Preventatives:
- Publishing friction: Have something to share but have to get approval first, or go through editorial process. Anything that puts time between thought inception and publishing is detrimental. Personal blogs/Tumblr excel at this, highly edited sites do not.
- High effort: Longer-form, high quality writing takes a lot of effort. When writing is a side-project or labor of love it's tough to justify high-cost.
- Expectation: If I write something, will people expect me to write again? I'm not sure it's an expectation/pressure I want to create for myself. Personal blogs can create this sense of expectation whereas community sites don't.
- Channel mis-match: This thing I want to talk about isn't right for channel X (where X is a personal blog, company blog, etc…). Could be because of the topic, scope or medium.
- Lack of topic confidence: I'm not confident my ideas are worthy or not. What if I'm wrong? Afraid to expose myself to public shaming.
Motivators:
- Recognition: People visiting the article (metrics), talking about it, responding. Knowing who you are. Secondary opportunities like conferences etc…
- Regularity: When have an established publishing cadence, it's easier to be motivated to do the next topic. Inverse is also true (see expectation).
- Education: Wanting to educate others based on your experience. Could be altruistically or because conclusions align w/ something you're a proponent of.
Thanks, @jjthrash - it seems writing is more of a thought exercise for you than a communication tool.