Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

Restarting Is Difficult

Restarting is hard.

It's difficult to abandon what you have to start something new. The sunk cost fallacy kicks in: What if I'm making the wrong decision?

I had spent 6 years building 66K followers on Medium by posting weekly articles. However, I noticed the growth wasn't bringing me much benefit. The algorithm decides who sees your content (similar to LinkedIn, but Medium is far worse), and the number of followers made zero impact.

I suffered from the Sunk Cost fallacy. Should I quit the platform that I invested so much time in and start over somewhere else?

In the end, I decided to leave Medium for Substack.

But I'm happy I made the plunge.

On Oct 22nd 2022, I quit Medium and moved to Substack. I almost started from scratch.

Now, roughly two years later, I'm back at 10K subscribers on Substack.

Don't be fooled. It's mostly persistence mixed in with some luck. It's easy to keep plodding on when you do what you love.

Thanks for being there on this journey, and I'm confident I'll hit 66K again.

And even if I would not, it doesn't really matter. I’m enjoying myself, and that’s what matters the most to me.

If you’re in a position where you have to take a step back, it’s difficult, but sometimes, it’s the best way to move forward. We’ll only know if it was the right decision afterward and that’s what makes it so scary.

Special thanks to Paweł Huryn, David Pereira, Dr Milan Milanović , Aatir Abdul Rauf, Willem-Jan Ageling, Stefan Wolpers, Martin O'Leary, Murray Robinson and Maria Chec for all your support on Substack!