How to Keep Going When Nothing Seems to Be Working

Right now, I’m showing up every day to write.

And most days, it feels like talking into the void.

No feedback. No applause. No sign I’m on the right track.

Just me, my words, and the quiet question: Am I even any good at this?

Getting Through The Dip

The hardest part of learning something new isn't the beginning, it's the middle.

When you first start down a new path, you have that initial burst of excitement. The novelty makes things fun, your mind is curious and engaged in learning new things.

But inevitably, progress slows. The easy wins dry up.

You enter what Seth Godin calls The Dip — a tough stretch where results lag behind effort, and everything feels harder than it should.

That’s exactly where I am right now with my writing.

This is my 11th long-form blog. Each one takes me days to write and edit. They aren’t quick thoughts — they’re deep, vulnerable pieces. The kind of writing that feels risky to share because it actually matters to me.

And yet, only around 80 people are reading them. My audience isn’t growing. Most weeks, I get no feedback at all. Every now and then, a friend will message me saying a blog resonated with them, but that’s about it.

I’ve also started posting daily short-form content on X.

And the silence there is even more deafening.

Forty followers. Zero engagement. No growth.

Some days, it feels like I’m standing on a stage speaking from the heart — yet the room is empty.

And in those moments, the doubts creep in:

Is this even good?

Am I wasting my time?

Why am I even doing this?

It’s easy to show up when you’re winning. It's much harder to keep showing up when you feel invisible. If you knew that you were going to get out of the other side, it wouldn't be so bad. But there’s no roadmap for how long you’ll be here and no guarantee that you'll ever get out.

You're forced to confront two realisations:

1) That you likely suck and need to get better.

2) That you will need to keep pouring effort into this with no short term rewards and hope that it's worth it.

These realisations are enough to make most people quit. Which is why it's so important to learn how to push through this phase for long enough for your efforts to compound.

The Courage to Suck (and Stay in the Game)

Most people quit in the Dip because they misinterpret the pain of slow progress as a sign they should stop.

I get it, I’m living it right now. At first, writing felt exciting. Every new blog post was a small victory. I was energised by the process, fuelled by the hope that if I kept showing up, the audience would grow and the feedback would pour in.

But now, the effort has gone up — hours spent writing, editing, posting every day — but the results haven’t followed.

And the voice in my head sometimes whispers, “Maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe this isn’t working.” It’s tempting to believe it. To chase a new project, a new path that feels easier. But I know that would only restart the cycle. What I’m starting to understand is that this frustration isn’t proof I should stop, it’s proof that I’m on a meaningful path.

The mistake would be thinking that frustration means I'm not cut out for it — when really, frustration is the price of entry.

The Dip isn’t a dead end. It’s a test. It’s asking me: “Are you willing to stick it out and keep showing up long enough for the breakthrough to come?”

I want to answer yes.

It's also asking me to shift my focus from whether I am good at writing yet, to am I willing to keep learning long enough to get good?

Rather than treating my writing as a performance that is being judged, I'm learning to think of it as a skill that I'm training.

Every blog post or X thread I write, are vital reps.

The Three Things That Matter Most

In the absence of external validation, in order to keep going I’ve come back to three questions:

1. Am I enjoying the process?

2. Am I learning and growing?

3. Is the upside worth it?

For all three, the answer is a resounding yes.

Some days the enjoyment of writing is less than others. That's normal for anything. But most days, I feel excited to sit down and get the thoughts out of my head.

When I first started writing, I was very naive. I thought it would be easy to write well, that I could just give ChatGPT a few prompts, do a brain dump, and it would spit out a polished blog. In reality, that's not how it works. Not it you want to write something authentic that actually sounds like you. I quickly realised that I was going to have to do it the hard way, to study different writing styles and learn from writers who I resonate with. I was going to have to find my own voice by trial and error.

What I didn't know, was that this was going to be one of the most fun parts. It allows me to be creative, experiment with different approaches and try to articulate my words in a way that make the reader want to keep reading. I'm not yet at the level I want to be as a writer, but I feel like I'm getting better with each post.

Then it comes to the final question: is it worth the effort for the potential upside?

If I was just doing this to grow a bigger audience, I would have to say the answer is no. I could allocate my time in better ways than writing long-form blogs that I know most people will never read. But for me, the upside I'm looking for is to be a better thinker who can articulate my thoughts and ideas to others. I also want to be able to share my experiences in a more vulnerable way and to talk about deep topics I think are valuable. For this, writing feels like the perfect medium.

The Lesson: Focus on the Next Action

When the results aren’t coming, it’s easy to zoom out and start questioning everything. The path, the process, even yourself. But what I’m learning is that in these moments, the answer isn’t to zoom out. It’s to zoom in.

• Forget writing the perfect blog post — focus on the next sentence.

• Forget growing a bigger audience — focus on sharing one honest idea.

• Forget crafting the post that will finally "take off" — focus on getting one paragraph right.

Writing long-form blogs has taught me this the hard way. It’s so tempting to think about the end while you’re still in the middle. To wonder if it will be worth the hours you've put into it and if anyone will even read it. But that mindset pulls you out of the work. It makes the page heavier. The way through is always the same: shrink the game. Come back to the next word, the next idea, the next hour of focused writing.

Skill isn’t built by chasing applause or obsessing over metrics. It's built deep in the process, in the quiet hours when you’re the only one who cares, when you’re writing sentence after sentence with no guarantee that any of it will matter to anyone but you.

When the big picture feels overwhelming, the next action is always the way forward: One word. One paragraph. One blog post at a time.

Closing Reflection

I don't know how long I'll need to suck at writing before I get good. I don't know if I'll ever grow a large audience that resonates with my ideas. What I do know is that every blog I write, every sentence I wrestle with, every moment I choose to keep going — I'm becoming the kind of person who doesn't quit when it gets hard.

And that’s a bigger win than any post going viral.

When I look back at the things I'm most proud of, it's always the moments when I stayed persistent, especially when things got hard. When I felt the urge to throw in the towel, but to keep going anyway. When I pushed through the Dip.

If you're going through your own challenging period of life right now, where you are putting in the effort without getting the rewards to show for it, I hope this post inspired you to keep going.

I'll see you on the other side of the Dip.

Adam