If you love it, do it every day

One of my life philosophies is that daily reptition is the the #1 driver for excellence. And, recently, I’ve realized that doing something every day makes you love it more too (quite possibly because you become better at it, and being good at something is satisfying).

The other month I went down a Hacker News rabbit hole that led me to one guy, Mike Crittenden, who has been posting a single blog post every day for a pretty long time (over a year now).

Mike Crittenden argued that the average person should write 5x more. I agree - we could all do with a bit more creating. So in the Critter spirit, I want to publish one thing every weekday throughout the month of October. I’ve had this idea for a few weeks and figured I should build momentum instead of procrastinating.

This exercise is half self-experimentation and half following my belief of daily repetition. The self-experimentation is simple: what’s the outcome? Does it help jump start my day, make me feel inspired? Do I make anything good or am I loathe to hit publish?

If you love something you should do it every day. Eventually, it’ll become second nature. Anything you do daily becomes a habit, changes your life in some way, and probably alters your brain too. I learned this while training for triathlon. For the last 20 consecutive months, I haven’t really taken days off. One of the best parts of this commitment was actually not the fitness gained, but the ability to just wake up and go, every day, without internal struggle or procrastination. This example took things to an extreme - you don’t need to pursue hobbies with religious zeal - but the point remains. Doing something you love every day is a worthwhile endeavor.

I’m still training every day, and it’s one of the best parts of my day. I’ve cultivated my existing love for physical exercise and become even more passionate about it. It’s made me think of other things that I could do every day. Writing is one of them, playing music is another, running is a third. The last thing I want to do every day is eat a banh mi - they’re delicious and the place around the corner from me is really cheap.

In the month of October, my goal is to do all three of these things daily. I’m going to commit to it for one month, and then re-evaluate and see how I feel. If my miles are slow, my music is bad, and my writing is embarassing - that’s OK. But the only way to get better is to try.