#9 Admiring early work

5 dead-simple steps to start writing – even if you’ve tried everything:

1. Set aside dedicated time tomorrow morning. From now on, this is your dedicated time every day.
2. Start with a Tiny Trust Builder; something that makes it easy for you to show up consistently. Write for one minute. Write one sentence. Write one word. If it feels hard to do every day, think smaller.
3. First build the habit, then build skill. Right now, you’re building a daily writing habit, not a “daily masterpiece” habit. That comes later.
4. If step 3 feels hard: write something bad on purpose.
5. If step 4 feels hard and you don’t feel motivated to write: write anyway. You don’t need motivation to write. You’re a writer. So you write.

Good luck!

In working-class cafés in Napoli, people who experienced good luck often buy a coffee, then another one “pending”, which the barista can serve to anyone at his own discretion: a caffè sospeso.

A symbol of social trust and solidarity. Or, in the hands of marketeers and big coffee chains, a tool for increasing sales.

Regardless, it’s an act minimal enough to not to turn the donor into a hero, and small enough not to affect the receiver’s self-worth.

If such accessible acts of generosity make the donor feel good, and the receiver of a free coffee too…

And if it’s something almost everyone can do, not just billionaire philanthropists…

It’s an initiative worth spreading. Maybe not only for coffee.

You don’t need to learn how to write, run, or learn a language yet if you haven’t learned to write daily, run daily, or learn a language daily.

No how-to program, but take-action-today program.

With how (online) education and teaching are done nowadays, most people give up long before they get real results. Let’s fix that with this counterintuitive 3-step approach to skill-building: 👇

1️⃣ Step 1: Intent Builder.

Before you start, you must light a fire under yourself.

Why is this important to you?

What do you stand to gain?

Also (especially), what do you stand to lose?

(❗️I guarantee that at some point, you’ll forget what you’re doing it all for. So make your Intent strong and remind yourself every day; otherwise, you’ll always let life get in the way.)

2️⃣ Step 2: Trust Builder.

In the first 14-21 days, there’s only one thing that matters:

Can you prove to yourself that your Intent is strong enough to show up and take action daily?

Or are you derailed by the slightest setback or the lack of quick results?

Most people don’t have that trust in themselves yet. So you must build it up by taking small, daily actions completely decoupled from “quick wins” (I call them Tiny Trust Builders).

This is counterintuitive because people crave instant results, which means most course creators try to build them in their programs.

But the harsh truth is, only when you can show up without getting instant results are you ready to get real results.

3️⃣ Step 3: Skill Builder.

Once you’ve built the trust that you’ll show up, you can focus on skills, progress, and results. Here are two valuable mechanisms that take you from Trust-Building to Skill-Building:

👉 Make things a little harder every day or week
👉 Implement feedback loops: ask for coach feedback, talk about what you’re doing, show your work,…

Bottom line:

Learning something new is easier if you’re already in the habit of showing up every day.

It’s also easier to get through a bad day if you’re already in the habit of showing up every day – after all, you know that tomorrow, you’ll be there to take action again.

You’re ahead of your time.

You’ll always be behind.

And you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Writing, running, work, relationships… No matter how you feel today, these three statements are all true, all at the same time, for everything you do.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, you can continue to do the work.