When I launched this blog in late February, my goal was to publish a post every single day.
On the days I couldn’t write and publish a new post, I cross-posted content from my now-defunct medium blog.
This way I maintained my daily streak for about 2 weeks.
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Then the first crack in my streak happened.
I think it was because of some unexpected additional demand at work…but I wasn’t able to show up every day in the 3rd week.
So, I switched to publishing a post once every 2 days.
And then things became even worse. Every 3 days. Then every 4 days.
I was going down a slippery slope.
How would I apply the brakes and get back on track?
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Anything hard we choose to take up, we’re going to hit the dip at some point.
But what does the dip feel like? Why does it happen?
Here are some reasons:
- We get impatient because we don’t see the results we want, soon enough. We forget that we’re ice cubes.
- We get bored. Showing up isn’t as exciting and fun as it used to be.
- We start doubting ourselves. “Who am I to try this anyway? I’ve never done anything great before, why should this work?”
You know you’re in the dip when you need to muster significant willpower to keep showing up.
It’s tempting to quit while in the dip. But, as I’d written in my earlier post, quitting while in the dip is a bad idea.
This leaves just one option: We need to figure out how to keep going until we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
So, how do we keep going?
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“If You Can’t Run, Walk. If You Can’t Walk, Crawl” – Martin Luther King Jr.
There are two ways to think about your difficult project:
- That it’s a competitive sprint you need to win in a short span of time
- That it’s a long-term marathon where you’re the sole runner
The first option is not very useful for most meaningful endeavours. You’ll run out of steam sooner than later.
The benefit of the second option is that..just like in a marathon, the only guideline is that you don’t stop.
Whenever the going gets hard, you can choose to switch your gears down..you can throttle your pace.
If you can keep putting one step in one front of the other, you’re still in the marathon and that’s all that matters.
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“A stone is broken by the last stroke of a hammer. That doesn’t mean that the first stroke is useless. Success is the result of continuous efforts.” ―
At some point, that next step in your marathon will result in the success you’re seeking. You just need to keep going until then.
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Circling back to my own blog frequency, here’s when I posted the last 4 articles:
June 9th: When not to quit
June 17th: 106 days of Pranayama
June 27th: When the student is ready…
July 3rd: “On top of the world”
As you can see, I’ve barely managed to post even once a week in the last month.
And that’s okay. Because this is a marathon. And that means that I don’t need to always run. I can walk. Or crawl. 😊