Long ago, Visa popularized “Do 100 things.” This is Great Twitter Lore. The basic idea: if you want to get good at something, or understand it, just do 100 iterations of it. If I remember correctly, he was riffing on a story about pottery class that goes something like this:
There was a beginner pottery class, and students had two options to complete the class. They could either make 100 pots of any quality, or they could spend all their time making one pot. The students who chose to make one pot inevitably produced one bad pot—they spent all their time on that pot, but since they didn’t know how to make pots, it didn’t matter that they dumped hours into it.
The students who opted to make 100 pots, though, found their skill level quickly increasing. Even though their first pots were absolute travesties, they were much improved by 20. By the time they got to 100, they were masters!
The same is true in writing, especially writing online. You can either wait to produce your one (inevitably bad) magnum opus, or you can just publish 100 things. You’ll improve naturally.
I published 100 things for Maximum New York, and along the way I created a civics school, met awesome people, and so much more.
So here’s a very slap-dash index of those 100 posts, broken down by categories I just made up. Later I’ll organize them even more, but I’m happy to give them their full debut here. If you want to be the MNY librarian, there’s much social capital to be had in organizing these better!
The categories:
My favorites
History
Technical commentary & political review
Civic tech
Teaching government
Social tech, culture, & memes
Theory & ideas
Experiments & unfinished threads
Fundraising
Class announcements & admin