“The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits.” – Steven Pressfield
I’m going to lose money if I’m wrong.
My goal is to have a hyper productive next 30 days.
To accomplish this, I set four things I have to do every single day for the next 30 days as part of a daily practice. They mostly revolve around ideas, writing, and creating. If I stick to the plan, I’ll have a hyper productive 30 days with a blog post at the end chronicling how things went. I’ll be tracking the time I spend toward the daily practice with TimeDoctor, so it should be easy to quantify the total input/output at the end. If I break the chain at any point in the next 30 days, I’ll owe Sachit Gupta $100 + $5 for every day I miss.
Why do this?
To take the Steven Pressfield quote further, greatness is largely small actions done on a consistent basis. It’s almost never a matter of being capable of doing something, the issue is making it a priority and thinking about the work like a professional would. At one job I worked, I wrote a 100-250 word social media tip that was emailed out to clients once a day. I did this for 262 consecutive days. I never ran out of things to write about, but the company ran out of money so the chain eventually broke. I was able to write something every day because I had to write something every day. I made it a priority. I’m making four things a priority and I’m betting I’ll be happy I did by the end of the 30th day.
Today is Day 1.
Stephen Meade says
What are your four things?
Ben Nesvig says
Daily: Come up with at least 10 ideas. Write at least 200 words toward a book. Read for at least 30 minutes. Fill out the Pick Four goal workbook by Zig Ziglar for the day. Have a few other bonus items if I have time. Hoping to add on top of this, but this is the base.
Sweeney Daniel says
12 days in.. how’s it looking?
Ben Nesvig says
Still on track. Learning how to freewrite has made hitting the daily writing goal much easier. Ideas aren’t overflowing yet, but I think I’m becoming more observant.