After Six Months Of Daily Blogging, I Get Bored Of Myself: Here’s How I Cope.

Writing less is not an option.

At some point in their career, most bloggers — and yes, I just called ‘blogging’ a career — encounter a problem.

They get bored.

Mainly, of themselves.

Of writing their thoughts, sharing stories, and making their entire content just about them. I encountered this problem just recently.

Running Out Of Material

When you write daily — as I do — it’s easy to run out of material quickly, especially if you’re sitting on lockdown, with each day repeating itself like in the famous movie.

There are so many stories about your childhood you can tell. There are so many ‘thought pieces’ you can write before you start repeating yourself.

The Blogging Problem

As much as I love blogging as a career and lifestyle, there is a significant problem with it. Your total creative output revolves only around you.

When you’re someone with as significant an influence as Mark Manson, you’re considered a “thought leader.” People listen to you, and they want your opinion on everything. But you — as a creative — are not getting anything valuable from that interaction. If all you do is give, you’ll inevitably run out of things to give at some point.

Should You Write Less?

One way to solve this problem is, of course, to write less.

But I found that with writing (just like running) — consistency and regularity are key. When I have a daily writing ritual, it allows me not to overthink. My brain expects writing to begin every day at 9–10 AM, and it makes the whole process easier, building the essential momentum.

So — “writing less” is not an option, at least for me.

Should You Be More Interesting?

Another solution you might think of is “make your life more interesting.”

As John Gardener says,

The key to being interesting is to be interested.

Instead of waiting for the action to come to you, you go where the action is.

When he was twenty-something, a young writer, trying to make his way up the journalistic ranks, Churchill made it a point of documenting any war he could find his way to. He would look for the next breakout, and immediately go there, collecting “War Hero” medals and making himself famous as a result.

Following the wars was his strategy.

As much as this approach sounds exhilarating, it’s not my style. I write for a living — not live for writing. Writing is my craft, I love it, but changing your lifestyle just to make your content slightly more interesting seems to be the same as making the tail wag the dog, not the other way around.

So — that’s not a practical option either.

The Three Working Solutions

Having thought about this problem for quite some time, I came up with the following working solutions.

Be like Google. Consume a lot of high-quality content, share it, and give all the credit to other people. Write through other people’s eyes. Share other people’s stories and use them as examples to illustrate a point you’re making. Create projects instead of building a “personal brand.” Nobody is interested in you — as a person — until you have credibility. Create something valuable instead of telling us what you think.

Let’s break them down.

Be Like Google

I’ve said this a few times already (I am definitely running out of stories!), but it’s worth repeating again.

Google is stupid. It knows nothing. Yet, people go to it every day. Sometimes many times a day. They now even have “google” as a verb in the dictionary.

But Google does two things very well:

It assembles a massive volume of information. It points fingers to other people and helps you navigate. It gives all the credit to other people.

When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to only say what you think and give yourself all the credit. After all, you want your audience to believe you are smart.

But after six months of daily blogging, I’ve discovered something extraordinary.

When you quote other people and give them all the credit, it makes you seem confident and smart.

With so much information flowing around, what people need is not just “content creation,” but high-quality content “curation.” We’re looking for more ways to save time and not have to read BS-articles — so, if you recommend us something fascinating to read, we’ll trust you.

Like Google.

The most common blogging misconception is that people read you because you’re smart. No. They read you because you’re passionate enough about a specific topic to be doing the heavy lifting of thinking, structuring, and organizing information for them.

You don’t own your ideas. They are common property.

People are ready to forgive you anything, as long as you’re honest and bringing them something new and exciting. What they’ll never forgive is a lie.

P.S. This “Google Rule” idea I first saw in James Altucher’s blog. He probably took it from someone else, too.

Write Through Other People’s Eyes

My father read my last book and said, “It’s great. You created a page-turner!”

I grinned with the smile of a happy son who was patted on the back by his overbearing father.

“But,” he continued, “why the hell are you always talking about yourself and Russia? That’s weird.”

The smile faded away.

Jokes aside — that was an interesting comment. When I look at most of my content and the stories I use as examples, I see me, me, me, Russia, me, Russia. While these stories might be interesting to me, they aren’t necessarily to others.

Writers like to talk about the value of being vulnerable in your writing. But if you’re vulnerable for the sake of being vulnerable, it turns your writing into an emotional strip show: undressing your soul for attention.

Stories need to resonate with the reader and help them see your point more clearly. In most cases, sharing somebody else’s story is more efficient than re-telling your childhood dramas.

The “Faldinmedia Problem”

Don’t launch a personal brand. Not at the beginning, at least. Young folks do this all the time.

They launch their blog. And work on “their personal brand.” They make all of their content about them, and name the blog after themselves. They launch an agency and call it by their last name while adding a “media” at the end to sound cool.

Well, at least that’s what I did.

The FALDINMEDIA agency that I’ve launched a few years back died within the first six months. I relaunched it with another name (as well as new partners) and ended up working on it for the next three years.

The problem with most new bloggers is that there’s a reality distortion in place. You think that because you care so much about your “brand,” name, and thoughts — everyone else will too. But people actually don’t. Nobody trusts you until you’ve got something to show.

The best strategy for a new project, blog, business venture, is to do something valuable — focus on the work and the content — that builds credibility.

My girlfriend and I have a podcast in Russia, where we discuss culture, books, and lifestyle. By episode #9, we got bored of hearing ourselves talk. So — we turned the tables and made episode #10 filled with stories of our listeners. It became an instant success.

Name your blog whatever you want, but focus on the work.