If someone told me there was something that cost $0 and only 20 minutes a day and it would help me…
- Overcome fears
- Build confidence
- Improve thinking
- Improve communication
- Build social capital
- Improve productivity
- Enhance creativity
- Bring new opportunities
- Increase happiness
- And more!
I’d probably think it was a cheesy infomercial or self-help book. Yet it’s true. Blogging every single day has done all of this for me.
It’s not some magical cure all. It’s actually pretty straightforward and anyone who’s done anything every single day will have an idea why. If you run every single day no matter how inconvenient, you’ll understand. Or meditate, or read, or whatever else. The act of committing to something every day with no breaks or wiggle room is scary in itself. I heard of a guy who was challenged to run 10 yards every single day and he laughed and said that’s crazy because it’s too easy. But he wouldn’t commit to run a mile a day because that was unrealistic. 10 yards wasn’t too easy. It was scary because it was so doable. There are no situations in which you can’t find a way to run 10 yards. No excuses. That kind of consistent finality is scary to face.
Once you commit it’s on. Every day is a battle. Ups and downs and everything in between must be overcome. It’s a wild ride. The thing I especially like about making blogging the daily commitment is that it’s public. Once you announce you’ll do it every day you can’t hide. Everyone can see whether you have. I also like that blogging is a creative act, and the more you turn creativity into a discipline the more creative you’ll become.
It’s hard to overstate the ups and downs you’ll experience. Recently I poured my heart into what I thought was a very inspired and very good blog post. I spent an hour typing it into my phone on an airplane. I leaned back in my chair tired, content, and excited. I had a few ideas and a few turns of phrase I really liked. Then the draft disappeared. It was gone for good. I couldn’t recapture that moment of inspiration or those turns of phrase. And yet I still had to write a post that day. It took everything I had to make myself get back on the horse and compose and entirely new post, knowing what I had previously written was gone. The make-up post I wrote wasn’t that good, but I’ve never felt more accomplished than when I finished it. I know, it sounds dramatic. But in the moment it felt that way.
You learn a lot about yourself blogging every day. You learn to pull a lot of ideas and insights to the fore that were floating in your subconscious. You learn to see the world differently and get better at expressing what you find. Most of all you learn to take yourself more lightly and not fear failure. Your ideas are now public and open to scrutiny, which means they could be ridiculed. Worse yet, they could be (and often are) ignored. Both prospects are equally frightening. Getting used to it and being unafraid to churn out posts changes your whole approach to the world.
I won’t go on (though I could) about the benefits of daily blogging. Nor do I think everyone must do it to have a good life. I only know how powerful it has been for me, and I think anything you commit to do daily will teach you to be in the drivers seat of your life.