Finding My Writing Focus and Voice
Zaib-un-Nisa Nawaz
The Dark Side of “Always Online”: How I Found My Focus and Voice
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Being online not only helped me to learn, but learning when to be offline helped me to think deeply, write purposefully, and ultimately find my voice.
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Reclaiming focus from the noise of being always online and finding a more purposeful, authentic writing voice.
Being Online Was Part of My Work
Being online used to be part of my process of learning and writing. Online didn’t always mean wasting time on social media. It didn’t always mean reading irrelevant content. It all happened to learn something new, improve my writing, or see how my readers reacted to the work. However, when I started my writing journey, I would often go online and check my views and claps and re-read my own work. It was my way to see if the audience was actually seeing my content and if they even read my article. When I didn’t get claps that I wanted and views that I was hoping for I was disappointed. It was hard to invest so much time and not get any response. Looking back, what I didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the amount of people reading my article, but whether the article was actually giving the reader something to read.
The Big Realization Was That “Writing an Article” Wasn’t Always Enough
One of the biggest realizations I made was that writing an article and publishing it wasn’t enough. I could publish an article and call it finished, but it wasn’t until the reader took something out of it that I could consider it a successful and complete piece of writing. What I tried to do was give the reader a sense of respect in their time spent. When they got to the end of my article, I always wanted to make sure they knew that they had something out of it. They understood something a little better. They had some type of solution in their pocket because of what I wrote. The article had to become a lesson for the reader. It had to help them see, recognize, explore, be inspired, and act on something. To me, this is when you completed the article. It wasn’t until the end of my last sentence that I considered the paper a finished piece of writing.
The Truth Wasn’t Always About the Reader
There was a time when I would get upset and ask myself why the reader clapped or didn’t clap for my content. The writing was there, I put in the effort and the response I got, was less than expected. The one realization I made was that it was possible that my article didn’t give the reader a reason to respond to it. It was a hard pill to swallow, but it was the truth. Once I realized this, I took it upon myself to improve my writing and my content. My writing didn’t lie on the surface. It was more personal now, more relatable to the problems people I knew actually struggled with. Instead of writing something half written and leaving the rest to the reader, I tried to explain the situation to the fullest. That was the biggest lesson. You don’t always have to feel sad about it when something you’ve done doesn’t work out. You can analyze it first and figure out what can be improved.
I Started to Write More Personally and Relatable to the Problems People I Knew Struggled With
Instead of writing articles that were completely generic, real scenarios gave the reader something to connect to. When a reader goes to a scenario and thinks “This happened to me,” the writer has connected to the reader. That is one of my biggest changes I’ve made to my articles. I’m not here to tell you I have all of the solutions. I’m here to give you something to reflect on. The problems people struggle with when trying to make a career online are very similar, but everyone experiences them differently. When I expressed those real situations to my readers, I noticed that the responses gave me something to reflect on as well. The experiences that I thought were mine, were actually something that everyone went through. They helped people make connections and realize that they weren’t alone in their problems.
Good Feedback Gave Me the Boost That Views and Claps Alone Couldn’t
Good feedback gave me something that views and claps couldn’t: confidence that what I said was heard and that what I expressed was felt. When readers told me that they experienced the same scenarios as I did or that my article enlightened them on something they struggled with, it was a good sign. I didn’t feel like I was just doing this for the claps that would come after. I felt like my words had made an impact on another human being and that they could understand what I was getting at.
That Good Feedback Motivated Me to Continue to Improve
I also didn’t have to be afraid to express my opinions anymore. I didn’t have to worry about every article I wrote being picture perfect. I was more interested in learning from my articles. I was more interested in the audience that I had built. The more I learned about my readers, the more I learned about myself as a writer.
Finding My Voice
Somewhere along the way, I found my writing voice. My goal was to personalize every article in a way that it could be read by someone I had never seen in my life and they would feel like we were sitting in the same room having a conversation. That was an important part of the writing process to me and one that I learned a lot from.
Finding my voice wasn’t because I found myself as a perfect writer. It was because I stopped writing for the claps and started writing for the people. I knew what I wanted my readers to feel when they got to the end of my article. I wanted them to understand. I wanted them to know something a little more about their own situation. I wanted them to feel a little more hopeful and know what to do next.
Being Online Isn’t Always Bad
My journey of finding myself as a writer also taught me that being online isn’t always bad. Being online can be a place where we learn, stay updated on the topics we’re interested in, receive feedback on our work, and even learn new things. Feedback is always important and there is always something new to learn to improve at what we do. I’m grateful for the feedback but I now have a bigger understanding of why I’m online.
