The Question every Digital Writer eventually has to answer

It will come up again and again

You show up every day. You are consistent. You post daily Notes. You send a long form email once a week. You network and DM. You’re learning and growing and doing all the right actions yet somehow something still doesn’t quite fit.

The work feels scattered. You may even be writing about the same topic week in week out but after a while you are not sure if this is really going anywhere.

This is where a lot of intelligent people start second guessing themselves. So they rightly take a step back. Think things through and then start writing again but within a few weeks they are back to questioning their direction.

The problem is they haven’t answered the deeper question that sits right at the root of this the issue.

Not many people know this but this is not the first Substack I started.

The first one was attached to my YouTube channel. At the time I was surrounded by people telling me that every creator needed a newsletter.

“Build an email list. Own your audience. Future-proof yourself.”

It sounded like a sensible strategy and I enjoyed writing so I decided to give it a try. To cut a long story short - It didn’t go anywhere and I eventually decided to call it a day.

For a while I assumed the problem was the topics I chose to write about or the writing itself. Perhaps I needed better headlines or more consistency. Maybe I should just try writing about the same thing or maybe I just needed more time.

But the the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I wasn’t struggling because I lacked tactics or strategies it was really because I lacked a clear direction.

I had never really stopped to ask what this thing was supposed to become. That may sound like a small distinction but it changes everything. Because you can be building a creative outlet, an audience, a business, or some kind of second path and although they overlap, they are not the same thing.

The problem is that most people unconsciously try to build all of them at once.

They want the freedom of a creative outlet, the growth of an audience, the income of a business and the fulfilment of meaningful work. The result is very often a constant sense of friction.

That is when I realised I had been asking the wrong questions all along. The question every writer eventually has to answer is this.

What am I actually building?

Not what platform am I using. Not how often should I post. Not what growth strategy should I follow.

What am I actually trying to create here?

The reason this question matters so much is that it sits underneath almost every single decision you will ever make.

Once you answer it, everything becomes clearer. Opportunities become easier to evaluate. Distractions become easier to ignore. You stop feeling pulled in ten different directions at once because you finally have a way to filter what deserves your attention and what doesn’t.

Until then, everything feels equally important. Every new idea looks exciting and every opportunity seems like something you should probably pursue. From personal experience I can tell you with absolute certainty that doing that is exhausting. I mean not just tiring but mentally and emotionally draining.

What makes me quite sad is that I see the misdiagnosis every day online. A large majority of intelligent professionals misdiagnose themselves as having a productivity problem, when it is almost always a clarity problem.

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The interesting thing is that there is no universally correct answer to the question. There is nothing inherently noble about building a business. There is also nothing wrong with treating writing as a hobby. Writing a newsletter for fun, creating a personal brand for leverage or venturing onto a second path...because well why not, is also ok.

The problem begins when your actions and intentions drift apart. This is what I have called the power unconscious goals in the past.

You optimise for growth when what you really wanted was self-expression. You chase subscribers when what you were actually looking for was connection. You build a business when what you really wanted was a creative practice. Or, the most common one of all, you tell yourself you’re just doing this for fun, while secretly hoping it will one day become something more.

This simple misalignment of values and goals is what kills the majority of hopes, dreams and aspirations on the internet. It is why you get whole genres of content based on nihilistic cynicism because people just fundamentally misunderstood this issue of alignment and think the world is against them.

You end up pursuing goals that belong to the person who told you to pursue them, and slowly, imperceptibly, you find yourself climbing a ladder only to realise it is leaning against the wrong wall.

Not only that but the deeper issue is that every meaningful project eventually becomes a reflection of the person building it.

Which means that if you are unclear about what you are creating, there is a good chance you are also unclear about who you are becoming. And so even if you have some traditional success, maybe a post goes viral and brings in a huge amount of subscribers…this will eventually tear you apart if you are not clear on the answer to this deeper question.

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Most people spend years asking questions like

How do I grow? What should I write about? Which platform should I focus on? What strategy is working right now?

These are not unimportant questions. In fact, they can all be useful. The problem is using them as a starting point before you have addressed the underlying question of what am I actually trying to create here?

A business? A second path? A creative outlet? A body of work? A community?

The answer will be different for everyone, which is exactly why it matters.

The moment you become clear on what you are building, many of the other decisions get answered by default…in fact you hardly need to even ask them because it becomes obvious very quickly.

So before you worry about growth, monetisation or optimisation, spend some time with that question. It may be the most important one you ever answer.

This is something I have wrestled with for years and so I understand that it is not an easy process. In the next article I will breakdown how to make progress even when you are not sure of what you are actually building.

If that sounds interesting make sure to upgrade.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your day.

Ben