Last week I talked about the importance of showing up. Just posting something every week to start to build the habit. That’s great and all but I am writing this post at the very last minute. I am showing up, but I haven’t put in the research and planning to produce a decent article.
But all is not lost. The very fact that I am evaluating the quality this post, and identifying the reasons for why It is bad, means that I have the chance to improve it.
It would have been very easy not to upload this week. To say to myself. ” I will do better next week”, and ” I will upload it once I have crafted a really decent article” But these excuses are vague. They don’t identify actions. I mean, what is doing better? presumably it means actually uploading a ‘good’ article. However, more importantly if I failed to upload this week, It would have been the start of a new habit of. ‘Not showing up’ – And that would have been in direct conflict to the habit I started last week.
This is why when starting a habit, no-shows are so much worse than just turning up and doing poorly. This is because it starts a habit in the opposite direction to the behaviour we are trying to cultivate.
- A poor workout in the gym is better than no workout at all.
- A bad blog post is better than failing to upload.
- A poor video is still another video for your audience to watch.
In fact, I was go as far to say as that those days where you show up even is you do poorly are more important than the good days. This is because it breaks the notion that you have to always produce perfection, and that any thing less is not worth it. Nothing can be farther from the truth. If nothing else, a lesson can be learned.
So keep turning up and keep learning from the process and just maybe, something will grow out of it.