My 888th Article on Medium: 88 Pieces of Advice for Creating Your Renaissance in the Next 8 Years

The world is changing faster than ever before. The decisions we make in the next few years will shape our future for decades to come. It is time to break out of old patterns and create a new renaissance, a revolution of ideas and actions that will propel us forward into a brighter tomorrow.

But where do we start? How can we create lasting change in our personal and professional life? How can we keep creating assets to ensure a better future?

To answer these questions, I’ve gathered 88 pieces of advice, distilled from my last 3 years of experience and reflection. These ideas cover a wide range of topics, including creativity, asset creation, writing, learning, and personal development. They are designed to inspire, challenge, and motivate you to take action towards creating your own renaissance.

Whether you’re a student or an artist, a professional or a writer, these insights will help you navigate the challenges and opportunities of the next eight years, and beyond. They will show you how to tap into your full potential, embrace new ideas and technologies, and harness your creativity to bring new and exciting things to life.

So, get ready to embark on a journey of self-discovery, growth, and transformation. Let’s create our own renaissance, and pave the way for a brighter, more sustainable future. It all starts with you.

It has been almost 3 years since I started my Medium writing journey. During the pandemic, I decided that I would write regularly on Medium. This has been one of the best decisions of my life. I wanted to develop my writing skills for years, and writing 888 articles on Medium has helped me to accelerate my writing career.

Although my progress has been slow, I have tremendously enjoyed writing on Medium and this has become one of the best learning journeys in my life.

Today, on 5th of June, 2023, I now have 888 articles under my belt.

Here are the 88 short lessons I have learned in my writing and asset creation journey:

