My Blogging Mantra: Create. Clarify. Repeat.
One simple mantra that’ll nudge me to keep blogging: “Create — Clarify — Repeat.”
Create
We were born to create. The evolution of human society is testament to the power (and reward) of mankind’s creativity. We create, to bring the very best of ourselves to the people around us — to our families, communities, industries and the world. When we don’t create — we deprive our families, communities and everyone, of us.
And what do we use to create? In his enlightening thesis, Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, artfully reveal that it is with words, with language, that all things are created.
Clarify
And that… is why clarity is supremely important. Mediocracy is often blamed on lack of ambition, or lack of capability. What constantly fascinates me — is how often, the sincerest pursue of excellence — is sabotaged, ruined — by lack of clarity.
Repeat
… With Habits, Systems and Automation.
We don’t lack literature that explain the power of habits. But cultivating habits can be incredibly time and energy consuming.
You may already know that decision-making consumes more energy than we think — and that’s why there are a bunch of us who choose to wear the same clothes, and eat the same things — so that we can save decision-making energy for the big decisions that have greater impact on our lives, careers and businesses than the clothes we wear, or the place we dine at, or the meeting venue.
But we don’t often think about the time and energy that habits require.
We know that habits can save you “time, money and energy”… That’s why there are people publishing articles and books about creating habits.
But what’s hardly discussed — is the time and energy it takes to cultivate a habit.
Think about it… The time it takes to schedule, to work on, to review, to deal with the work — associated with a habit.
When you are out to accomplish big things / many things… I’d argue that — just as you choose to many only crucial decisions — you’ll want to choose to cultivate only crucial habits.
And that’s why I’m not going to make it a habit to “take out the trash”, “organise my paperwork”, or “maintain a tidy desk” or to “eat healthy”.
All of that requires persistence. Persistence requires time and energy. And while I consider persistence a virtue, I don’t want to apply persistence (time and energy) to every single thing.
So here’s how I think about it…
- Habits Perpetuate Action (when persistence is applied)
- Systems Perpetuate Results (with little/no dependency on persistent action)
- Automation is the Perfect System. It doesn’t require persistent action or decision-making, and frees one up to apply all that creative energy to other things.
And that’s the third thing, my blog will be devoted to — how to create repeatable systems, and to have as much of our life’s tasks and work automated as possible.
