One Year Later… A Story of Slow-Growth
Reaction to... One Year of Blogging?
It’s hard to believe that a whole year has gone by.
When I first came across the “Facebook memory” reminding me it had been a year since I first created my blog, Kaleidoscopic Thoughts, two unwavering sensations passed through me: shame and guilt.
I expected to progress further and achieve better results than what I have done up to now.
In fact, I set out on this journey with high expectations—back then I didn’t think they were unrealistic, nor did I think that I was being delusional. You see, when I first conceived Kaleidoscopic Thoughts I envisioned myself writing and publishing piece after piece at a steady pace. Every. Single. Week.
I certainly felt that this would be a manageable task. How difficult could it possibly be to alternate between articles, literature reviews/opinion pieces and prose on rotation for fifty-two straight weeks? The answer: VERY difficult.
Yet, I really believed that it would be different considering the circumstances: we’ve been living amidst a pandemic for a year now, so I thought that since there were lockdown and social distancing measures in place, I’d churn out a lot of work on a regular basis.
While I have managed to make some progress since March last year, it felt marginal in comparison to the amount of time that has now passed by us.
Yeah, I know I shouldn’t feel disheartened—especially since I’ve been working a lot on my craft behind the scenes. I wanted my reaction to be different when I saw the memory pop up in my Facebook feed, but I know why I reacted that way: it’s because I’ve entrenched myself in high standards of work ethic for most of my life. If I didn’t have anything tangible to show for my efforts—some results that I can share with the world through the blog—how will anyone know what I’ve achieved in the past year? Have I even achieved anything in the past year?
I know this is a toxic mindset to have. After all, this was never meant to be about seeking out validation from an audience. I know that many may not care about what I’m currently doing, since they’re all busy living their lives. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel like a failure in the moment.
Despite some recent changes in my mentality, it’s abundantly clear that I still have a long way to go on this personal journey.
I’ll explain in more detail.
I want to break down what has happened behind the curtain on my writing journey thus far; why things haven’t gone the way I initially planned, what’s changed over the past year, and how I’m currently tackling with the struggles along the way.
Quantity Or Quality?: A Vicious Cycle of Perfectionism
The best place to start is my initial mindset going into this passion project of mine.
From the very beginning with this blog, I’d been mindlessly obsessing about quantity over quality. As if I had to operate on the expectations of self-entrepreneurship and hustle-culture, churning out material like any content creator trying to remain relevant in today’s society.
I believed that success was ingrained in a workaholic lifestyle, and I had no choice but to attempt to output content every single damn week. Even though I stretched my creative endeavours to first of all conceive a weekly piece and then write it, I always felt stifled. I knew in the back of my mind that I couldn’t keep this up permanently.
Things fell apart quickly after that.
When that weekly-piece venture failed [immediately in the following month after launch] and one missed week became two… I readjusted my target: a piece every fortnight. That failed as well... It got pushed back to a monthly quota—a single piece published every month—only twelve pieces a year. Surely, that’s manageable, right?
Wrong.
Even with meticulously planned deadlines to hit our goals, we somehow get in our own way. Between studying writing courses, working on a myriad of prose projects, and churning out ‘relevant’ blog content, I was stretching myself pretty thin. There became an overwhelming number of deadlines to meet every week. So instead, I adopted a semi-flexible deadline approach: if I didn’t finish a task in a set time frame, then I’d tell myself that is “perfectly okay”—I’ll eventually finish it someday in the near future—as long as it’s five days from now.
In retrospect, I deluded myself by thinking this was a healthy approach to planning. Especially since there were a lot of responsibilities to manage every day. Needless to say, I struggled to hit the monthly quota. Even when I gave myself this leniency and devoted extra time to finishing blog pieces, it never felt like it was enough. Instead, I’d still try to rush things and inevitably get frustrated with how slow the process of it all became.
Eventually, my energy and morale dwindled under this sheer pressure.
This neurotic fixation with quantity dismantled my writer’s spirit.
Then, I thought that if I shifted my mindset to the other end of the spectrum—quality, with less emphasis on quantity—I’d still get some more content published, even if it didn’t surmount to a monthly quota.
