This weekend I almost broke my writing streak – just three days away from hitting 500 days in a row. I went to Emerald City ComicCon with some friends, and didn’t get home until 9PM. I had some prep to do for Sunday School the next day, so that took priority. If I hadn’t gone back to my computer to check my Facebook one last time and reload a few pages, I might have forgotten completely and gone to bed without realizing I hadn’t written anything that day.
The streak is important to me and I’m glad I remembered in time. But more important is the habit that I’ve built. I know that even if I had broken my streak, I could pick up again the next day. I might be more willing to make excuses on hard nights when times are tough, but I would know how much I can suffer through and what it really means to say that I “didn’t have time to write today.” I’ve certainly had those days. I’ve had days where I was staffing youth conferences and had to wake up at 7AM, spend every moment of the day chaperoning kids or meeting with the staff, and then go to bed at 11PM after an hour of cleaning the church. I didn’t have time to write on those days. I still did it.
Recently I read about the ‘100 Times’ method to habit forming and productivity. When you’re about to make a choice you know isn’t the best, you ask, “What would happen if I made this same choice the next 100 times?” It’s easy to say you’re just going to miss this one workout, but you know you’d get really out of shape if you missed the next 100 workouts. Likewise, I know that I wouldn’t be failing as a writer if I genuinely forgot to write for just this one busy and unusual day, but I know what would happen if I ‘forgot’ for the next 100 days in a row. I would stop producing. I would stop practicing. I would stop writing.
I don’t want that. So at 12:06AM on Sunday morning I was still in front of my computer. And these were my 372 words for the day.