Daniel RendoxIf you’re starting out in writing, you probably have little idea about what to blog about and where to do it, but the last thing you want to do is to follow my mistakes. Take a look at my journey, and find answers to these questions.
Table of contents
Starting out 👶
In March this year, I registered on DEV community. I vaguely imagined what was the actual reason for doing that. But what I knew for sure, was that coding alone, I wouldn’t go far. The initial plan was to share my programming notes to possibly help others and gain followers. This way, I wanted to show myself to the world and meet new people.
To realize these plans, I started making tutorials about what I was learning. That’s because no one would’ve read my notes unless I’d made guides from them. And I discovered that these were not easy to make. It, first of all, took A LOT of time. But being goal-oriented, I tried to make everything to get them popular, to read how I can make my tutorials better, improve them in various ways, learn about SEO, and even switch the platform.
The mistake 🤦♂️
But that approach turned out to be a mistake. I found myself learning things only for the sake of making tutorials. In fact, now I have bad impressions of multithreading in Java, only because I spent a lot of time on that. Although this knowledge will certainly come in handy, I could be so much better off doing what I do now.
I’ve loved writing since my childhood. But, honestly, I didn’t really enjoy the process when I was writing those articles. In addition, except for the one that was successful, they didn’t get very popular and useful for others. So I decided to turn up to @jmfayard for some advice. He told me a very interesting thing that got stuck in my head for a long time:
On your blog, you are currently writing about race exceptions, threads, that kind of Java things.
If I had magical growth hacking techniques, and would make your blog more popular, what kind of people would you attract?
The kind of people whose primary interest are race exceptions in Java and such technico-technical questions.
There is no point in going faster in the wrong direction. Start writing about you and your projects. Write for and with your real audience.
I was relieved that I found a solution to my problem and that I no longer needed to write those tutorials. And it seems very logical, cause what you do should be aligned with your goals. My goals are:
I want to meet new people and showcase my work to others. My dream is to work in a team of passionate developers who are friends with each other and work together.
I think that communication is one of the key things on the way to success, and a very important one if I want that dream to come true. Attracting people that are interested in me, not in my tutorials, makes so much sense here. And while I chose the right blogging platform that meets my goals, I wasn’t doing the right things there.
Reflection 🤔
However, my initial plans and ideas didn’t come from nowhere. And if you do the same thing, you probably didn’t come up with this idea yourself.
Lots of people make tutorials and succeed. There are many good educators whom I follow and who give out very helpful information in an understandable way, and help lots of other devs. I think, there is some part of their followers, who are interested in them and are ready to work with them if they invite. And the bigger audience they have, the more people are in that part.
Educating work assures a potential recruiter about your experience in a certain field. Teaching others is also known as a great learning technique. What if I possess a latent passion for educating and if I make things right, I'll enjoy the process and achieve my desires?
So, I was torn between these two, by sight, contradicting choices. I couldn’t start doing both because I usually do something only when I clearly see what my goals are and how I achieve them.
The common sense pushed me to choose the second approach. But, I didn’t know what I could write about myself and my projects, unlike when it comes to writing about technical things.
Meanwhile, life went on, I engaged on DEV, and once found a post about the Virtual Coffee community. I was interested by the described level of communication. There were regular Zoom conferences and a Slack channel where people could support each other, give and get advice, talk about their wins and challenges, and work together. I was really impressed by how all of these meet my goals, I could also get an opportunity to speak to native English speakers for the first time in my life. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I was approved to enter!
But the reason I’m telling you that is that Virtual Coffee was exactly what caused me to discover the learning and building in public concept. Before that, I’d, honestly, found things like the following weird:
What was your win this week?
Michael Tharrington for The DEV Team ・ Jul 28 '23
I thought, like, “Who cares about what you are learning or building?” and didn’t understand the guys who shared this info.
People are selfish. They wanna find something valuable for themselves in your articles.
But the warmth of the Virtual Coffee community in their monthly challenge, caused me to do some more research on this topic.
Learning and building in public 🧠
It appears that:
- some people actually do care;
- that’s exactly you who should not care whether somebody cares or not.
I tried to see things from a different perspective. What do people who share their progress get? Turns out there are plenty of benefits:
You document your progress 📝
You don’t just blindly go in an indefinite direction. You track your progress by regularly writing about what you achieved, what setbacks you encountered, and what your future plans are.
When you face up to a challenge, you can look back, appreciate how far you've come, and how many adversities you’ve already encountered, and get determined and motivated to continue.
Moreover, it may be even beneficial to your career, cause future employers will see the evidence that you've gained the knowledge over time.
You meet new people, give and get help along the way
Sharing your journey sparks a conversation, and lets you meet new people. Talking about ourselves is what we are usually doing in daily conversations, that's what creates new relationships.
There are so many people, who faced and will face the challenges you encounter, so you may give help to less experienced, and get it from more experienced.
You make notes about what you’re studying, which helps you remember it.
As explained in the “Make It Stick” book, recalling what you’re learning helps to put that knowledge into long-term memory, and is a great studying technique.
