I wrote the first of my daily blog posts yesterday.
While not quite a virgin experience, I notice that already today I wonder if I am going to make my second attempt. I have done it once. I’ve proven it can be done.
Now, I have the opportunity to try it again.
In athletics, academics, and art, this second attempt is often referred to as the sophomore effort.
I suppose there could also be a freshman effort, where we’re brand new to an experience. That would have been my experience yesterday where I began the journey of a thousand miles with a single daily blog post.
Today, I am following up on that commitment with my second daily blog post.
I’ve noticed that people often stop after the first attempt. I’ve noticed that I often stop after the first attempt. Success or failure, the first attempt is a bit like getting my toes wet. I know what I can do now.
Was the water cold? Then I might wait around a while to try again.
I’ve seen some of the people I’ve coached through their first writing success stop immediately afterwards. The first blog post gets written. Then the second blog post gets put on the back shelf.
When I began my daily morning pages practice, my writing was rather sporadic. I wrote a few times the first week. Then I skipped a few days. I began the practice on May 20, 2013. I wrote eight times in 12 days.
In June, I completed 15 days. In July, I wrote every day. Then in August, I completed five entries on 750words.com. It wasn’t until October of that year, that began to write consistently every day.
Once I began writing on October 2nd, 2013, I didn’t miss a day until March 26th, 2014. A streak of 176 days.
It takes time to get into a consistent routine.
New Year’s resolutions are infamous for not being held to throughout the year.
I am hoping to be more consistent with my daily blog post. It would be wonderful to hit an unbreaking chain of daily blog posts this early in the process.
The odds, though, are against me. According to the U.S. News and World Report, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail.
That suggests I only have a 20 percent chance I’ll stick to my daily blog posting.
There are some strategies I can follow to increase the odds, though.
- Think Small. Rather than writing a daily blog post of a thousand words, I am committing to publishing a blog post each day. I take inspiration from Seth Godin, who has been blogging daily for a long time. Over the past seven days, his posts have averaged only 167 words. A very doable rate.
- Build Self-trust. One thing I have going for me is I have been maintaining a daily practice of writing 750 words nearly unbroken since October, 2013. I’ve written 2,613 days total on that site. I have a high level of confidence I can do it again on this blog.
- Change Your Mind before Changing Behavior. While I was operating under the principle of completing a thousand-word blog post, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve published five posts so far in 2020. I began strong: January 22nd, January 23rd, and January 31st. I published my fourth post on February 14th. It wasn’t until yesterday, December 17th, that I published my fifth post. I’m changing my mind from posting thousand words posts to posting a hundred daily posts. Smaller efforts made more consistently.
Given that last idea, smaller efforts made more consistently, I’m ending my post here rather than trying to fit everything into this one post. Now I not only succeeded in publishing this post, I’ve also given myself some room to work on another post.