Life & Success
Most Writing Advice is Bullshit
Constant Grind Can’t Bring You Long-Term Success — Here’s What Will Instead
Day in, day out, we hear the same advice hammered into our brain and pegged as the ultimate recipe for success. When I started writing, that’s all the advice I could ever find.
Things like:
- Write daily/write everyday
- Find your niche
- “No one cares about you specifically”
- Always think of it as a business
Advice like this feeds right into the daily grind that powers social media. It propels people not to dig into what they have to offer, and instead mold themselves to the gods of algorithm and be as capitalistic as possible with their venture. And it’s a circle, too: the internet is saturated with content, everyone is trying to make it, and so everyone is competing against each other.
We all want our breakthrough. We all yearn and aspire to be recognised.
But this modus operandi doesn’t really work as far as long-term, effective break through is concerned, two things that I believe always irrevocably translate to external and financial success in some way.
Personally, I find advice like these unnatural, and at odds with the human heart.
Not to mention that, the recipe for success differs for literally everyone. What gives you the breakthrough you seek will be accomplished with different ingredients than for the next person, even if some correlating practices might stick out.
So instead, I’m debunking all the common advice we hear, and transforming them into what they really should be.
1 “Write Daily”
That’s one of the main advice everyone always sees, and yet it doesn’t always work, because success can be random.
For instance, Swedish YouTuber Jonna Jinton publishes whenever she is inspired to, and has done so since the beginning of her channel. That means publishing once a month if she feels like it, and sometimes skipping a whole month altogether. The result? Over 4 million subscribers, and a thriving jewelry business.
On the other hand, spiritual guru Teal Swan diligently publishes videos weekly, and has done so for over a decade. The result? Over 1 million subscribers. Granted that, there are severely mitigating factors to look at, and there’s certainly far more to say on the subject, that affects the success stories of both these artists.
But based on these stats alone, it seems that pleasing the algorithm really isn’t the ultimate, “one-size fits all” key to sticking out from the crowd.
Want to know why? That’s because there are far many more things that factor into what success will look like for you.
And that is because among many other factors, what people actually respond to is “consistency”.
So the real advice should look like: “Write daily” ⇾ “Be consistent”.
It doesn’t matter how often you write. What you must be, however, is dedicated, determined, and involved. Because when you love something, you are dedicated to it, and when people see that thing, there’s always someone who wants to see more of it.
What you do, whatever that is, must be your enterprise and your goal in life. What really gets you going, enough that you can do that thing all the time, and often enough that you can be consistent.
That is what we observe with successful personas across the globe; their passion for what they do, their dedication to it, and their consistent sharing of it with the rest of the world.
But that doesn’t mean publishing every X period.
What matters is that regularly enough, you leave your mark on the world in a way that is noticeable to people. It could be once a month, once per quarter, it doesn’t matter. You must continue to show up, with the same drive and passion as the last time, and you must do that often enough and long enough that people notice. The specifics of which, are entirely up to your dedication.
2 “Find Your Niche”
While I wholly agree with the advice of finding “your niche” on a personal level, I must disagree with it on a global one.
What this advice really corresponds to is: “Find your niche” ⇾ “Find Your Passion”. What a “niche” tries to emulate is a passion. And since passions are so all-consuming, there’s often only one great big venture that each human is fundamentally interested in and capable of pursuing.
But that advice undeniably has got a horrible capitalistic aftertaste to it. It forces you to do things not because you want to, but because if you don’t, it’s telling you that you’ll fail.
But having multiple projects and passions is ok. And you don’t have to limit yourself. People can get used to seeing you do multiple things at the same time. It’s entirely possible to be known for doing X and Y at the same time. And on the contrary, it can make people feel like you’re versatile depending on how it’s done.
What you should know, is that people do prefer consistency, once again. So a common denominator to your content is a good thing to have, because people get used to seeing you do the same thing, over and over.
For instance, I usually write to teach about the universe. That is one broad subject in itself, that leads me to treat different subjects every time I do it. But the common theme for all of my content is to read the undertone of what I analyze, and to dig up and teach more about life and the universe through that thing.
Again, what really matters is consistency. If you do something consistently, it can be multiple things at the same time, it’ll work. You don’t have to do what everybody else is doing, or what everybody else tells you to do, for it to be work out.
3“No one cares about you”
That one is one particularly horrid thing to say, and it’s as demotivating as can be.
This idea often tells you to build a business that exists solely to meet the needs of others. Which makes it feel like you, the individual, is completely erased. Like all you’re good for is help others. It feels like suddenly, you become an automated machine that’s here only to perform certain tasks automatically, serve the customer only to make as much money as possible, and forget all hopes and aspirations for personal fulfillment.
