The 10 Commandments for Reaching Your Destiny on Medium
This is the consensus of us all, by us all, for us all
For what I am about to impart, may Medium be truly thankful.
This platform exists to share ideas and perspectives from the world’s most insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers. I’m talking about you.
I chewed over what you told me. I deliberated. And I came to a conclusion — ten conclusions, actually. A multiple of epiphanies, if you like.
Reading needs guidance. Writing needs structure. Medium, as a platform, differs from other social media content, thus it needs its own rules. These are supplied in their policy. The policy helps ensure you comply with their terms of service.
But it has morphed from that — and not by design. Since its inception, Medium has evolved. The people using this platform to share their ideas and perspectives have developed their own vision for the platform.
Rules are not meant to be broken, but people protest against rules that don’t fit with their values, beliefs, or skewed view of the world. Creatives are innovators, pioneers, and sometimes buccaneers — you again.
Today, Medium is something its founders could not have imagined. The creatives have choreographed a patchwork platform far removed from the haughty goals of Evan Williams. This social journalism experiment is now a hybrid collection of publications populated by amateur and professional people.
With every minor change, we see the butterfly effect transform the chrysalis into chaos. The unintended consequences are not seen, heard, or felt until it travels around the world, multiplying the good (or bad) it wasn’t conceived to do.
Medium has grown like an unruly garden perennial, but it has yet to blossom. It continues to sail stormy seas, but there is no one person at the helm. It is being steered by the collective, and the only sensible thing is to fit a new mission statement to the current condition.
You have spoken. I have consumed and digested your collective thoughts. And the following excretion is here to guide you on your way.
Every rule can be broken, every order disobeyed, but woe betides the rebel who breaks these words I command.
Friends. Writers. Journeymen. I give you: —
The 10 Commandments for Reading and Writing On Medium
1. Thou shalt not —
Skip down to this part of the article. Get back up there and read the introduction. It’s important.
Writers spend hours agonising over their introductions — maybe not hours, but some can put a lot of thought into it. They want to ensure you are reading the information they provide in context. What the fuck are you going to get out of life if you skip and skim your way through it?
You don’t order a three-course meal and then skip the starter to taste the dessert, do you? You need to savour what you are reading. The meat and potatoes are important. Then you need to give yourself time to digest what you read. Don’t spit it out. That’s information bulimia.
No wonder there are so many anorexic brains in this world.
2. Thou shalt not —
Give up. Not unless you are a quitter. Are you a quitter? It’s fine if you are, there are so many other things you can do, so quit. You don’t have to stick to reading and writing on Medium. Not if you don’t want to. Nobody is forcing you.
But…
The single biggest predictor of success in any enterprise is persistence. Athletes don’t run for a bit and then stop to look at their Facebook. Day after day, year after year, they train consistently. They dedicate their lives to their chosen sport. They hone their skills, working on incremental improvements.
With reading, you never stop learning, laughing, or being afflicted with a gamut of emotions.
With writing, there is no finishing line to cross. You keep going. Whether you are a Sunday fun runner or an Olympian, you can’t get any better unless you keep at it.
3. Thou shalt not —
Stop being curious. Without curiosity, you won’t read. Without reading, you won’t find things you are interested in. Without interests, you’ll never be fascinated. Without fascination, you’ll never be curious enough to find out more.
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” — Albert Einstein.
Ask: Why? Why? Why?
Your life depends upon it. Neurological research has found it’s not your early level of schooling that prevents dementia and premature death, it’s your continued mental activity throughout life that is important.
Without curiosity, you atrophy and die.
4. Thou shalt not —
Ignore the smarter people. Successful people hire people who are smarter than themselves. Here, you don’t have to hire them, but you can read them, learn from them, and better them.
You don’t dignify yourself with jealousy. You don’t have to follow the crowd or believe everything your sister’s friend at the pub tells her. My sister’s friend at the pub told her Gummy Bears prevent cancer.
Read the people who are writing from a position of know-how and excellence. Take your time and learn from what they say and do. And not just the ones who you agree with.
