Yesterday I wrote my first blog. Do you know what?

Unlike John Saddington and many, many others I’m certain – it did not take me 17 minutes. 

It didn’t take 1 hour, or 2 hours, even half a day. It took ALL day long. I didn’t have all day. Things definitely didn’t get done yesterday. LOTS of things. *sorry everyone who’s stuff I didn’t do.

I fussed, tried to work out the kinks, I looked for ages for a funny photo – thank you Fischli and Weiss, you always deliver. 

The point is I did it. 

And today I’m doing it. That's all. The point really is to show up and be consistent. It will get easier. It will get faster. Sometimes it will just be shorter. 

But shipping work is hard. It’s not perfect. There are still wires that are dangling out of the box. Unworked out thoughts, probably a whole lot of imperfections I can't even see yet, frankly – yes, it’s not perfect. And it won’t be.

The internal urge to say, ‘ahhh, let’s leave it for another day’, or ‘tomorrow will be different’. But it won’t. I promise. It won’t be different. Take it from me. It will be worse. The resistance will be there. And stronger, so it’s just easier to show up now. Steven Pressfield in the War of Art, describes this internal urge so well – it rises up in all of us. 

Here is my trick. I printed out a calendar – posted it – and marked a red X over the day. Today I will do the same. Second red X.

Maybe you’ve heard this story, but it’s worth a re-read because it demonstrates a system, and it’s simple. 

Jerry Seinfeld shared this to a young comic asking for writing advice. Seinfeld knew that to be a great comic, you had to make great jokes, to make great jokes, you have to practice. He knew he had to write every day. He got a big calendar, a red marker and after writing, he crossed off the day with a giant red X. And after a few days he had a chain of red X’s. He said, “You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."

"Don't break the chain," Seinfeld said again for emphasis. 

See we are back at a simple system. But it works. 

It still didn’t take me 17 mins, but it didn’t take me all day.