Writing Daily on My Daily Reading
Stacking a new habit on top of an old one
"If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."
I have been struggling to find and make time to write and publish daily as I resolved to do. I tend to be meticulous about my posts, so each one takes so long to write that I find it difficult to also complete the other tasks of that day. So I’ve been skipping my intended daily writing practice for the sake of my job, family, and health commitments.
But last night I came up with a plan to make the practice fast enough for me to hopefully be able to squeeze it in.
The plan is to integrate my daily writing and publishing with my daily Bible study, which I have been faithfully maintaining. I have been studying one pericope per day for a while. And lately, I’ve been drafting “key word outlines” and paraphrases of each passage as I recently described.
Now what I’d like to do is write daily Bible study posts that build on those exercises. I’ll start with the first pericope of the Book of Matthew and work my way forward through the text, one pericope per day.
I’m hoping this approach will help me write much faster, because it will save me the lengthy time it takes for me to think up and decide on the topic. The topic will be provided for me by whatever happens to be the next pericope. And the key word outlining and paraphrasing method will make research for the post formulaic, straightforward, and therefore fast. It should also make the writing itself faster, because it helps me to quickly structure my thoughts about the subject.
And forming my target habit (daily publishing) should be facilitated by attaching it to the end of an already-established habit (Bible study). This is a habit formation strategy known as “habit stacking.”
I will also give myself permission to write short, simple posts about minor points and incidents. This should help me to avoid breaking my streak and to “master the art of showing up” as James Clear puts it. I might even give myself multiple daily posts to cover a pericope, if it’s an especially rich one.
“When there's a setback, someone with a fixed mindset will start thinking, 'Maybe I don't have what it takes?' They may get defensive and give up. A hallmark of a successful person is that they persist in the face of obstacle, and often, these obstacles are blessings in disguise.”