52 Tuesdays and Now We Start Again
In December of 2018, as I was assessing my year and thinking about the coming new year, I realized that of the four things that I want to define my purpose – being an author, speaker, teacher, and coach – the author part was lacking. Ever since I published my first book a few years ago, I have slowed down on writing and was only updating my blog sporadically. So, I made a commitment to myself to publish an article every Tuesday in 2019. Today is the 52nd Tuesday and I am happy to report that I did it, but not without struggles and learnings.
Three Struggles:
1. Time is moving quickly – actually, time is moving at the same pace it always has; steady, consistently, never ceasing, tick, tick, tick. However, when you have a weekly or daily commitment, you will be stunned by how quickly the commitment comes due each week.
2. What will I write about? It was easy the first few weeks, but then I had to get intentional. I increased my daily reading and took notes. I took notes during all coaching calls on areas where people were struggling. So far, I have not lacked for a title.
3. Why am I doing this? At first, my why was around reestablishing a writing habit. Then, after 15-16 weeks, I started wondering if anyone is reading this; Is anyone impressed with my string of clever articles; and other meaningless measurements.
Three Learnings:
1. My why is my reason – It’s easy to be distracted by trying to add subscribers, or generating likes, or shares or comments. What empowered me was remembering my why. To help leaders find walk the path to remarkable performance. I just want to add value to others.
2. Having a goal is mandatory for daily progress – To say that I am going to try and write something every week would have been an enormous miss. Without a specific goal – publish an article on my website every Tuesday at 8am US East time – I would be tempted to delay, push it out, ignore or forget. Instead, I woke up most mornings for my regular writing time with one thought in mind, “Tuesday’s Coming.”
3. Small things done daily equals BIG results - Doing something small every day is much easier than trying to accomplish something big at the last minute. Sometimes you can pull off the big deliverable at the last minute, but it is stressful, and the quality of your work will suffer. Instead, breaking the goal into manageable chunks and then deciding what you need to do daily to get there is the magic formula.
The new year begins tomorrow what 2-3 goals will you set for yourself so that at this time next year you will have a significant result to show for it. Time is passing. Where did this year go? Plant seeds daily and watch the crop come in over time.
As a leader, one of the fastest ways to increase influence with others is to improve how you communicate. More specifically, we need to improve how others perceive our communication.