1. Compounding is the strongest force and the 8th wonder in the universe — use it to your advantage. Use it to amplify your skills, investments, knowledge, and assets for the long term.
2. Do not break the chain and create/write every day. Results only come from consistency.
3. Procrastination is your biggest enemy and it kills your writing dreams. Start writing now. Your article does not need to be perfect, you just need to put it out there. Do not wait for the perfect time — the perfect time is now.
4. Whenever you start writing, start small. Do not wait for inspiration to start your writing.
5. Create small victories. Without breaking the chain, you need to create, write, shoot, or draw something small every day. Whatever your goals are, break them down into the smallest pieces possible, and then start collecting some small victories. You have written just one sentence? Brilliant, this is an amazing start! Congratulate yourself and try to write your second sentence now. And then your third. This is how success is achieved: You start with very small steps, repeat these steps, and achieve momentum. Before you know it, you will find yourself writing and creating in a flow state.
6. Forget quality and focus on quantity first. Your initial goal should be to create at least 100 pieces.
7. Treat your Medium articles exactly like an investment portfolio for the long term. Consider each article as an experiment and give yourself the chance to make hundreds of articles.
8. You are the hero of your life. Act like it. Share your own journey and progress with the world.
9. Imagine the future and your future self. Create your own renaissance in 10 years. Do at least 10,000 experiments in 10 years.
10. Writing is a long-term game. Continue your writing and asset creation game for at least 10 years, and be here for the long haul.
11. Create your own creative assets on the Internet. Compound yourself, your skills, knowledge, networks, assets, and mindsets for the long term.
12. Instead of obsessing over your metrics and statistics, spend your time creating your next masterpiece.
13. Write every day even if you do not feel like writing. Try to write at least 400 words every day. If you write 400 words every day, you will have an edge over 90% of your competition.
14. Get up, dress up, and show up. This is a good start. Even if you start small, start now.
15. You take yourself too seriously. You are overthinking and under-doing. Stop paralyzing yourself and jump into action. Show up and start writing.
16. Cultivate your own voice. Do not try to imitate others or try to be anyone else. Become the best version of yourself.
17. Celebrate your failures. I have more than 800 failures under my belt. I celebrate these failures.
18. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Make sure you sell the lemonade as well. Make the most of your story. Tell your story and share it with the world. Add breakthrough value for other people and show this value.
19. Do not quit your Medium journey and do not expect fast results. 888 articles is not a lot in the larger scheme of things.
20. If life shuts a door, open it again. Repeat. It is just a door. If that door does not work at all, find another door.
21. Be a marathon runner, not a sprinter runner. Do not expect virality — the secret is in slow and steady progress.
22. Do not compare yourself to established and accomplished authors. Compare your success now to where you were one year ago.
23. Give yourself time and do not be discouraged if your articles do not get enough views and reads. Progress takes a lot of time.
24. Progress is power. Get better every day. Improve your craft. As James Altucher suggests, if you improve at anything 1% per day, by the end of the year you’ll become better at it by 37 times (1.⁰¹³⁶⁵ = 37.7834343329). Your brain has amazing capabilities of limitless learning and neuroplasticity. Rewire your brain to learn fast and achieve fascinating things.
25. Be compassionate to yourself — it takes time to find your voice.
26. Do not worry about controlling your emotions. Control your actions instead.
27. Astonish/amaze/scare yourself every day. The bigger your comfort zone, the smaller your life.
28. Dream big dreams and passionately pursue them. Do what you love and love what you do.
29. Pursue a ‘blue ocean strategy’ to navigate uncharted territories, combine surprising and contrasting elements creatively, and use ‘enchantment’, thereby creating a magical feeling or influence to sell your view to the world.
30. Create multiple streams of passive income. Medium can be one of them.
31. Even if you are extremely busy, try to find ways to continue writing and publishing at your own pace. You might need to find creative ways of doing this. For example, I have combined my teaching and my Medium writing to create synergy between these two domains. Try to combine your job responsibilities with your Medium writing.
32. You are an idea generation machine. Establish a system for writing and publishing a huge volume of work.
33. Be curious and open to wonder. Read and learn. Follow your passions, excitements, and curiosities.
34. You have not created your best work yet. You haven’t unleashed your best talents yet. You haven’t written your best posts yet. You haven’t told your best stories yet. You haven’t composed your most beautiful music yet. You haven’t created your best assets or contents yet. You haven’t yet learned the things that will excite you the most. You have a very promising life full of art, creativity, storytelling, hard work, experimentation, and entrepreneurship ahead of you.
35. In ten years, you will be totally different person. Your vision and contribution will be infinitely bigger than today. That person is a much more visionary, formidable, creative, and wise version of your current self. The bigger your dreams are, the further you will be able to carry yourself forward into the future. You need to respect yourself in 2033 (or in 10 years from now). Your future self will emerge and grow incredibly over the next decade.
36. Be positive. Act as a positive and inspiring role model.
37. Reclaim your childhood positivity. Own it proudly.
38. The biggest game of your life is to create your own creative assets in your life. Create fresh, exciting, and original pieces of writing.
39. There will be a valley of disappointment after your initial enthusiasm wears off. Accept that and make peace with it. Continue your journey.
40. Try to incorporate your authentic voice, quirkiness, weirdness, and talents into your work.
41. Make each sentence a bit more colourful and playful, and this will also help you put more of your creativity and soul into your article.
42. Upcycle your old articles which have had dismal results. Improve and republish them.
43. You will write so much better if you shut down your critical voice. Trust your intuition, not your inner critical voice. Give yourself the joy of crappy drafts.
44. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.
45. While you are writing something new, it is OK to follow your subconscious, your dreams, and emotions. Practice blue-sky writing.
