Social proof
I know I’m not supposed to do it but I still did it.
I started judging the quality of my LinkedIn posts by the number of likes.
I would check how the post was doing every couple of hours. I would get discouraged when there wasn’t much engagement. And excited when a post got a bunch of likes.
And I would justify it by thinking: increased distribution/visibility for Kindred Minds is my goal. And more likes -> increased distribution (since that’s how LinkedIn’s algos work).
But that’s not the truth. The real truth was that likes are a quantitative measure of social proof and it felt good to get that social proof.
Subconsciously I started thinking about writing for what would get the most likes, instead of what I just knew/felt would be good.
I know all this stuff, talk about this stuff, live this stuff and still fall pray to the toxicity.
It’s a potent reminder that the real work to living a full life is not in knowledge, but in regular and consistent practice.
It requires constant mastery and remastery.
There is no magic bullet. And it never gets easy. But the challenge is also what makes figuring it out so rewarding.