Right, so, well, hmm… let’s see about this then, shall we?

I thought I’d try and do some weeknotes. I’ve been writing things for myself for a while now but nothing I’ve ever wanted to share. It’s been more a stream of thoughts, almost in a Morning Pages way, only once a week, as a record. Recently I’ve thought it would be nice to do something more “in the open”. And that some kind of weeknoting would be a good exercise.

I’ve always been a fan of the idea that a blog should be your brain, over time, on the internet. But I’ve struggled not to be a bit too perfectionist with the stuff I tend to write on my blog. I’ve felt like the less I’d written recently the higher the bar should be for the next thing I wrote. This predictably created a spiral of self-doubt and procrastination. That, in turn, lead to even less writing and an ever-higher bar-raising.

But I do think there’s something useful in regular writing. And I’m feeling more and more lately that a sense of rhythm and discipline are something that I need to embrace.

Have you read Switch by Chip and Dan Heath? It’s one of the best self-helpy books I’ve read. It’s well written, with a great central premise. It helps you to understand things and motivates you to do things. So anyway, read that. The point is that cultivating habits, good habits, is something Chip & Dan recommend. As is making them manageable and not setting your ambitions too high at first. Hence wanting to find a way to side-step the self-imposed pressure and perfectionism of my other attempts at blogging.

So I have a plan.

a) I’ll keep it under 500 words. Maybe less even, let’s see.

b) I won’t try to do justice to the whole week or list everything I’ve done. I’ll try and record in some way where my brain is at, over time, on the internet.

c) And I’ll try very hard to hit publish once a week.

I’m going to try to make sure I don’t hold myself to high standards of coherence, and I will attempt to keep myself from worrying about tying things up in a neat little bow at the end. This week I thought I’d ease in with a “why and how” one. Next week I will begin putting the world to rights in earnest. :-)

Cheers.

First published at: https://weeknot.es/weeknote-27-06-20-episode-one-3cf98c6ef83d