The Unexpected Writing Lesson I Learned from Raising a Reactive Puppy

What does raising a reactive puppy have to do with overcoming writer’s block? A lot more than I ever expected.

I’ve been running into an interesting problem lately. Well, not just lately — this has been bubbling under the surface for the past two years. I want to write, but every time I try, I come up against an invisible wall of resistance.

I know I’m not alone in this. Plenty of people struggle with writing. Whole books have been written to solve this exact problem. I’ve even read some of them, hoping for a breakthrough. But for some reason, nothing ever seemed to stick.

That is, until recently.

Oddly enough, the answer came from an unexpected place — a Huberman Lab podcast featuring Josh Waitzkin. During the conversation, Waitzkin introduced a thought-provoking idea: the interconnected nature of technical, thematic, and psychological errors.

The core insight: mistakes don’t exist in isolation.

A single problem can be symptomatic of deeper, recurring themes across multiple areas of life.

"Every technical mistake is local, but there are themes — patterns that house hundreds of those mistakes. If we're always thinking about the technical, the thematic, and the psychological together, we have what I think of as a six-dimensional introspective process. The growth curve is then incredibly explosive. Because we make one technical mistake and study it in a way that reveals the theme that housed it. Once we turn that theme into a strength, that local mistake disappears — and so do all its little cousins."
— Josh Waitzkin

This hit me hard.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with my 8-month-old reactive puppy, Kairi. Raising her has been one of the most emotionally challenging experiences of my life. But through this challenge, I uncovered a deeper issue — one which continues to show up everywhere.

My complicated relationship with control.

That realization cracked something open for me. It wasn’t just about Kairi. It was about my writing, too.

I realized I had been trying to control the outcome of my writing before I had even written anything. Before I typed a single word, I was already burdening the process with expectations:

It had to be helpful— not just to me, but to everyone.
It had to be monetizable — after all, why spend time writing if it doesn’t generate something?
It had to be authentic — but also polished, articulate, and effortless.
It had to be interesting — something people actually wanted to read.
And worst of all, it had to be perfect — above criticism, a testament to my “intelligence” and “competence”.

With all that pressure, it’s no wonder I found myself procrastinating, avoiding the page entirely, and feeling awful about it.

It was never just about writing.

It was about the need to control the perception of my own competence.

And that realization pointed me toward the solution: I needed a new approach — one that shed external expectations and re-centered writing as a practice, not a product.

So, I’m rewiring my relationship with writing based on three core principles.

Principle 1: Write ‘Dailyish’

A common pitfall when trying to build a habit is the illusion of perfection. The fantasy of waking up one day, flipping a switch, and suddenly becoming someone who writes every day without fail. It’s an attractive vision. It’s also the fastest way to fail.

Instead of rigid consistency, I’m embracing a more sustainable idea: writing ‘dailyish.’

I first heard about this on Oliver Burkeman’s blog, but this term comes from Dan Harris, who used it to describe how to build a meditation practice.

The idea is simple: Aim for daily, but allow room for imperfection.

This works for two reasons:

Consistency without rigidity. If I miss a day, I haven’t “failed.” The goal isn’t to uphold a perfect streak — it’s to keep showing up over time.
Avoiding the control trap. If I turn writing into another rigid system, it becomes yet another thing I’m trying to control. A little flexibility ensures that writing remains a practice of exploration, not another domain where I impose pressure on myself.

The goal isn’t daily for the sake of daily. The goal is to remove the friction that stops me from writing in the first place.

Principle 2: No Pressure to Publish

Somewhere along the way, I started seeing writing as a performance.

Every piece had to be worthy of an audience. Worthy of sharing. Worthy of external validation.

But the moment I attached publishing as a prerequisite, I closed off the most important function of writing: self-discovery.

So, I’m decoupling writing from publishing.

Writing is for me first.

That means:

Some of what I write will be too raw or personal to share. And that’s okay.
Some pieces will be unfinished thoughts rather than polished arguments.
Some might sit in my notes forever, never seeing the light of day.

And that’s liberating.

When writing is no longer a means to an end, I’m free to explore ideas without wondering, How will this be perceived? or Will this get likes?

Curiosity drives the process — not algorithms, monetization, or an imagined audience.

Principle 3: Write to Think, Not to Conclude

One of the most underrated benefits of writing is that it forces clarity.

Thoughts, when they stay in your head, feel fully formed. It’s only when you try to put them into words that you realize how unfinished they are.

Paul Graham put it best:

”If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn’t written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.”
— Paul Graham

This is why I’m shifting my mindset: writing is not about delivering answers — it’s about refining my thinking.

We’re moving into an era where AI will amplify execution speed. Information will be easier to generate, summarize, and automate.

The real differentiator? The quality of your ideas.

And the best way to develop better ideas is to write through them.

That means:

Writing to explore, not just explain.
Writing to ask better questions, not just answer them.
Writing to discover insights, not just communicate them.

By shifting the focus from “having conclusions” to “engaging with ideas,” I allow myself to grow through writing, rather than waiting until I “have it all figured out” to start.

Letting Go

I thought I needed to control my writing to make it good. Turns out, control was the thing keeping me from writing at all.

So I’m letting go.

Dailyish. No pressure to publish. Writing to think, not to conclude.

Let’s see where this goes.