Every time I hit publish on WordPress, I get a notification on my phone from the app letting me know that I’ve been on a streak— yesterday it told me I’m on a 32-day streak.
It’s nice. If anything, that short message boosts my confidence and makes me feel good.
And recently this week I reached a streak of 30. In other words, I published on my blog for 30 days straight. I’ve done this before, once or twice. But now that I’m pursuing a career in writing, the weight of this streak is heavier.
Having published for 30 days straight and forming the habit of writing daily, now is the time to take on something more challenging.
I’ll continue publishing daily on my blog. But on top of that, I’m challenging myself to write 5oo words a day— I wanted to start with 1,000 but that might be setting the bar too high. These 500 words will exclude my daily drafts.
My struggle recently has been finding time to sit and write my weekly articles. But if I instead carve time to focus on writing 500 words a day, an article of 850-1000 words can be finished in two days, giving me time to rewrite before releasing it.
If I were to write 500 every day, that would result in 3,500 words a week; 14,000 in a month; 168,000 words in a year. This is more than double the average length of a nonfiction book!
Of course, there will be a lot of rewriting. Regarding this goal, however, what matters is not quality but quantity.
I must be consistent and produce more writings, more articles, and more journals to accumulate the experience I need to write anything.
Regarding quality, the more I read, the more writing styles I will be exposed to, and the more likely I will experiment with what I like and don’t like. Quality will come naturally after enough quantity.
So cheers to my streak of 30! And cheers to the start of a new one, for fulfillment cannot be met without first embracing consistency.
Here’s my quote for the day.
Successful people don’t do extraordinary things; they do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
— Jim Rohn