Do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t

The #100DaysOfCode challenge is popular over on Twitter. For 100 days, people learn how to code and share their progress. Thinking the commitment might help me grow Lovelicons, I started my own challenge. I shared an icon from the set every day under the hashtag #100DaysOfIcons. The challenge was that I didn’t have 100 good icons yet, so I’d have to extend the set to complete the challenge.

I thought I had slowly figured out how Twitter works for me. Over the last year, I saw a slow but steady increase in followers and interactions. Then I started tweeting about these icons and a project about sprint retrospectives. From one day to the next, everything reversed. All numbers went down, and only slowly picked back up when I went back to what I did before.

In the spirit of iteration, I’m going to file this away as “ran a failed experiment”. I tried something new and learned that it didn’t work. Instead of continuing with it despite clear signals, I’m going to stop early. If something isn’t working, we don’t have to stick to it. Instead, we do the next experiment in search of something that is working.

With that said, it is time to put this newsletter on hold.

Having something on my calendar that forced me to write every week was a good motivator. The results I’m seeing from it don’t justify the work I put into it. As I’m continuing to shift my focus, I need to cut everything out of my schedule that is not essential. The newsletter falls in that category at the moment.

I’ll still send out updates to this list going forward, but on a less regular schedule. The frequency will go down, and the topics will focus more on the “building in public”. At least until I learn if that experiment works.

Talk to you soon!