There’s a big difference between working on being online with purpose and being online without purpose. If we spend hours and hours online looking at numbers and not analyzing why we got those numbers, we’re just wasting our time being busy. Being connected online gives us a lot of information, but it’s up to us to use that information to improve.
I Learnt That Rest Was Part of the Process
New ideas are hard to come up with from a mind that never rests. I found that mornings were perfect for writing. My mind was fresh and I could focus. Afternoons were times to eat, rest, sleep, enjoy my family, and exercise. This might not seem like it has anything to do with writing, but it did for me. When my mind was tired, I struggled. New ideas didn’t come as easily and it was harder to think about how to improve.
I Started Seeing Rest as a Way to Come Back Fresh and Ready to Deliver What My Readers Needed
When I took time off, it didn’t move me away from success. It sometimes moved me closer. When my mind was at rest, it was able to come up with something fresh that my audience needed.
What Questions Do I Ask Myself Now?
My questions have changed. Instead of focusing on whether or not people read my content, I’m more focused on what they understood. Did I clearly explain my problems? Could someone read my article and see their own struggles in them? Did I give them something to take away? Is there something I can improve? There have also been times that I’ve seen my mistakes without feeling the need to quit the moment. When there is a problem, the first thing I do is understand it. If something went wrong, I ask myself what happened and what I can do to handle it better in the future. A mistake can ruin your morale if we let it. What can help is looking at it as a piece of information. We may need to learn from it and understand how it could be handled differently.
You Can’t Solve a Problem Until You Understand It
One problem I’ve had to solve was that I had to understand the problems. Sometimes, we rush to solve the problems and don’t understand what they are. We try one solution after another and become frustrated when nothing works.
Everyone Views Problems Differently
Another person would suggest something based off of their own experiences. That doesn’t mean it will work the exact same way for us. We need to understand our problems. Once we do, finding the next steps are easy. That is what I try to help my readers do with my articles. Not only do I write about my problems, but I help my readers recognize them as well and start solving them.
You Don’t Have To Quit Because of One Mistake
Every day, our work won’t always be successful. Sometimes we do everything right and it doesn’t turn out like we want it to. It’s not our efforts that have failed us, it’s that we may have something new to learn before we take on the next thing. A mistake shouldn’t be a reason for us to punish ourselves. Learn from it. Understand it. Know what you can do differently and move forward. One mistake shouldn’t dictate who you are. Use it to move you forward and make you better.
Being Online Was Part of My Process, But Now I Try to Make That Time Count For Something Useful
I’ve found that being online all day doesn’t mean much, if all that time spent online isn’t used to either learn, build, or improve. I want to be able to come out of that time and have a new idea, get something good out of it, understand something better, or know how to improve my work. Success isn’t defined by how much time we spend online compared to others. It’s defined by what we do with our time. We need to learn, do, rest, observe, make mistakes, understand them, and try again. Being online can give us opportunities, but becoming better also requires us to do things for ourselves.
I Found My Focus by Finding My Voice
Looking back, I don’t think that it was necessary to disconnect from the online world. It was necessary to have a different relationship with it: instead of calculating every bit and piece of effort through views and claps, the focus had to change and become something that would make me a better writer. That change helped me to focus on the work instead of the results.
And somewhere in that, I found my voice. I found a way of writing that was me. I learned that my sentences don’t always have to be perfect to matter. They just have to be honest, helpful, and clear enough for another person to connect to them. If the reader finishes one of my articles and feels like they understood something, learned something, or were ready to take one small step forward in their lives, then I know that I did something meaningful with my writing.
A Reminder for Anyone Still Trying
If you’re working towards something and feeling like you’re not getting much progress, don’t let one day of struggle convince you that you can’t do it. You may just need a little more time to understand the problems, change what you’re doing, or take a break. Not every day will give us the same results and not every day will have success.
Learn from the mistakes. Believe in the ability to change. Do what we have to in order to become who we want to be. There will always be people who convince us otherwise or try to bring us down, but it doesn’t have to define our future. We have to build our future with our work, our lessons, and our persistence. One day, the struggles that once brought us down will be the experiences that we use to help others.
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Posted Sep 25, 2026
A deep first-person personal growth article about overcoming digital distraction. This original article is available for direct purchase by magazines and blogs.
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Sep 22, 2026 - Sep 25, 2026
