You Can Just Do Things

Nobody gave me permission to start a newsletter.

I made a Substack one evening and started writing. That became issue one. That was four years ago. I now run four newsletters simultaneously, none of which I planned in advance, none of which I waited to feel ready for.

I sat down and did it.

The Planning Trap

People wait. They’re always waiting for something; a better month, a finished idea, a cleaner setup. I get it. But here’s the thing about waiting: it’s very comfortable, and it produces nothing.

Six weeks into doing the thing badly, you’ll feel ready. Not before.

I am not an exceptional person. I have 24 hours, same as you.

What My 24 Hours Actually Look Like

Monday to Friday, I’m a Product Marketing Lead at WPManageNinja. Three WordPress products: Fluent Forms, Ninja Tables, FluentPlayer. Five-person content team I manage. Product marketing strategies, weekly reports to the CMO, cross-team meetings, cross-product coordination, community management, marketing communication, product releases. Nine to six, sometimes past that.

Then I go home to my wife and my three-year-old daughter. Spend time with them.

Then I write.

Every week, four newsletters go out. Weekly NishIsHere at nishishere.com — 104+ issues, close to 2,000 Substack subscribers. WP More at wpmore.net — 50 issues, 454 Substack subscribers, Spotify & YouTube podcast, two Shorts per issue. HighDegree* Marketing at serplabseo.com — 30 issues, 640 LinkedIn newsletter subscribers, also on Substack, Medium, Spotify & YouTube. And NishNama, the Bangla version of NishIsHere, which goes to 11,000+ subscribers. Plus Curious Nish, a private weekly blog for myself and a few friends.

Each newsletter gets distributed across LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr, subreddits, FB groups. Each one goes to Spotify and YouTube as an audio & video podcast.

I also have nishat.blog, nishnama.com, and a monthly meta-newsletter – NicheNish on Beehiiv.

One person. No personal team for any of this. The same 24 hours you have.

This Is Not A Productivity Post

I’m not going to tell you to wake up at 5 am or batch your content or build a second brain.

I started WP More because I wanted to write about WordPress. I started HighDegree* Marketing because I had SEO and marketing things to say. I started NishNama because I had thoughts I wanted to share in Bangla and nowhere to put them. No research phase. No strategy doc. I wanted to do it, so I did it.

None of these started because conditions were right. They started because I stopped waiting for conditions to be right.

What Actually Stops You

It’s not time. You have pockets of time. You’re spending them on something easier right now and that’s fine, but don’t call it a time problem.

It’s not skill. You build that by doing it badly first. There’s no other way.

It’s not money. A newsletter costs nothing. A blog costs nothing.

What stops you is a voice that says you need more before you can start. More clarity, more confidence, a better plan. That voice isn’t helping you. It’s just buying itself more time.

Why I Actually Keep Doing This

None of this feels like extra work because I’m not doing it to optimize anything. I like writing about WordPress. I like curating SEO and marketing reads. I like writing in Bangla. I like Curious Nish even though almost nobody reads it.

When you do things you care about, the “where do you find the time” question doesn’t quite land.

You find time for things that matter. You stop finding time for things that don’t.

It doesn’t feel like sacrifice.

So What’s Stopping You

You have something you want to do. You’ve been sitting on it. Maybe a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a blog, a hobby project. You know what it is.

You’re waiting for something to change. It probably won’t.

You don’t need a launch plan for month one. You don’t need the full system figured out. You don’t need to feel ready.

Open a tab. Do the first thing.

You can just do things.

With Love,

– Nishat Shahriyar