I’ve long been wary of anything published daily, weekly, or even monthly–the news, newsletters, podcasts, streamers, poetry, etc.–because committing to such a schedule inevitably means prioritizing expediency over quality and engagement over wisdom.
Life does not adhere to a fixed schedule. There are periods of growth and discovery with frequent epiphanies, and there are also long periods of rest or stagnation where there is little worth saying.
The Buddhist concept of ‘right speech’ reflects this understanding and implores practicioners to avoid ‘idle chatter’, which the monk Bhikkhu Basnagoda Rahula categorized as:
- Words spoken at the wrong time (e.g. inappropriate to the occasion)
- Words that contain untruth or exaggeration (instead present true information)
- Words that bring no benefit (not self-display, long winded, meaningless topics; instead, use profitable words, atthavadi)
- Words that lead the listener to unwholesome thoughts and conduct (not words that develop greed, instead words which lead to wholesome thoughts, dhammavadi)
- Words that threaten the listener’s self-discipline (words that persuade people to break rules and undisciplined actions, instead of vinayavadi)
- Words that express trite and shallow ideas (words that lack originality and depth, instead of important views and ideas, ndhanavati vaca)
If you are a creator, respect your audience enough to not publish something until it is truly done and worth their time. And challenge yourself to ask questions that you don’t already know the answer to.
A good indicator if you are challenging yourself is how much unpublished content you create. Stephen King implores us as writers to ‘kill our darlings‘ and Transcend shows us firsthand the quantity and quality of unpublished notes from Abraham Maslow. I believe Abraham Maslow’s unpublished notes show us how he became one of the world’s most renowned thinkers–by asking questions that took decades to answer satisfactorily.
tl;dr avoid publishing (and consuming) content at a fixed cadence. Ask questions that cannot be easily answered. Don’t publish something until it is True.
Post-Script
One parting thought is it would be interesting to see analysis that compared an author’s annual published word count to some measure(s) of quality (e.g. average rating, sales, prestigious awards, etc.)