One at a time
Ok, so this is a new project that I have decided to take up and whether it flourishes or not, I make it my Holy Grail to write 1000 words for 1000 days. It seems daunting when you conceive it from a high-level perspective. Although, when you break it down into fragments, it comes across as a less formidable task. And, that’s exactly what I plan to do. I’m going to ‘concentrate my rays’ on writing one a day and my mindset will be to complete that task for the day.
This leads me to several ideas that I often dwell on…
On the habit of writing
If you’re telling me that writing takes up too much time, you’re lying. Of course you have time for writing 30 mins a day! (Writing in this context is typing on a keyboard; technically speaking I’m wrong in saying writing. Ah well.)
Anyway, the proposal of this is to remind me that everyone has the same amount of time in a day and it’s just about how you use it productively, although, taking breaks is also healthy productivity. But that’s another topic.
As this project is fundamentally based on consistency, it requires me to build a habit of writing at a level that I’ve never done before. So, in a way, this is an exciting challenge for me to appraise my habit building, time management and various other skills. Oh, I love the sound of that!
I attach some thoughts to habit-building…
Firstly, I believe that ‘motivation is a myth’.
Yes, you heard that right. What I mean by this is that motivation doesn’t lead to doing tasks. Doing the task itself leads to motivation. When I first heard this(from Ali Abdaal), I was mind blown! My perception has recently shifted to seeing everything as an experiment that you try and the result is either motivation to continue doing it or boredom if you don’t like it. The former mostly applies to me because most of the handful of experiments I choose are things I’m interested in so, I don’t get bored. I start doing the task and automatically get interested to be able to continue doing it. This is the high-level formula:
What you see here is the concept of ‘motivation is a myth’ in action. Alright, that’s out of the way… Next up.
Secondly, building a habit requires you to do is consistently for the first few days. For a habit to take formation, you need to get the ‘snowball rolling’. Once you do the first few weeks, the task becomes an integral part of your lifestyle and workflow and it fits nicely into your day. There’s loads of research and evidence stating that it takes between 18-254 days to build a habit but, I don’t buy that. I simply believe that if you can show up every day for the first few days, you’re on your way to make history(ok, maybe I exaggerated that too much).
Thirdly, building a habit should be a fun process. It shouldn’t be some chore that you’re compelling yourself. To make this work, simply create ‘friction’(I feel like I’ve used quite a few physics references lol). What does that mean?
Let’s take a simple example. Let’s say that you want to stop using your phone in bed. In this case, you’re creating a new good habit. So, create ‘friction’ between you and the phone. Throw(literally) the phone to the other side of the room before lying on your bed to make it harder for you to use it while on the bed. Putting it next to you as if it’s your cuddly teddy bear is the move that destroys many people’s sleep. Simply replace it with something else – perhaps a book! Revolutionary isn’t it?
How does this all tie in? Well, there’s another common saying that when we ‘preach’, we’re the best versions of ourselves. And I’m no exception. I accept my flaws and know that these apply to me. So, I plan to implement all of these in my road to 1,000,000 words. That leads to another point. What am I even going to write about? Well, anything really! My objective is to use these 1,000,000 words to ‘learn in public’ and improve my writing, so, I’m going to pen any idea that comes to my mind.
Mistakes are versions of the final ‘product’
Mistakes are an intrinsic part of improvement. In this project, I’m going to be bad initially. I know it. Accepting mistakes and willing to try multiple ‘versions’ is part of the learning process. This doesn’t mean that you deliberately make mistakes; you need to give it your all.
Process. pic.twitter.com/VWqY7eFTN7
— Visualize Value (@visualizevalue) August 2, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So, with that, I commit to trying my best in this project; with 1000 blogs, I’m sure I can reap multiple versions of the same concept to squeeze in improvements.
For more reading about this, I highly recommend reading @visakanv’s blog about this. This leads me nicely onto the next part.
Thanks and final words
This project is purely inspired by @visakanv who is one of my recent favourite people on the internet! He’s mostly active on Twitter which I’m sure you’ll have lots of questions about, and he’s a very interesting person. Go check him out!
This project could have been done completely offline. But writing in public is much rarer than it should be. And I thought I could contribute my part of making it less rare by making these blogs/documents/whatever you wanna call it, public. Another point I’d like to mention is that we consume more and create less. And, I feel like we need to balance the equation. It may seem like there are so many creators out there and what’s the point? It’s salient to understand that everyone has their style and consumers are after that style! So this idea has contributed to my decision of making this project public.
I think a big reason why so many people are unhappy is because we’re a society of consumers.
We need to encourage more people to create.
There’s something uniquely rewarding and enjoyable about creating something.
Make more, consume less.
— Mckay Wrigley (@mckaywrigley) August 7, 2020
With that, I am now going to wrap up the blog here and enjoy the landscape that’s zooming past me. (I’m on a road trip…)
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