Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Hello rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
📓 The diary of a man who thought he was finished
Four months into a new novel, John Steinbeck opened his journal and wrote that he was not a writer.
"My many weaknesses are beginning to show their heads.
I'm not a writer.
I've been fooling myself and other people."
This was not a bad morning.
He'd been at the book since June, two thousand words a day in longhand, and he'd decided the whole thing was a mistake.
He wrote about the book itself: "It isn't the great book I had hoped it would be.
It's just a run-of-the-mill book.
And the awful thing is that it is absolutely the best I can do."
That's a man deciding, in writing, that he is not good at his job.
He kept that journal for a reason, and the reason wasn't reflection.
He kept it so that skipping a day would be obvious.
If a day was missed, he wrote, it would show glaringly on the record.
So on the mornings he was certain he'd been fooling everyone, he still wrote his two thousand words.
The journal recorded that he had.
Turns out the run-of-the-mill book was The Grapes of Wrath.
It sold around 430,000 copies in its first year and won the Pulitzer Prize.
John was wrong on the bad days.
He was also wrong on the good ones.
He wrote the two thousand words either way, and that's the only reason we can read it.
⛳️ The problem
John wrote that he was not a writer, in the middle of writing his best book.
But most weeks, we're sure the idea is working on Monday and sure it's hopeless by Friday.
✍️ Nine months, three hundred readers
Dickie Bush hit publish on another post almost nobody read.
He was working a full-time finance job at the time, and the year was 2020.
He did that over and over for nine months.
Then, in September, he looked at the list.
Three hundred people.
Half of those three hundred he'd signed up himself.
Nine months of work.
A hundred and fifty strangers.
Ouch.
If you wanted evidence that something wasn't working, that's what it looks like.
He kept publishing anyway.
Then he and a writer called Nicolas Cole turned what he'd learned into a course called Ship 30 for 30.
It teaches people to write online for thirty days straight.
More than ten thousand writers have been through it.
Get this — together with two other writing businesses they built, Ship 30 for 30 has crossed $10 million in sales.
Now notice what did not happen.
Dickie did not suddenly get better in month ten.
The same writing that looked like failure for nine months was what people later paid for.
The work did not change.
The verdict did.
He kept going on the days the numbers said he was an idiot, because he believed the idea was right.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Genius-Idiot Rollercoaster
John wrote in his diary that he was not a writer, in the middle of writing his best book.
Dickie published for nine months to three hundred people, half of whom he signed up himself.
Neither of them had better days than us.
They just kept working on the days that felt like failure.
So one bad day stops being a reason to quit.
The bad weeks stop costing you the project.
On the days you're sure you're not good enough, do the work anyway.
Let the record show you turned up.
That's it, my fellow anti-status-quo-ers!
Yours 'helping you skip years of pain and frustration in your life and business' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below separates the swing from the evidence, and gives you something to
read on the bad days.
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
- Be honest and kind. Do not cheer me up with numbers that are not there, and do not agree that I am failing.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
How long I have been publishing, and how often:
{e.g. eleven weeks, one issue most Sundays, missed two}
The actual numbers, however small:
{e.g. 62 subscribers, about 20 opens, four replies ever}
What I tell myself on a good day:
{e.g. this is finally clicking, I should go all in}
What I tell myself on a bad day:
{e.g. nobody cares, I picked the wrong topic, maybe I am just not interesting}
Why I believed this idea would work in the first place:
{e.g. every new manager I know is drowning and nobody writes plainly for them}
For Audience: {e.g. new managers who have just been handed their first team}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. Weather or evidence — sort my good-day and bad-day statements into feelings versus things a number actually supports.
2. What the numbers can and cannot say at this size — be blunt about where they say nothing yet.
3. My original reason — restate why I believed this works, in my own words, so I can check whether anything real has changed.
4. My bad-day note — five lines I can reread when I feel like giving up, using only true things.
5. The real stop condition — the specific evidence that would honestly mean change direction, decided now while I am calm.
Then name the ONE decision I have been about to make on a bad day that should wait for a calm one.