Welcome readers to today’s blog. I’ve just come back from a two week holiday in Greece and can now begin to get back into the swing of things and resume my writing . This is what I would like to base today’s blog on : habit. How I use habit in everyday life and how I use habit to plan a book and write a book.
Like many, I am someone who has goals and aspirations to achieve well in life. We all have goals but unfortunately some of us may not know what these are exactly. I would suggest that those people invest some time in looking at what they want to achieve in life. I certainly have many areas in which I wish to succeed , whether it’s my writing, my career at work, my social life or sport. Unfortunately laziness / the scary thought of the amount of effort it can take, can often block progress for some individuals.
Then one day, I started to realise that it’s largely down to habit. If you look at the world’s successful sports stars, business people, singers etc, they all are different but have a few things in common: one of these is hard work but the other is habit. They repeatedly train and do things to make sure that they excel in their area.
I decided that in the different areas of my life, I wanted to do the same. I therefore listed habits that I believed would help towards success in each area of my life, just simple habits (not massively hard) to enable me to be more successful. For example, writing a couple of pages a day helps towards my aspiration of becoming a successful writer or kicking a football about every day improves my skills for the football playing season.
When you carry out habits for a while they then become almost natural and you feel that you can’t go for a single day without them. These habits can become as routine as getting dressed or having a shower, every day.
In order to remember what I have to do, I have a task board in my room on which I write down all my tasks and habits for the day. Having it down in writing, so that it is there in my face, definitely helps!
In terms of writing I tend to take the approach of working on it on weekdays (Monday to Friday). If I am in the planning stage of the book, I will do a few pages of planning a day; then in the writing stage, I also do a couple of pages a day as I write the first draft; then I will do a section each day for the second draft and so on, until I complete the final draft. Writing a book can take me 4-6 months doing a small section at a time but with gradual small steps, I get there and have a fresh mind each day.
It is important to remember that with habits, they need to be specific to what you want to achieve on both a daily and long-term basis. Habits also need to be simple and of a repetitive nature. If you overload yourself mentally or physically with hard habits each day, there is always a large chance you will crash, burn and give up.
I hope that you found this useful and whatever your goals are, this may be beneficial for you. As always, please feel free to get in contact with me if you have any questions.
Goodbye for now.
Jonny Pardoe
Photo by Fernando Hernandez on Unsplash
Jonny Pardoe © July 2017
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Jonny Pardoe
