The Write Stuff

 Last week was the 100th Top Tips since I stopped using Mailchimp to send these emails and migrated to a different software. It doesn’t feel as though it can be that long but I’ve definitely written a Top Tips every week so it’s clearly coming up for two years. 

That’s one hundred straight weeks of writing something every week. Or one hundred and one including this week!

Every Day I Write The Book

The Top Tips email is usually about a thousand words long. Sometimes the word count is under one thousand, like this week. Very often, however, it’s more than a tad over. 

That means that since I’ve switched to using Kajabi to send the emails I’ve written around 100,000 words. That’s a huge amount. Your typical John Grisham door stopper airport novel is that size.

That’s crazy to me. And a little confusing because the thought of sitting down and purposefully writing 100,000 words would be overwhelming. I don’t think I could do that. It’s too big a task to contemplate. 

Yet over the past two years that’s what I’ve done. 

Sure, it’s not been a single body of work but it’s usually similar ish themes I’m writing on. Generally something to do with Time Management, Productivity, Wellbeing, Communication or Perspective. Or The Cure.

But there’s no way I’d be able to sit down and write that much. Even if I knew I had a year or even two to write it all in.

I've Got The Key

But here’s the key. There is a power in repetition. Turning up on a regular basis and repeatedly doing a small thing eventually leads to a much bigger thing.

So very simply the 100,000 words of Top Tips is an example of a repeated action, building and increasing until there’s something quite impressive.

A thousand words is nothing to shout about. But a thousand words repeated one hundred times is.

Keep Me Moving

This week’s Top Tip is very simply to keep going. Continue to turn up and put one foot in front of the other on whatever journey you’re taking.

Fitness - keep turning up to your fitness class / netball team / running group / gym / football team / karate group / swim class

Work - continue to put in the hours for your team project / next promotion / business start up / company expansion

Relationships - never stop building and nurturing your relationship with family / friends / work colleagues / neighbours / community 

Financial - keep saving for that rainy day / overpaying the mortgage / slicing percentages off flexible costs / developing that money mindset / chipping off the credit card

Learning - keep checking in with your short daily guitar practice / memory work / MBA / photography study / Italian language learning

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in two or three decades” - Tony Robbins

Every Day It's A Getting Closer

I said I couldn’t sit down and write one hundred thousand words even if I knew that I had two full years to do it.  But here’s another thing. It hasn’t taken me a full two years to write. 

Each weekly email takes a couple of hours. Sometimes less, sometimes more. It’s enjoyable and it’s a short morning’s work. 

That’s one or two hours in total. Okay, let’s be generous, it takes an absolute maximum of three hours, including choosing an image, proofreading and scheduling. So to ensure I’m not underestimating let’s say three hours once a week, every week.

The maths is 3 x 100 = 300 hours. 300 divided by a 7.5 hour working day = 40 days. Forty days out of seven hundred to write one hundred thousand words is okay by me.

Stop For A Minute

This weekend take a look at your goals. The achievements you’re wanting to move towards.

One way of making the journey easier is to focus not so much on the end goal - that could well be too far out of sight - but on the next stepping stone that leads you a single step towards the goal. 

That single step won’t feel like much on it’s own but take it anyway. And the next. And the one after that. 

After a while you might well have reached your end goal without having realised it and without as much effort as you anticipated. Good luck.