How I overcame 30+ years of writer's block
Channel: George Kao
Date: 2017-05-05

Believe it or not, I had writer's block my whole life, up until just 2 years ago.

This is through 16 years of schooling, including a college degree in English literature where I had to write paper after paper -- suffering through all of it.   (Part of the challenge was that English was my 2nd language.)

Fast forward to starting my business in 2009, in marketing, of all fields, where writing is supremely important.  Every time I had to write an email to my subscribers, or update my webpages, it was painful.  

From 2009-2014, I did not blog at all.  In fact, I ridiculed the blogging & content industry... I talked (rarely did I get "talker's block") about how bloggers are stupidly giving away so much value for free, when they could be charging for almost all of it.  Back then, I was selling expensive online courses, and the only free thing I was giving away was teasers... "free webinars" that were essentially elaborately-designed sales pitches.

Fast forward to 2014... I had been going through a spiritual transformation.  I came to see my business practices in a new light -- and I could no longer do it.  I stopped selling my expensive ($2,000) online courses, and started only providing 1-1 coaching.

And I started to give away all my content for free.

I became one of the "dumb" bloggers I was making fun of 😯

The bloggers had it right all along.  

When you create and publish content consistently, you earn enormous benefits over time.  (That's the key -- a bit of patience that leads to great good for your business later, and sometimes in the short term as well.)  

By publishing content consistently, you get smarter, faster.  You get to see what types of content your audience wants from you (and therefore what you can develop further, and eventually monetize).  You build loyalty with your audience.  They see that you care enough to give generously. You develop connections with -- and earn respect from -- other generous colleagues that you can collaborate with.  You build an online presence you can truly be proud of.  You build a far more sustainable business.    

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Back to my 30+ years of writer's block... how did I overcome it?  

Here's the story:

In 2015, I was a year into my "business awakening", and I decided to challenge myself to make videos 5 days a week.  (Why I did that is another story.)  

Once I started making videos, I realized that many people (like me!) prefer to read the content, instead of take the time to watch a talking-head video.

So, out of courtesy for them, I started to quickly, casually, write out the content of my video. 

I thought: "I'm just going to quickly type out what I basically said in the video, so those who don't watch it can still get the message." 

I started doing this before bed, on my little iPhone screen.  Interestingly, having such a small screen eased my writer's block for 2 reasons:

(1) Just a few sentences, typed out, made it look like I was writing a lot
(2) Letters appearing across the small screen looks like I was writing more quickly than it would've looked on a computer screen.

Because I was making 5 videos a week, I had to do the writing 5 days a week as well, and I found it was always at the same time -- right before bed.   (Now, my writing rhythm has changed to 3 days a week, 8:30am - 9am.)

A few dozen videos/writings later, I came to realize that *I had overcome my writer's block!*  I did this without *trying* to overcome to block... but simply as a result of these factors:

...Youtube wouldn't let me paste the entire article.  To see the rest of the article, go to:
https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeKaoCommunity/posts/10156126554729867/

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