Strategies for Staying on Track
Revealing The Secrets Behind My 285 Consecutive Days of Writing (Part 1/6)
The Path to Writing Every Single Day: Breaking Down My Process
Let me reinforce a fact: You are not alone, and your problem isn’t unique if you strive for consistency in your writing but struggle to achieve it.
Taking consistent daily action is one of the hardest things a human experiences in their lifetime.
So, if you behave harshly or berate yourself for your inconsistency, stop.
I’d suggest you take a moment and think.
Consistency like many other things is a skill. It needs to be developed.
Unless you are taught or you specifically go after it, consistent action is likely to elude you.
Consistent action is either engrained in us by some external force or an internal desire.
After writing one article a day every day for the past 9 months, I’m still learning.
Factors such as emotions, your mood, the way you identify yourself, your environment, your ability to keep getting up after you fall, etc. contribute to your ability to consistently show up.
The one question I get asked the most these days: How have you been so consistent?
It’s a common struggle among many people I know. Including myself.
While my writing streak is something I’m extremely proud of, I still have a long way to go with some other habits such as going to bed early and waking up early.
So a streak in 1 thing doesn’t guarantee a streak in other habits.
It’s taken me several failures, years of trial and error and a lot of effort to reach this kind of consistency in my writing habit.
With that, let’s jump into secret #1
Let Bygones be Bygones
Let go of your past — Unlearn.
Make space for the new.
Your current state is a result of your past thinking. But your current thoughts will create your future.
Read that again.
The way you identify with yourself or your perception of your personality is something that you need to learn to shed.
It will take some time. Don’t expect it to happen on your first attempt.
You will take a few steps ahead, make some progress and fall.
This will happen a few times or it will happen at all times.
The question is can you keep getting up?
Here’s an example from my own experience.
This is article #285 for me.
Only 5 out of these 285 articles have ever generated any engagement that’s led to 1000+ claps for example.
As a creator, once an article does well, you want to see the same thing happen with all your future articles.
When it doesn’t happen, it creates negative thoughts.
There are both ways to look at it. If I think it is an abysmal performance, my mind will carry that thought around.
On the other hand, if you showed this to a younger me — from 9 months ago, I’d have taken it.
I’m learning to have faith in myself, my ability and the present.
It is not easy. Because if it were, I’d be consistent right from the start.
This struggle is what makes it worthwhile and worth sharing.
The question is how do you let go of the past? What kind of exercises can you engage in?
I asked ChatGPT to help me understand a few exercises that can help in letting go of the past. It threw me a list of the usual suspects
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Visualisation
- Therapy
- Gratitude Exercises
I don’t want to dive deep into these because I’ve done it here. Besides, it is not an area of my expertise. All I want to show you is that you can👇🏾
Use Google, find books, explore YouTube, and consult experts to discover the best ways to let go of your past and live in the present.
That brings us to the end of part one of this six-part series.
I’d love to hear suggestions if you have any on how I can improve the content and provide more value to you. If you can, do spare a minute.
