Short 5: Setups
You have to setup yourself for success.
It’s getting really hard to make you to the “post a day” commitment. But, how? Alex seems to pull it off so good. Ok, while I can bet it’s not easy on him, I can say he got one thing right: he did it in the morning. I’m not the morning guy. But still, letting this daily duty linger in my list until the very last moment is not doing me any good.
It’s important to have the right setup. If not, even worse than not having a frictionless environment, you’re making yourself a serious target for procrastination. Don’t do it now, it says. You’re not in the right mood. You don’t have a subject to write about. You’re way to tired to produce anything other than crap.
While all of these might me be true, you have to ignore this whimsical voice. It’s always the same thing when you’re trying to do anything that you don’t particularly like. To those who think you have complete and solid control of your willpower, I can make you see this very clearly in just one word: “diet”. It’s not easy on anyone. The trick is to think once, at the start, at the commitment, and only let yourself think after the hard work is done. If not, the loudest voice will be procrastination. Even so, you want to think about what you’re doing. But, listening to yourself at the wrong time, you’re just setting yourself up to fail.
Make sure you sculpt the landscape as much as you can to make things easy on you. Don’t listen to temptatious muses. Taking the first couple of steps takes willpower. Making it uphill takes perseverance. Only give yourself permission to stop after you’ve climbed over that crag. The moment you stop, it’s downhill from there.