72 days ago, when I leapt headfirst into my 100 day experiment, I was feeling overwhelmed. This was too hard, it was taking a lot of time, ideas for writing were excruciatingly challenging to come up with, ad infinitum. Pain was the predominant feeling/emotion. Consistency was not a feature until that point of time.
I have evidence now that 3 of the 5 things I listed are daily, enjoyable, system-building habits. I write in my journal, a little blog post, and have been doing Spencerian every day. Both my handwriting and my Spencerian calligraphy have improved. Words are easier to find in my mental drawers (and the Thesaurus helps when they’re not). I’ve been reading a chapter a day of the 100 ways to improve your writing aloud, and with practice, training my voice and slowly improving the way I pronounce and enunciate words.
All of that takes no more than 30 minutes. Of late, I’ve been doing them before I start my working day. The sense of satisfaction allows me to then focus on helping other people succeed at work, or to tackle challenging circumstances with equanimity.
There are other areas of life I’d like to apply this same approach to. Exercise is the overarching system, not merely walking. Long term investments (money, people, ideas, etc) over focus on reviewing portfolio (financial, network, idea list).
There’s one habit I want to kick that has stayed with me over 25 years. No one notices it but me. I don’t wish to draw attention to it either. And on the eve of my 44th trip around the sun, it is time to retire the habit for a different one.