We need diversity of age and colour and place. But more than that, we need diversity of thinking. Read people who think differently from you and see life from their perspective.
Do the little things to grow your indivisible mind and improve your thought process.
5. Thou shalt not —
Denigrate your fellow writers. It’s not attractive. Dishing up poison can kill the cook just the same as the diner.
We’ve all been there. Listening to the gossipmonger talk about someone behind their back, and it’s never kind. It sometimes comes in the guise of sympathy, but the underlying meaning is toxic. You walk away and wonder — what is he going to say about me?
All social media platforms come with a sliding scale of unwholesomeness. This isn’t Twitter. Medium holds itself to higher standards. On balance, it favours moral and mental well-being. It promotes good health and sound advice.
Be virtuous. Don’t tarnish your reputation. Studiously ignore those who aren’t principled, good, and true.
6. Thou shalt not —
Wait to be perfect. Who knows what genius lies inside? Get it out. It might embarrass you in years to come or it might change the world. Can you chance to miss such an opportunity?
It’s okay to wait. Give it a day, a week, but not too long. Check it. Read it over. Put it through writing software. Send it to a friend. But choose to publish or delete. Either choice will allow you to move on.
Move fast and break things. Do your best work. Have no qualms — get it out or get rid.
7. Thou shalt not —
Forget what works — and what doesn’t. Re-examine what you release to the world. Take heed of your feedback or lack thereof. Pay attention to when you nod and smile or shake your head and snarl.
Feedback drives change and improvement. Go back and look at what you produced last week, last month, last year. Redesign. Reclaim. Regenerate. Celebrate your wins. Take solace from those incremental steps towards excellence.
Learn quickly what your readership wants to read, but write what sustains you. Kill your bad ideas.
7. Thou shalt not —
Do it all on your own. Tap into the expertise you don’t have. You can seek help from many places. This is a relational model, so relate.
Advice abounds, you don’t have to speak to somebody face-to-face but if you can, all the better.
Although, be careful where you seek that advice, from whom you seek it, and always take it with the 14-day return policy — what works for others might not work for you.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been advised to wake up earlier — I’m a fucking insomniac. I do not need to wake up an hour before I go to bed. I need more sleep, not less.
But generally, there is good advice to be had. Some people will tell you to take some of the controversial bits out, while others will tell you to put them back in. You still have to make that decision.
8. Thou shalt not —
Believe everything people comment. Good or bad. Ignore the bad — unless you have a jazzy response. You know this type of thing: —
“The earth is flat.”
“It’s okay to be uninformed. It’s not okay to be uninformed and have an opinion.”
Accept everything that is said about you with good grace. Don’t be a bad loser, or worse, a bad winner — only the emotionally intelligent know they are one step away from falling flat on their backside.
9. Thou shalt not —
Use A.I. or plagiarise. You know who you are. You will get caught and accused and it won’t be nice. People will talk about you with a sneer on their faces.
Did you know there is software for checking these things? I use the free version of Duplichecker for plagiarism and GTPZero for A.I.-generated copy. And I use it on my own writing. Not because I might have had a brain fart and used them — seriously, have you read my stuff?
No. I sometimes check it to see if others have plagiarised me. And it is a totally satisfying experience to use GTPZero and for it to tell you “Your text is likely to be written entirely by a human!”
And it gives you a score for ‘perplexity’. A.I. generated text sits about 50 and you should aim for over 1,000.
10. Thou shalt not —
Wear a frown. Yeah. You. Don’t be a grumpy fuck. What’s the point if you aren’t enjoying yourself? Where would you be if you can’t be having a laugh — England?
It’s amazing how your face reflects in your writing. It’s like a mirror. Lighten up. Take a chill pill. 😎
If you want friendship, gift friendship. If you want respect, gift respect. If you want energy, exercise. If you want love, be a luvvy. If you want happiness, gift happiness.
And by that reasoning, if you want a chill pill, you first have to give a chill pill.
Here endeth the lesson.