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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

A lot of what you list is output. Output is actually not that hard once you actually know your domain very well. It's just putting what you already know/understand well onto paper.

Input or synthesis based activities are much harder and take more voluntary investment imo. For many of us, becoming very good at our craft (ex: day job) will be the input activity, and the retained knowledge can be channeled as output over multiple mediums.

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Also, the skill of making tech talks, or blog posts, or even tweets is equally something that must be learned. I've had the fortune to hang out with well known tech speakers several times, and I observed the same things again and again:

- It took a long time for them to get good at public speaking

- Each talk takes a lot of prep, 20 to 40 hours easily, for people already very skilled at crafting talks who already know what they want to talk about.

- They have a drive towards perfection and often tend to feel like they aren't really good enough by their own standards.

And: they do the same talk quite a few times.

You can do the same talk first for your team, then the company, then a small local conf, etc.

In agreement, this pretty much sums it up - it really isn't hard if you already have something to say. The hard part is building internally so you actually have something to say. Related poem. [1]

[1] https://allpoetry.com/So-You-Want-To-Be-A-Writer

That's a good poetry you've got there.

While this may be the case for the poet and many like him, it isn't true for all writers. Not having something to say can be a good starting point and shouldn't discourage those who want to practice and improve their writing.

That’s rather modest of you! Quality output still requires time and effort.

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