One of the ways to establish a habit is to make it part of a system. How do I make writing a blog part of a system, though? I suppose I could write a little bit each day. But each day I feel a little different. Today I might want to write about work but tomorrow I might want to write about music. Does that mean I need to write everyday? That seems like a lot. That said, I do have a lot of thoughts everyday.

Sometimes, writing can feel like such a chore. I have to write and then edit. And I’m a little lazy. Actually finding the right words takes effort. And before finding the right words, I have to land on a topic.

Here’s a topic. I don’t like to read articles but I want to know the information in the article. I thought, “boy, it’d be nice to just have someone read the articles to me”. Then I found out about Noa. It’s an app that has professional voice actors read articles. I listened to an article Thursday from HBR titled “Feeling Stuck or Stymied?” (which I am)

Here’s an excerpt:

“Let’s face it: Patience is annoying. It would be far better if we didn’t need it at all and could achieve everything we wanted quickly. But the truth is, in almost all cases, our most meaningful goals require effort and perseverance—and time.”

I agree with this. And the most vivid proof I have of this is with piano. For my most recent recital, I had to practice SO MUCH. Everyday for at least an hour, sometimes more. I look back on the pieces I played and some of them were really difficult. I played this impromptu by Franz Schubert that was like 10 minutes. So many different parts to the piece and I never ran out of things to improve. In my recital I still didn’t play it perfectly, but I played it pretty damn well. And I was so proud of myself. There’s like 50,000 notes in that piece and I played it all from memory. But it took time. Sometimes it didn’t feel like I was making progress. Sometimes I was really frustrated.

The author says this in the next paragraph:

“You might need to write a blog few people read as a way to test your ideas and slowly build an audience…”

Hehe. This is what I’m doing right now.

“You might have to keep making the effort, even when it seems pointless, boring, or hard. There will be dark moments when it’s unclear whether you’re making any progress at all.”

So, with this blog, that I want to update weekly, I am going to keep doing it even when I don’t feel like it. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before. But I’m getting tired of restarting.

With piano, I’ve learned a lot of music. But once I learn it I move on to the next piece. I don’t go back to refresh pieces so my repertoire is equal to whatever I’m learning at the moment. That is not reflective of all of the hours of practice I’ve put in. I want to be able to show more for my effort.

Universe, please help me do better this time. I will never get out of this first level of the game if I keep restarting it before I advance. I want to do better.