That’s not to say the content should provide value to the reader, also known as you, but it’s still a very important question to answer.

With the reboot of my blog and getting back into social media, this has become the first question I ask myself before writing a post, or planning a livestream, or scripting a video, or even saving a link. It’s selfish, but if the post isn’t valuable to me, then why would it be valuable to you?

In my previous professional life, the content I created with exclusively for the readers and for Microsoft. I made content, they awarded me an MVP award with some great perks, an awesome community, but it lead to an unforeseen need to be validated and rewarded for my content, which I wrote about recently LINK. It was a good deal and made sense at the time. But that was then, and this is now. Now when I look at creating content, first person it needs to bring value to is me.

So why bother blogging at all?

I didn’t.

At least I didn’t for a few years and just left my blog and website to be a development science experiment. Reason being, I didn’t know the value the blog could bring me.

I’ll leave the numerous self-driven arguments and half baked reasons I tried to give myself out of it, but ultimately it didn’t make a lot of sense to keep on blogging.

Until it did again.

Sharing my Self-Retrospectives

Even though I stopped blogging and stopped doing my annual self retrospectives (like this one from 2014: LINK and this one from 2015 LINK) the self-reflective process never stopped. Rather, my the self-retrospectives evolved into smaller chunks of thought that I would or share with trusted friends or family to get opinions on the deep thoughts from this inner monologue I maintained.

Then a pandemic started and I was unable to share, at least not with the frequency and ease that I used to.

The Absence of Validation

It’s the inability to share the way I was used to got me thinking differently. I started to realize that sharing was my way to get approval and a pat on the head for an idea. I didn’t need to take action with my website or my social media presence, because I already had a bunch of people tell me it was a good idea. Why bother doing it when I already got it validated?

And so I tested my theory and stopped sharing my ideas on social media. Not long after that, I stopped sharing my ideas with my trusted friends virtually (unless I had something to show, which I never did) not because I didn’t want to, but because I needed to learn to do this for myself.

For me.

This means I am the first validator of the idea, and ultimately gives me that first bit of validation to approve my time investment into it. Of course the catch is, if I want futher validation, I suppose I should validate my own feelings first to make sure I’m right.

If its valuable to me, then it’ll be valuable to someone else (TL;DR;)

Time is my most important asset. For that reason, the first question I ask the question: “What value does it bring to me?” as I need to decide if the idea is worth investing my time on it. If I don’t see the value in it, the idea might not be bad, but it’s just not for me. My time is better spent on an idea, post, or science experiment that I think will bring me value first.

Because if it brings me value, then there it will probably bring value to someone else out there on the internet.

Thanks for playing.

~ DW

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Photo Credit

• Photo by Rob Schreckhise on Unsplash
• Photo by Drahomír Posteby-Mach on Unsplash