46. Do not take yourself too seriously. Embrace the idea that you are just a steward and a vessel for your ideas.
47. Write about stuff that excites you to the bones. Find topics that you are obsessed with, care about, and want to learn more about.
48. Your feelings are your fuel — make good use of them and articulate them in your stories.
49. Best Writing Formula: Curiosity + Exploration + Wonder + Passion a) Being Curious and Asking Questions (Extreme Curiosity) b) Hunting for Originality and Inspiration Everywhere (Trans-disciplinary Exploration) c) Learning New Things that Amaze Me (Bewilderment and Wonder) d) Sharing my Enthusiasm with my Readers (Passion)
50. When you have your muse, dive in and enjoy the ride. Enjoy these joyful moments when you can.
51. There will also be moments of agony where you cannot even write a clear sentence and you will find your work appalling. Hang in there and persist in those moments.
52. Treat your writing as a hobby to remove the pressure. How can you make the process of writing more engaging and enjoyable for yourself?
53. Try to find tricks to fall in love with writing. If you do not enjoy writing, you will feel compelled to quit it. Make the process more enjoyable.
54. Read a lot of books to nurture your intellectual life. Reading is not a luxury, but an essential habit you want to do each and every day. Read widely and from diverse genres or disciplines.
55. Know why you are writing and what you would like to accomplish. Why are you writing?
56. Do not worry about writing about things that have already been written. Put your spin, your voice, and your story on ideas.
57. Readers want your story, your independent thinking, your unique perspective, your packaging, and your take on the issues. Give them what they want.
58. Amplify what is unique and different about your perspective.
59. Excellent writing needs to strike an emotional spark in the reader — and you need to feel that spark first.
60. When you are experiencing flow or joy, your writing starts to take flight. Keep the flow of your writing, and try to get into the momentum zone.
61. Your job is to make mistakes, so just go ahead and create your imperfect work. Perfectionism is not good for your soul, and it is not good for your work either. Permit yourself to create bad work and crappy drafts.
62. A mediocre draft you produce today is more valuable than a perfect draft you will produce one day. That one day might never come, and the only day you have is today.
63. Make sure you deliver value in each of your articles. Readers want to learn something fresh and exciting each time they read you. Provide useful information and inspiration whenever you write.
64. Write or create as if you are talking to a specific person. Put your heart out there, share your own stories, and make yourself vulnerable.
65. For whom are you writing or creating? Visualize that person and converse with that specific person. Try to connect to that person through your work.
66. If you want your writing to stand out, write from your heart. Write about things you are passionate about. Your readers will recognize when you truly share your excitement. Your passion is what will make your content appealing and worthy of readers’ attention.
67. Learn how to tell a good story. Our brains love stories and we are wired for meaning. Stories well told engage readers more than any other tool. They tap into what makes us human.
68. Figure out how you can turn your Medium writing into a fun game for yourself. Fun is the secret sauce that will keep you going, especially when things get challenging.
69. Do not get lost in the metrics. Do not worry about the changing algorithm. Nothing should take your focus away from real writing. Worry about improving your craft.
70. Carry a notebook and a pencil wherever you go. Your notebook is the seed catalogue of your writing ideas. Create 30–40 fresh ideas every day.
71. Imagine that you have 1000 ideas in yourself. You have this amazing treasure chest in you. Unleash these ideas, cross-pollinate them with others, develop them further, and share them with the world.
72. Defend your ideas courageously, stand up for your values, and never give up on your dreams.
73. Nobody is against you. Nobody will ever care enough about you to be against you.
74. Do not take yourself too seriously. Nobody cares.
75. Do your own thing. Dare to disappoint others. Do not care about what others think of you — especially when you are breaking new ground or trying out new things.
76. The headline is 60–70% of the battle. Make an attempt to write a clear, enticing, and enchanting headline. Readers decide if they will read your piece in just one second. In your title, make a good impression and spark curiosity in a split second.
77. Ask yourself these two questions every day: What will I learn that will excite and astonish me? What will I write about today?
78. Curiosity is a game-changer for you. It increases the quality of your life and it brings you joy and flow.
79. Be a hunter and learner of the most interesting things. When you are curious, you become a relentless learning machine.
80. Where do you want to be in 10 years? Take this question very seriously. Write down all your goals and dreams — be 100% focused and intentional about who you want to become in the long term.
81. If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
82. Consider becoming a member of Medium for $5 per month using my link. The knowledge, skills, and perspectives I gain from Medium are worth at least $100 per month. I can say that a Medium subscription is at least 10 times more useful than a Netflix subscription.
83. Know why you are writing and what you would like to accomplish. I view myself as a teacher. My passions are learning and teaching, so I view my writing as an extension of these passions.
84. What are the articles that only you can write? Make sure you write these articles.
85. Have fun, otherwise it is not worth it. if you do not experience joy, you will quit. Make sure to have fun as a writer and content creator. Get out of the rut by experimenting with new things and challenging yourself to new heights.
86. Do not try to imitate others or try to be anyone else. They are already taken. Be the best version of yourself.
87. Start writing today, use your imagination, write every day, do not break the chain, hit publishing, and repeat these actions for a couple of years — you will enjoy tremendous results if you hang in there and do not give up.
88. Create room for the X factor. Embrace the unknown. Be flexible and open.

Which lessons did you find most insightful and useful?

Which lessons have you neglected until now?

Which lessons have the most priority and urgency? Choose them. How will you apply these in your own Medium journey?

Fahri Karakas is the author of Self-making Studio, If Life Gives You A Squash, Squash It!, and 99 Creative Journeys: Unleash Your Imagination. He is passionate about doodling, creativity, asset creation, and the future.