For the longest time, I had struggled to keep consistent with my blog. I would upload a few articles here and there but nothing consistent. Even I after I committed to writing an article every week, the habit of writing just didn’t come naturally to me. It was always something I had to force myself to do.

If you can relate, then read on to find out how I developed the habit of writing every day.

The 7 Blog Posts In 7 Days Challenge.

Recently, I completed a 7 blog post in 7 days challenge. I set myself the challenge to practise turning my ideas into articles. I didn’t focus on quality and I didn’t worry about the aesthetic. I just focused on reps.

Focusing solely on reps allowed me to develop the meta-skills of writing every day. These are the smaller components of habit building such as:

• Carving out time to write.
• Getting the tools to write
• Overcoming perfectionism
• Using tips and tricks that work for me.
• Building consistency.

All of these things allowed me to upload a post every day and help me build the habit of writing.

But there was an interesting side effect.

The Writing Itch

The day after the challenge I was happy not to have the pressure of writing a post. It was nice to take some time off. I enjoyed time with my family and relaxed with some of my favourite Netflix shows. ( I am loving ‘The Legend Of Korra’ Right now).

But that night something didn’t feel right.

The next day I decided to focus my attention and energy on a new project. I decided to start a new challenge and try the keto diet. However, as I was planning I noticed the urge to write a blog post about it.

This would have been fine if I hadn’t decided to reduce my post frequency to every 2-weeks. The idea was to write higher quality posts, with better research and more value to the reader. So I dismissed the urge.

But again something was off.

I think you can see where this is going.

After writing a post for 7 days straight I had not only established the habit. I also now had the itch to write. Now It feels weird not to write something towards my blog every day. In fact, that is why I am writing this very post.

The Habit Loop

Readers of the power habit by Charles Duhigg will be familiar with the habit loop: Cue, Craving, Response, Reward. I am not going to explain it fully here, but here is an article on James clears blog if you are interested.

In short, habitual behaviours are triggered by a cue, which leads to a craving. Our response to this then leads to a predicted reward.

So for me, the craving was the itch to write a blog post everyday, thanks to the habit I had been building.

Conclusion

The quickest way to establish the habit of writing every day is by putting in the reps. This will lead to a craving for that habit to be repeated and make it easier to perform in the future.

Blog #5 of My 7 Blog posts in 7 days Challenge

Yesterday I failed to upload the 5th Blog post of my 7 blogs in 7 days challenge. I could give you the excuses but I’m not going to. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I don’t miss a second day.

How many times has this happened to you? You mess up after a good streak and think ” I’ve ruined this now, I might as well give up. I am not good enough” We allow one mistake to completely derail our progress. It’s silly. We’re only human after all and no one is perfect.

But the reality is that one mistake is not what ruins our progress. Its the repeated mistakes ups that occur after this, often encouraged by this flawed thinking.

To prevent himself from making this mistake, popular YouTuber Matt D’Avella follows something he calls the 2 Day rule. He allows himself to take a day off going to the gym if he doesn’t feel up to it, but he doesn’t allow himself to miss twice in a row.

Why Do We Fall Master Bruce?

If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy you will be familiar with Bruce Waynes father’s advice, later repeated by Alfred.

Why do we fall Master Bruce, so we can learn to pick ourselves up.

The crucial word in this is quote is “learn”. We learn to pick ourselves after we have failed. We get back on the horse; We try again. Because if not, we are reinforcing the behaviour of giving up. I like how James Clear puts it.

“Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”

James Clear Atomic Habits.

Conclusion

So next time you mess up. Forgive yourself. You are only human. But look at it as an opportunity to practice the habit of never missing twice. It’s probably one of the most important habits you can cultivate.

“This is Blog 4 of My 7 Blog posts in 7 day challenge “

So far today I have had at least 4 post topics I have started to compose in my mind. With each one, I was super excited. When I was busy doing other things, I felt the paragraphs forming in my mind. The arguments. The evidence. To conclusion.

They all sounded amazing – even if I do say so myself.

But when I got down to writing them. Poof! They’re gone.

