I used to care so much about curation. To some degree, I let it affect my life, though to a lesser degree than a lot of people.

Like you correctly said Jun Wu: “curation matters, but it’s not everything.”

Five months ago now, I stopped caring about curation and statistics. I stopped looking at my stats entirely, and I have no clue if my articles get curated or not. For the most part, I don’t know which one of my articles are performing and which ones are underperforming.

And here’s why it’s great:

Not getting curated makes you feel bad about yourself. Seeing low stats on an article you spent a lot of time on sucks. And when an article does great, your standards for success go up. You expect all of them to do as great. And of course, it doesn’t work that way.

By having zero expectations about curation and stats, I can focus on the one true thing that matters: producing quality content.

When I stopped caring for stats and curation, I either maintained my revenues or increased them. More importantly, I’m always satisfied. I know I worked hard. No more downs because a piece I wrote didn’t get the attention it deserves.

The whole idea of “curation jail” makes me laugh. I hear people boast about their high percentage of curation. I get curated less than 10% of the time. Always have. I’m certainly not less successful because of it.

You’ll never hear Tim Denning, Anthony Moore, and Niklas Göke, for example, talk about not getting curated. They don’t care, like me, they write good shit without any pretence that it will be (or deserves to) a greatest hit.

Anyway, you’re right about these misconceptions. Thanks for sharing that Jun Wu!