Did you write today?
That is a question my husband asks me. Every day.
I had given him the task to ask me, “Did you write today?”.
In January this year, I created this blog. The idea came up after I was struggling to follow the lessons on navigating WordPress. Struggling to understand the explanations given during the lesson, I thought, “instead of learning the theory, why not learn by doing?”
Then I got another idea — why not play around with twitter too?
On 1.1.21 I wrote my first post, a few lines of poem to greet the new year. I also posted the poem as my first tweet.
I was delighted to see my work on display; after many years hiatus from writing. But something bugged me. It had to do with my first attempt at blogging in 2014. The blog was also created on New Year’s day. But it died a few days later. I was afraid this blog would succumb to the same fate.
I decided to challenge myself to write more frequently, i.e. daily. By writing I mean jotting down ideas or drafting a post or finishing a post. I knew it cannot just be me telling myself to write. I wanted a more structural help.
This idea to assign my husband with the task came from something I learned from The Daily Questions, a list of questions around commitments set by ourselves. It is a technique used by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith whose talks and guidance I follow from time to time.
So my husband has been asking the question every evening since 2.1.2021. I soon realised the question is easy but it is hard to do, just as Goldsmith had warned (he hired a person to call him every day to ask him a set of questions), because it is easy to get off target.
Sometimes my answer is a “no”, another time a “yes”. Every time it is a “no”, I would get uneasy and upset at myself for not writing. Sometimes I would answer with a terse ‘no’ almost sounding annoyed by the question (and at the questioner!). Sometimes I would say “no” and come up with excuses.
Over time, I am better at managing it — instead of a barking “no” or finding excuses, I have come to accept that behaviour change is not easy, and that the aim of this exercise is making progress. I also realised there will always be areas where I can improve.
I am still not writing daily, but I am proud that after 71 days since my blog and tweeter went alive, I have a total of 66 tweets and 13 blog posts. I am thankful too to my husband for taking on the task which seem simple but actually requires some patience and understanding.
Ends
Originally published at http://chinheimerl.wordpress.com on March 12, 2021.
