I wrote a weekly log for half a year and it was stressful

Published on in Blogging

"Weekly log" basically meaning weekly blog posts with a specific structure. Today I removed the whole Weekly log.

Table of contents

Why I started a weekly log

I started the weekly log to reduce stress: by publishing short weekly log entries, I wouldn't need to stress so much about my blog.

Writing blog posts takes time, and I wanted to publish something regularly.

And I did publish regularly: I published the first entry on the first week of 2021 and then a new entry each week for 6 months for a total of 26 entries.

Why I ditched it

So I wanted to reduce stress, but here's what actually happened: I had two things to maintain; the blog and the weekly log.

Or actually three, because this site used to also have a Cookbook section with "technical recipes."

Publishing every week was nice for a while, but quickly started to feel like work. Having an obligation like that was stressful.

Plus I didn't manage to write short and quick weekly log entries, so it wasn't much easier or more enjoyable than writing blog posts.

How I ditched it

I moved the best bits to individual blog posts and deleted the rest (unnecessary ramblings etc.). I did this slowly, so looks like it took me almost two years.

Other issues

Bad discoverability and SEO

(SEO = search engine optimization)

The weekly log entries were on a separate "Weekly log" page. Someone going through my blog posts might miss entirely that the "Weekly log" page has more blog-like stuff.

Opening a weekly log entry was not a nice experience either because the page was long and had lots of mixed content to go through.

The weekly log entries appeared on Google with names like "22nd week of 2021 – Weekly log." Such titles aren't very clear nor inviting.

So it wasn't easy to discover what topics the weekly log entries actually cover.

Too rigid structure

My weekly log was mainly inspired by Sam Selikoff's Work journal in which he publishes weekly bullet points about work-related stuff, learnings and interesting stuff.

Piggybacking Sam's Work journal, I structured my weekly log entries around these four headings:

  • 👨‍💼 Work
  • 👨‍🚀 Personal
  • 👨‍🎓 Learnings
  • 🕵️‍♂️ Cool stuff

That's sort of nice, but also sort of rigid. I didn't have anything to say in each four category each week, so I either said something pointless anyway or felt bad that the section was empty.

Too much effort

I should have written only bullet points (and headings), but I wrote full paragraphs, and many of them. I put way too much time and effort into something I originally wanted to be a chill little side quest.

The reading experience could have been better too had I written more shortly. Sam Selikoff's Work journal (linked above) is nice to read because it's concise: it has only headings and bullet points, and most bullet points are short (even only one sentence). Who wants to read too lengthy ramblings? Yeah, like this very text here.

Also, the posts could have been regular blog posts with a "Weekly log" tag. Why complicate things?

Lessons learned

Next time I'll think twice before committing to an arbitrary schedule. Publishing something regularly is nice, but not if it starts to feel like work.

Next time I'll also try to keep things simple and flexible. My weekly log entries could have been regular blog posts with only headings and bullet points.