Are You Addicted To Medium?
By: Jim Woods
Tags: Writer, Creativity, Writing, Writing Tips, Ｍedium

Are You Addicted To Medium?

I have a feeling I’m not alone

Photo by Daniel Schaffer on Unsplash

I know the question might sound a little weird, but it’s a question worth asking. The quick dopamine hit of pushing publish on a post and making some amount of money on it. The claps, the comments, the promotion.

Writing online is like a roller coaster ride. And once you start the ride, you don’t want to get off.

Last month, I had a few posts go viral for me. And these posts made me think a lot about my approach with Medium. Here they are.

One day I had like 150 notifications on Medium when I logged in. Soon, I was checking my smartphone all the time. I wrote another post that got like 30 responses. In all, I wrote 16 new posts last month — which is about 4 a week.

I made more income on Medium and started to wonder if I could make more and more.

But at the same time, I realized I’ve never been more stressed or anxious. I was playing Medium like a slot machine of sorts. If you’ve read those posts, you can easily see my frustration in how Medium and many popular publications are treating writers just because of a lack of transparency. I stopped writing for 80% of the publications that I’ve written for in the past.

It was time to step away.

So far in this month (and today is the 18th), I’ve only written two posts. But here’s the super cool part: because of the way Medium works, I’ve still made $100 just stepping away.

Why did I pump the brakes?

3 Reasons For A Medium Break

Mental energy is finite. You only have a certain amount of mental energy. In addition, you only have so much time you can commit to writing during the day.

Opportunity cost matters. When you do one thing, you cannot do something else. So in this case, I committed to writing my novel instead of writing on Medium. And I don’t regret that for a moment.

The freedom problem. Too much freedom will only lead to a lack of focus. Too much freedom and you just wander around in circles.

My New Strategy

So, on that note, here is my new simple strategy for Medium. To stay focused, I only will write for a handful of publications and about writing, productivity, fiction, and marketing. That’s it. Those are the topics that matter to me. I’m not writing about technology, sports, politics, or anything else unless it’s related to those specific topics I am writing about.

I’m also capping my time spent on Medium. I’m using a timer. If I spend more than one hour on Medium per day total, I know I’m going to slip back into bad habits. I’m going to focus on Medium goals, not my goals.

Please consider this fact that no one ever talks about: people go to Medium to read articles about topics that interest them. They don’t go to Medium to find new writers that they want to read and follow. (And even if they do follow you, they most likely are not seeing your posts.)

Writing a bunch of click bait posts or make money posts or something like that won’t give you long-term readers. You’re likely just going to give away all of your secrets to other writers. It’s really thinking short-term over long-term. And you want to build long-term assets.

The Takeaway

Medium had too tight of a grip on me. I gave too much focus and attention to Medium. And this isn’t a knock on Medium, but Medium is not an entree by itself. It’s a side dish. It’s the cherry on the sundae. It’s important to keep things in perspective. Don’t trade long-term growth for the short-term pleasure and making a few dollars.

If you treat Medium like a job or as your main way of publishing content — over the long-term — you’re only going to be disappointed. Medium is just one tool in the toolbox, like a screwdriver. You don’t want to use a screwdriver for all of your projects. Rather, you want to use other tools. Keep that in mind, and all of a sudden you will have more clarity and confidence in pursuing your goals.

Jim Woods is a writer who loves helping others bring their story into the world. He’s written three books and has worked with authors such as Jon Acuff, Mike Vardy, Courtney Carver, Eric Ries, and Gretchen Rubin.