Too Much Pressure

I set my standards too high for blog posts. I know that they are too high because I don’t publish them. It’s too much pressure! (It’s got to stop, it’s got to stop) And a cool thing: I was magically able to write blog posts again after publishing this one!

Image of black and white album cover from the Selecter for Too Much Pressure

Here’s my usual strategy for writing a blog post:

  1. Almost finish a blog post on my blog, in WordPress.
  2. Read over it the next day, make some tweaks.
  3. Read over it the next day and think, “You know what? This is really good. I should submit it as an article for CSS-Tricks or similar.”
  4. Move it to Dropbox Paper and work on it for 3-5 hours on a Saturday, restructuring the entire thing.
  5. Work on it a bit the next day and think, “Okay nice, getting there!”.
  6. A couple days later, “Oh damn…there’s a long way to go. This is all over the place…”
  7. A couple days later, “This is no longer fun. I should have kept it a blog post.”

It’s too much pressure! And nothing ends up happening.

Too much pressure to write great blog posts, too much pressure to write great tweets, too much pressure to work on side projects and participate in Slack channels.

On one hand, this pressure – 90% a personal problem, let me make that clear – ensures a certain level of quality, on the other hand, it is utterly paralyzing and I’m really not sure how much difference in the quality it actually makes.

Here’s one of my favorite classic Ska tracks from the Selecter about this very topic…or close enough:

Too much pressure
Too much pressure
Too much pressure (It’s got to stop, it’s got to stop)
Too much pressure (It’s got to stop, it’s got to stop)

🙌