As quick as those thoughts came they have now gone. Even the ones I had managed to jot down a few notes for no longer appeal to me anymore. I can’t return to that state anymore.

It is strange how we feel so invested, so convinced and so enthusiastic about an intention, just for it to disappear later the same day.

The State of Things.

It’s amazing just how quickly our moods can change our feelings towards something or someone. Two hours ago I was completely fine with this person, but now I just can’t stand them. Maybe I’m hangry? Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep. Maybe they actually are a jerk!

This changeability explains why so many of us fail to follow through with our good intentions. We tell ourselves. I will wake up early tomorrow and go for a run. But when the time comes we just don’t feel the same.

The problem is that our state has changed. We change from minute to minute and our future selves many not feel in line with what we are feeling right now.

Get In the Zone.

If we want to reap that benefits of our good habits then we must stick to them consistently. Therefore, we need to make sure our future self is consistent with our present self. Here’s a tip for doing this.

Use A Motivation Ritual

In James Clears amazing book, Atomic Habits he suggests using a motivation ritual to help us get in the right state for whatever we are trying to do. A motivation ritual is a few simple actions that you perform before any given habit. Think of them as small habits that help prepare for the bigger habit you are trying to build.

For example, If you trying to build the habit of writing. Before you sit down, clear your desk and make a cup of coffee (or any drink of your choice). Each time you do this you build an association and your brain starts to anticipate what is coming next.

If you want to start working out at home. Go and fill up a water bottle, grab your headphones and start playing some music to get you in the mood. Holding your water bottle and listened to your workout playlist will now be associated with working out.

You can often see these rituals in top performers to get them in a peak state. English Rugby star Johnny Wilkinson used to perform the same actions before every conversion kick; Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards used to eat a shepherds pie before a concert and Michael Jordan used to chalk his hands and then clap them together right in front of the people sitting behind the scorer’s table before a game. At first, these sound like superstitions. And maybe for some, there were. But the repeated association allowed them to return to a particular state for performing.

Bonus: A good tip is to make these small actions less than 2 mins, easy to do and rewarding, especially for habits you feel a strong resistance to starting. Notice I didn’t say for working out.’Change into your workout clothes’ because that doesn’t feel rewarding.

Conclusion.

Next time you are struggling to stick to a habit, begin it with a small rewarding motivation ritual to encourage you to follow through with your intentions.

Blog #3 of 7 in my 7 Blogs in 7 Days Challenge

Being able to write well is one of the most important skills. Whether its paper and ink or digital text, writing is still one of the best ways to communicate our ideas.

The trouble is I am not that good at it.

So I have set about trying to get better. The problem is that figuring out where to start has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. Prior to starting this blog, I knew nothing about writing or how to learn it.

However, here are 4 free tools I have found to be helpful. .

1. Grammarly

The Grammarly extension is a brilliant way to check for those spelling and grammar errors. Especially if, like me, you like to write your posts directly into WordPress. Writing directly in WordPress helps me reduce the friction in uploading.

2. Hemingway Editor

This website helps you write more clearly and succinctly. Just write in the editor directly or copy and paste in your text. The webpage will highlight areas of your text that are too long, complex, use too many adverbs or the passive voice style. It’s a great way to get immediate feedback on your writing.

3. Yoast SEO Plugin

Whilst Yoast primarily focuses on improving the SEO (search engine optimisation) of your posts, it does have a nice readability feature. It tells you where how readable your post is and gives you suggestions to improve it.

4. WordPress

Okay, this might seem obvious for anyone already writing online. But for those who aren’t writing publicly, this is one of the best ways to improve. This is because it forces you to clarify your ideas. In most instances, you’re trying to communicate to a stranger – so writing a blog helps you practice turning those ideas into comprehensible writing.

‘This is Blog 2 of My 7 Blog posts in 7 day challenge “

Over two decades ago a young Japanese man named Satoshi Tajiri, was inspired to make what would become a hugely successful cultural phenomenon.

Keep reading to find out what we can learn to from this example.

