Consistency is key

Some of you might know that I'm working on a book called "The Mediocre Programmer". I'm in the editing phases of the book now (cleaning up the language in the book and hopefully releasing something that isn't a confusing mess). One of the things that I've committed to is doing at least 10 minutes per day on the book. This has netted me a short book of about 26,000 words. I've been doing this since April 1st (The significance of the date is not lost on me), and have worked on a routine where I do at least 10 minutes of either writing or editing. I'm currently editing the last chapter now and it's been interesting to see how I've managed to go from "I can't possibly find time to write this" near the beginning of the year to "I'm about ready to open the beta to the rest of the world". All because I did a little bit each day (10 minutes isn't that much of my normal day).

This is in stark contrast to some of my other projects that I've worked on where I feel I need to clear off 30 minutes to 2 hours to even start on them. That gets me more into procrastinating about them than anything. But 10 minutes? That's easy enough.

The other secret is when the 10 minutes is up I sometimes want to keep going and keep the flow.

Building a habit where I'm consistently starting is paying off for me. I'm hoping to continue this trend.


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