You Chose a Niche. So Why Do You Still Sound Like Everyone Else?

We’ve all heard the niche argument.

Some swear by going narrow. Some swear by staying broad. Most people are tired of both camps so I’m not interested in re-running that debate. I want to talk about something that sits beneath it.

Your niche is how you see, not what you write about.

I think this used to be obvious but years of gurus screaming to “niche down” and focus on “specific problems” has drowned it out, so maybe you haven’t heard this idea before.

Two people can write about the same topic and be operating in entirely different niches because they are noticing different patterns, asking different questions, and organising reality through different internal lenses.

One person looks at work and sees optimisation where another sees identity. One looks at money and sees suffering the other optionality. The internet can be seen as freedom or control depending on where you choose to look.

The same topic categories but different ways of approaching them lead to vastly different outcomes for yourself and the quality of people you want to attract.

Over time, readers don’t follow you because you “cover a topic,”but because they recognise a mind at work that keeps naming things they already feel but haven’t been able to articulate yet. That is a perceptual niche, not a topical one, and it’s the only kind that doesn’t trap you.

None of this is to say that narrowing never works. Of course it can.

Entire companies are built around a single product. There are creators who choose a tightly defined lane early on and build remarkable businesses by staying inside it for years.

In certain contexts narrow precision can be an advantage. But those cases share something that usually gets overlooked. The constraint fits the person and their goal. The product aligns with a long-standing interest and the topic maps onto an existing depth of experience.

The crucial part is that the narrowness doesn’t feel like restriction, or discipline or “brand building” it feels like natural focus.

That is very different from selecting a “profitable niche” because you were told it would optimise growth. The first emerges from identity. The second attempts to manufacture one.

When narrowing grows organically out of what you cannot stop thinking about, it can be liberating. When adopted as a tactic before that internal centre has stabilised, it becomes a form of self-censorship and that’s where everything starts to go wrong.

Market categories vs. Perceptual orientations

If this sounds abstract, it’s because we’ve been trained to think about niches as market categories rather than perceptual orientations.

A niche, in the way it is usually discussed, is a subject area. Productivity, crypto, parenting, fitness, relationships, AI, Stoicism etc. Each of these becomes a label under which a person is expected to remain stable, consistent and predictable. Any deviation from that topic causes confusion and usually results in lower engagement which translates into less leads and less money.

The tragedy of modern internet advice is that it treats identity as a prerequisite. As something you are supposed to possess before you begin.

Historically, this idea would have sounded strange. For most serious thinkers, identity was never a starting point. Putting yourself or your brand into a box means you are limiting your potential and intellectual development from day 1.

“Pick an identity” and watch your mind, soul and spirit contract

Carl Jung described individuation as a lifelong process of becoming. It is a gradual integration of the parts of yourself that reveal themselves through lived experience. It doesn’t arrive with a flash of insight. It’s not like you just decide you’re the finance guy, or philosophy guy, or mental health persona and that’s it.

In Jung’s view, the psyche speaks in symbols, patterns, and repetitions. Certain themes keep surfacing. Certain questions refuse to leave you alone and particular tensions return across different stages of life.

You are not the same person at 30 as you are at 40 and you are not the same person at 9am and 9pm. We are not static systems set in stone. We are living organisms who change, develop and adapt as we progress down the path of life so why would you set up a system and an environment in direct opposition to that basic biological fact?

I’ll leave that question for you to answer yourself.

The real task is to stay in relationship with these recurring themes long enough to understand what they’re pointing toward.

Viktor Frankl approached this problem from a different angle but arrived at a parallel conclusion. Well, he never talked about niches but what I’ve interpreted from his writing is that meaning, as in the purpose of your work, emerges through responsibility. You commit yourself to something outside your own comfort, your writing, business, side project or even a relationship and in carrying that weight, a sense of purpose slowly forms.

This is more important than you think. Frankl does not say.

“first feel meaningful, then act. He says: “act, and meaning grows as a consequence”.

This demolishes the entire “find your niche before you start” premise, because that premise assumes that clarity precedes commitment and every serious psychological tradition says the opposite.

All of this points to the fact that unless you have one singular burning passion (I’m guessing if you’re reading this you don’t) you must express yourself long enough for a pattern to become visible, that pattern may then be developed into your niche.

