week.

Watching Medium’s feedback (score) systems during a cooldown phase

Playing a game and achieving its goal is fun, but the cooldown phases can be fun too. And they should exist for many good reasons.

One of them is that change in activity prevents you from being oversaturated with your favorite activity and giving it up completely or for longer stretches of time.

Another reason is that it gives you time to analyze your active phase's effect on the flow of your game and its progress.

Watching my stats and earnings on Medium during this holiday season gave me several insights, which I might not have seen, have I been in the race to publish every day as I did before.

Below are just a few epiphanies from this cooldown phase.

Epiphanies from watching my Medium score during my publishing game’s cooldown phase

Not every published article meant a day with more earnings. Some days during this cooldown phase brought both more views, reads, fans, earnings than some of the productive days in terms of the publishing on Medium.

The new articles might add to the number of the viral-article-lottery tickets I “buy” by publishing a Medium story. However, the evergreen ones can still do well in terms of reads (and earnings). The second article I published on my first publishing day on Medium back on April 30, 2020, ended up being the best one earning in December, catapulting on the first place just before Christmas. Here it is if you want to check it out:

This article surpassed all the others that earned me something in December by far so that even as it stopped earning around Christmas, the other competing articles couldn’t reach its level for the whole week after that and through the New Year’s.

The earnings, the views, and reads did go down toward December 31st. They went a little up and then down again during the following weekend.

The reasons for the low on December 31st could be plenty.

One could be that the readers who didn’t discover my stories might have been busy preparing for celebrations, decorating their homes, and preparing the festive dinner just like we did in our family. Not many had time for reading on Medium on that day. And the new to them writers had even less chance to catch their attention on that day.

Another reason for the decreasing number of views, reads, fans, and earnings could be that those who discovered my stories before wouldn’t read the same for the second time.

And here is one more reason. The marketing game for the articles I wrote here on Medium was in a cooldown phase too. So, my Medium stories were all on their own, without any help from me.

New articles and marketing the older ones would have helped add both values to my readers and attract new ones from my network and increase the number of views, reads, fans, and earnings.

This story, along with those I published after the new year 2021 has started, reopens the active phase of my “publishing on Medium” game.

Learning from the experience

I am glad that I had tasted the cooldown phase and discovered that it was not something to be afraid of.

It can be recharging and enlightening watching the stats during such a phase without having anything published during it. But it can only be fun if you don’t take it either seriously or personally — in other words, just like the feedback systems in games.

It is something to enjoy and learn from, just like the times of analysis after a game is played.

The cooldown phase contributes to the flow of a game and to the flow of life — when lived wholeheartedly.

An afterthought

However fun and recharging the cooldown phase was for me, I couldn’t wait to publish an article here as soon as it ended, which is also like in games. We can’t enjoy the games until we play them.

At first, I tried to finish and publish this very article on this year's first workday, but it was impossible. I will not name any reasons for that because it will equal blaming someone or something for not finishing it. I don’t usually blame (seriously) someone or something when the game doesn’t go the way I wanted it. So I won’t do it for my publishing on Medium game either.

I’ll just say it wasn’t time for this article to be done then.

But here is a short article I did write and publish on that first day. It served as a power-up for me. Maybe it will work for you too. Here it is:

So, now I will wait for another vacation to have the next cooldown phase, and instead, play the “write every day and publish as soon as ready” game here.

I might reserve the regular watching of the stats parameters I can’t control for the next cooldown phase. I recommend you to do the same — try to look less often at your stats and earnings during the active phase of your publishing on Medium game. If you feel the pull to take a glimpse at your stats and earnings, do it, acknowledge it, and then move to your next project or activity game, which might be writing your next story on Medium.

Here is one of my favorite quotes about the gameful nature of writing:

“I learned that when you play golf you’re actually supposed to play golf. It’s a game. You play it. You don’t think it.

“It’s before and after a round that you do your thinking, your analysis, your practicing.

…

“When you write, you should write. You should play. Then you balance that with analysis and learning and training and drills.”

— James Scott Bell, The Mental Game of Writing

And thus, let’s identify our rounds, which are unique for each of us and at different times of our lives, and play!

Thank you for reading!

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About the author:

Victoria is a writer, instructor, and consultant with a background in semiconductor physics, electronic engineering (with a Ph.D.), information technology, and business development. While being a non-gamer, Victoria came up with the term Self-Gamification, a gameful and playful self-help approach bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together to increase the quality of life. She approaches all areas of her life this way. Due to the fun she has, while turning everything in her life into games, she intends never to stop designing and playing them.