Everything gets forgotten over time though, no matter how hard you try. But taking notes minimizes forgetting. It will be also easier to recall the knowledge if you have notes.
This ignites your motivation to continue learning and building.
To my mind, the most important benefit of this activity is that making some public promises forces you to continue learning and building consistently. If I promise to post at least 5 tweets and 1 article a week documenting my progress, I’ll not break this promise. That’s because people will expect me to do that, and if I don’t, they’ll see me as a not responsible person.
You build your brand, but that’s secondary.
Your blog may get many views, after all. If that happens, you achieve all of these goals. Your next project will get seen and used, your future employers will appreciate your audience, your knowledge, and your experience.
However, this benefit is secondary. You write for yourself in the first place. You actually get most of the benefits even if you do it privately, publicity only introduces some more cool things and motivates you. Following this approach and trying to become famous is the last thing you wanna spend time on. Here is the reasoning ⬇️
BTW, I also started to notice that even educators don’t post only about technical things. Talking about their journeys and giving advice to other devs is an integral part of their work. For example: Florian Walther, Donn Felker, Rahul Pandey.
If you want to start 📣
If you plan to start learning and building in public, definitely check out this post ⬇️ for lots of valuable advice from an experienced person.
What blogging platform?
Speaking about the blogging platform, I’ll never regret choosing DEV, cause thanks to this platform, I found Virtual Coffee. I feel like DEV is the most suited for my needs.
If you, like many people, also consider Medium, DEV is about the community, whereas on Medium you’re a product. They aim for their membership program. I don't want my articles to ever become paid.
There are other platforms, but if you're on DEV and like it here, why not stay? For people like me, I see little benefit in cross-posting unless you have your own website or cross-post to LinkedIn.
I think, having a personal website is great in terms of promoting, being a better specialist in the eyes of an employer, keeping all your work in one place, and owning it.
But blogging on DEV is also a great thing to do. Don't wait until you get a website or any other resource that stops you from doing what you want.
What am I going to do? 📅
All of those look appealing, but what did you decide at the end, Daniel?
Well, first of all, I’m certain that tutorials are not a way to go. That’s still a great way if you want to be an educator, but I don’t.
And if you’re in a similar position, I would encourage you to consider learning and building in public instead of making tutorials because of these two reasons:
1. Teaching is not the best learning technique!
There are many people who will tell you the opposite. Lies!
There has never been a better learning technique than practice.
University professors may know more, but they don’t do a good job if they don’t practice in side projects, or don't work at some company. On the contrary, good educators often work as freelancers or make their own projects.
I don’t argue that teaching is great. It's the best after practice. It's great when you quickly explain a learned concept to your mate, but a different story when you spend a lot of time when you could be better off applying that knowledge to personal projects.
2. It takes A LOT of time for little gain
As I see it, to get successful in educating, you should do that seriously and firmly by growing your social media, publishing consistently, eventually transitioning to YouTube, etc. Otherwise, you will not get popular and will not make a profit from this. Therefore IMO, this does not worth that amount of time.
In addition, there are lots of people who are already in that business. They are doing well. The are a lot of great learning resources nowadays. So there is a lot of competition and if you want your guides to really help people, you should make them better than existing ones.
Plans for the future
However, understand me correctly, if I’m learning a difficult topic and I don’t seem to find any resources that would explain it well, I’ll certainly make my own article with an explanation. That’s what I did in this post ⬇️
On the other hand, the concept of learning and building in public combines almost all the benefits of talking about your journey and writing about technical things. This approach is the most suited for beginners. That’s what I plan to do in the first place.
And I’ll try to make these posts helpful for other people so that they could benefit from my journey and get some advice.
And there are also general topics when you write about your experience in life, programming, etc. This, obviously, attracts more people than some tutorials about Race conditions. And these people are my real audience. That’s what I plan to do in the second place.
Challenge 💪
For me, this idea of learning and building in public seems very exciting. This really stirs up my productivity soul, taking into account that last time I’m trying to stabilize my schedule. So I wanna take the following challenge:
- At the end of each day, at least 5 days a week I’ll post on my Twitter about what I’ve learned and made today.
- And over on DEV, I'll write at least 1 summary article every week, talking about what I did, what I learned, my wins, and difficulties.
My SMART goal
Specific: I want to learn Android to get a freelance job and create an Android app to practice my skills, get myself organized, and help other people.
Measurable: I'll spend at least 40 hours a week learning and working.
Attainable: I'm already familiar with Jetpack Compose, Kotlin, and the View system, so I have about 30% knowledge of Android.
Relevant: After I achieve my goal I see further development in Kotlin multiplatform, Android is widely used and in demand, and I’ll certainly get relevant knowledge that’ll come in handy in my career.
Time-bound: I’ll give myself 2 months. In this period of time, I should have the app with the basic functionality.
The challenge starts today!
Conclusion
So write about you and your projects. Absolutely recommend considering learning and building in public. Don't care much about getting famous, write for yourself in the first place.
With that being said, I think I'm on the right way now, I hope you're too, my dear reader. Either way, let's just do what we like and follow our passion.
