The Good, Bad & Ugly of Writing a Weekly Newsletter

🥳 Celebrating 1 year of Making Product Sense

Wow! Today is the 1-year anniversary of Making Product Sense. Wild to think that it’s been that long.

This is a special edition where I’m going to talk about the good, bad and ugly of writing a weekly newsletter.

Also…

1. Year in Review (+ stats over the last year)

2. Top 5 Articles (+ vote for your favorite type of article)

3. Top 5 Product Nuggets (+ vote whether it stays or goes)

4. The future of MPS (+ vote for the technology that excites you the most)

Don’t worry, I won’t wax poetic - I’m keeping this thing short and sweet with a lot of bullet points.

Let’s get into it!

Welcome to Making Product Sense
Join thousands of leaders from companies like Nike, Google, Uber, Coinbase, Twitter and Venmo as we learn how to build the future.

The Good, Bad & Ugly of Writing a Weekly Newsletter

I’ve learned a lot, I’ve written a lot, I’ve thought a lot. So I’m going to try to be as honest as possible here. What’s it been like writing a weekly newsletter for a year?

🥳 The Good

1. Community: The community is fantastic. I’ve met some truly wonderful people - shoutout to

   Jaryd Hermann
   ,
   Will Lawrence
   ,
   Jeremy Caplan
   and many others who I’ve enjoyed getting to know over the last year.

2. Clarity: Writing is incredibly clarifying. It not only helps me think better but it helps me communicate better in general.

3. Quality: Growth comes through putting in the reps, not from fine tuning a single work until it’s perfect.

4. Consistency: You learn how to ship even when you don’t feel like it, or you have writers block, or you’re sick (like I am today).

5. Creativity: A lot of life isn’t all that creative. It’s really healthy to have an outlet for creative expression because creating something is an innate part of what makes us human.

6. CV: Having a body of work you can point to and say, “I did that,” is the best evidence of your ability to deliver.

😬 The Bad

Now on to the challenges which I’m encouraged to see that there are fewer of than the positives!

1. Mental weight: Most weeks I’m genuinely excited to write. There’s a long list of things that I would love an excuse to research. But sometimes there are days when it feels like a burden. Those weeks are tough.

2. Planning: If my weekend fills up with plans, I have to write in the evenings after work which is very difficult to carve out time for.

👹 The Ugly

I can deal with the occasional mental burden or planning conundrum. But the ones that really make me question if this is worth it are:

1. Imposter Syndrome / The Comparison Game: I often see other writers that I respect who are absolutely crushing it. Twitter threads, Discord communities, complementary podcasts, custom graphics, cross-platform distribution… it honestly can get overwhelming at times and it makes me feel like I’m losing at a game I don’t even want to play.

2. Opportunity Cost: To thoroughly research and write a high-quality article with factual claims, entertaining stories, insightful or educational takeaways and a unique hook takes a LOT of time. Time that I could be spending with my wife, playing sports with my friends, doing work around the house or even just resting.

Do you write a newsletter too? Drop a link in the comments with the good, bad and/or ugly from your experience!

---

📆 The Year in Stats

A few stats from the last year.

• 49 long-form articles

• 101,500 words (This is not an estimate! I actually landed on a round number 🤯)

• ~3,500 subscribers

• ~187,000 views

Thank you all so much for reading, commenting and sharing - it truly makes this newsletter a life-giving part of my week :)

Here are the most popular articles from the last year 👇

Arc Browser | The Meta-OS Layer (1/3)

"Building Product at Linear" with Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear (1/2)

Should you learn how to code in The Age of A.I.?

The Best Products Have Low Floors and High Ceilings

How to Build Complex Products While Avoiding Confusion

Here’s what’s fascinating to me. As this newsletter has evolved over the last 365 days, I’ve experimented with different types of articles. Surprisingly, at least one of these different types made it into my top five, approximately one every other month 😂

So let’s settle this. What’s your favorite article type?

If you aren’t subscribed yet, I’d love to see you around!
Making Product Sense is read by thousands of folks from top companies like Miro, AngelList, Chewy, Dropbox, Grammarly, Twilio and more.

🐤 Product Nuggets

Product Nuggets was my Friday roundup of my favorite Tweets from the past week. It was a way to share exciting, interesting or funny things happening in the world of tech and product that I didn’t dedicate a full article to.

Here are the most popular Product Nugget roundups 👇

🐤 Product Nuggets #30 — Give ChatGPT some data and just... let it work 🤯

🐤 Product Nuggets #23 — 10 wild ways GPT-4 is changing life (for the better?)

🐤 Product Nuggets #27 — Distribution > Product

🐤 Product Nuggets #22 — Billion-dollar ideas

🐤 Product Nuggets #19 — should you name your layers?

---

👋 What about you?

I’m so thankful for everyone who reads this newsletter. I’d love to know more about y’all! What gets you excited? What do you do? There are 4 short polls below :)

---

That’s all for this one - I’ll catch ya next week as we kick off year two of Making Product Sense!

—Jacob ✌️