In the last 60 days, I've helped 253 people build an online writing habit.

Here are 10 lessons they've taught me in behavior change, human psychology, and writing online.

THREAD...👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

1. Start smaller

The foundation of Ship 30 for 30 is the Atomic Essay.

• One idea
• Under 200 words
• Fits in one iPhone screenshot

This eliminates any friction to publishing ideas online.

And without that friction, momentum is inevitable.
2. Constraints create freedom

"Write something every day" is hard.

There are too many choices to make.

"Publish a 200-word essay with a 30-minute time limit every day for 30 days."

This is easier.

Within these constraints, creativity thrives.
3. Results come from tight feedback loops

The foundation of Ship 30 for 30 comes from @jackbutcher:

Make noise, listen for signal.

Weekly blog posts sent into the void = no feedback.

Daily Atomic Essays on Twitter = immediate feedback.

Faster feedback = faster iterations.
4. Impostor syndrome is curable

But not with common advice of "believing" in yourself.

Early writers think everyone else has figured out.

Until they start writing.

Then, they realize everyone is figuring it out as they go.

Cure impostor syndrome with action, not belief.
5. Fear is ego in disguise

If you're afraid to publish ideas online, you have an ego problem.

You assume people care what you have to say.

Newsflash: No one on earth thinks about you 1/10000 as much as you think about yourself.

Just start shipping.
6. Behavior change is identity change

The goal of Ship 30 for 30: build an online writing habit in 30 days.

The real goal: become a writer.

Because writers write every day.

When your habits align with your identity, they're easy to stick to.

Simple as that.
7. Focus on finding your tribe

Writing every day, alone, is hard.

Writing every day, surrounded by 250+ others on the same journey as you, is easy.

When a behavior aligns with the rest of the tribe, behavior change is easy.

There's a camaraderie to group struggle.
8. Put some skin in the game

Never underestimate accountability.

Ship 30 for 30 leverages:

• Financial accountability
• Community accountability

If Ship 30 for 30 was free or done privately, no one would stick to it.

With any new habit, find your forcing functions.
9. Consistency creates competence

No one has 200 shitty versions of anything.

They either quit after 10 tries or stick with it long enough to figure it out.

It's not 10,000 hours.

It's 10,000 iterations.
10. Writing and publishing every day is the highest leverage habit in human history.

In 30 minutes per day, you unlock:

• Clearer thinking
• Sharper communication skills
• Access to like-minded people

And most importantly:

Unstoppable personal momentum.
If you found this thread valuable, follow me @dickiebush for more insights like this.

And you can jump back to the top of the thread here: https://t.co/jY1qfJIxAU
And if you want to learn more about Ship 30 for 30, you can learn more here:

https://t.co/gFBSuuRAzv

More from Dickie Bush 🚢

More from Writing

I want to talk about how western editors and readers often mistake protags written by BIPOC as "inactive protagonists." It's too common an issue that's happened to every BIPOC author I know.


Often, our protags are just trying to survive overwhelming odds. Survival is an active choice, you know. Survival is a story. Choosing to be strong in the face of the world ending, even if you can't blast a wall down to do it, is a choice.

It's how we live these days.

Western editors, readers, and writers are too married to the three-act structure, to the type of storytelling that is driven by conflict, to that go-getter individualism. Please read more widely out of your comfort zone. A lot of great non-western stories do not hinge on these.

Sometimes I wonder if you're all so hopped up on the conflict-driven story because that's exactly how your colonizer ancestors dealt with people different from them. Oops, I said it, sorry not sorry. Yes, even this mindset has roots in colonialism, deal with it.

If you want examples of non-conflict-driven storytelling google the following: kishoutenketsu, johakyu, daisy chain storytelling/wheel spoke storytelling. There was another one whose name I forgot but I will tweet it when I recall it.
I can second this observation through personal experience. I was only able to start writing because "it's just dumb weeb fanfiction quests, who cares." 100,000 pages of dumb weeb fanfic later, and I actually got better... but only because I was trying my best with every page.


"It's dumb weeb fanfiction" gave me permission to be bad, to vomit things onto the page that I knew fell far short of what I wanted it to be. To just write and write instead of laboring over six paragraphs for weeks like I'd always done before.

But I still *wanted* to be good.

Writing is HARD. And unfortunately, most people don't appreciate just how hard writing (or communication in general) is, and that cultural attitude infects writers, too.

You must give yourself permission to be bad. And realize that all writing is practice.

IT. COUNTS.

And as the folks in my mentions are pointing


... it's an excellent way to find out what actually resonates with other people - putting work out there. Even your early bad stuff you'll cringe at later.

What resonates is NOT easy to tell, because we all, inherently cringe at ourselves, a lot.

You May Also Like

I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹
Tip from the Monkey
Pangolins, September 2019 and PLA are the key to this mystery
Stay Tuned!


1. Yang


2. A jacobin capuchin dangling a flagellin pangolin on a javelin while playing a mandolin and strangling a mannequin on a paladin's palanquin, said Saladin
More to come tomorrow!


3. Yigang Tong
https://t.co/CYtqYorhzH
Archived: https://t.co/ncz5ruwE2W


4. YT Interview
Some bats & pangolins carry viruses related with SARS-CoV-2, found in SE Asia and in Yunnan, & the pangolins carrying SARS-CoV-2 related viruses were smuggled from SE Asia, so there is a possibility that SARS-CoV-2 were coming from