I spent some time just now Googling: “Does Seth Godin blog on holidays?”. (Un)fortunately for me, there weren’t really any results, at least not any that would allow me to write myself a permission slip to take today (Canada Day, here in Canada) off from my daily writing practice.

Of course, I don’t really need a permission slip – this is my habit, which I’m establishing for my benefit, which affects almost nobody besides me. I could stop whenever I wanted to! I could never write another blog post after today! I could throw in the towel on the whole thing, and almost nobody besides me would care.

But I would care. It would matter to me, and if I skipped it often enough, I would get back to the place I was when I decided to establish the habit in the first place: feeling like I was missing something in my life. It makes me wonder: why do I constantly want so badly to “get out of” the habits that I put in place for my own benefit? Meditating, writing, exercising: these are things that improve my wellbeing. Why are they always the first to go?

This reminds me of a blog post I wrote several years ago now: Who Are You Doing a Favour? Upon re-reading it just now, I realized a couple things:

1. I’ve been struggling with this for years, and probably will for years to come.

2. Some of the habits I mentioned in that post (like washing my face!) I no longer EVER try to “get out of”. They’re an established part of my routine and I never question them or skip a day.

It seems like the solution is to stick with habits long enough that they become a mundane part of your day that you never even think to question, let alone skip. So, here we are. It’s Monday, and this is my weekday blog post, holiday be damned.

This month, I tried weekday blogging for the first time. I set myself a goal of writing an observational blog post Monday through Thursday, with link round-up posts on Fridays. I put this goal in my bullet journal and on Asana, and today (the last Thursday of the month), I get to check it off both places. Two major hits of dopamine! A job well done!

I’m flagging this now because I know that once I click that checkbox, there’ll be a huge part of me that feels like I’m off the hook. Cool, we did it! We accomplished the goal of weekday blogging, so we’re done now, right? I can feel how badly I want to give myself a pat on the back and call it a day. And while I probably should give myself a pat on the back (daily writing is hard!), I definitely don’t want to call it a day. 

I think I’m in a version of Seth Godin’s The Dip: the bump in the road where I feel very much at risk of falling off the wagon. Where it would be so easy to forget why I started in the first place and just move on to something else. Because I don’t want that to happen, I need to remind myself of why I started in the first place.

The whole point of this goal was to establish a new habit for myself, a habit that ideally continues hereafter whether or not there’s a finish line, or a checkbox or an external prize. No, the prizes are all internal: a feeling of attunement with my life. A consistent writing practice. More awareness and a deeper integration of my lessons. 

So I’m leaving myself with these words from Seth: “If you can get through the Dip, if you can keep going when the system is expecting you to stop, you will achieve extraordinary results.”

One of my Super Seven daily practices is “Zero-In Time”, a name I coined this week because I’m obsessed with naming things. It seems silly, but I think naming things properly actually helps me take them more seriously and stay more committed.

“Zero-In Time” is what it sounds like: time with zero things coming into my brain from other people’s brains. Time alone with my thoughts and senses. And of course I love the double-entendre, because I think this practice will also help me “zero in” on what’s most important, glean new insights, and come up with new ideas.

When I interviewed Sarah Von Bargen, she talked about how having this kind of time every day is an important part of her creative process. She walks her dogs and doesn’t bring her phone, or she’ll drive without listening to the radio. And I’ve also heard other cool people talk about similar things! Back in 2016 on the Happier podcast, Moby recommended going into nature without bringing your phone. Jocelyn K. Glei talks often on her podcast about doing things without being tethered to her phone. One of my favourite books of last year, Solitude, is all about finding more space without any external inputs.

But as often as I’ve been exposed to this idea, I’ve struggled to implement it for myself. The biggest problem is that I LOVE inputs from other people’s brains. It’s my #1 biggest strength in the StrengthsFinder framework! It’s as easy as breathing for me to consume new ideas and information. So when faced with a walk, or time in the kitchen, or free time, it’s a challenge to not immediately fill it with a podcast, a conversation, a book or a video.

Thus, I’m adding it to my daily list of habits! I’m expecting to resist it at first, but am hoping that the peace, quiet, and inspiration it brings me are enough to perpetuate the habit. The universe abhors a vacuum, so maybe creating one will let the ideas flow in.