#66 Scarcity is like pollution

When everything is urgent, how do we know what to do first?

One solution is adding more nuance:

What’s the most urgent?

What’s the most important?

Breathing is urgent.

A crying child is urgent.

A toilet visit can be urgent.

Sending that email out tonight right before bed instead of tomorrow, maybe not so much?

Here’s the important question:

If you’re going to prioritize the urgent matters anyway, why stress yourself out by calling everything urgent in the first place?

Making everything urgent devalues truly urgent matters.

Because when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent anymore.

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!

Day 150: I started a podcast

First, I focused on becoming good at publishing my writing every day.

Then, I started focusing on getting better at writing—a never-ending story.

Now, 150 days later, the cycle starts over.

First, I focus on becoming good at publishing a podcast every day, narrating the daily insights from the newsletter.

And soon, I’ll start getting better at narrating the daily insights—a never-ending story.

You can do me a massive favor by subscribing to the podcast on your favorite podcast app, leaving a 5-star rating, and sharing the podcast with anyone who may find these daily reminders helpful.

The podcast schedule runs behind the newsletter schedule, so you won’t see audio narration for the newest Insights yet, but for older Insights, there’ll be audio embedded on the website.

Thanks so much for being on this journey with me!