You Are What You Repeatedly Do (How I Wrote a Book in 29 Days)
Like most people, I’ve always wanted to write a book.
Like most people, I’ve never gotten around to it…at least until March 3. From March 3 to March 31, I wrote the first draft of my first ever book, which I hope to release in June on Amazon Kindle.
How did I manage to write an entire book in 29 days?
I stuck to a routine.
Every single morning I woke up at 5:30 am, spent 30 minutes reading my Bible and writing in my Bullet Journal, and then I wrote for a solid hour.
No stopping. No distractions.
If I ran into a part that needed more research I just marked it with this designation before moving on to the next sentence: (?). Now that I’m editing. I hit Control-F to find every instance of (?) and find the info that I need. When you are writing, you can’t let anything slow you down, not even not having all the information in front of you.
I find the fact that I was able to write a first draft of more than 30,000 words in less than a month somewhat remarkable given the fact that the vast majority of the time I don’t finish my daily to-do list, even when it only has three items on it.
You Need to Commit to Something Bigger
This relates to a critical point: human beings tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a day and to underestimate what we can accomplish over time with consistent effort.
That includes you. You are far too optimistic about what you can do in a day and not nearly optimistic enough for what you can do over the next ten years.
One of my favorite tools for focusing on the big picture is the 10 Year Plan for a Remarkable Life. The idea is to get focus and clarity about what you really want for the future. The exercise is a series of questions based around the premise of figuring out what you could do if you knew you couldn’t fail.
The 10 Year Plan is inherently optimistic, because the best chance that you have of moving forward is if you believe in a bigger, brighter future.
One of the scariest aspects of the 10 Year Plan is also one of the most important: it might not work. If you create a plan, you are committing to something that you might not pull off.
And that’s the key.
When it comes to the future, there is no certainty.
The best chance that you have of creating the future that you want is to act in the face of doubt.
Commitment takes courage, which sounds great, but in practice, courage feels pretty terrible.
Create a Goal That Will Stretch You
The 10 Year Plan is not actually a plan, it’s a snapshot of a destination, a bigger brighter future worth pursuing, a powerful “why” to under gird everything you do.
It’s an important first step, but once it’s done you need to figure out a way to move forward fast. The best way to do this is to create a stretch goal that is outside your comfort zone. If you create your goal and are 100% confident that you can pull it off, you need to try again.
When I first got it into my head that I was going to write a book (which was the night before I started writing), I quickly came up with a timeline. First draft in March. Editing in April. Proofreading, cover design, and drafting an autoresponder sequence for people who buy the book and sign up for my email list in May. Releasing and promoting the book in June.
I told my wife about what I had decided to do while in my head thinking this is crazy, there’s no way I’m going to be able to stick to this aggressive schedule!
Those are the kinds of thoughts that should routinely go through your head if you’re on the right track.
I’ve gotten some confidence from staying on schedule through March, but I still routinely wonder whether or not I am crazy.
Having an aggressive goal keeps you from stalling. Whenever you are going to do something important, fear tries to convince you to stop. If it can’t do that, it will settle for sidetracking you indefinitely. Ironically, many of the tactics that fear will use sound reasonable this chapter isn’t ready yet, you need to redo it again. The truth is that nothing is ever ready. You do the absolute best you can on a realistic but aggressive timeline and you keep moving forward.
My book isn’t going to be perfect, but there are no perfect books. My book is going to be outrageously helpful and that is all that matters.
Show Up Every Day
Once you have a goal, it is critical that you have time set aside every day to work on it. You are not allowed to cancel this time, you are not allowed to be distracted by anything except the immediate physical danger of a family member or loved one.
This time is an appointment you make with yourself, and it’s the most important time on your calendar.
I scheduled my time from 6–7 in the morning so that I could avoid any possible scheduling conflicts or potential distractions. As Tim Ferriss has said, “it’s easier to concentrate when the rest of the world is asleep.”
Mornings are nice because they are a natural place to establish a routine. You already have a built-in trigger: waking up. Whatever else you might fail to do in a day, you don’t fail to wake up.
For me, writing became automatic during the month of March. It was like the fourth step in a script that I was executing on auto-pilot: wake up, read Bible, journal, write for one hour.
There were still a couple of days that were duds where I wrote 300 words, but I made up for them with inspired days where I wrote 2,000.
I have no idea why some days are inspired and some days aren’t, nor do I care. Show up every day and they will all even out in the end.
Memento Mori
I have good and bad news for you. It’s not actually two pieces of news but one: you’re gonna die. If there is one single fact about the future that you can bank on, it’s that one day your time is going to be up.
So how is this good news? Because the fact that you’re not dead yet means that you still have an opportunity to do something. Figure out what you want, start moving towards it.
As Aristotle once said: “we are what we repeatedly do.”
I hope that you are becoming better, one day at a time.
Your Next Move
If your serious about chasing your dreams, you need an unbeatable system to keep you consistent over time. Take enough steps forward and you’ll get where you want to go.
With that in mind, I wrote The Ultimate Daily Checklist: 13 Steps to Winning the Day.
Get it free here: http://thematthewkent.com/the-ultimate-daily-checklist/
