The Chain
You might have heard of the so-called Seinfeld Strategy for sticking to something and building a habit.
You don't have to click all those links, I'm of course going to explain it. Basically, you buy a big wall calendar and every day you do the thing you're supposed to do (practice an instrument, write in your journal, work on a YouTube video), you get to put a big red X through that day. After a few days to a week, you have a “chain” of unbroken X's. Supposedly, you will find that the desire to procrastinate, the perceived pain of working on your project, is overcome simply by your desire to “not break The Chain”.
I bring this up solely because 2 weeks ago I realized I had blogged about once a week for a few weeks. I felt pretty good about that! Then I blogged again last week. Then this week: well, I didn't think I had anything to blog about.
But I didn't want to break “The Chain” even though I don't have a real or even virtual calendar where I'm keeping track of it. So I decided to write this small post explaining what The Chain is.
I'd love to commit to The Chain, and I'm not sure what's stopping me. I think it's not the effort or time it takes to write blog posts. I'm completely onboard with offering that much. I think it's the fact that I've tried to consistently blog before, and it always ends in so many tears. The added fact that I will have broken The Chain makes me feel like it will be harder to then, once again like so many times before, resume blogging to any degree.
Actually if I could commit to only writing ¼ of my blog posts about blogging itself, that would be an improvement. Maybe when I feel like The Chain is being strained (Don't Strain The Chain, Gang), I could just cop out and blog about blogging.
I have to also take this opportunity to point out that the name of this blog is YABIWU — Yet Another Blog I Won't Update. Am I proving myself wrong? Probably only temporarily.
So has anyone successfully used The Chain? As always I'm Travis Briggs, of travisbriggs.com fame. If you'd like to comment on this post you can do so on Mastodon (@audiodude@toot.cafe) or Twitter (@audiodude) or send me an email at audiodude@gmail.com.