Blogging For Humility, Perspective and Growth

I’m not a top blogger, a thought leader or industry expert, and probably won’t be any time soon. No big deal. I’m not out to take the internet by storm.  I don’t worry about my daily traffic stats, I don’t stress out about posting every day and I don’t blog for money (although I do make money doing it that supports the habit). I originally started blogging just to become a better writer. I’ve been blogging consistently now for over 2 years and I’ve learned that blogging itself is not a means to any end. The real value is in the process – it’s about continuous learning, connecting, collaborating, and growing as a person. In many ways, it’s a lifestyle choice rather than an activity or a hobby, and the people who are doing it for the right reasons are generally in it for the long haul.

Seth Godin and Tom Peters recently weighed in on why they blog at an AMEX OPEN forum. There were some great points made by both on the value of blogging that really resonated with me — I particularly appreciated Seth’s comment on developing humility, and Tom’s on how it changes your emotional and intellectual outlook. These are two of the most successful bloggers on the web and even after years of blogging and thousands of posts they still site growth, dialogue and openness to change as the top reasons they’re still writing. I find a lot of comfort in that. I’ve included some video highlights from the forum below…

The content of the first clip, which was taken from the forum, is transcribed below. The second clip is a segment of a post-event interview where Tom Peters elaborates on what he said in the first clip.

“Blogging is free, it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the meta cognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself to the two employees or your cats or whoever is going to look at it? How do you force yourself to describe in 3 paragraphs why you did something? How do you respond out loud? If you’re good at it, some people are going to read it. If you’re not good at it, and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. But this has become much bigger than “are you BoingBoing or the Huffington post?”. This has become such a micro-publishing platform that basically you’re doing it for yourself to force yourself to become part of the conversation, even if it’s just that big ::makes a “small” gesture with his hand::, and that posture change changes an enormous amount.”

- Seth Godin

“I will simply say, my first post was in August of 2004. No single thing in the lat 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it has changed my emotional outlook…and it’s free.”

- Tom Peters