The 6 thinking hats and why I will be publishing weekly | #55

After 3 months of publishing every weekday, I made the decision of moving away from daily publishing to publishing once a week. Moving forward, Atomic Learnings will be published weekly on Thursdays. One of the tools that I used to make this decision is the 6-thinking hats framework. And since we often talk about mental models in this newsletter, I wanted to write about this framework and break it down with a real example.

The 6-thinking hats framework helps us take a holistic approach to evaluate any proposal or idea. The framework is simple - there are 6 hats of different colors and each explores a different perspective. By wearing different hats, we evaluate the proposal from different perspectives. It allows us to not only focus on the positives and negatives, but also consider the data, check how we feel about it, and explore alternatives.

Let’s break down a real proposal that was in front of me - move the publishing cadence of the newsletter from daily to weekly.

🟡 Yellow hat focuses on the benefits.

Let's put on this hat and explore the positive outcomes of this proposal. While I learned a lot from daily publishing, it consumed a lot of my time and energy. Even a small write-up takes a lot of time to research before sitting down to write. Moving to a weekly cadence will free up some of my time to dig deeper into certain topics and create new products I’ve been ideating about. It will also make sure that the weekly pieces I write are of high quality. I will still be writing every day, but not having the pressure of publishing will lower the bar and make it more fun.

There are a lot benefits to moving the newsletter to a weekly cadence.

⚪️ White hat focuses on data.

Use this hat to analyze the available data and take the most rational approach. When I was starting out, my hypothesis was that daily publishing will lead to faster growth of the newsletter. That hypothesis turned out to be wrong. After 3 months and 54 publications, I have less than 200 subscribers to show for it. I know that newsletter don’t grow linearly, but this is a strong data point that shouldn’t be ignored.

The essays that brought most of the subscribers were the longer pieces I wrote about my writing streak, my comparison of ChatGPT with Bard, and analysis of Substack Notes. While short essays take a lot of time and energy to write, they don't result in subscriber growth. In fact, some of the people unsubscribed because they received too many emails.

The rational approach here would be to move to a weekly cadence.

🔴 Red hat focuses on the emotions.

By putting on this hat, we get to explore how we feel about this proposal. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this. From one side, I feel like it's the right decision - the one that will allow me to spend more time building and creating other types of content. On the other hand, I've wanted to publish daily for a long time and ending this feels like giving up on my goal.

From this standpoint, I have mixed feelings about this decision.

🟢 Green hat focuses on creativity.

By wearing this hat, we can step out of the set constraints to generate new ideas and come up with alternative solutions. Ideating here… I will still write every day which means that if I want to publish my essays, I can do it via social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter. The growth of those channels will help my newsletter grow as well. And I don’t necessarily have to publish only once a week - in the future I can decide to publish 2 times a week, or 3 times. It’s a reversible decision.

I think this is the right decision. Moving to a weekly cadence doesn’t mean I will stop publishing the smaller essays - I can publish them on channels outside the newsletter.

⚫️ Black hat explores the downsides.

What are the downsides of this proposal? What's the worst-case scenario that can happen? There aren't any severe downsides to the decision. The worst that can happen is that everyone decides to unsubscribe. Otherwise, I believe that people who read my daily essays will continue read weekly pieces as well.

The fact that there are no severe downsides to this decisions means this is the right decision to make.

🔵 Blue hat controls the process.

Blue hat is in charge of the process and shifting between different perspectives. This hat is useful in a group setting with each person wearing a different hat and taking a certain perspective. Since I'm the only person wearing the hats, this one is kind of useless.

So this is the process. The 6 thinking hats framework is a great tool we can use to consider all sides of the proposal and take a holistic approach to decision making. In this case the decision is that I will move forward with weekly publishing. I explored different perspectives and think this the right decision to make. I hope you keep reading this newsletter and stick around for the journey!

What do you think about this decision? Comment with your thoughts and feelings towards this decision.