After all, quality is more important, right?
However, the emphasis on quality can become a hindrance as well. Especially if you’re still working with a toxic mindset to begin with.
At the time, I didn’t realise that I’d be battling against sardonic perfectionism. Even though I added a further degree of flexibility into my work routines, I still struggled a lot.
Not only was I juggling an exponential, overwhelming number of projects at this point in late Spring of 2020, but I was also not finishing them. I certainly tried, but the issue that arose now was that I never felt satisfied with what I produced: every story or article that I wrote didn’t feel good enough. Good enough for who? Well, the reader of course. In retrospect, I deluded myself during this period (yet again), thinking that external validation wasn’t a critical influence on my works. However, it was the opposite: it became a prominent, indulgent crutch.
I wanted every piece to be “quality-controlled”. I wanted every piece to be close to perfection—not because I didn’t want any criticism or opinions on my work—in fact, I wanted to get feedback from readers so I could improve my skills and abilities as a writer.
However, it was more a matter of pride. On one hand, I honestly felt that if my work isn’t perfect [to my standards], then readers would be disappointed and I may end up with a lot of rejection—no one would continue reading my portfolio of work. On the other hand, I wanted to prove my capabilities. I knew that I had some potential, and I wanted to squeeze out every ounce of it. Yet, the stories themselves never felt polished enough… there was always something to improve in them. They could always be undeniably better.
Hence, why anyone perusing my blog will notice that some sections are looking particularly sparse these days...
As time progressed, more contentless weeks flew by and the summer of 2020 began, the more internal pressure and stress boiled under the surface.
Enter crippling anxiety and self-loathing.
I lost all confidence and self-esteem in my abilities. All I had to do was publish and send out any written piece onto my blog. In retrospect, they didn’t have to be perfect. Literally anything would have sufficed back then. Anything. Just something. But it was too late by then. Ego pummeled this rationale out of me long ago.
Eventually, my health and wellbeing suffered for a while, and intoxicating amounts of procrastination during those next several months took form in cooking a diverse range of cuisines. If I couldn’t be productive in one area of my life, perhaps I could be in another?
From mid-May to August, four contentless months went by—I published nothing on the blog.
Meanwhile, I invested time and effort in a few creative projects (one of them being my longest short story to date: 60+ pages), I never sent them out into the world for others to see. They remain... unpublished. I cherished them too much and by this point, I knew that [due to self-worth issues] I wouldn’t be able to handle any feedback. Anything could cripple my creativity; A gentle whisper of a negative opinion would dismantle my self-esteem. How strange it is that someone's mind can change drastically in a matter of months.
Then in early September, I finally plucked up the courage and resurfaced with a piece, and a promise to do better with my consistency [in publishing pieces]. I had written the piece, Rise and Shine, on a fanciful whim the previous day in a single sitting. This came as a shock to me. But it engrossed and fascinated me, and I felt compelled to send it out into the world. I allowed it to take flight and spread its wings.
The passion for posting my writing became reignited.
Yet, the same dilemmas arose, as I strived for some sort of balance. Different forms of resistance kept beating me. Again and again, I kept struggling with this. Even though at times I begrudgingly accepted that the [writing] process will take longer than expected for certain projects, it still felt like bitter defeat if I couldn’t keep up with the hustle-culture attitude and keep on churning out the end-products frequently.
My most recent piece was on Christmas day last year. Since then, not another piece has been deemed worthy yet to go online.
I guess a big reason for all of this is because we’re all perpetually exposed to this work-life mentality that I keep referring to: whether it’s from YouTube content creators I watch, Instagram influencers and entrepreneurs on my feed, to fellow creatives, artists and writers who seem to relentlessly churn out content every other day. I couldn’t figure it out: did they have impeccable organisational skills and planned months in advance, or were they disciplined like warriors and grinded each and every day—or was it a bit of both?