Try to think of this as a psychological orientation rather than a market category. It’s the kinds of suffering you feel compelled to examine and the lens through which you keep interpreting events, even when you try to write about something else.

From this perspective, most niche anxiety is actually not about strategy, It’s existential. Which is why this question never goes away. On the surface it might look like “pick a profitable niche” is just about making money, but underneath that is a desperate attempt to be seen heard and understood. In other words people are trying to secure an identity before they’ve lived into one.

They’re asking branding questions to solve developmental uncertainty, and because the internet loves answers that sound concrete, they’re handed frameworks that promise certainty where only process can actually get you there.

Your niche is something that crystallises through repetition, friction, and time. Writing simply makes that crystallisation visible, which reframes the entire problem.

So I want you to understand that you’re not behind, or broken and you haven’t failed to “pick correctly.”You’re in the only phase that ever actually existed, which is the phase where you become.

This all takes time

If identity emerges through repetition, then the real work is building a container sturdy enough to hold sustained expression.

Most people skip this step. They jump straight to tactics, cadence, platforms, and growth loops, while the underlying environment in which their thinking is supposed to mature remains unstable.

So the practical question becomes this.

What kind of structure allows a pattern of self to be revealed over time?

This is obviously very personal and individual. Only you have had the life experiences that you have had, but if you have been struggling with the question of finding your niche here are five conditions that matter more than any “niche market” research.

1. First choose a finite exploration horizon.

Decide for yourself, (no need for an announcement), that the next three to six months are not about traction, monetisation or positioning.

They are about paying attention - to yourself. This single decision removes the psychological violence of needing every piece to “work.” Stop performing. Start observing.

What I mean by this is observe what you feel compelled to write about. What kind of writing comes easy and what is difficult? Where does resistance build up? What kind of writing do you like to read? What draws you to certain works of art or people or ideas? Why do you think that is?

These questions cannot answered at the intellectual level. They are felt at the emotional level. You must allow them to reveal themselves through writing and publishing regularly which leads us onto part two.

2. Establish a sustainable publishing rhythm.

This is a pace you can maintain even during busy weeks. Forget what you have been told about audience avatars, content calendars and publishing schedules. That is not relevant at this stage. You also don’t have to publish everything you write. This is primarily for your own development. Ideally in this stage you would publish once a week but if that is unsustainable do it twice a month, or even just once a month. If Long form is too challenging start by posting notes. The important thing is to get the ideas out of your head and onto the page.

The function of this rhythm is sustainability and continuity because continuity is what allows patterns to appear.

3. Treat writing as a diagnostic tool.

The writing is stage one but you also have to take time to look back at what you have written to re-live those words and notice patterns.

At the end of each month, look back and reflect on which pieces felt clarifying to write? Which ones left you strangely energised? Which questions keep resurfacing in different disguises?

At this stage likes and engagement are counter productive. You are measuring your own internal signal. The analytical layer of “this got more likes than normal I need to replicate it again”is what kills beginners before they’ve even started.

4. Introduce gentle constraint.

Once you have been doing this for a few months you will start to notice some gravitational themes. So the next stage of development is to deliberately stay inside them for the next window. Treat this as a focusing lens. This is not a decision on “your niche” you are just leaning into what resonates (with yourself).

This prevents drifting while preserving discovery. In this stage you can begin to experiment with story arcs and building a cohesive narrative over multiple pieces, kind of like chapters in a book. This is where you sense the beginnings of something important and pushing that can be intoxicating.

5. Resist premature naming.

The urge to label yourself is usually a fear response, and also because everyone says you need to be as specific as possible like “I write for middle income mid life management consultants who want to leave their job but retain their income bracket”…can you honestly imagine doing that for even six months let alone years?

I know this might sound counter intuitive, and you want to get results now but honestly most jobs of any meaningful complexity take several years to get good at.

Let the work accumulate before you try to explain it. Over time, something subtle happens. You start recognising what you already write about, you have the beginnings of a body of work and it is much easier to then determine in which direction it should go.

It means you are slowly shaping a centre of gravity. Growth that emerges from a centre of gravity behaves differently to growth that comes from engagement bait, hacks and viral hooks. It is the essence of a stable identity, which is exactly what sovereignty actually looks like in practice.

I hope this was helpful.

If you struggle with short-form writing. If you find that it fractures your attention, makes it difficult to focus and you’re not getting traction this will help:

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Take care and don’t forget to have fun with this.

Benjamin