3 lessons from 1,854,821 views in 60 hours

Intellectual Banter: Episode #14

Welcome to the 337 (!!!) new members of our tribe who have joined us since Saturday. Thank you for giving me your time, I appreciate it.

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Greetings, my friends!

I’ve had the craziest week ever.

Last week, I spoke about generating 1.5M views on my writing in 6 months. Then I got more than that in under 60 hours this week. What the fuck?!

A special welcome to everyone who is here because of my (crazy) thread. It’s unbelievable that this email is going out to a community of 482 members (last week's count: 145). Holy crap.

Today I want to share three reflections with you. From my experience with going viral.

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On my mind

1,854,821 views, 16,078 likes, 4,706 retweets, 333 email signups from something I wrote.

Back when I began writing online in Jan ‘22, I didn’t know what I was doing. Still don’t most of the time. But I seem to be getting better, apparently.

After writing, editing and obsessing on my thread till I was ready to pull my hair out, I published it last Saturday. By Sunday it had gone mental.

I checked on in Sunday afternoon to “review progress”. By then my Twitter app had flipped out with notifications flooding in faster than a hit per second. It was incredible, but intense! So I switched them off. Then my wife and folks at home spent their entire Sunday staring at it and counting likes 😅

Extreme attention is a potent drug.

I’m beyond grateful for all the love you showed it. But I had to summon my stoic powers to keep my composure. I rode an emotional roller coaster from shock and disbelief to feeling validation for all the work I’d done. Sprinkled with downplaying it (this will stop soon) and simply freaking out (WTF, that’s a lot of people reading my crap!).

Finally, it settled down. Took me three days to come out of that dopamine induced hangover.

You always come back to your base state.

Extreme highs don’t last long. Your mind will return to your base state (good or bad). It’s called hedonic adaptation. And is the reason why “chasing” happiness never results in attaining it.

While the instance in my case was positive, this holds true in reverse.

So always manage your reactions.

Focus only on the output, never on the outcome.

This email was a *tad* harder to write than usual.

Because it’s going out to a community 3x what it was last week! My expectations of myself have never been higher (“you’ve got to repeat that viral piece”). And I’m overthinking the crap out of it. So much fun.

But that doesn’t work.

So I remind myself daily to focus only on my output. That’s all I can control, anyway. And if there’s ONE lesson from all this, it’s this: 

Boring fundamentals executed consistently unlock ridiculous outcomes.

So I sit down, open my laptop, sip my black coffee and write.

Every single day.

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Something even crazier than my thread…

4 days after my thread went bonkers, it got picked up by an online publication and ended up in people’s Google News feed.

Holy. Freaking. Crap.

Since then, I’ve received messages from friends, family and beyond. Lauding me for “being brave”. I’m humbled by the experience, but I want to reiterate - I was miserable and wanted to change. I struggled for three years. Then I found help and went HARD for the next year. I stumbled a LOT (and still do). But I was stubborn to get better and never go back.

So there’s no magic pill. You’ve got to do the work.

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Un-chuckle worthy quote

I’m writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves - Lena Waithe

I’ve already shared this, but it seems more apt here.

Because I’ve received a flood of messages with people telling me I wrote about “their lives.” But I didn’t. I just shared my story. Shows you how much of this “human experience” we share.

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Until next week

I’ve still got boatloads to figure out.

Living better. Writing online. Being self-employed.

Six months in, I’m only starting to get the hang of it. I’m gonna use this week to reflect on my journey. I thank you for giving me your valuable attention. Till we chat again.

Your “famous” friend,

Adi

(Also, humble AF. Definitely not a douchebag.)

PS: Hit me up for any questions you have. I love banter, so ‌hit that reply button, comment on the website or book a call if you want to chat! I’d love to hear from you.