I obviously know that social media feeds are seen through a narrow lens—all media feeds tend to filter in the limited scopes of someone’s life. We never get to see the finer details, the day-to-day grinding and endless toils they deal with—we only see the big picture— the goal or milestone they’ve accomplished at the end of their struggle.
Although I understand this, it still doesn’t make it any easier to be subjected to it daily. I always felt like I had to work harder. I always felt like I wasn’t doing enough. Even when I actually had finished projects stagnating in my folders, they weren’t good enough. Everything needed more polishing. Therefore, nothing felt finished in my head.
How did I let this bleed deeply into my state of mind?
It is because this neurotic mentality of the daily grind bleeds into your life subconsciously: at first, it feels empowering—a motivational tool to keep me working; then it becomes detrimental to my self-worth. I allowed self-doubts to creep up on me, taunting and teasing away till I don’t even know whether anything I do is good enough. I can’t imagine I’m alone in this way of thinking either.
Despite this, the constant working-on-the-go attitude is highly praised and in fact celebrated in all aspects of life. It’s considered a good thing that we’re always “keeping busy”; and when we’re not, we’re “lazy”, “pathetic”, “not doing anything with our lives” and “wasting our time”. Why? How is this a healthy attitude to life?
I had no choice but to re-examine it all and figure out things for myself.
Eventually, it became abundantly clear to me that a results-based approach (focused on treating content like products in a factory line) was not the answer here. Sure, quantity was never the right direction to take in the first place. Neither was quality—at least in the “perfectionist lens” I perceived everything through at the time.
I had to find a different approach. A better mindset that would be suited to long-term growth. I had to steer into a new course.
Shift in Mindset: The Power of Slow-Growth
Focusing my self-worth on any metrics related to my blog was not leading me anywhere. So, what did I have to do? How would I unhinge myself from this toxic relationship with hustle culture and the workaholic attitude that I harboured? Especially since it became unproductive and conducive to harming my health and well-being.
I started thinking about the bigger picture.
Much like anyone who wants to pursue a calling or develop any habit that leads to long-term growth, I had to make small incremental steps towards my goals. Mastery in any craft takes a tremendous amount of time: I was not simply investing in months of diligent practise, but in fact years, perhaps even decades of my life to something I want to pursue (regardless of where it leads me).
Rather than sprinting towards instant gratification [by manufacturing blog pieces], I opted for the slow burn: I knew that there is no such thing as fast-track success and that I had to take my time with progress.
But there is a caveat to this shift in mindset; no one tells you that the nature of progress is a spiralling curve, not strictly linear. More importantly, progress isn’t always visible to the naked eye either. You don’t see gradual changes every day, and often there are many setbacks that impede progress entirely.
I was investing my time learning and studying everything to do with the writing craft: from the fundamentals about grammar and style, to learning about the foundations of storytelling from renowned authors. I spent more time immersing myself in a variety of literature, delving into different genres, understanding and evaluating what I thought were the “pros-and-cons” to each story told in-between the pages of a book. I practised diligently in my own stories, building characters and settings, outlining plot points, writing from different perspectives and experimenting with different styles, all while I was finding my voice.
Even while I was shifting my time to the dedicated aspects of reading, studying and writing daily, setbacks started to obstruct my path.
This is due to the fact that the writing process itself is a complicated, haphazard journey into unknown territory. I think when you tell most people that you’re a writer, they immediately conjure up this fantasy: you sitting down at a table and writing on a laptop/notepad in a café or office for endless hours, relaxed and poised with all of your free time spent looking out the window, enraptured in daydreams, sometimes pondering away at a blank page and sometimes writing down a sentence or two, sipping casually on a hot beverage like a pompous artiste. They believe that we have an easy, carefree, lush life. They believe that we don’t have a real job.
Trust me, there is much more to it than many realise.
Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned as a writer along the way: it [the writing process] involves endless hours of research, learning about a range of subjects so that you become a renaissance man, and can give credibility to your work when writing about certain topics; it involves meticulous outlining of the plot and ensuring that story arcs are tightly weaved into the main narrative (without glaring plot holes), developing well-rounded characters and a detailed setting so they can appear real and authentic to the reader; it involves writing a first draft—knowing that you’ll snip and tweak bits here and there—and may become directionless with writer’s block as you figure out which scene to write on any given day—then getting alpha-reader feedback; it involves re-writing multiple drafts again and again (because there is always something that can be written better)… till it is polished enough, then having the courage to get beta-reader feedback from a pool of people; it involves editing grammar and tweaking structure, until it is finalised and you can eventually publish the piece you’ve worked on for countless weeks/months/years… Then you move onto the next project and repeat the process.
Also, this process doesn’t happen in linear phases either… it fluctuates all the time between different areas, depending on what needs to be done that particular day. Sometimes, you realise you don’t know enough about a topic yet and have to delve into more research, or you have to tweak a character's backstory etc. Basically, if you’re not prepared for a major overhaul with every single project you undertake, you’ll be overwhelmed quickly. A strenuous amount of patience, endurance and resilience is needed.
This usually applies to any piece of writing that I do. Even if it is an article piece—the process is slightly tweaked with a few obvious omissions—but it is more or less the same, since I want everything I write to be meaningful.
Naturally at times I’d hit a dead end in some area, or some of my previous work felt redundant the next day. Then there is the matter of consistency. If I missed a day or two, I noticed that my skills became rusty and I had to hone and refine my abilities yet again. Sometimes, life gets chaotic and I get drawn elsewhere from the writer’s chair… a few weeks pass and, ironically, even though I have worked on things related to writing, I have not put any words to paper.
Regardless of this frustrating cycle, I knew that I must trust the process and see things through.
I had to intuitively stick to a reasonable pace, going much slower than I liked, instead of rushing the process to get things done briskly. Otherwise, I’d find things too daunting and I’d be defeated. Even if it meant intentionally not publishing anything for a while on my blog, I had to remain on this path.
After all, this shift to a slow-growth mindset was never an excuse to be lazy, but rather a method to provide sustainable results.
What I’ve Done Differently (Since December)
First of all, I had to understand my “why power”: something I’ve heard several times [in different variations] from YouTube content creators out there such as Sadia Badiei from Pick Up Limes, Thomas Frank, and Matt D’Avella (to name a few). What was my reason for committing to this journey? In hindsight, this was a way of finding my intrinsic motivation—reminding myself that I do this because I love the writing process and everything it entails—it enthrals me. While at the same time I was eliminating extrinsic motivation (seeking out “reward” in the form of overnight success and validation from an audience).
Secondly, once I established this for myself, I then had to readjust my daily routine so that I could sustainably stick to this in the long term. Additionally, to cultivate a slow-growth mindset, I had to lay out some ground rules for myself:
1) Health and wellbeing are the main priorities
I had learned by this point that my energy, focus, willpower, creativity and inspiration are all finite resources. They get drained frequently, so I shouldn’t exert myself to the breaking point and risk burn-out. Rest was paramount to progress: knowing intuitively when I should take a breath was a crucial factor in my efforts (as well as for retaining my sanity).
It is vital to manage my stamina during this process. So between active working hours, I’d always make sure to proactively schedule time for myself to avoid built-up stress and frustration.
A well-timed break means more productivity in the long-term.
2) I must keep myself accountable
Lately, daily schedules have become a major catalyst in my productivity. The morning ritual of planning out my agenda fuelled my focus, while prioritising tasks on my to-do list according to importance ignited my concentration. At the beginning of every day, I knew this ritual was paramount to my productivity (regardless of success and failure). I also sometimes shared my intentions for the week with someone else, which helped me hold myself more accountable.
I didn’t want myself to conjure up any form of excuse, unless my intentions for the day would be detrimental to my health and wellbeing. There is a distinction between laziness and apathy, after all. Therefore, the sole intention here was to defeat any forms of resistance (I’m looking at you, procrastination) that came my way. Self-discipline instigated the difference between taking action today or yielding to resistance and saying, “I can’t be bothered, I’ll leave it for tomorrow.”
