Tomorrow I’m speaking to the current cohort of James H. Gilliam Jr. Fellows.

Presumably I’ve been asked to speak because I’m an expert at something, but experts usually aren’t the best teachers, so I’ll speak on something I’m a novice at: A commitment to publishing and why.

I’ve only been at this publishing stuff for less than a year, but it’s the best thing I have to offer. And because it’s fresh for me, I’ll be better at transmitting the experience. I’ll also be proving the metapoint: YOU have something to offer, new as you are (as I am).

One of the things I wish I’d been taught when I was much younger, though I probably wouldn’t have listened (in fact I was certainly taught this and said “I’m good”) is that publishing Quantity, for its own sake, as much as it hurts me to admit, is the One True Path.

Now I don’t mean just any old Quantity. It needs to be Sincere Quantity. But, critically, it does not need to be Good™.

Aim for Good™ and you’ll ironically get less quality because you’ll produce less.

Aim for perfection and you’ll get NOTHING AND ALSO MAYBE DIE.

What is Sincere Quantity? Basically, it just needs to be genuine, authentic, from you. That’s all.

This is tricky in a culture that is pathologically incapable of sincerity, but it isn’t hard. Just publish what you are thinking about as your earnest self (or pseudonym).

One video that’s gone around in the last week is Marques Brownlee’s 100th YouTube video from 2009. He had 74 subscribers.

Today, he has 13.6 million.

But even if today he had 74 subscribers, publishing would STILL be worth it!

One of the great ironies of this digital world is that while we’re very much “in contact” with each other, and through TEXT no less, we don’t actually write to each other.

A lot of our historical record is made up of letters written between people. That’s lost for most of us.

Write a couple of letters to people you care about and you’ll immediately see how it helps you discover what you actually think, what you actually want, and pathways to new/better ideas.

If you’re publishing to only a handful of people (or even one), you get these incredible benefits. Journaling is also important and great, but there’s something about pressing Publish that’s different. It’s saying “this one’s done, on to the next one.”

You kill a LOT of birds with one stone by publishing: You create something that might be useful to others, sparking their own ideas. You relieve your mind, soul, even your body, of tension. You open avenues to new relationships and opportunities.

Concerning yourself with “success” through publishing (in the form of money or fame) is a sure way to publish nothing (and certainly nothing sincere). But just publishing your work somewhere, in a place that you own, for its own sake, regularly, will probably transform your life.

As someone so concerned about quality for so long that I made bits and pieces of hundreds of things that I never shared with anyone, I regret that my mindset wasn’t Just Press Publish from the start.