The Craze That Swept The World

Growing up in the 90s It was hard to miss an international cultural phenomenon that would still be around 25 years later. The franchise has spawned multiple video games, TV series, films, books and a very famous trading card game. Today it is the highest-grossing media of all time, earning a whopping estimated 98 billion dollars, trumping even that of Star Wars, another successful franchise that has been out nearly 20 years longer.

I am of course, talking of Pokémon.

For those people who have been living under a rock, Pokemon (a portmanteau of Pocket Monster) started its life as a Japanese Nintendo video game in 1996. In the game, the player collects small creatures called Pokemon, trains them to become stronger and battles them against other character’s Pokemon as a kind of sport. In the fictional universe in which they exist, there are special gyms to train Pokemon and even leagues and competitions. The franchise’s famous slogan ‘Gotta Catch Them All’ relates to players journey throughout the world trying to collect all the original 151 Pokemon to become the ultimate Pokemon champion.

What some people may not know is that the inspiration for Pokemon came from the creator’s, Satoshi Tajiri’s, childhood hobby of insect collecting.

As the story goes, Tajiri used to collect insects as a child in what was then, a more rural area of Tokyo. He even earned himself the nickname of Dr Bug. However, as Tokyo became increasingly urbanised, habitats for insects were lost and insect collecting became less accessible. When Tajiri came up with the idea for the video game Pokémon, he saw it as a way for others to experience the enjoyment of exploring and collecting, in the same way, he did with insects.

Combining Tajiri’s two passions: video games and insect collecting, may not have seemed like it would be an obvious success. Even at the time, executives at Nintendo did not really grasp the concept. But they were impressed by Tajiri’s programming skill, so they went along with it.

Finding inspiration in Non-obvious places

Oftentimes when we find ourselves at a creative dead end, we often look for inspiration in the same area of our work. If we write about productivity, we read productivity books and articles, we make videos about tech, we read tech reviews and watch tech videos. If we make video games, then we might copy the formats of other video games out there. However, we also have seemingly unrelated interests, that if we considered them, could offer a new angle or take on our work. In fact, that was the very nature of the article – I linked my knowledge of entomology, video games to offer a post about combining other interests to find inspiration. I am not actually offering anything new or groundbreaking here. Most people already know this. But I am using my uniques experiences to produce a blog post that combines the things I am interested in.

So next time you need some creative inspiration for your work, try looking at what your other interests could offer you.

In January I set myself the target of writing 1 blog every Sunday. I failed to hit that mark by 1, on the very last Sunday of the month. Even though I had done some thorough research on the idea for my post I couldn’t seem to follow through with it. I didn’t feel like I was ready to write it, I didn’t feel like it was good enough. I didn’t feel like I was getting any better.

As had become my habit of my last few posts, I left writing to the evening of the deadline. Forcing myself to stick to that deadline was the only thing that kept me uploading consistently. As I wrote at the beginning of this year, we need to start new habits by simply showing up’.

But at some point, we hit a stumbling block. We don’t feel like we’re progressing. We conclude ” I’m bad at this and I am not getting any better, so it’s a waste of time”.

And this is the point at which most people give up.

In this post, I want to discuss what we can do when we hit this pivotal point.

Just showing up

The reality is that simply showing up won’t make you better at what you are trying to do. However, it is crucial because it’s the baseline from which improvement is made. Trying to improve without showing up is like expecting to build muscle by reading about the best techniques but never going to the gym. On the other hand, only showing up is like, expecting to build muscle whilst only doing the bare minimum every time you go to gym. Neither alone will produce the result you want.

Showing up + Deliberate Practice = Improvement

As I said, in order to start a skill, we should build the habit of showing up first, but if we want improve on that skill, then we need to perform deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is different from regular practice. Regular practice is just repeating something over and over again mindlessly – usually without any useful feedback. Think of someone trying to learn guitar, but every practice session they just play the same scales, riffs, and songs that they’ve always done. They compound their mistakes and, even worse, they automatise the habit of this type of practice so it is a negative feedback loop.

