TLDR: From time to time I run out of topics, so today that is the topic.
Most Monday mornings I sit down at my computer with a few drafts from the week before—ideas I’ve been noodling on—and I polish one up and drop it in your inbox.
Other days, I sit down and see what inspires me, write for 30-45 minutes, and hit send with a rush of spontaneity.
Some posts, like last week’s Many Lives Theory, or the formerly popular (Obvious) Values and Rule of Three have been rattling around in my brain for some time and were born from resources, like my user manual.
And then there are those days when you sit down and you just don’t have it.
In the two years writing 100+ Monday Morning Meetings, I think that’s probably been the case 10 or so times.
For example, I’ve got nothing today, ended up being the 10th most popular post of 2022.
And if you’ve been reading a long for a while, you know I’ve written about this topic of consistent long-term habits quite a bit, quoting people like Naval when he says “long-term games with long-term people” or authors like James Clear who says “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
In fact, it’s not dissimilar to the String of Pearls concept from Stutz that we covered two weeks ago, where he describes the personal motto “I’m the one who puts the next pearl on the string.” Interestingly, he talks about how every action has the same value:
This is a matter of identity…If there’s a failure—or a big success, by the way, either way—you’re gonna keep going. “I am the person that puts the next pearl on the string.” That’s it.
I think that’s an important idea, that whether simply getting out of bed or crossing the finish line of a big goal, each action in itself holds the same value—the value of moving you forward. That’s a reframing for me that has rewired my brain in the smallest way, and yet I can already see how that shift in perspective has the potential to compound for decades in a life-changing way itself.
To put an image to the idea, here’s what consistency looks like for me in terms of Substack subscribers. It’s slow for sure, including those ~10 days where I simply didn’t have it, but then there are moments of inflection and clear compounding too. Each post, regardless of its contents holds the same value—the value of consistency over time.
And while subscribers are certainly not the metric of life, this graph looks eerily similar on pretty much every measurable long-term topic from personal finances to professional connections.
So the question to ask yourself is, even if you don’t have it today, what things in your life are still compounding?
See you Monday.