Is it new or does it suck?

Hey! Dan here. If you're an introspective person, you probably spend a lot of time asking yourself how things are going: Do I like this? Do I not?

This is a post about those questions, and when they might, paradoxically, get in the way of helping you find the things you love. I wrote it in July 2020, just as I really started to ramp up working on Every. I bumped into it recently, and it was exactly the thing I needed to read. I hope you feel the same way.

A lot of people ask me for advice on how to get started writing.

The pattern I see is fairly repetitive:

They get inspired by something. They make big plans to write: maybe it’s a newsletter, maybe it’s a book, maybe it’s a script for a movie. Then they set up their routine.

Often the routine itself isn’t bad. They’ll block time off on their calendars once a day, or a few times a week. They’ll try to focus on the process and not on the results.

They finally sit down to write. And then they make it through a week’s worth of sessions before they throw their hands up in despair.

The verdict? “Writing sucks! I can’t take it. It’s not for me!”

Writing is hard. You have to deal with so much inner chatter: is this any good? Does this idea even make sense? Where should I take it next? What if people hate it? What if no one pays attention?

The process is similar for doing pretty much any new creative thing. Starting a company is similar. Starting a new job is similar.

The key thing to realize here is that they’re all transitions — points in your life where you’re doing something different than you were before. So, mentally, they have to be treated a bit differently than in other parts of your life.

Taking your temperature

Western culture, generally, tells us we should be happy. If you’re ambitious, you expect that your work is going to be the thing that makes you happy.