For a while now, I have run across blogposts with the #100DaysToOffload hashtag. What’s this #100DaysToOffload thing? I would wonder, and look it up.

The official #100DaysToOffload challenge website gives a good overview. (Started by Kev Quirk, it’s a challenge to publish 100 posts on your personal blog in a year.)

Several times, I looked into it, and then moved on.

See, publishing 100 stream-of-thought blogposts goes against my perfectionist tendencies (and also, Henrik Karlsson’s writing advice).

Specifically:

• what if I say something stupid that I regret forever and ever?
• what if everyone unsubscribes from my blog?

To mangle a maritime proverb: there are old bloggers, and there are bold bloggers, but there are no old, bold bloggers!

But wait: like all the old bloggers are bold bloggers! Controversy er, authenticity is the currency of the realm.

Although I and other risk-averse perfectionists might shy away from this kind of challenge, Austin Kleon, James Clear, Derek Sivers et al. — the be prolific, build in public, increase luck surface area types — would approve. And people who have done it say it was great and made them famous.

So, how to mitigate the two risks mentioned above?

1. To start with, I’m going to stick to writing micro tutorials, and wait on the political hot-takes. Once I get used to the rapid cycle time, I might get more adventurous.

2. I’m not going to send #100DaysToOffload posts as standalone newsletters to the full list. Instead, I'll send periodic round-up style newsletters like we used to, and maybe send a few of the #100DaysToOffload posts as standalone newsletters. (If you’d like me to ping you every time a post goes out, reply to this email.)

This leaves an unknown number of RSS subscribers (you’re the best!) who will be subjected to the firehose of #100DaysToOffload posts. What about them? Fortunately, most RSS feed readers let you filter out posts containing certain keywords. Like, say, #100DaysToOffload! (I might even write a little tutorial on this.)

This leaves the risk that fancy people I want to impress will go to my blog and see #100DaysToOffload posts on the homepage, and my reputation for intelligent thought will be utterly destroyed by the time they close the tab eight seconds later.

To mitigate this risk, I have removed #100DaysToOffload posts from the main feed, and relegated them to a special section of the homepage. (This is now built-in to my Laminim ghost theme.)

This leaves one final risk: that people will find my #100DaysToOffload posts via search or people sharing them, and be aghast at the typos and sloppy reasoning and forever associate the good name Autodidacts with typos and slopping reasoning.

So, taking inspiration from Will Webberley and others, I’ll put a big-ol’ disclaimer at the top of 100DaysToOffload posts.

Newsletter readers: I invite you to use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons at the bottom of this post to give feedback on whether you'd rather read 100 tossed-off posts (thumb up, do the challenge) or 10 long, properly-edited posts (thumb down re: doing the challenge, continue as normal).

Don't be shy with the thumb-down button, either: honest feedback is like this is super valuable, and takes guts to give.

Happy New Year!