When I write every day at my blog, I only write things I’d write for free, which means it’s for fun.

When I tried to write every day at Medium, I was writing each article as an instrument to make money.

Even though the end result might sound the same—I’m writing every day—the experience is day and night. The motivations are entirely different. Writing at this blog is energizing; the process actually powers and feeds the rest of my day. By contrast, writing for and at Medium is draining; the process takes away my life force for the rest of the day. 

For me, changing my motivation unblocked my creativity; and frankly, I didn’t really do it by design, I just started blogging every day again to practice creative doing, and also to try #the100dayproject as a structure. (Thanks, Lindsay!) 

It sounds high level, but I think this motivational shift—which takes a lot of time to practice and soak up—will be really valuable in the long run. It could be the same for you, too.

This shift comes with a circumstantial one as well. If you don’t own your own marketing (and income), then you’re subject to the intermediary’s incentives too. 

When you build your mailing list, or sell your own products and collect customer data, and build your own business model, you’re going direct to consumers, which means you’re able to set your own incentives as well.