This kind of model is awful, because it completely forgets the human behind it. And the idea that we can cater to “customers/audience,” and transform ourselves to care about that exclusively? That’s what robots do. That’s what machine learning is about. Machines cater themselves exclusively to what makes humans tick. You? Don’t have to be exclusively wired to create according to that.
While there must be a bridge between you and others, that advice is wrong, and can be very poorly interpreted.
Because people do care about you. They care about who you are. They care about what you do. They want to know more about you, why you do the things you’re doing, what your background is, how you came to do that thing, etc.
When I wrote one of my articles that went viral and that generated a lot of clout, people clicked the link in my bio after reading it. Do you know want to know why? Because they were curious. Because they wanted more information about the person who had written the thing they were having such a strong reaction to. They wanted to put a face to the content; they wanted to know who I was, and use that information to judge the worth of what I was saying in my article.
Who I am mattered. Who you are absolutely matters.
You should do what makes you tick. Find the people who also like what makes you tick, and let those same people come to you as well.
4 “Treat it like a business”
This really should read “Be Passionate about it”. It may sound like I bring everything back to passion (and so what?) but I’m really just drawing your attention to the solidity of passion.
When you’re passionate about something, you take it seriously. And that’s what really matters.
So in short: “Treat it like a business” ⇾ “Be serious about it.”
While there’s a difference between a hobby and a business (or side hustle), if what you’re doing is about more than just money, then the real difference between the two is how serious you are about it.
A hobby might take up only a fraction of your mental focus. But a business (read, a passion), would naturally take a lot more than that.
If you’re dedicated to something, then that thing becomes what your life is about. It’s what you “eat, drink, piss and shit,” as they say. It’s what you do. It’s what you consume and exhume.
Because of it, you should treat your writing the same way you’d treat a business: seriously. Treat your writing, and content, like you’re genuinely serious about it, not just like it’s a whim you decided to pick up and might return to in six months or whatevs.
Take your writing as seriously as you would take a real business that brings in money, because your writing just might bring in money too. Be dedicated to your writing the same way you’d be dedicated to a business, along with everything that it implies.
The result of people not finding their true path and their true voice, is that everyone crafts the same generic content, the same boring listicles with a non-existent tone or voice behind the text. The whole internet is saturated with things that feel like it was written by bots. Because they’re designed to please algorithms, rank high, but not to find true personal accomplishment for the author, or connect with a real person, the ones behind the screen.
And you may tell me “well my toneless ghost-writing business for X huge publication/website makes money so I’m satisfied.” And quite honestly, that’s part of the problem. People are satisfied with whatever works as long as it provides them with enough money to live, but don’t necessarily go beyond that to find something they’re genuinely passionate about.
They hustle away to stay on top of bills, and so settle for what works. Or they don’t believe they can do more or better, or differently than what the “work, pay bills, prepare for retirement” grind, so they stick with what they’ve got.
And the more this modus operandi is advertised around the internet, the more people are encouraged to do it, and the more the world follows.
But content like this is only temporary. It generates intense buzz at the beginning, and it fades away in time into the depths of oblivion.
Think to yourself: Will you remember that listicle you read a few days ago, debating which item or service is the best, say, in a month? Or in a year? Or even in a decade? Will it matter at all? Has it left an impact? Do you even remember the brand? Much less the ghostwriter who created the piece?
Rather than having a generic formula to reach success, that makes you look like Mr. Everybody Else online and only caters to algorithms, we should give, and follow, advice that directs you to do the opposite of that: not to “crunch”, rather than to let yourself shine.
Because in the end, if you don’t follow your heart, you can’t touch people. Sure, the early days of being ignored are always difficult, they can make you question your own worth, and push you to fall into the awful patterns dictated above. I believe we’ve all experienced that, and have all complained about it at least once. But following your own inspiration, and genuine creative flow is the only way to succeed long-term. Because it’s what truly distinguishes you from others, and what resonates with crowds.
If you are the type of person to produce one quality piece every six months, then you’d rather focus on distribution and marketing of that one piece, ensuring it reaches the eyes and ears it must, rather than on switching to daily production to keep up with everybody else.
Especially if the content is evergreen. You’d benefit more from presenting that same piece, over and over, from different angles, to the the public, until you accrue a following that is genuinely interested in what that thing is about, even if that only comes once in a blue moon.
No one cares about your listicle and your other stereotypical content with super clickbaity titles, unless it comes from the heart, and you genuinely want to share that with the world.
And believe me, there are plenty of creators and artists out there who publish whenever inspiration pushes them to, and not when they’re “supposed to”, and it works. Because it populates their portfolio with pieces that come from the heart, and the heart is exactly what consumers want: the emotional imprint of something that’s real.
If you’ve read this whole piece, I truly appreciate your time and focus. If you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments.
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