Showing up every day

I’m a sucker for the idea of consistency and persistence. Also a big fan of glorified training montage from movies or training highlight reels of famous athletes. The problem is, however, that fantasizing those glorious pursuit of greatness one day at a time is one thing but trodding along that painful path by myself is another. Just a month or two ago, I went gung ho about daily writing sprint, but after just one post that I made on one day that I woke up very early (and after raving about how excited I am to continue this daily writing spring for days to come), I didn’t show up the next day.

I’ve been thinking about this topic for some time ever since then. Whe watching the post season baseball games recently, I pondered upon the baseball players and the consistency they embody. When they hit 3 out of 10 at bat, they’re considered excellent. What matters is that they keep showing up at bat, and over the course of 10+ or even 20+ years they keep doing that. What they produced (number of home runs, hits, World Series wins etc) and how they did it (batting average, ERA etc) over the course of their career are their legacy.

What about writers? Many of them openly give the credit to their daily writing routine for their prolific and successful career. Stephen King is known for writing everyday aiming at 2,000 words a day. Seth Godin has been publishing on his blog every day for 20+ years. I read his posts from time to time, and most of the times the blog posts are very short. It’s more like a short musing than a fully-structured essay. I think that’s the key, what makes it possible to keep being consistent for 20+ years.

When I’m excited about starting something new, I tend to get overly ambitious and picture the success state too glamorously, like publishing a book in a few month only after a few weeks I started blogging. Picturing an amazing outcome surely is a great motivator, but it doesn’t factor in the variables and challenges that come from living in reality. The excitement fizzles out over time whenever it gets struck by the obstacles from life and work.

What i saw from Seth Godin’s blog was that he doesn’t always swing for the fences. He captures the fleeting thoughts that occur to him everday that would’ve otherwise escaped. Then some days he writes a longer essay that is a combination of shorter daily blogs or expanded the topics he mused upon in the short pieces. The key is that just a few lines and paragraphs form building blocks for something bigger and greater. It’s like boxers throw jabs consistently. They say the jab is the most important punch in boxing, it starts and ends with it. I can see that since it starts the momentum and the combos that ensue the intial jab. Just like that, daily writing pieces probably aren’t the greatest pieces but they’re the brooad brush strokes, bricks for building a house, seeds that will grow into something bigger.

Tangentially related, but the whole chain of thoughts reminded me of this quote from The Catcher In The Rye: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.“

Now I’m motivated again to start my daily writing sprint, but should I really start it again? Maybe yes, but I need to set up a rule around it so this time I don’t repeat the same mistake of overhype followed by disillusionment.

I will only write for less than 30 minutes everyday. The style will be just a quick musing so it’ll be more like tweets than blog posts. Also if I end up skipping it a day or two, I will not be disappointed. I will chalk it up as strike-outs (and my batting average going down sadly) and will come back at bat again.

I will not be swinging for the fences (that’ll be much much later) and will try to just contact the ball. I will throw jabs, a lot of jabs.

One day I’ll be able to hit homers and throw knockout punches, but let’s talk about it in a year!