I've been having trouble articulating my thoughts
Hey friend,
For a few years now, it's bugged me that my ideas don't come out the way they exist in my head.
An idea will seem clean in my head, but when I release it into the world, it comes out kinda messy.
Writing is the remedy for exactly that, and I'd known I needed to start for years.
I avoided it anyway, for 2 reasons. The pressure I put on myself to do it well. And school, where writing meant matching each teacher's preference and getting graded on how close I came. I learned to hate it. Enough that I graduated college with a math degree, partly so I'd never have to write a long paper again.
So for 3 years, my answer was buying journals and never actually writing in them.
Then in July I went on a weekend bike trip with my brother Jack. He's a writer, getting his master's in English while working on his first book. On the ride I told him my frustrations: I pressure myself to write something deep, then judge myself when it isn't good enough.
He told me to be nicer to myself and just write. Anything. Literally anything.
So I started. And still tried to write something deep.
Beginner's luck. The first entry went great. 2 pages, sorting through things that needed sorting.
But nothing after it measured up. I got discouraged and fell off.
I didn't write for 10 days.
Then I shrank the commitment to one line a day. Doesn't matter what. One line, any line, in any 30 free seconds I had throughout the day.
I've missed a day here and there since, but never 2 in a row. And almost every day, that one line turns into a page.
The page only happens because the promise is one line. A page is something I have to be ready for. One line takes 30 seconds, and I always have 30 seconds.
Going big feels like proof you're serious. So that's what we pick. And big is the version that lasts one entry, one week, one January.
Same in the gym. 6 days a week is what gets committed to in January. 3 days is what's still happening in October.
Less only looks like less inside a single week, a single month, or even a single year. Stretch the time horizon and it turns into the bigger number, because it's the one that never stopped.
If your training is the thing that keeps stopping, I made you something.
It's a free resource I built to meet you where you are now and write you a training routine the way I write them - using minimum effective dose - the least amount of work that still gets you the result, which is also the one you'll actually keep doing.
It also tells you how to pick your weights and how hard each set should feel, and answers just about any question you could possibly have.
It takes less than a minute. No credit card, no download.
Until next time,
Peter