The Moment When All the Procrastination Becomes Clear
Sometimes, I get a feeling: 'Oh, I should have done this YEARS ago'.
I got it a few weeks ago when I finally made it possible for people to subscribe to this blog via my website. You can do that by clicking here.
And I got it again this week when I finally used the newsletter functionality on LinkedIn to create a newsletter so people can subscribe to the blog here. You can do that yourself using the subscribe button at the top of this page.
Even writing this now I can't help but wince. As I write this fewer than 20 people have signed up to receive the blog via my website. If I had set this up in 2016 when I first started the blog, here on LinkedIn, how many subscribers would I have by now? Hundreds? Maybe more?
Similarly, as soon as I saw people setting up newsletters on LinkedIn I thought 'I could do that', but I didn't.
Until, sitting and thinking about it last weekend, it occurred to me: it is RIDICULOUS that you haven't set that up, Robbie.
Now the thing is, until that point, it made a lot of sense to me that I hadn't set it up. Here, essentially, is why I hadn't:
First, it was for productivity reasons. It was because I was focused on 80/20 and on what might be Resistance. And on sharing what I've made, not getting it perfect.
At that first point, it was wise not to worry about getting a blog which you can subscribe to up and running. Most important was to be creating and sharing. LinkedIn (and Twitter, and my monthly-ish mailing list) did a good job of helping people find the blog, read the articles and - hopefully - be inspired by them.
And then, a couple of years ago, it started to shift.
This often happens with me. It happened with my mailing list, too. At first, setting up a mailing list is Resistance. It's a way of avoiding doing the REAL work: in my case, building a coaching business. A mailing list sometimes helps with that, but it is certainly not necessary. It isn't a definite part of the Prosperous Coach Flywheel that I have spoken about elsewhere.
And then, after a while, NOT setting it up is Resistance. It's Resistance at that point because I'm procrastinating about setting up the list, and I'm losing out through the procrastination. I remember realising this when my brother-in-law said he used to see my articles on Twitter but had stopped going on it (good work him)... and so, who was winning by there being no mailing list? No one. Except Resistance, stopping my work having more impact.
And so I needed a list. Even if just my brother-in-law read the articles because of the emails, it was worth it. That's because the way through Resistance for me is always: how many people need to benefit from this for the discomfort to be worth it? The answer is always one.
I realised that with the blog, I was in the same place. It used to be Resistance to faff around creating a subscribable blog... but now I was procrastinating on creating one. On allowing my blog to be better read. On allowing my audience to grow. On allowing people who wanted to learn from what I have learned to do that.
And then, once I'd realised that, I REALLY started procrastinating.
I just couldn't face adding another job to my week, or researching autosending blogging software, but then my friend Diego told me about newsletters that read RSS feeds. Oh, fantastic. This is it.
And then I did nothing about it.
In the end, I realised I was doing nothing about it, and got some help - a new level of success often requires a new level of collaboration.
Last autumn, a friend who works on some marketing things for me set up an RSS newsletter for the 12-minute blog. And it was working! I received it every week! Just me!
I was busy, so I didn't get to launching it (Resistance?), and I realised I needed to tweak it slightly (Resistance?)... and then... it stopped working.
I'm not sure if this is Resistance, but it feels like it. The software I use, ActiveCampaign, has some kind of bug on the newsletter. And then their customer service is, it turns out, TERRIBLE. And so it stopped working. But that's awfully convenient for something I've been procrastinating on in a complex way for years.
I waited and waited and chased and chased for six weeks until... I thought, 'THIS IS RIDICULOUS'.
That moment - the moment of 'this is RIDICULOUS' - is key. It's finally seeing that all these things that looked like coincidence are actually some form of procrastination. It's what Malcolm Gladwell calls Default to Truth in his book Talking to Strangers: the same psychological move that means that once someone has found incontrovertable evidence that their partner is having an affair, all the previous signs that had looked innocent suddenly become clear.
So... I fiddled and fiddled until I got it working.
And then I launched it! And felt amazing. I felt the rush of inspiration and courage that always happens when we start something.
And then it stopped working. But this time I'd already started and it was too late. I had to keep going. And I found I could quite easily manually make it send. And now it's moving. And I could have been doing that for years.
All this time, I hadn't launched my LinkedIn version... because... tactically it's smarter if you subscribe on my website. That way I have your email address, which is more reliable than LinkedIn - we don't really know if they'll change the way their newsletter works at any moment.
So tactically smart. But 'tactically smart' is often code for 'Resistance'.
In the time I was being tactically smart, hundreds of people could have been benefitting from reading what I have written here on LinkedIn - emailed to them, instead of the unreliable news feed algorithm.
Who was it helpful to that I was being tactically smart? Not me, not you, not anyone.
Before the frustration kicks in, I come back to, as so often in times like this, a proverb I once heard from Seth Godin:
The best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago.
I hope you find your way to subscribing.
And I hope you start doing the thing that you haven't been doing.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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