Publish Like the System Was Designed for You — Because Now It Is
5 strategic shifts to help your natural publishing style thrive inside Substack’s new model
When I came to Substack in 2022, I brought with me a kind of cautious optimism — the hope that it might finally be possible to grow something real, meaningful and lasting outside the demands of social media.
For a while, that felt true. Publishing here felt calmer, smarter and more connected to how I actually wanted to create.
If you came in early, you probably felt the seismic shift in your publication this summer — free subscriptions came to a screeching halt and with it came a quiet grief as the platform began shifting. The early magic gave way to features and changes that (while likely necessary for scale) felt closer to the growth-churn of everywhere else.
But based on everything I explored yesterday about Substack’s new sequential recommendation model, I have to say, without an ounce of sarcasm:
I’m still hopeful for the great Substack experiment.
Yes, my enthusiasm is tempered by many things because ** gestures broadly at the world ** — but I’d be lying if I said wasn’t even more confident for people who have storytelling chops and an earnest desire to connect with real humans on the internet.
Because I believe this particular shift — the launch of Substack’s sequential recommendation model — actually re-aligns the platform with what makes good publishing work.
If you’re someone who hates social media, who resents having your creativity compressed into sound bites, who’s tired of your publishing tools and timelines shifting every time another platform decides to kill a feature — I have good news:
If your ideas are strong enough to carry a reader on a journey, they really will have a system designed to support them.
Substack’s model doesn’t reward noise. It rewards curiosity. It doesn’t ask for constant reinvention. It asks for continuity.
It doesn’t want you to write for an algorithm — it wants you to write for a human, and let the algorithm follow their lead.
Today’s post is about how to strategically respond in 2026 after a depressing summer of wilting email lists — and asks you to consider five small but powerful adjustments that I think can help your natural publishing rhythm do the work it was always meant to do.
→ And if you want to explore how these shifts fit your actual calendar, creative cycle or strategy for 2026 — our 24-hour Voxer channel is primed for you inside our Publishing Mentorship Circle.
1. Plan in Waves, Not Isolated Posts
The shift: Instead of rotating topics randomly across the month, organize your calendar into waves — ideally clusters of posts that reflect your curiosity, your expertise and go deep on a single theme.
Why it matters: This gives your posts a natural momentum — one piece leads into the next. That’s what the sequential model is designed to surface: connected explorations that make sense to read in sequence.
What it looks like: If you’re planning a post on Topic A, consider: what’s the second or third idea in that same thread? You don’t need a full series, just a sense of the journey you’re on — and how you might guide readers through it.
If you’re already using monthly themes, you’re halfway there. This is about being more deliberate in how you stack posts within those themes. (This also makes it easier to track data trends week over week — and what wakes people up in their inboxes.)