At 5am this morning, I finished listening to an hour of Eddie Pinero, journaled about 5 pages, read 2 chapters of Content Inc. and journaled some more.
While journaling, I noticed how smooth my pen wrote across the page and how cold the wire coils were on my hand as I inched closer to the middle of my journal. Then as if it was a signal to stop, I felt a cool breeze on my left arm.
Then I sat – quietly.
Closed my eyes and could hear the damn Blue Jay squawking at the top of Walnut tree outside my dining room window.
It’s ok, just keep sitting quietly and listen.
I focused on a Cardinal, singing his little song. I knew he was right outside my window. Didn’t see him, but I knew he was there. Along with the slight noise of the neighbours air conditioner and a kid saying “bye bye” to his Dad as he left for work.
As I’m aware of of these noises, but the overall feeling I had was the burnout from the 66WRITE challenge I’m in.
Sunday is the last day, I’m almost there.
When I first started the challenge, I had an idea of what I wanted to accomplish from a business perspective. Experiment with writing, toy with different subjects, short form, long form, frameworks etc. etc.
The challenge was this huge monster that was taunting me that I wouldn’t make it.
- Why is it so important that I do this?
- Why is it so important to finish strong?
- Is it to prove to myself of what I’m capable of?
- Because I had to post my work every day, therefore was I accountable? meh, if I didn’t post, nobody would miss me, so I’ll take the previous reason.
Never in my life have I written an article, read 10 pages, did three tweets and documented it all for every day, for 66 days.
It was grueling and sometimes, I was a downright bitch of misery.
But I kept at it.
When the challenge ends in a few days, I have no excuses to not have time to do anything, because I found the time to do the challenge even though it brought me zero in revenue. What I got out of it was much more.
It was Eddie’s podcast this morning that re-framed my experience like this:
Gary Keller said that dominos can knock down a domino 50% larger than itself. If a domino is 2″ tall, and keep increasing the next one to it by 50%, the 23rd domino in progression would be able to knock over the Eiffel Tower, the 31st would be able to knock over Mount Everest and the 57th would bridge the gap between the earth and the moon.
I had to look this up to believe it. Could you imagine watching that take place?
Looking at the end goal as this monster was overwhelming and I doubted myself for the first 3 weeks.
Now that I look back, day 1 was small, wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I did it. It was easy. Took on day 2 with a bit more force and repeated that until today and will keep repeating it until Sunday.
Right now the domino is so fricking big, I’m tired and don’t have much strength left to push the next domino, but I know it can be done.
I believe if you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way. Yes there were sacrifices, but what I got out of it was worth it, because I built a new set of habits that are better.
- cut out 95% of Netflix
- unsubscribed from anything that I snoozed more than twice
- woke up an hour earlier, so now 4am and btw, what the hell are the bird chirping at around 4am!
- my phone was on permanent “do not disturb” except for Joe
- cleaned up my office every day, removing more and more clutter that was distracting, even though it made my office look good
- said no to more inquiries for 1–1 work (which I’m pivoting away from)
- and this one I’ve been working on, but let slack: only work on ONE thing at a time, cause I’m proud to say I suck at multitasking and my work is amazing when I don’t do it
As I’m looking at my goals list that I wrote out for a Content Inc. exercise, each big goal is the domino filling the gap between the earth and the moon.
All the smaller dominos are the daily steps I’m going to take to get there.
No more obsessing on how I’m going to get to that big goal. I just have to knock over one little domino at a time.
The burnout is every so slowly fading away.
I know what I’m capable of and I still need to cut out more things, which will leave room for adding things that truly matter.
And that’s the key… doing things that truly matter.
Until next time, stay inspired!
Gisèle
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