Having tried it before, I know that the challenge of writing every day for a year will be very hard to sustain. The most difficult part is getting down every day to work on it for a significant amont of time, meaning for me at least 30 minutes minutes every day. If you have read Atomic Habits, by James Clear, you’ll know that creating a habit that would last that long everyday is difficult, since the time spent makes it less desirable. But I don’t see any other way to get started. I tried writing daily for 1 minute for years before without being able to create something meaningful, and publishing my daily steps will take more than just one minute.
Evening work is not consistent (for me)
I tried writing and working on my project at night, but it has been too hard to sustain before for a few reasons:
- I’m tired after a day of work
- I’m tired after a day taking care of my child (even more on week-ends)
- I want to spend the evening together with my wife
I have to find an other solution that does not rely on potentially feeling good in the evening, since this hardly happens.
The first attempt at a solution - Work in the morning
Instead, I will start getting up earlier and work on my company in the morning. The hardest part is getting out of bed. So I’m starting easy, with just getting one hour of work before the day starts. Once I am more used to this, I will rise earlier and work longer.
An other challenge is to not wake up and just be taken by laziness. For this, there are two main actions I get to take the day before: Change computers on my desk (I have two laptops, one personal and one for work), and know exactly what I will be working on that day, preparing my workspace for it the day before.
I will create myself a small task with what I plan to do for the next day at the end of the previous work session. It will change some mornings, but I always should know the next morning, when I wake up, what I will be working on.
The potential blocker: Late evening
If I end up going to bed too late, and it lasts for a few days, tiredness will catch me up, and it will be difficult to get up. I have to make sure that I get to bed earlier than before the challenge to get enough sleep, potentially get a nap during the day.
Magic is in your environment
I have to create an environment for myself in which getting to work on my side-project is the default option. That’s the only way for me to be as consistent as is needed to create something that is worth it.
In any case, this experiment being bounded in time will make it easier to sustain too since I know there will be an end. That is also a part of the environment that I want to create, to push through during the most difficult days.