In my professional life, I have had the privilege to work amongst many people whom I learned a lot from them. I also tried to encourage many others to follow the path to success. Talking about blogging, videos, or speaking in general; I always encourage people to start doing their blogs, videos, speaking sessions. But often I hear that: “I don’t have something important to say”, or “all I want to say is already out there in tons of videos and blogs”, or any other blocker’s statements. So, I thought better to write about it and explain my reasons here for you, in the hope that it helps you in your path.

Do We All Speak the Same Language?

Of course not. people of each country, speak different languages. Even in one country, you will find dialects that can be sometimes very different from each other. Why a person’s book in one language, will have a better audience overseas if it is translated in other languages? because people from other countries understand it.

Different people understand different languages.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean you have to write articles in different languages (that would be, however, a good thing to do anyway). I want to use it to jump to my next topic below:

Conceptual Language

I believe that everyone also has something I call conceptual or logical language (this is not a public term, it is just invented by me 😉). This is the language that helps me to understand something. It has nothing to do with the fact that I talk English or French or anything else. It is the line of thoughts that I follow to reason something logical in order to understand it.

That is the reason why when you say the same thing to a group of people (considering they all have the same language), some of them might understand it, and some of them might not.

Different people understand things differently.

In order to explain something that everyone can understand, you need to explain it in multiple ways, and multiple languages.

Do You see only one book on any specific topic? of course not!

Just go to Google and search for books about Power BI, DAX, Power Query, SQL Server, or any other subjects. You will find tons of books on each subject. Have you ever wondered why so many books? if one is written in a good way, then why so many? The answer is that; there is an audience for all types of books. People understand things differently. Each book has good reviews and bad reviews, but the bottom line is that most of those books are needed by a different variety of audiences in the world.

If there was only one explanation for a specific topic, many won’t understand it.

Back in the old days when I learned SSIS, I did not learn it using only one book, I read over ten books, tons of forum’s discussions. Why I did that? well, not because those books were not good books, but because I understand things differently, sometimes I need to read it in two or three or even more different ways of explanation to understand it (even though they are written all in the same English language).

I believe I am not alone in this journey. Was there a time that you read a book’s chapter or an article and you did not understand the concept fully? have you tried to check for other articles, blogs, videos or books explaining the same thing? with reading it two, three or more times, didn’t you gain a much better understanding of it? You see! this is where our conceptual language is trying to understand the content?

Where I am going with these?

The most blockers I hear when I ask people to go and write about their experiences and knowledge are:

• This is not a new concept, there are tons of articles, and videos about it!
• This topic is presented so far more than ten times in many conferences, who wants to hear more about it again?!
• (Marco, Brent, Pinal,… you name it) wrote about it already, how on earth I am going to write about it better?
• I do not know about all aspects of this topic, what If I get a question that I don’t know the answer?
• I am not good at writing (or speaking) English!
• I wrote about all the things I knew, nothing left. I stuck in the writer’s block.
• I don’t have time to write!
• ….

I want you to overcome the challenge of these blockers, as I did myself a long time ago. Here are why these blockers are not valid reasons.

This is not a new concept, there are tons of articles, and videos about it!

my idea is that as long as there is someone who wants to learn about it, there is a need to generate content about it. Imagine if everyone only focuses on generating content for top edge technologies and only hot new features. What would happen is that everything would be only touched at the surface level. You won’t really have any deep content about the subject matter.

This topic is presented so far more than ten times in many conferences, who wants to hear more about it again?!

That is exactly why I started this article by explaining that we have different languages of understanding. People are keen to learn, and they understand differently. So start talking in your language and your way of explaining, there will be an audience for it for sure.

How on earth I am going to write about it better?

Don’t write (or publish videos, or speak) because it is BETTER. Do it your way, it might not be the better way, it is just ANOTHER way. In the realm of sharing content, the BETTER is not important, the variety is important. Do it to have your own way of explaining things, and your audience will appreciate that.

I do not know about all aspects of this topic, what If I get a question that I don’t know the answer?

To be honest, this is sometimes the reason I write or speak. I get questions that I normally don’t face. those questions help me to dig more into that topic and learn it better. What is a better way to get that source of questions? I have a backlog of topics that I want to write about in my blog, and a good portion of that backlog is fed from questions that I get in the comments section of my blog. a question can lead to another blog article or view or a conference session.

I am not good at writing (or speaking) English!

Believe me on this; I am the last person you want to blame about this one. I am not good at English myself! Even right now after over ten years of writing blog articles, I still get comments about parts of my writing which was not Grammarly correct. But I also get tons of comments saying “Thank you for sharing this”. And that I why I continue to write. My accent might be hard for some people to understand, my writing the same, but on the other hand, it might be my way of explaining which makes it easier for some others to understand it. Leila wrote a fantastic post about speaking in conferences as a second language English speaker, I highly recommend reading it.

English is my second language, in fact, it is more like my third language, but I still write and speak, and never thought this as a blocker.

I wrote about all the things I knew, nothing left. I stuck in the writer’s block.

Like many other blockers, this also happened to me in the very first years that I started to write. I wrote about all the things I learned, and knew, and ran out of content. Now, what should I write about?

These days I never get to that situation, I write sometimes DAILY, and even on weekends, and I never run out of topics. I have a backlog of topics that I always select from it. My advice to you is to have your backlog of all the topics worthy of writing, add topics to this all the time. I get ideas from anywhere, in a client meeting, in a training session after a specific question, after reading a comment in my blog or someone else’s blog, As soon as I get the idea, I write it down in my backlog. And every time I want to write, I select a topic from there. There is no writer’s block for me.

If you look at my blogs on Power BI, you’ll see that I have had over 500 blog articles on this subject, and never ran out of things to write!

I don’t have time to write!

Sharing is Caring. I always believe in this. I learn things because someone spends his/her time to write about it, and I read it. So why shouldn’t I be doing the same? When I learn something by reading it or watching or listening, I feel that this is my responsibility to share what I know with others. I write because I feel I owe it to all who thought me something; to pass on the knowledge and experience.

I also write because I use this as my notes. I have written over 500 articles, Would I remember the technique used in every one of them right now? not me, I don’t have that sharp memory. When I have it as writing, I can easily come back to it and remember. My blog is my notebook. But even better, a public notebook for everyone to use.

Sharing is Caring

No Matter why you are not staring to write or produce content, I urge you to start it right now. None of us would have learned a single thing if authors of books, speakers of conferences all have thought the same way. This is a world of sharing, with sharing, you care about others, and others care about you. share because this world needs your knowledge and experience, as much as you do need the same from others.