Willpowerless Publishing

You begin each day with a limited reserve of willpower. You burn some each time you fight distractions from long-term goals.

Like me, you might wake up itching to explore and experiment, getting your hands dirty and seeing where it leads.

Most of the time, that means writing code. Sometimes you're using tools you're an expert in, and other times you've never touched them before.

You don't quit until you've scratched the itch and learned something interesting.

Sometimes you'll have something to show for it; other times, you realize your idea was broken to begin with.

What you've learned could benefit someone – perhaps not today, but maybe tomorrow or later this week.

Yet, you never actually share. When you try to publish your thoughts, you get stuck in an endless loop of revisions, draining your willpower before you can hit "send."

Motivation is a mirage. Don't gaslight yourself. Develop discipline or cancel your plans. Never depend on systems that demand willpower.

Are You Serious?

I've come up with a strategy that removes willpower from the equation, which includes:

  • Daily practice
  • A familiar workflow
  • External editing support
  • Automation

Daily Practice

Forget the ceremony; share something every day. By utilizing a familiar workflow and collaborating with ChatGPT, daily posts become achievable.

Familiar Workflow

To make daily posts achievable, the publishing process must be as effortless as possible. I've been maintaining daily work-log entries since late 2022, so I'm very comfortable writing Markdown in a text editor.

External Editing Support

To avoid the frustration of self-editing, I rely on ChatGPT as my editor, making the process more efficient and enjoyable.

cat willpowerless-publishing.mdx | chatblade -p edit > willpowerless-publishing-edit1.mdx

Automation

Originality is a must in your first draft and edits. What you share should be your work, and you should be imposing in how you constrain ChatGPT while editing.

For the rest, automate it.

This site uses Next.js + Markdown, and it's hosted on Vercel. Deploying is a matter of committing and running git push.

I've even removed the work from writing commit messages. OpenCommit writes them for me, and then runs git push.

oc

We'll see how this goes 🤞 See you tomorrow!