And make 3K a month just from writing a few hours a day.

If you’re having trouble establishing a writing habit, it may be because you don’t think of yourself as a writer. Call yourself a writer first. This may sound silly. You may be thinking, “well, I only make a few dollars from writing,” or even a few cents. That doesn’t matter; if you write, you are a writer.

Start with the name.

I’ve been writing every day for over a year and made money after the first month. But I’ve always considered myself a writer. Even when I was writing in a journal daily for my own satisfaction.

Identifying with the word “writer” is the first step to creating a writing habit that sticks. When we identify with a value we see in ourselves — or we want to see in ourselves — it gives our habits a more significant impact. …

Set the pass-fail bar low.

I wonder what I’ll cobble together for dinner tonight?

I really should have gone to the store yesterday. There’s nothing in the frig.

I have to stop listening to the Dipsea app and start listening to Calm, then I wouldn’t suck at meditating.

These are just some of the thoughts swirling in my head as I sit and fail at meditating.

Meditation is something I’ve struggled practicing with any sort of consistency. I’m well aware of the benefits. I’ve felt them. I’ve had periods when I meditate every day, only to give up after 30 days, three months, six months in. I’ve never been able to maintain the practice for longer than that. Even sitting for only ten minutes a day, I feel the benefits of meditating. …

Consistently.

We all have a different process for creating content. It took me a while to develop one I can rely on for producing large amounts of writing. It started with blogging for my own blog and then writing for this platform every day. That is a lot of content. But the thing about ideas is that they build on one another, and the more content you create, the more content you have to have to build upon.

Each of us develops our own recipe for content creation. When you are developing yours, take what works and leave the rest. I came up with mine from reading other writers and books on writing. …

And write 8 to 10 blog posts a week.

As someone who writes every day and publishes anywhere between eight and ten blog posts a week, a question I get often is, “how do you come up with daily content?”

I thought the same thing when I started blogging. I get it. When you haven’t done it before, it can feel daunting, you think,

there is no way I can come up with something to write about that amounts to seven blog posts per week.

I bet you can. You just have to reframe a few things in your mind.

Whether you write for clients, a blog, or Medium, you need reliable ways to generate ideas to parse out, filter through your perspective, and give your spin for your audience. …

But I don’t need turkey to remind me that I’m grateful.

I never liked turkey. A holiday centered around a large bird I find unpleasant to eat isn’t something I have ever looked forward to. Especially when cooking for family, the fest fell on me alone. I’d spend $400.00 at the grocery store for all the ingredients and three solid days in the kitchen cooking only to deliver an amazing meal to the table I was too exhausted to enjoy.

Oh, and the cleanup. For days. In addition to the obligatory, let us eat Thanksgiving for a week straight, so we don’t waste this expensive meal.

Covid gives us the excuse to skip all of that. …

The Diderot Effect.

A few weeks into the pandemic, I started having a few friends over for Saturday movie night outside in my backyard, taking advantage of the open air.

It’s my good friend’s “one night out.” He lives alone, has a pre-existing condition, asthma, and takes the necessary precautions to stay healthy. To stymie the adverse mental side effects of never seeing anyone other than on Zoom, he makes Saturday nights at my house the one exception to staying in all the time.

Pre-pandemic, he and I went to see nearly every critical hit in the movie theater (no blockbusters), mostly indie films and art-house features. So, when I decided to recreate movie night in my backyard, I went on Amazon and picked out a projector and a screen. We’ve had movie night outside for many months now and will probably continue this tradition when/if Covid ends some day. …

It’s a process.

Rarely does a blinking cursor scare me back into bed. Ideas are everywhere. I have notes and half-finished blog posts sitting on my desktop, messages to myself filling my inbox with the subject line “great idea for a story,” notes on the back of receipts crumbled at the bottom of my purse, and thousands of memos on my iPhone waiting for me to turn it into a publishable post.

Ideas abound if you keep your eyes open while living.

I pay attention, looking for a great story or an idea that plants a seed for a larger idea to develop.

Ideation is the first part of the process. …

Today’s decisions determine the quality of your life 20 years from now.

Humans have the distinct ability to place ourselves in the future and think about how our short-term actions will affect us in the long-term.

Yet, so many of us rarely do.

Similar to other animals on the African savannah, our ancestors spent their days responding to grave threats, securing the next meal, and taking shelter from a storm. It made sense to place a high value on instant gratification. The future was less of a concern. And after thousands of generations in an immediate-return environment, our brains evolved to prefer quick payoffs to long-term ones. — James Clear

Like my Labradoodle at home, we are really good at identifying and worrying about short-term dangers and challenges. …