Need a pep talk about blogging? Listen to this.

We’re proud and happy users of the project management tool Basecamp, and if you’ve worked with us, you’ll know it’s how we collaborate with clients. Every so often, I test other tools to make sure we’re not missing out, and every single time, I’m convinced that Basecamp is still the right choice.

The founders of 37 Signals (the company behind Basecamp), Jason Fried and David Heinemeier-Hansson, have written some fantastic books and have a podcast called Rework. I really love their perspective because it’s so fresh, original, and unashamedly blunt, raw, and passionate. They’ve carved their own path and believe in doing things differently, refusing to follow what everyone else says is the path to success.

Their latest episode is called It Started with a Blog. If you’re feeling burned out about writing, lacking inspiration, or feeling the pressures of SEO and metrics, or you want to start something new with an audience of zero, please take 24 minutes of your day and take a listen.

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On authenticity:

“People can smell inauthenticity a million miles away, and if you’re setting up your writing, anything you’re sharing online with the outcome in mind first – the reason I do this is because I want to move this lever, I want to move this number in so and so ways – it’s going to leak.

It’s a form of lying when you’re writing for instrumentality, when you’re writing to do some numbers, when you’re writing to move the score.

No, no, no. You got it backwards. You’ve got to write because you care. You’ve got to write because you’re excited about something.

And you **** well better care and be excited about something if you’re building something because if you don’t care, if you’re not excited, who the **** is going to be?

You have to have authenticity. And in authenticity, there’s also this built-in patience, and I think that’s really key. You both have to have the patience that the results may take a while to show up, but you actually have to be desperately impatient to share what it is you want to share.

Letting people behind the curtain changes your relationship with them. They’ll feel a bond with you and see the effort behind what you do.”

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On content strategy:

“[Don’t start blogging as] a strategy. It gets even worse when you start adding other words to that, like content strategy, engagement strategy, actually, any word you put strategy behind instantly becomes ****.

No, we’re not doing content strategy. I’m going to share what I learned. I’m going to share what I’m excited about and we’re going to see where that goes. For a lot of people, maybe it doesn’t come as natural. Exercise the muscles of writing; not everything’s going to be a viral hit.

If you think you don’t have time to share your ideas, but you do have time for endless meetings and reporting, then your priorities are upside down.”

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Every day, I read so many things that feel like they’ve been generated by ChatGPT, and I feel a little put-off. Perhaps I feel a little less trust in what they’re saying because they couldn’t say it themselves.

Every day, I see so much formulaic text. I often imagine bumping into a person in the street, and they start speaking to me like their blog posts. (If you’ve ever seen the Black Mirror episode Common People, it will be even easier to imagine.)

Jason and David are right, I can smell inauthenticity.

Let’s put more authenticity out into the world; that’s not for the numbers.