In my November month challenge, I mentioned that I will be writing one article every day. Consistently writing one article every week is doable, but one per day is unbelievably hard.
One of my friends mentioned that doing such a challenge will reduce the quality of the posts. I totally agree with him. I have taken up such a challenge before in my Personal Finance Blog for a month and I knew how hard it was once the initial set of ideas run out.
Daily Practice
You would have heard of this story in one of its variants. There was a professor who taught pottery and he wanted to run an experiment with his students. One month before the final exam, he split the class into two Groups: A and B.
Each student was supposed to submit one clay pot for the exam. The only difference group A was supposed to model and build only one pot on the exam day. They could study all kinds of theories, but whatever they build, they have the submit it.
Group B had to model one clay pot every day. It didn’t matter whether it was good-looking or out of shape, they had to model every day. But on the day of the exam day, they are also supposed to model a pot like others and submit theirs.
Both groups will be evaluated on the workmanship of the pot on the exam date.
Students in group A who were supposed to model only one pot, failed miserably even though they were really good with the theory. Whereas the students in group B, because of their daily practice were able to build really beautiful pots.
You can’t swim without getting into the water
This story shows that you can learn all kinds of theories about programming or running a business or making money on the stock market. But unless you hit the ground and run, you can never learn and improve yourself.
It doesn’t matter whether your program is buggy or your start fails or you lose money in the first few weeks of your trade. You need to constantly practice and learn from your mistakes and improve yourself.
This is something that Seth Godin also mentions in his 6000th post.
More important than the output, though, is the act itself. The act of doing it every day. When you commit to a practice, you will certainly have days when you don’t feel like it, when you believe it’s not your best work, when the muse deserts you. But, when you keep your commitment, the muse returns. When you keep your commitment, the work happens.
It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it, buys it, sponsors it or shares it. It matters that you show up.
Of the 30 articles that I am going to write in November, I know that at least 25 will be bad, 4 might be good and the remaining one article will be an exceptional masterpiece. That will be worth it.
So go ahead and write every day. Even if what you write sucks, do it.