3) Only do 1% every day
Here is where things get difficult. It is so easy to fall into workaholic patterns and assume that we could do it all and more: we almost always overestimate how much we can do in a single day, often piling on too many tasks on our to-do lists. I doubt many people listen intuitively to their energy levels and willpower regularly; they fluctuate daily and we have to bear in mind that the resources within ourselves are finite and can deplete rapidly.
By focusing on smaller tasks, I found that I could remain persistent in my endeavours: whether it involved studying a course or working on a project. Instead of telling myself to finish studying half of a course in a given week, I’d break it down into chunks, tackling maybe a lesson a day/over a couple of days at a time. In the same instance, whenever I worked on a new story, I’d decide to work on a particular scene, instead of trying to finish a rough draft by the end of the day. Using this method of breaking tasks into smaller chunks has also helped alleviate any stress (from past experiences), since I knew I had the time to take things gradually at my own comfortable pace.
I don’t want to go overboard while adopting a slow-growth lifestyle, so I had to carefully monitor my input. As a reminder of this rule, I constantly ask myself, ‘Am I doing too much?’, ‘Have I set unrealistic expectations for today?’. More often than not, I have to scale things back and tweak my schedule for the week.
4) Get acquainted with flexible planning
Things always take longer than we expect. More often than not, I’d never finish tasks, projects and/or achieve certain goals in the estimated time period I set for myself.
This lack of accomplishment inevitably made me feel like a failure and I’d get frustrated to the point of wanting to give up. I knew that I had to stop with the self-criticism (easier said than done).
I had to stop demanding that I do things in “x” amount of time and instead began asking should I be rushing this deadline?
Progress takes a considerable amount of time—I had to embrace that concept if I was going to successfully adopt this slow-growth mindset. I allowed myself to set buffers between deadlines, since projects and goals usually require an extra reserve of patience. Eventually things will get done, just not according to my predicted timeline.
There is also more in life than work. I’m not referring to rest and leisure in the schedule, but the day-day errands, house chores, and personal commitments we can’t reschedule. Due to this, there will be times when I miss a day… and that is perfectly okay.
I abide by the two-day rule: something else I learned along the way while integrating a slow-growth mindset gradually into my lifestyle. Essentially, you give yourself permission to take a day break, but never take two days off in a row. Even if on the second day I do something incredibly miniscule—i.e. writing for five minutes—that is still progress, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.
5) Failure is part of the growth
I’m going to fail. A lot. In fact, I’ll probably fail a lot more than I succeed.
That is okay.
This is a learning process that will happen throughout my writing journey. In fact, it generally happens a lot in life.
All I have to do is remember that I am enough right now.
Even if something that I invested a lot of time in doesn’t pan out and I get frustrated… I have to remind myself that there is a learning opportunity hidden in there somewhere. I just have to look for it.
There’ll be plenty of rejections. There’ll be many rough drafts of stories tossed aside. I just have to take it in stride, because even if I do everything I possibly can right, it doesn't necessarily guarantee any success.
It does suck to tell myself this and remind myself about the importance of failure. I know that shame and disappointment are not far behind in every failure. But I have to embrace those feelings. Sometimes, it’s a gut punch that lingers forever. However, we all learn more from our failures in life, than the successes that come along the way.
So, I have to remain persistent, practice patience and stay true to the course.
6) Reward my efforts
This is non-negotiable.
While I’m not using this as my incentive for this journey—it’s not an extrinsic motivation that keeps my drive—but it is rather a form of appreciation and gratitude for my efforts. I reward myself with small things like a treat meal or enjoying a video game/board game, perhaps watching a movie or a tv show, or even spending time with loved ones.
I’m passionate about my pursuit for writing, however, if I devoted all my time only to work, I know I’d be breaking the first rule I outlined above (no compromise on health and wellbeing). I’d also quickly burn out and everything I’ve done to shift to a slow-growth mindset will become inefficient.
Managing my rewards daily and celebrating the little wins along the way keeps me sane and avoids any form of self-sabotage to my endeavours.
When the milestones come, I’m going to celebrate the hard work and effort that I’ve put into the journey along the way. As I fondly remember a quote from a writing course taught by James Patterson: “Take the cup of joy!”
