Sometimes I wonder- not without very good cause- if all the HOW TO articles on Medium (and I am just addressing Medium here) are so popular because the act of reading feels like doing.

In that same way that putting up a black square to show alignment with BLM feels like allyship.

It's seductive. Years and years ago I facilitied personal growth seminars in Australia. The first time people went through a seminar like that it was a huge wakeup call. Then they would go to seminar after seminar trying to replicate that first WHAMMO moment of self-awareness.

It can't be replicated. The only thing to be done after that big hello moment is the hard slogging work.

To your point. I wrote a book on networking some years ago. Must have worked on it for five years. OH my god did I keep making changes. It never did get published. The next book took me nine months from inception to the deep satisfaction of a copy with real heft in my palm. Went on to win three prizes. Damned thing was almost easy. ALMOST. The difference was that I understood that 1) it was imperfect 2) it would always be imperfect and 3) that was all right. Yah I found a typo. ONE.

I went back to read the draft years later. It's AWFUL. Funny-awful. But damn it was good practice.