Division of topics

I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog and why it has became difficult for me to write here over the last few years.

Family drama aside (which takes up lots of my energy), I’ve realized that the fundamental problem lies in the incompatible worldviews between different markets.

Because of this, I’m splitting up the blog into two separate websites:

• Magical Dev School — for coding related content
• Better Human — for life, philosophy, relationships, ontology related content

In this article, I want to walk you through some of my thought processes. I hope it helps you clarify the actions you need to do (in your life) that you may have been postponing. I wish that, after reading this, you’ll find the strength and resolve to do take the next step.

Worldviews for Different Markets

The easiest way to explain this is via politics. So bear with me for just a few paragraphs. I promise the politics part will be so short, so sweet, that it’ll end before you know it.

In the United States, politics is often split into two opposing viewpoints — Democrats and Republicans.

Each of these circles represent a worldview. The worldview determines what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s acceptable, and what’s not.

So if you say Trump sucks, Democrats will be behind you while Republicans will be out for your blood, because these two groups rarely see eye to eye with each other.

That’s the end of the politics analogy.

In my case, when I started this blog, I focused only one one worldview — people who’re on the journey to become better frontend developers.

Talking to this group of people was easy. There was a lot of stuff I could talk about. From CSS, to JavaScript, Design, Typography, Accessibility.

Things began to become a little more difficult as I expanded to include server-related content (mostly Node).

But people who are interested in server-related content were still pretty similar to frontend developers. They form a bigger group called Full Stack Developers.

(There are lots of nuances on what “Full Stack” may mean. But we don’t need to dive these nuances for the purposes of this article).

As I continue to mature as a person, I find myself want to talk more about life as well. Unfortunately, the circle of people who were simultaneously interested in life-related topics and code-related topics was much smaller.

So now I’m making a choice — one that I had deliberated and held back on for ages as I pursued the elusive sweet spot.

The Elusive Sweet Spot

One way of handling the issue above is to find a sweet spot — covering topics that hit all three worldviews at the same time like the picture above.

Unfortunately, this idealism doesn’t happen in reality.

Realistically, it’s pretty difficult to cover a topic and make it relevant to all three segments at the same time. It’s often much easier — and probable — to create a topic solely focused on a single segment.

Plus, people are already inundated with choices, messages, lots of advertisements, and stories from everywhere, that few people have the capacity to make sense of what someone does without putting them into a box they already understand.

Since humans have a deep need to sort and categorize things (mostly for the clarity of the mind, but also because it drives certain people crazy if they can’t), most people find it easier to block you out if you don’t belong to a category they recognize. (This box that you’re trying to create in their mind, marketers call it positioning).

As a business, it’s simply more realistic to focus on one core area — and resonate so strongly there — that people get attracted to the work you do.

Resonance and Core

The Earth has a core. It’s a place resonance is so strong that matter gets attracted to it and begin to form around it.

Each business that you create must have a core as well. This core guides your decisions and helps you craft your messages. When your core resonates, it attracts people — like gravity.

So, instead of focusing my content on the elusive sweet spot (which probably doesn’t exist), it makes much more sense to create content at the core of each circle.

This allows content to resonate so strongly, so clearly, so unapologetically, that they attract people who are interested in that area to dance around your core with you.

On the other hand, if you place multiple cores in close proximity to each other, you’ll get unpredictable and erratic behaviour depending on the strength of each core — they interfere with each other.

By allowing this blog split into two separate business, I allow their respective cores to resonate strongly without their gravitational fields interfering with each other.

So each business can shine without being limited or adversely affect by the gravity pull of the other one.

Then, when the time is right, or when the opportunity becomes available, I can always sponsor content from the other business to allow individuals to hop aboard both trains if they are willing to. After all, they get to decide. And I end up serving everyone better.