Now contrast this to deliberate practice. A guitar player might isolate a particular area they are weak on, break it down and find ways to improve on it. They set out to practice it, evaluating the impact on their overall ability to play. They use feedback to test whether they are improving or not, maybe from themselves or maybe from a coach.

This leads of an obvious question? If we want to do deliberate practice, which parts should we focus on to begin with?

Focus on the Fundamentals

Obviously, it makes sense to start improving the most important areas first. The fundamentals. This is where coached/ guiding learning deviates from self directed learning.

Coached / Guided Learning

When we have a coach, or some syllabus to guide us, they can help direct our learning to focus on the fundamentals. What’s more, is that they can also give us immediate feedback. This is why basic tutorials can be super helpful when starting something new because they allow us to practice some of the fundamentals. The drawback of a coach/ tutorial is that by making these process easier, we don’t internalise our learning as effectively. As Sönke Ahrens puts it in ‘How to Take Smart Notes, p 88’:

“[Teachers] attempt to make learning easier for their students by prearranging information, sorting it into modules, categories and themes. By doing that, they achieve the opposite of what they intend to do. They make it harder for the student to learn because they set everything up for reviewing, taking away the opportunity to build meaningful connections.”

Therefore, if we are not careful this knowledge and skill can easily decay and be forgotten and all the time, effort and money we invested will be wasted.

Self-Directed Learning

For self-directed learners we have the opposite problem. Finding the focus of deliberate practice takes much more work, and oftentimes can lead to focusing on less important skills or even completely Irrelevant ones. However, when a self-directed learner does deliberately practise a fundamental skill, they get much more out it. Because it requires more work, they are more likely to remember it.

A Combined Approach.

An ideal approach is to try to combine both guided learning and self-directed learning. If we have a coach, then we should make sure we spend some time practising those fundamentals and expanding on them.

If a coach is not available, then we can research on the web or in books and look for repeatable themes that come up over and over again. These are likely to be related to the fundamentals of what we are trying to improve. In his book on rapid skill acquisition, the first 20 hours, author Josh Kaufman suggest:

For rapid skill acquisition, skimming is better than deep reading. By noticing ideas and tools that come up over and over again in different texts, you can trust the accuracy of the patterns you notice and prepare your practice accordingly.

Kaufman, Josh. The First 20 Hours (p. 29).

If In Doubt, Try A Short Experiment

Maybe we’ve skimmed some books and some articles, but we still can’t figure out where to start. Maybe we’re completely overwhelmed now. Maybe we feel even more lost than when we started. If that’s the case, we shouldn’t worry. Instead, we should try a short experiment. Here we can use our intuition as a barometer. We should pick something that we think might be important to what we want to learn. Then set aside some time each day to improve it. After a week we can review our experiment we can see if we have improved.

Back to My Blogging

There are many fundamentals that I need to work on in my writing, but the one I feel that I am struggling with the most is connecting my research with my ideas.

My current approach is to go through related books and underline a few paragraphs and then try to use them as the basis for my blog.

It might make sense to start with research first, but now I feel that I should develop my own ideas first.

If I start writing my idea first, I can then be reminded of the things I have researched. Then I decide whether they fit into my narrative. Plus, I can identify areas that are lacking and do some focused research and fill in the gaps – rather than trying to become an expert in the whole subject.

However, this is just a theory, so I am going to do a short experiment to see if it makes a difference.

My Challenge: A Blog A Day For 1 Week

Upload a blog post everyday, for 1 week. (3rd Feb – 9th Feb 2021)

Rough Plan:

1. Start writing first from Am to Noon
2. Edit in the Afternoon, limit to 4 O’clock.
3. Publish
4. Decide tomorrows subject.
5. Evening – research and take notes.

If you read these posts, please leave constructive feedback. I would really appreciate it.

I know that my writing skills are far from good right now, and I have a long way to go but I hope that using deliberate practice and showing up every week, I hope to get better.

Resources Mentioned

How to Take Smart Notes: – By Sönke Ahrens

The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything … Fast by Josh Kaufman