I’ve been hyping myself up for a couple of weeks, because I had a plan for today. I had picked it specifically: the halfway point for the year, start of a month, start of a week, start of many of the changes I want to make in my life.
It’s important to use markers like these to make events and goals mean something to you. Giving something significance is hard, and using these existing outside elements, which mean something only because of our mutual agreement on them as a society, gives you a better chance of establishing a new habit or maintaining a goal.
But like most plans, mine did not survive a punch to the face. My old web host was even worse than I had thought, and I was forced to migrate this site over to my new host and reestablish so many elements before proceeding. It’s still in progress; pages are missing, links are broken, and nothing here looks the way I want it to yet.
This is not the quality I wanted to start with. It could be better if I waited a few days to get everything polished.
Some things have to be done right, or they shouldn’t be done at all. However, sometimes the important part isn’t the quality of the product, just its mere existence. To best serve your audience (or future audience), you have to give them value, like I hope to do with this blog. And to push yourself to give them that value regularly you have to do things that will be motivational to you.
For me and many others, the motivation of being able to say “I did it yesterday, I can do it today” is very important. It picks up momentum as the tasks get harder over time, too: “I did it the past 2 months, I can do it today” is quite the rallying cry against the voice inside my head that loves YouTube and social media and sleep.
Please ignore me if you see me chanting that phrase under my breath in a public setting throughout September. The surface of my beautiful plan is already bruised after today’s twists, but I stand here triumphant despite the (relatively minor) hurdles. That makes it taste so much sweeter, and fuels the work to be done tomorrow to maintain the streak.
Zach 1 – Laziness 0
