Over the past month I've been noodling with the idea of developing a writing habit. The thought has been gnawing at me, so I'm leaning into it. The driving motivation is to continue to learn. I've read over and over that the best way to coalesce thoughts and really test whether you understand something is to get it in writing and try to communicate it with others. I like the idea of that exercise. A secondary motivation is to create a sort of public portfolio I can share with others to demonstrate my work. I've done a number of fairly interesting things in the business analytics space, and I think it would be valuable to get some of those things down in writing. If an audience grows, that's great! But if nothing else, these writings could serve as a handy reference of what I've done and how I did it, for when I inevitably forget how to do something. I'll start with a target audience of myself 5 years ago. What would have been helpful to read at that point in my career/life?

There are a number of forms this whole thing could take, and I could very easily get lost in the deliberations of the mechanics of how to go about writing. The general direction I'm going in is to just get started. I came across Ship 30 for 30, which advocates for writing shorter "Atomic Essays" of around 250-words. There's a lot more to the program, and I agree with some of it but am skeptical about some aspects. In general, though, I like the idea of just pulling the trigger and starting to write, without letting the inner critic get in the way. Hey, World! will serve as a good place to start to build the habit until I'm ready to start sharing with a bigger audience. At that point maybe I'll start to cross-post on LinkedIn or move to a website that I create (for which I can write a how-to article). 

Here goes...