***
So these are the ground rules I laid out for myself. Now, they definitely weren’t easy to implement—in fact, it was so goddamn hard to keep to this because my drive was telling me to do an all-or-nothing approach… which would be detrimental to myself in the long term.
Everyone wants to sprint towards their ambitions and goals, no one wants to take things at a leisurely pace. But I knew that this shift in mindset was not only important, it was healthier as well.
I won’t lie though, in the beginning it became daunting trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to achieve every week, let alone every month. I felt directionless, as there was (and still is) so much work to do, but I had to knuckle down and start somewhere. My to-do lists and schedules started with vague inclinations at first, but then things eventually fell into place. Having done this for a while now, I have a better grasp on what I want to work on every week, by trusting my intuition and working at this improved, leisurely pace.
However, every day can be different… each one has its fair share of struggles. On most days, I just had to begin before I succumbed to a state of overthinking paralysis—the ultimate killer to productivity—as it would stifle and maim my creativity. Otherwise, I reckon a lack of any notion of a plan or even a daily schedule to guide me would leave me feeling overwhelmed and distressed once again.
Finally, the plan was set into motion and since December I’ve now taken small incremental steps towards my goals daily. When it comes to the slow-growth mindset, consistency is key.
After all, it’s not about getting my shot to make it big someday, but rather appreciating each and every moment along the way.
Most importantly, I’m content and happy with where I am right now.
Final thoughts
I wanted to be here today boasting about the impressive milestone of consistently writing 24+ pieces on my blog. I wanted to be here beaming with pride and satisfaction, revelling at the finished efforts I’ve produced on my writing journey thus far. I wanted to rush success and gain instant gratification.
But things took much longer than I could ever anticipate.
Instead, I see a sparse site craving for some attention, awaiting to savour and flaunt new published pieces to an audience. Instead, I reflect on all the what if’s, thinking about whether I did things wrong during the past year or whether I should’ve completely disregarded the perfectionist nature much earlier. Instead, I deal with a lot of crippling self-doubt, wondering if I’ll ever be worthy of the milestones I want to achieve.
However, that being said, there is a silver-lining to all of this.
I’ve taken an incredible risk with the opportunity in front of me: to embrace and integrate a slow-growth mindset into my journey, allowing myself to progress at my own pace. Sure, there’ll be plenty of ups-and-downs along the way, and at times I’ll always wonder whether this is the right approach to take. But it feels right to me at this very moment.
I’m satisfied with what I’ve done so far behind the curtain and I should be celebrating for this reason and for many others. I’m celebrating my consistent endeavour at the writing craft in the long term. I’m celebrating the fact that I show up every day to do the work. I’m celebrating the small victories of finishing things in my own flexible deadlines.
I’m celebrating my story of slow-growth.
At the end of the day, I want to cultivate my talents and abilities so I can tell spellbinding stories that age gracefully over time: the ones that tell fundamental truths about our human nature; the ones that resonate with us on an intimate level; the kind of stories that change and nurture someone’s way of thinking, helping them grow and perhaps even guide their understanding about the world we live in.
But it’ll take time to get there.
For now, I’ll settle for expressing myself freely, using my voice to share current works stagnating in my folders (the ones I’ve been afraid to share with an audience)—these stories will have their turn breathing on the page very soon.
After all, it’s about having a voice and using it. To be vocal about the things that matter to me. To tell stories that captivate my heart and enrapture my imagination.
Finally, I wanted to write this piece to myself as a reminder that slow-growth is vital and nourishing on this journey. I am exactly where I want to be right now. Even if it won’t always feel that way. At times, I know I’ll get frustrated, stressed and even overwhelmed—it’s daunting how much there is to do already… But, I’m going to trust the process and see where it takes me.
I hope that you, wherever you are reading this, will have the patience to bear with me. Eventually, there’ll be much more content and perhaps there’ll be a following of readers like yourself who believe that it will be worth the wait. I certainly hope so, anyway.
Much like the saying goes: “Good things come to those who wait.”
Until next time then,
- Amaan