Repeat, repeat, repeat...
In this post I explore how I missed the fact that I was writing the same article all over again…
Bah.
Yeah, that was a really stupid mistake…
One that’s fully worthy of a full-on facepalm:
So start again. Preferably with something that is not the exact same article as before…
Okay, perhaps I’d better explain the blunder.
The original aim of this Substack was to provide some commentary and suchlike on things that I would see whilst travelling around Australia in the campervan-cum-travelling-office that I’d bought. Keeping the overall focus on the big-picture - not just the big changes that are already hitting us now, but also the ever larger ones still very much coming our way. Yet keeping that focus by looking at the small-changes all around us right now. And then exploring what lessons could perhaps be learnt from those small-changes, that we can then re-use elsewhere.
It was a good idea. It still is, I hope.
The catch is that courtesy of Covid-lockdowns and the like. I couldn’t get on the road. Couldn’t even get out of the house, much of the time; in fact often still can’t. So, no new ideas from the road, then, because I’m still not on the road.
In which case, where to get those ideas to explore?
Answer: look around at what I already have, and see what I can find.
Yes, I do already have a large stock of material that I’ve written and developed over the years: dozens of books and videos, articles by the hundred, and so on. But so much of that is just technical stuff - arguably a fair amount of good stuff in there, true, but no fun for this kind of need. Not enough new ideas. Oh well.
But also why I fell into the trap…
After the usual struggle, I’d found a good topic for this week. For once, the ideas flowed smoothly; the structure almost wrote itself. Running low on time, as usual, but everything came together well. The whole thing was complete in only a few hours, compared to my all-too-usual flounderings and procrastinations of several days. For once, a real success.
Checked everything: all looked good.
Clicked the publish-button; set the publish-date-and-time; clicked again. All done.
Sigh of relief.
Look at the dashboard: schedule properly set. That’s good.
Casually scroll down the episode-list, just to look with some satisfaction at what I’ve already written here.
And that’s when I see it.
A previous article with the same title as the episode I’d just done.
The exact same title.
For an article on the exact same topic.
The exact same themes, in the exact same order.
Much of it with the exact same content.
Using the exact same images, too.
From about eight months back, for what it’s worth.
Oh.
(Okay, I admit it: the language I used at that point was quite a bit stronger than just ‘Oh’….
Oh well.)
The new post went straight into the bin, of course. Nothing else I could do with it, really.
Yet there are perhaps some useful lessons here: the accidental-repeat is itself a topic that’s worthwhile to explore. How does it happen? How can I prevent it from happening again? How can others prevent it from happening to them, too?
There are some obvious points, of course. One is that I do have a notebook set aside to list each of the ideas for new topics here, and the date that I use them in a published post. Which, of course, I forgot to use… And even if I do forget to do that, every previous post is automatically listed anyway on the Substack dashboard. Which I also forgot to check.
No excuse, really.
But it’s not just me, is it? Pretty much everyone I know has done it sometime, in their own way, their own context, whatever. Repeating tasks that we don’t need to repeat. Buying stuff from the shops that we already have. Searching for something that’s already right in front of us, or literally right in hand. And despite the embarrassment and all that, we go right ahead and do it all over again.
Repeat, repeat, repeat…
Maybe we’re just fated to do it, over and over again: I don’t know. But given the amount of wasted time and effort involved, it does seem to be something that’s worth not doing - and instead doing everything we can to prevent it. Especially if it’s an unnecessary repeat of something that matters more than just an everyday article like this one.
What’s your experience of this?
For your possible amusement, the post I repeated was ‘Weird, right?’, from back in May 2021. Which, as a topic, I suppose seems kind of appropriate somehow, for this kind of context. I didn’t really add anything significantly new in the repeated version, though I did point to a pair of books on Weird that I’d written a couple of decades ago:
I originally wrote them for the self-development market, to help people explore how to use concepts of weird to guide change for oneself (Positively Wyrd) and/or with others (Wyrd Allies). The paperback editions went out of print a fair while ago now, but the books are still available in ebook formats via Leanpub - more details, samples and so on at Positively Wyrd and Wyrd Allies respectively.
(I’d intended it to be a full three-part series - change at personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal levels - but I never did get round to writing the final part in the trilogy. It would have been titled Wyrd World: given the full-on weirdness of our current world, perhaps it’s the right time to do it now?)