I keep myself on the hook every day for writing here. It’s not always easy – it’s often hard to summon the focus required to put even a short few words together. The trick I’ve found is to sticking with this for the last four months is to “park on an incline” each day. That is, to set myself up for success by storing some momentum ahead of time.
I do this here by writing with at least a one-day backlog. So what I write today is actually what I wrote yesterday. Each day is then just a matter of polishing what I already started, and drafting the next day’s post.
Parking on an incline means anticipating and preparing for future challenges. I know if I skip this step, I’ll regret it later, because there’s no slack. No room for error. Current me is creating a problem for future me.
Most of the habits we want to form are built from this loop of anticipation and preparation for future outcomes. What separates the habits we keep from the ones we drop is how well we can keep this loop going. And parking on an incline is just a tool to maintain that momentum.