The rocket science of just doing the thing
In my last article, “The concept of Ikigai — How a 'noodle western' will help me pursue my project”, I wrote about a Japanese philosophy which states, to become excellent at what matters to you, you better start small, never quit again and implement incremental refinements over time while enjoying the process.
The sticking point here is, we all managed to launch projects, that we thought would turn out great, just to realize two weeks later, we lost sight of them already. Following a philosophy may help to perceive what we do as meaningful. But how do we do the thing? No concept is of any value without execution. This article therefore will be about execution. About showing up every day.
Inertia
To keep our momentum pursuing a project, we want to implement the concept of Inertia, described in the first law of motion by Isaac Newton.
Inertia is the natural tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion and objects at rest to stay at rest.
A change in velocity happens only when force is applied. Tragically, in the realm of every day, friction exits in abundance, a force that causes our momentum to slow down. There might be other tasks that are demanding our attention, we might be hungry or too tired to work on our project. We then could apply a complementary force, to build up momentum again. Discipline. But we would rather not apply force. Not because we are pacifists. More so because it's hard. The days that matter most, will be the days when we don't have left the power to be disciplined.
Habits
Fortunately, there is one more way to keep our momentum. By removing the friction. There are at least two kinds of friction. Friction of mind and friction of matter. Rest assured, we won't need 'rocket science' from this point on, kitchen sink psychology and a calendar will be sufficient. The science of removing everyday-friction is called 'habits'.
A habit is any regularly repeated behaviour that requires little or no thought and is learned rather than innate.
One universal law I came up with myself is the following: If we don't need to reason before we start working on our project, the chance by which we will find an excuse to not work on it, will be reduced by 76.3%. We can take discipline out of the equation by not letting them excuses arise. To establish a new habit, try the following:
- Start small. At the beginning, there will be no habit. Just a task we want to repeat regularly. To limit the force applied necessary to complete the task, start small. You could start, for instance, by reading for just 5 Minutes every day, even if you would like it to be half an hour eventually.
- Set a definite time and day for the habit. The more frequently, the faster the habit will be strengthened, the less we will need to think about it. Ideal is every day. Pick a time and day that is less busy.
- Actively protect this timeframe. This one is about removing friction of matter. Planning ahead–in a calendar–and removing events that could interfere, will ensure you have no good reason to not perform your habit. Everything left will most likely be an excuse.
- Make it an enjoyable ritual. You will exhibit less creativity finding excuses if you enjoy performing your habit. Make it more enjoyable by linking it to something you like already, or reward yourself afterwards (e.g. by listening to music or drinking coffee).
- Stick to the 2-Day-Rule. You miss one day… that happens. Missing another day is unacceptable. Pay extra attention to show up this time. Not breaking the streak will keep your habit strong and ensure sustainability.
Implementation
As a habit, I aim to implement the ideation process for my blog article to take place from Monday to Wednesday. This will revolve around researching Ideas or reading a relevant book, probably in the afternoon when I have some spare time. This part of the week will be tricky to implement into my blog process because this is where most of my university lectures take place. From Thursday to Sunday, I want to spend at least one hour in the morning, from around eight o'clock on, doing some more dedicated researching as well as actual writing on the article itself. Before the researching or writing, I will get myself a coffee for some extra motivation to get started. I will block my mornings from Thursday to Sunday to get the blog related work done. Other projects can take place from 10 am on. To not let anything get in my way of posting the article at 6 pm on Sunday, I will schedule the article to be published automatically once my Sunday morning session will be finished. If the article is not published by exactly 5:59 pm, that means I probably messed something up.
What habit will you implement to remove friction? Take your time to plan it out and write it down. Don't give up if you fail to be persistent from the first implementation attempt on. A study performed by Lally et al. (2010) showed that it takes approximately 66 days until a habit is performed automatically. Of course, the time needed for implementation heavily depends on how unpleasant you feel about it. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of habit formation, read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.
Are you interested in finding out in as far I am able to stick to my blog process and pursue this project? Subscribe to my email newsletter, if you haven't done that already, to keep me accountable.
