Wednesday, January 27, 2010

My goals in writing this blog

Writing this blog is not an easy task, but it is very satisfying.

My philosophy of writing about anything is to make it ASAP: As simple as possible. True understanding is the ability to break a complex subject into its simple elements. To connect an abstract idea to concrete cases in reality, and to bring the light-full feeling of clarity to every subject I write about.

To achieve this I demand of myself the strictest use of logic. I look at all my experiences, what they have in common and draw my conclusions based on them. Then I take those conclusions and check against all cases again, trying to see if there are some cases which suggest that the conclusions are incorrect or missing something. This process is called "integration" of knowledge (as some of your know).

Then, it is not enough to reach conclusions. I am passionate about presenting them in a way that makes it easy to understand them. I put myself in the shoes of someone with complete ignorance of the subject (usually, myself before I ever thought of those ideas) and aim my writing to explain it to that individual in the right order, while keeping in mind that the value the article holds needs to be communicated implicitly as well. I never expect a reader to take me on faith regarding the value of what I am about to write about: I am always aware that such value needs to be communicated right from the start of a piece.
It is not a gimmick to attract audience - as some writers see it, but an essential part of writing properly.

I love writing this blog; I love the times of brain wrecking effort that goes into understanding new subjects, I love thinking of good ways to break down and present a subject.
I love writing things that can help people change their life for the better, and indeed many of the posts are aimed at challenging misconceptions and psychological problems that undercut happiness.
I get tremendous satisfaction knowing something I write has helped someone become more motivated to improve their lives or has given them something meaningful to think about.

I write my blog for all these reasons; for the selfish satisfaction I get from gaining knowledge and doing a good job providing it to others.

However, these are not ends in themselves: The satisfaction I get from writing is not enough to motivate me to write this blog, nor to spend the hours of mental effort to produce high quality articles. I write to eventually make money. This is why I have a donation option. I would therefore appreciate if you donate even a small amount, just to show your support and appreciation. Consider it as if you were hiring me to write more: it is exactly what it is.

This blog is not about sharing fun experiences from my daily life. It is not political activism. It is about improving people's emotional quality of life.
This requires abstract knowledge - discovering principles of psychology central to life.
Because of that, writing the blog is not a piece of cake. It is not something I can write effortlessly as sharing some daily experience with a friend. Writing a single piece takes days and hours, hours of sitting at the computer, thinking of every sentence and days (or even months) of thinking out the problem in my head. It is like writing a scientific journal.

I have plenty of topics I would like to write about, but, on a personal note, making not a single dime out of writing everything I have so far, despite the countless hours I have put into writing, I have lost the motivation to do the final editing, which is why you are seeing less content.


I therefore ask my readers to donate to keep the blog running and to get new content, if you find that the blog has the potential to add value to your life.

Thank you for being my reader and for any future contribution you might give.

2 comments:

  1. I would like to thank everyone who donated. I feel honored that you considered my blog worthy of your money, a value worth preserving.

    I would also like to emphasize that I ask only for donation that are in line with your hierarchy of values. What does it mean? That I do not expect donations if you are struggling for food. I do not expect donations if you barely read the blog and gain only a small value from it and so on. I respect all of that as well and I am glad you get some value from my blog, big or small.

    So thanks again for your donations and other efforts to support and expand this blog, big or small.

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  2. The book seems to be mostly about business management, not about mental health.

    Please keep posts on-topic and only post links that are relevant to a specific topic. Business management might be an interesting topic and this book might be great but please post it on if and when it is relevant.

    ReplyDelete