One Year of Society's Backend
The lessons I've learned along the way
A year ago, I challenged myself to write at least once a week for year. I realized I wasn’t learning at the rate I wanted to and I really missed writing. I haven’t historically been a very “online” person, but I challenged myself to research a topic once a week, write about it, and publish it online.
It was also a challenge for me to stick to something for myself for an extended period of time. I have 5 young kids including two sets of identical twins. I’ve realized that I need to put effort into doing things for myself or they won’t happen.
It’s been a year and a week since I made that challenge and I’ve written ~80 articles and I’ve really enjoyed it. Thanks to all of you for supporting me.
I want to take this week to share what I’ve learned. I recommend writing a blog or newsletter to anyone to get their ideas out their and share them. It’s a great way to learn about topics (and yourself!) and meet likeminded people. I realize its tough to get started. I want to share what I’ve learned to help others get going and keep going.
Keep in mind that I never plan on writing for a living, so if your plan is to write full-time, my advice will be relatable but maybe not as helpful. If you think of advice for others, drop a comment on this article.
The Best Piece of Advice I Received
The best piece of advice I received was from another writer when I first started writing Society’s Backend. When I stuck to this piece of advice my articles were good and I enjoyed writing them. When I didn’t, my writing suffered and I felt stressed.
This advice was from Devansh. He writes Artificial Intelligence Made Simple and Technology Made Simple and has been writing for quite a bit longer than I have been. He has hundreds of thousands of subscribers so I asked him about his process. The piece of advice that stuck with me most was to be a successful writer you can’t be afraid to be selfish about your writing.
Let me explain this because it sounds counterintuitive. In the online world, people chase the content and topics that “do well”. In a feed-based system, this works because an algorithm serves your content. In a newsletter system, subscribers trust the author to provide them with the information they need. When writing a blog or newsletter, chasing trends will lead to inauthenticity (that your subscribers will notice) and your writing will suffer.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about your audience—it means the best way to care about your audience is to let them trust you to write about what you think is worth writing about. This means ignoring less important things like numbers (followers, subscribers, engagement, etc.) and focusing more on the quality of what you provide.
What I Would Change Looking Back
I wish I hadn’t let less important things distract me from what I enjoyed. It isn’t easy to ignore things that are less important especially when distribution platforms constantly highlight them for you. In fact, all platforms will try to skew your focus because its how they make money. While my focus has always been to learn and share, there were times when I allowed less important factors to impact me and I wish I hadn’t.
When I did this, I found writing to be stressful and it felt like a chore. When my focus was in the right place, I always looked forward to writing down my thoughts and talking about them with other people. To top it all off, the articles I enjoyed writing were always better received than the articles that stressed me out regardless of the topic.
To ensure this doesn’t happen anymore, I’ve written down my primary motivators and I revisit them to make sure they aren’t out of focus. I write to:
Learn the things I want to know and share them.
Meet awesome people.
Read more and think more critically.
And that’s it. As long as those things are at the center of my writing, I enjoy it. If you haven’t written down your motivators, I suggest it. Drop them in a comment below so you can revisit them as needed.
My Collaborations
Writing has afforded me the opportunity to meet and learn from some really great people. I’m grateful for all these people and extend my thanks for the impact they’ve had on me. I’ll start with my collaborations this year.
I’ve written about online machine learning as a guest post for Devansh:
I’ve written about social media algorithms with Jaskaran:
And I’ve written about the best ways to use AI to summarize AI research papers as a guest post for Michael Spencer:
Thanks to all of you for lending me your platform and trusting me with your audience. I’d also like to shout out some excellent writers whose articles I always read:
Sebastian Raschka, PhD writing Ahead of AI
Nathan Lambert writing Interconnects
Charlie Guo writing Artificial Ignorance
elvis writing NLP Newsletter
Christoph Molnar writing Christoph Molnar
Thanks to all of these writers for sharing their writing and for their support!
If you’re into machine learning or software engineering, I recommend subscribing to all of them.
Advice I Would Give
Here are the other simple lessons I’ve learned through writing this year:
The best way to get better at something is to stay consistent.
Don’t worry about perfection.
Just get started.
Society’s Backend Going Forward
Now that my first year is up, I’m taking a short break until the end of August. I’ll still be writing the Monday round ups, but I’ll take some time away from the Friday topical articles. I’m going to take the time to decide if I want to make changes to Society’s Backend going forward.
Currently, this is what I’m thinking:
I want to maintain Substack as my primary platform. I love the vibe and the community. I want to utilize the community chat better and am open to ideas for how to do this. If you have ideas, let me know.
I want to share my writing in other formats. Audio, video, and shorter posts come to mind. This way anyone can enjoy them in whichever way they see fit. Follow/sub on YouTube, LinkedIn, and X for those.
Instead of Friday topical articles, I’ll just write topical articles whenever I feel like it. I don’t want this to hurt my consistency but I find myself feeling limited and/or stressed by trying to fit ideas into a schedule. I think I’ll give writing whenever I feel like it a try and see how it goes. Don’t worry, I won’t spam your inbox.
Thanks again to all of you for your support!
Always be (machine) learning,
Logan
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Consistency is the hardest part, and it seems like you've managed to nail it - with five kids no less! Looking forward to seeing what you tackle next.
HBD