Several months back I came across a guy called Dave who was in the middle of an attempt to publish a blog post every day for 66 days. During that time he produced some really valuable content. What was most valuable of all though was the encouragement from seeing his consistency, in spite of the obvious struggle and seeing the lessons he was learning along the way being demonstrated in his writing. I have decided to follow suit. I am committing to trying to publish something every single day between now and the end of the year. That’s 61 days, not 66 which is what they say it takes form a habit but it just seems odd to ‘Write every day until 5th January’! As I start, and as post number 1, I thought I would share what Iearned from following a ‘write every day’ challenge.
1. Consistency is the key to achieving anything long term
Honestly this is one of the biggest lessons we need to learn in life. Movies and TV are all about the big wins and the training montages. We see a 30 minute montage of exercise and Rocky is in the greatest shape of his life. We see the Avengers coming together for the big fight to beat the big bad. What this teaches us that you can achieve anything you want with a big push in the moment. This is not true. Real achievement takes time and it takes consistency. It is the hard graft that goes the distance that will in the end win out.
2. Consistency is very hard work
Writing today’s post is easy. It’s day 1 and I am on a high with big hopes and dreams for this endeavour. So was Dave. But, somewhere in the middle, the motivation falls away, the glory is not quite so glorious as you hoped. There will be no external motivation to keep going and it is only sheer force of will and discipline that will get you through. You will be sacrificing time, and time spent doing something else for very little point. I do not expect many of my readers would even notice if I miss a day and even if they do, they probably won’t care very much. All that gets you through is will and discipline. This is what I am hoping to learn and build through this.
3. You do not have to say everything all at once
When I write, I tend to feel a need to to provide context, explanations, solutions, conclusions, caveats etc all in one. You don’t need to do this. If you have a blog, a podcast or a YouTube channel or any other outlet of this kind, then you have time to build up what you want to say to people. It doesn’t have to be all in one post.
4. Sometimes it is better to say something badly, than to say nothing at all
The perfectionist in me wants to dot every i and cross every t before I publish. The perfectionist in me wants every post to be a big hit. It doesn’t need to be. Somethings will not resonate with that many but over time, you can have an impact.
5. Honesty and authenticity are more compelling than confidence and bravado
I am not someone who believes that you should ‘fake it until you make it’. To me this solves the problem of Imposter Syndrome by just being an imposter. Dave was honest about the struggle of writing every day for 66 days. This, more than anything else, is why I followed to the end. To many people out there believe that in order for people to back you and support you, they need convincing that you already the finished article. We never are and to behave otherwise is just dishonest.
6. Sometimes, success just means that you grow
I do not know if Dave’s endeavour resulted in thousands of followers and big wins in Medium’s partner program. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to build discipline and improve his writing ability and consistency. And he succeeded in those.
So that’s what I learned from someone else’s experience. From my own, I hope to improve my self discipline. Full disclosure though, I plan to publish every day, not necessarily write every day. This doesn’t mean that I will write 50 posts today and schedule them all. It might mean that on Christmas Eve I write two posts and schedule one of them.
I hope that through my journey in this, you will be able to learn as I did following someone else’s.
