My feed is flooded with really good advice on how to write for LinkedIn.
How long your post should be.
When to post it.
Where to place the line breaks.
What headline style performs best.
Which formats drive the most impressions.
What the algorithm wants today, and what it might want tomorrow.
Most of this advice is genuinely useful. It’s strategic, considered, often generous. But I can’t help wondering if we’ve just replaced one kind of rigidity with another. Have we made ourselves slaves to a new system, one where the algorithm, not the clock, dictates how and when we show up?
There’s a perfect time to post, apparently. But that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing because the thought is alive right now, not because the algorithm says it’s time.
The reason I’ve always struggled with the idea of a 9–5 is because creativity isn’t predictable. Ideas don’t respect time slots, and neither do I.
Over the years, I’ve built a career that allows me to work outside of traditional constraints. I can choose when and how I create. That’s a privilege, yes, but also a conscious decision to avoid a structure that has never suited the way my mind works.
That freedom doesn’t mean I’m in flow all the time. It just means that when I am, I can run with it. And when I’m not, I don’t have to fake it. But more and more, I see creative people trying to squeeze their process into the logic of performance. Write at this time. Post on this day. Use this many characters. Craft for engagement, not for expression.
The people I admire most create because they feel compelled to. Not because the clock says it’s time. And yet here we are, staring at analytics dashboards and adjusting our output to suit invisible forces. It feels less like creative freedom, and more like a digital shift job in disguise.
When inspiration strikes, I want to follow it. I don’t want to schedule it or sit on it. I don’t want to overwork it. I want to publish it, share it, let it go, and make space for the next idea. That rhythm of capture and release is part of how I stay creatively alive. Holding things back just so they can land at a better hour feels counter to the whole point of creating in the first place.
And yes, the data says we should post three to five times a week. Gary Vee would probably tell us to post thirty. And honestly, I could. Some days I’ve got three ideas before lunch. But the moment it becomes a rule, or worse, a routine, I’m out. That’s where the hustle-culture hangover kicks in. I don’t want to be consistent. I want to be compelled. If that means nothing for a week, or three posts in a day, so be it.
If you’ve ever listened to Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan podcast, you may have seen how visibly he struggles with the infinite loop of ideas in his head. I relate to that. Ideas don’t arrive in neat, linear form. One idea leads to another, which leads to five more. It doesn’t stop. And the more I follow those threads, the more I want to create. Not later. Now.
I write because something wants to be written. I post because something feels ready to be shared. Not because the algorithm says it’s the optimal time, or because the format is trending. Those things can help, but they cannot lead. Because if they do, we’re not really creators anymore. We’re just workers in a new kind of system, staring into a different kind of clock.
So perhaps the real question is not how to beat the algorithm, but how to resist becoming dependent on it. How to use it without being used by it. How to show up without waiting for permission. Because if the point is to connect, to share, to express, then we can’t afford to wait for the perfect conditions. We have to go when the fire is lit.
And if this post lands poorly because of when I hit publish, that’s fine. I’ve already moved on to the next idea.
P.S. The perfect time to post is 5:12 PM local time.