Years ago, I watched an interview with Derek Sivers where he talked about a friend who had passed away without sharing much of his knowledge with the world in writing. Derek described this friend as someone he deeply looked up to for guidance — and when the news came, one of his first thoughts was about all that knowledge, now gone forever.
That story stuck with me. Derek even mentioned the idea of building a trust to keep someone’s knowledge alive long after they’re gone. I found it fascinating — but also sobering.
The Chapter That Got Fully Highlighted
In Derek’s book How to Live, there’s a chapter on creation. “How to live? Create.” I’ve read that book several times over the years, and each time I highlight different parts. The last time I went through it, I realized I had highlighted every single line of that chapter.
It resonated because I’ve been creating — blog posts, videos, music — for years. But that chapter pushed me to ask: am I getting everything out?
Derek’s message is direct: don’t leave anything on the table. Live so that when you’re gone, there’s nothing left unsaid. He puts it something like, “You can improve something bad. You can’t improve nothing.” Get the idea out. Even if it’s rough. Even if it’s not fully formed. Because then you can iterate on it, refine it, or simply move on knowing it exists outside your head.
When you're gone, your work shows who you were.
Not your intentions.
Not what you took in.
Only what you put out.
Tracking Creation vs. Consumption
In the last quarter of 2024, I started tracking how much time I spend creating versus consuming — mostly reading. I wanted to make sure creation wins.
A year and a half later, I’m glad I did. The ratio is healthy. I’ve been putting out videos, blog posts, short books. And because I focus on shipping ideas that aren’t fully formed yet, I get to see them in front of me. I can decide: do I want to refine this? Or am I just glad it’s out?
That shift — from holding ideas to releasing them — changed how I think about content.
Remixing and Feedback
Once ideas are out in the world, something interesting happens: I start seeing how they connect. I can remix them, combine them, build something bigger and/or better from the pieces.
And feedback has been surprising. Some of the rawest, least polished ideas are the ones that resonate most with people. That feedback becomes fuel — it motivates me to refine, to incorporate new perspectives I hadn’t considered, and sometimes to take an idea much further than I originally planned.
But none of that happens if the idea stays in my head.
The Daily Blog Post Experiment
Looking at how many blog posts I published last year — my highest ever — I decided on January 1st of this year to try something new: one blog post every day for a week.
At the end of that week, I thought: that was easy. I have more content. Let me push this to the whole month.
January 31st came around, and I’d published every single day. It didn’t take more time than I wanted. It was actually manageable.
The Process Behind It
Part of what makes this sustainable is the workflow I’ve built: voice journaling to published blog post. I’ve automated the logistics — categorizing, tagging, formatting — using AI where it makes sense. That means I spend my time on the part that matters: thinking, reflecting, getting thoughts out.
AI helps me synthesize and consolidate ideas, but the thinking is mine. Reading what comes back after AI has helped shape it actually improves my thinking further. It’s time well spent — watching my own thoughts, analyzing them, and deciding what to do with them.
Some entries become blog posts. Others are just closure — acknowledging a thought, getting it out of my head, and knowing it’s stored somewhere I can find it later if I need to.
Where the Content Comes From
People ask where all this content comes from. Three main sources:
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A journaling prompts list. I keep a running list of things I want to journal about. When I’m driving or walking, I pull up the list, pick one, and voice it out for transcription later. That’s the freshest content.
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A backlog of blogging ideas. I’ve collected ideas over years. Sometimes I revisit one from two or three years ago and realize I now have a different perspective on it. I voice my current thoughts, get the transcript, and turn it into a post.
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Meeting recordings. When I’m helping a colleague understand something — testing, BDD, event sourcing — and we’re recording the conversation, I can later pull the transcript. I ask AI to extract the questions I answered and draft posts from my responses. What could have lived and died in a single meeting now reaches a wider audience.
Looking Ahead
Will I keep this up through the end of the year? Maybe. I’m treating it as an experiment. Daily blogging works for me right now — the process supports it, the content is there, and the habit is paying off.
For how long? I don’t know. I’ll just keep going and see how far it takes me.
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