I've used Medium as a chance to experiment with my writing process. I know that I have an idea, and that it's going to result in an article - and the big question is how I'm going to get from the beginning of that process to the end, and how much control I can exert over the final result.

A lot of my favorite articles started small and then grew until they were 11-14 minutes long. I wrestled with this for a while and couldn't seem to get a process that allowed me to write smaller ones, until a short while ago. Now I can reliably write an 8 minute article on an idea of my choice, and it only takes about 4 hours, all told, instead of the 10-12 hours that some of my other articles took.

I'm also grateful for the Medium stats, because they've confirmed something I wasn't sure about--as it turns out, my longer articles (10+ minutes) tend to be my more successful ones.

Small victories. I don't know many people who treat their writing process itself as something that can be tinkered with, but I'm grateful for the chance to write on Medium because it has given me the opportunity to become that person. There are few things that are a greater blessing for those who want to learn than repetition, and I'm at 45+ articles now...

Anyhow, all that is to say that AP is right. Experiment shamelessly.