To Make Money Writing You Need To Keep Going (My Resilience Tips)

3 threats that push you to quit. How to overcome them.

Writing online is brutal.

I’ve written 65+ Medium stories & 2500 Tweets this year. Some weeks I’m on fire and think I’ll never stop writing. At other times I’m wiped out with nothing left.

The online game is dangerous for our mental health. It’s always dragging us down.

To survive you need a way to deal with its attacks.

We enter the arena enticed by those who have made it. But no one tells us we are entering the gladiatorial contest defenseless. Many don’t last. Eaten alive by the online monster.

Getting clear on the hazards can enable us to thrive.

Here are the biggest 3 threats to our mental well-being

(and how you can overcome them)

Danger 1 — Constant judgment

Does any other arena have such continuous judgment?

Imagine…

• A manager leading a meeting with a display of how many people liked her decisions?
• A shop assistant revealing what all the previous customers thought of his speed?
• The doctor’s surgery plastered with every opinion patients have of their work?

It would leave you feeling so vulnerable.

Yet that is exactly what we face writing online.

How am I supposed to keep focused on doing a quality job when I’m surrounded by constant judgment?

I’ve found these 3 strategies help keep me mentally strong

Design success measures you can control

Feeling a sense of control is a key ingredient of mental wellbeing

You can’t control the metrics. This lack of control makes them stressful. Setting input goals is healthier and more motivating.

Here’s mine:

• Write 60 minutes a day on Medium. I aim for 3 articles/week. But 60 minutes of writing is my daily success measure
• Write 21 tweets on a Saturday and schedule them for the week
• Write 1 thread every week
• Commenting — 15 minutes on Medium & Twitter a day.

If I complete these I’ve succeeded. This means I succeed most days and feel a sense of achievement.

Long term I know this will lead to better results.

How to review your metrics

We need the follows, likes and comments to win the game.

So we can’t ignore them. But obsessing over them results in a rollercoaster of dopamine spikes and slumps. This robs us of the ability to write creatively.

After only 2 months on Twitter a tweet went viral hitting 27,000+ views. I was on a high all week, and became distracted from writing. Checked the stats every hour. A week later I was feeling low and had lost my writing rhythm.

I needed a more sustainable way of using the metrics.

Here’s my new approach:

• Review stats less often and have a system eg. do a weekly review to learn what worked & what didn’t
• Focus on % not absolute numbers. You’ve got 7 more views. That feels not much. But if your views grow from 50 to 57. That’s a 14% increase. The big guns would love that sort of growth
• Celebrate progress — I note my number of followers every 3 days. When I feel like I’m not making progress I pick a point in the past (3 weeks ago, 4 months ago) and calculate how much I have grown.

Get plenty of psychological sunshine

The metrics are cruel so you need a way to refuel.

Spending time in positive places can feel like warm sunshine restoring your soul. This is crucial to heal us from the wounds the stats give us.

• discover new and stimulating things to do — it’s hard to switch off. Deciding to switch off doesn’t work. Finding offline activities that captivate our attention does
• talk to positive people — Do a people audit and design your week so you spend time with those who energise you
• nature is a great friend — there is strong evidence that nature heals us from stress. Walk. Sit. Look.

Danger 2 — Constant Comparison

You always know who’s the better online.

Numbers give a crystal clear answer.

It’s hard not to view yourself as worse than other writers. When the numbers scream out to you.

I’ve got 478 Medium followers. Tim Denning has 317,000.

That suggests he is 787 times better than me.

It takes a lot of mental strength to keep motivated. When others’ success is rammed in your face.

To survive you need to decide what your comparison will be.

I suggest you ignore other writers and compare the old you to the new you.

I have days of negative self-talk:

• ‘I’m making no progress’
• ‘This isn’torking’
• ‘You should quit’

When this happens I look at a random date in the past. 11 days ago or 67 days ago. Calculate my % follower increase since then.

Then for fun, I project that forward twice. My potential growth is always astonishing.

For example.

I’m at 478 Medium followers. 19 days ago it was 366. That’s a 30% increase.

So I’ll have 621 followers in 21 days and 807 in 42 days.

This reality check breathes new life into me.

All because I refocus on me & my growth.

The old you — the only comparison worth making.

Danger 3 — The endless demand for more

Creating online is a battle for attention.

We have to find new things to say and novel ways to say them. We strive to keep capturing people’s attention. This is the game we are playing.

We are told consistency is key. We need to churn out endless content. But this can be exhausting and it is easy to run dry.

Creating online offers incredible opportunities. But we must keep our creative edge to have any hope of realising these.

Stop your well from running dry by:

• Keep growing — no matter how much you know about your topic. Keep learning to stimulate your writing. Discovering a new idea is exciting and animates our brain. This energy makes writing easier.
• Use templates to kickstart your writing — our brain loves patterns but this can get us in a rut. We return to the same words or structures. Having a variety of templates can stimulate our writing. If you always write listicles — write an in-depth piece that challenges an idea. Use a thesaurus to freshen up your language.
• Write in response to comments — when you are reading comments ask yourself what do my readers need more of? This can activate your creative juices
• Walk if you need a new idea — Einstein, Darwin, Jobs — there is a long list of famous creators who saw walking as the key to their creativity. Include a daily walk in your routine.

The brutal truth is most people quit writing online. But you can beat more talented writers simply by lasting longer. The dangers are real. But using these strategies will keep you resilient.

Remember — those who last win.

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