One Compliment

An idea just comes to me. I’ve been writing for a long time, so the ideas come partially formed. Not written but formed into the beginnings of a familiar shape. It is critical in the next hour that I write this idea down somewhere accessible because it’s just an idea, and failure to capture it means it will disappear as simply as it appeared.

Whether this idea becomes an actual piece is defined by the next 72 hours. If I succeed in sitting down and expanding the idea, the probability of a completed piece increases significantly. This first attempt is an hour of my time, perhaps more if the window aligns with a weekend, so call this first investment ninety minutes on average.

In this session, I am taking the wisp of an idea and giving it shape. What was a three-to-five-word reminder is now five to ten paragraphs. If I’m lucky, I can see the beginning and part of the middle. If I’m really lucky, section titles are starting to show up. These section titles are similar to the initial inspiration in that they, to me, elegantly encapsulate part of the idea. If I can’t find a section title but know I’ve moved from beginning to middle, I write a dummy title, usually Something.

Something

If I make it to the middle of a piece, the publishing probability has again increased significantly. Still, as I’ve matured and relaxed about my writing, the number of abandoned articles has increased significantly. If this reads like bad news, I understand, but I’ve learned two important facts that affect this moment of writing.

There is always more writing. Every piece doesn’t need to be finished.

The remaining work to publish this on the blog is significantly more than I expected. If this piece is for a book, it is twice as much.

In the back of my head, sitting and staring at this half-formed piece, I’m quietly asking, “Is this worth finishing?” What pushes me over is the idea remains stuck in my head. There is still something to discover, to say, that I am curious to find.

I’m wildly guessing that 30% of the work is done now. 30% might be too high because what happens now is much more of a slog. I like writing. No, I love writing, but middle to end means I must continue to ignite what inspired me initially, but now it needs to make sense to you. This isn’t a journal entry; this is an artifact that I am placing into the world for judgment, so I must:

Finish the middle. The end of the middle is the end of the most challenging part of the writing. A good ending is a work, but it’s usually a clever and synthesized arrangement of your beginning and middle. There’s a chance I’ve already found it, but if I haven’t, I’m not worried. I’ll slap something together.

First pass edit. I print out the piece, and I edit it somewhere that isn’t near a keyboard. This change of perspective is a coherency pass Does this make sense? Just about anything can happen during this editing. So much so, I have a well-defined system of notation that tells me exactly what I need to do the piece because my regular scribbles are often indecipherable.

First pass edit changes landed. Taking my written notes, I graft them onto the piece. We’re somewhere between five and ten hours of work now. We’re somewhere between one day and three months from when I started. Pieces languish. Life gets complicated. The half-life of an idea is extended by the amount of work invested, but sometimes… it just fades.

But not this one. This piece will be published, and I know the precise moment: I can see the entire shape of the piece in my head. It’s not a geometric shape; it’s a feeling shape where I understand the beginning, middle, and end. Chances are significant chunks of the piece are not written or edited, but if I can see the end, the publishing probability reaches 90%.

I know the ending of this piece.

I know it because I knew the title was the ending when the idea arrived. This has allowed me not to put a section header where the ending became obvious, which is right here, incidentally. No, I need to finish describing the amount of work because this piece, confusingly, is not about writing.

With the final shape in mind, I finish the writing. Call this another two hours of work. I do a Grammarly pass (30 minutes) and a technical pass – links and images (another 10). The piece is dropped into Visual Code, where I zap gremlins, I produce the featured image, I push the piece to WordPress, do another read (30 minutes), and then hit publish.

I estimate I’ve devoted ten to fifteen hours of my life to your average blog article. The question is: what makes it…

Worth it?

One compliment. Just one.

When I hit publish, I broadcast to Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky, and the Rands Leadership Slack, and I’m looking for straightforward feedback on having devoted ten to fifteen hours of my life. A compliment.

Now, this can’t be from someone I know because while I trust these folks, they are biased, lovely, and biased. This is a thoughtful compliment from a stranger who I do not know and does not know me, and wants to say something interesting about the piece briefly. When this occurs, I release a deep breath I have held since I hit publish.

Compliments work.

As you climb the leadership ladder, you’ll have the idea of performance management in all its forms beaten into you. Your interpretation of what success looks like is often, “I need to give them feedback to improve effectively.” Advice, constructive advice. Sometimes critical. This is a reasonable interpretation, but half a strategy. Explaining where they need to focus is as important as clearly acknowledging when they have.

But there is another compliment out there. It’s a random selfless acknowledgement. To the stranger. I love those kicks. At work, to the person you’ve never met, interrupting This Keynote template is… stunning. To the human you’ve known forever, I don’t say it enough, but I am glad we are friends.

The rule is: people want to be seen.

You have no idea how much work goes into a human’s chosen passion. When they become adept at their work, the simplicity or approachability of their ‘product’ might give you the erroneous impression that because it’s clever, approachable, or just straight up fun, the work involved was simple, obvious, or… fun.

People want to be seen. Writing as an introvert, I can confirm the last thing I want is public recognition. I would prefer it if you slid a folded note under the desk where I am hiding. Make no eye contact. People are a lot of work for me. The reason I spend so much time writing it down is that I don’t want to explain it to you face-to-face.

But.

I am deeply interested in your folded note. Just tuck it under my foot.