7. Don’t underestimate what you can accomplish in a year

I noticed that I was doing as little as possible because I believed in the notion that good things take time. I would read a book or two a month, write once a week, and made small decisions based on where I saw myself in the next year. After months of realizing that I wasn’t making much progress I started to think about ways to quickly make instant changes in my life.

Patience is a virtue but it becomes paradoxical when we don’t give it our 100% simply because it will take time. Good things take time but it does not have to be a year or two from today to reap its rewards. Good things can happen now. I was reading two books a month and thought about ways to read more books. I now download audiobooks onto my phone and listen to them while I shower and commute. If I am reading a book that I physically own I buy the audiobook and double the speed of the audiobook and I read along with my book. Doing this allows me to read a book in about three hours.

My writing wasn’t improving either and that was mainly because I was only writing once a week. I figured that by writing once a week I would slowly become better. I was wrong. I can improve my writing tenfold by writing every day for a month than by writing once a month for a year. We learn quicker if we immerse ourselves in what we are doing.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.” -Aristotle