Issue #52: Reflections From 52 Weeks Of Writing

Jul 07, 2025

Week 52: 30th June 2025 - 6th July 2025

When I started this newsletter, I never thought I would write consistently for a year!

I only realized how close I was around the 46-47th issue. This will be the final issue for this series, and I thought it would be appropriate if this issue were a reflection of what I learned from this exercise. I do not know how many points the reflection would lead to as I am writing this paragraph, so I won’t make promises like ‘52 learnings from 52 weeks of writing.’ I do not think I am smart enough to grasp new concepts within a week, nor willing to write generic bs just to get to the 52 number.

So here are a few lessons I could think of!

[#1: Reading is a habit]

I always read and heard about how great leaders and thinkers of any period were “voracious readers”. I always thought this was something you were born with. A tick you had that made you read “voraciously”. Turns out it’s a choice like anything else.
I read about 15-20 articles per week, so I could shortlist some for my newsletter.
There is zero chance I would’ve done it if it weren’t for this newsletter.

Why do I say that? Well, because many times getting the newsletter out every week meant actively choosing to read articles and blogs over, say, watching a series or playing games. So it wasn’t like I was divinely inspired to read every week and write about it for a year straight; instead, I made a choice to do that consistently.

Note to self:

You won’t feel like reading every day, but you must make time for it by actively choosing to read. In the long run, it’s helpful to have read in the past ;)

[#2: Motivation Comes After Action]

I have written about Action → Motivation before, but this exercise helped me see it in action. Out of the 52 weeks, I’d say I was motivated before starting to write for less than 10 issues. For the rest, I began by researching through articles and writing. Once I read a few articles and started writing a little, finishing the issue was easy.

Note to self:

Motivation follows action. Just start doing it.

[#3: Writing About What You Enjoy Is A Privilege]

I think this exercise has been very successful in terms of helping me read more and improve my writing. However, as a newsletter, I’d say it’s been an abysmal failure.
As of the writing of this issue, my newsletter has 43 subscribers. That is less than 1 per issue. Out of these, about 10-12 read the newsletter frequently, out of which a couple are people who have found my newsletter organically, and the rest are friends or family.

Now I am not complaining since my goal wasn’t to build a huge readership but rather to improve myself. But this has taught me something about why listening to your customer (here, reader) is important when building a product.
A much better strategy would have been branding the newsletter to a specific topic, like say, productivity, and then only researching and writing about productivity.
Then your readers know what to expect from your newsletter, and if that is something they should invest their time in.

Note to self:

Every choice comes with its tradeoffs; remember to be fully aware of them before making a decision.

[#4: Writing = Thinking]

This is also something I have written about many times before, and through this newsletter, I have proof. I wrote an article called Fuzzy to Concrete, where I said that before you write something down, the concept in your head is a fuzzy approximation of the actual thing. When you write it down, you are forced to give it a structure, which forces you to come up with a consistent interpretation.

Note to self:

Keep writing to get better at thinking.

[#5: Innovation Happens At Fractals]

Knowledge grows fractally. From a distance its edges look smooth, but when you learn enough to get close to one, you'll notice it's full of gaps. These gaps will seem obvious; it will seem inexplicable that no one has tried x or wondered about y. In the best case, exploring such gaps yields whole new fractal buds.

This is a line that has stuck with me from Paul Graham’s essay ‘How to get new ideas’.

This is well-known in scientific research. You do a literature survey, find gaps in current work, and propose a method that patches the gap.

It turns out that this is very similar to how reading + writing help to get new ideas. If you read enough, you start seeing patterns in ideas on various subjects. People are saying the same thing in different ways. The gap is always about how you can apply it uniquely to your situation. Sometimes this solution works only for you, other times you get messages from people tipping their hat for your trick!

Note to self:

Read more, read widely, and see how you can apply what you read uniquely to yourself.
If it works, share why; if it doesn't, share that too!

[Sign Off]

This 52-week journey was quite eventful for me. I will be taking a break for a while now and think about maybe some other format.

To all my readers who have read the issues, taken time to comment, and share their thoughts with me, I want to say thank you! If you have been reading this newsletter but haven’t reached out, please do! As I said, I genuinely read all the messages and responses.

And as always, I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. Let me know if you have any feedback.

पुन्हा भेटू!