– Robin Sharma
“When we give up on our dreams, we die while still alive.”
After reading every productivity hack in the book, I’ve found it: the answer to actually making my creative habit dreams a reality.
How can you make it work for you?
- Grab or print yearly calendar (free + paid options below) and buy, steal, or obtain a red pen. More on this to come.
- Pick the skill you want to acquire. You can only focus on ONE habit at a time, so make it a good one. (exercise, joke writing, playing ukulele, or just remembering to apply your teeth whitening treatment).
- Identify a daily action to practice that will produce results for you in that skill.
- Don’t confuse motion with action. Researching weight lifting ≠ exercise.
- Design the task to be simple to achieve.
- For example, if your goal is to write music, vow to write one just one line of lyrics a day.
- Alternatively, set a timer to spend 30 minutes doing creative work, even if that means banging your head against a blank computer screen the entire time.
- Post your newly acquired calendar on the wall in a highly visible area, like above your desk.
- Use aforementioned red pen to X off every day you spent time working towards your habit (even if it is just five minutes).
- Make the calendar bleed.
Full credit disclosure: This is a riff off of the ‘Seinfeld Calendar‘ technique. His advice is to not break the chain, but if you’re a human, the chain is going to break.
Word of warning: focus on one habit at a time, for at least 90 days so as not to overwhelm or confuse yourself. HT/ Leo Babuta of Zen Habits and Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
It is much more satisfying to make your calendar bleed, just like you are now doing for your art the regular.