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CHAPTER 1, JAN 2018

As the title of this post serves as an ample preamble, let me share with you a few sketch pens to help you make your 365 pages of 2018 more colourful 😊

·      TRY USING A HABIT TRACKING APP: If you’ve never tried a habit tracking app before, give it a try in 2018. There are a ton of these out there. The one I’m familiar with is Fabulous. It is designed to help you build, maintain and track your new habits. And, I find that using such apps is useful, especially to a writer, because the act of marking down when you make progress in your writing creates a streak. And when you look back on that streak, you won’t be comfortable breaking it. As Peter Drucker once may have said, “What gets measured gets managed”.

·      CREATE PRE-PLANNED BLOCKS OF WRITING TIME IN YOUR SCHEDULE: The power of focusing on one task for a long, uninterrupted period of time is unfathomable. But a lot of times it’s really easy to convince yourself that more urgent, but easier tasks, should be done right now. So if you start your week, or at least your day, with a plan like I’m gonna write from 5 AM to 8 AM and do nothing else, then you’re more likely to do it, and you are more likely to focus only on that task, which is difficult.

·      START AN ACCOMPLISHMENT JOURNAL: Keeping a simple record of everything that you’ve accomplished in your writing, either on a daily or weekly basis, depending on whichever suits you the best, is a good idea. As days pass by, your new habits blend into your system and everything gradually becomes a routine. At this stage, you might start to feel like you haven’t accomplished anything in a while. Because your brain has sort of filed it away. And, that could demotivate you. But if you have an accomplishment book to look back on, you can see that you actually have progressed a good deal in your writing.
Try doing an accomplishment journal on a daily basis. Essentially, as you finish tasks during the day, jot them down in your note-taking app of choice or just on a scrap of paper. And at the end of the day or week review them and evaluate your actions. It will help you take wise decisions.

·      MAKE TIME FOR REGULAR EXERCISE: It might be one of those moments where after striking off dozens of paras or pages and scratching your head for around an hour or so, the idea buried deep within you breaks itself free and drowns you in the ocean of writing. Writer's block is now just a pebble on your path, and words bleed from the tip of your pen. At this stage a writer finds it fatal to pause and take a break. And I'm not suggesting to do so. My point is, sitting in an unhealthy posture for hours has several health risks. Even in a healthy posture, being idle for a long period of time is not something that your heart prefers. A lot of people, especially when they’re ambitious, don’t prioritize exercise.
The important thing to keep in mind when you decide to exercise is START SMALL, RESTRICT YOUR TIME SCALE AND DON’T BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW. Because when you start the New Year, you have a lot of motivation and you might not have a whole lot on your plate. So, it’s really easy to stick with a goal. But, later on down the line, when stuffs start to get into your way, your schedule starts to get a bit more busy, and that’s when your self-discipline is truly tested. So, if you set a goal that stretches your capabilities and challenges you a bit, but it’s still doable within your schedule, even at its most challenging points you’re going to stick with it. If you wanna exercise more regularly, it can be very helpful to sign up for a class at your school or your rec centre.  It gives you 1) a community of people who are doing the same thing as you, which is a lot of fun and 2) an obligation that doesn’t exist just in your head. You don't have to rely only on your self-discipline. You now have other people who are expecting you to be there.

·      REDESIGN YOUR WRITING SPACE BASED ON THE 20-SECOND RULE: Essentially the 20-second rule is all about increasing the difficulty and the time it takes to get into the things that you don’t wanna do so often, the bad habits, and reducing the time and the friction that it takes to do the things that you want to do more often. So, if right now you play way too many video games, maybe put your game controllers in a drawer somewhere or maybe even take the cord out of your PS and put it in a closet. That way, it’s kind of irritating to set it up every time you wanna burn your precious time. And, on the other hand, to read and write more often, put your book or writing materials on the table so you can walk into the room, grab it, and start reading or writing. Anything you can do to reduce the friction between you and a good habit is gonna reduce the willpower required to remain consistent in doing it. And, the same is true of avoiding bad habits.

·      DISBALE NON-ESSENTIAL NOTIFICATIONS: Phones are supposed to aid us in our writing, not burn our precious time. So, go into your phone setting and disable basically every notification, every little sound and every little badge on the home screen other than the ones that are completely essential. And speaking of the things that are non-essential, it’s better to remove them. In my opinion, social media apps are essential only when you are travelling. Having quick access to them while you are trying to work represents a mental burden.

·      REPLACE ZOMBIE-MODE BROWSING TIME WITH READING: There are certain times in the day when we automatically go to reddit, fb or twitter and spend time on things which we didn't plan to spend on. By consciously identifying these times and then scheduling some reading time during the exact same times, we can avoid this unconscious social media consumption.

·      PRIORATIZE YOUR GOALS AND KNOW WHICH ARE MOST IMPORTANT
Doing this is absolutely crucial if you wanna remain consistent on the most important goal - writing. Because, inevitably you are gonna run into absolutely chaotic days where you just don’t have time to do all of them. And, when that happens, or when you’re feeling demotivated and you just don’t wanna do anything, you can think back to what you’ve prioritized. And, you can tell yourself, I’m going to do that no matter what and these things are less important. That way you are always going to remain consistent on what’s most important.

…………………………..

“I pray to be like the ocean, with soft currents, maybe waves at times. More and more, I want the consistency rather than the highs and the lows”
-Drew Barrymore

___AUTHOR’S NOTE___
Just drop me a line if you want me to cover a topic that you feel is missing on this blog. You can
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