Addicted to Repetition

My head hit the pillow at around 9:30 PM last night. It had been a rough week. You see, every night I’ve been blogging until about 2:30 in the morning. The other night (Thursday morning), I was up until 3:30 AM. This wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to get up at 6:30 AM. I’ve had a goal since April 13th to blog every weekday. Occasionally, Brian helps me out. As my head hit the pillow, I remembered that I had neglected my blogging duties for the following day (today). I thought… “I’ll just repost a post from techneur.wordpress.com or blog.reflect7.com” as those posts aren’t on this blog and I would like to eliminate those blogs altogether since they are unmaintained. My eyes quickly drifted to sleep. When I awoke this morning I felt great; then I remembered “shit I didn’t blog, OK just go find a post from those older blogs.” That felt like an easy way out. Those posts should be saved for a Saturday or Sunday. I think that if I posted them on a weekday I would be shortchanging my readers and most importantly myself.

I bet any seasoned blogger will tell you that to create a blog post worth reading, it’s a lot of work. To do it everyday is near insanity. It takes me on average at least two hours to create a blog post. Some days more, some days less. I knock some of them out of the park. Most of them receive very little attention. But two hours a day! Two hours a day on top of my day job, on top of the hour a day I spend exercising, on top of the time I spend on Reflect7, on top of the time I spend with my fiance and son. It’s no surprise that I don’t make it to bed before 1 AM.

Ahh, but I know a secret to accomplishing goals. I learned this from The Simple Dollar blog. The idea came from Jerry Seinfeld the actor of my all-time favorite sitcom Seinfeld.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.\ \ He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”\ \ “Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.

It really works. It helped me run a half-marathon and now I just run every weekday for health. Admittedly, I don’t use it for blogging. I believe that’s because I have the mindset “if you say you’re going to do it every weekday, you are going to do it every weekday.” It works. But to get started, I believe the calendar method is great way to introduce a positive habit in your life. I would love to build a web app that would do this, but~~I don’t have the time~~ erm, it’s not a priority. Take the idea, I’ll be your first customer.

Am I addicted to repetition or am I addicted to accomplishing goals? Who knows, but it feels great either way.