From Seth Godin on Friday morning,
“Sometimes the rule is:
You don’t have to finish, but you do have to start.
And sometimes the rule is:
You don’t have to start, but if you do, you have to finish.
When building a personal habit, it might make sense to embrace the first rule. You don’t have to run all the way, every day, but you do have to get out of the house and start running.
And when making promises to a group where trust matters, the second rule definitely applies.”
Continued my thinking of running versus blogging.
Come next month, I’ll have run every day for five years.
I didn’t have to start this streak or to finish it, whatever finishing a streak of running everyday means.
I just got up and started running one morning – and never stopped.
Five weeks ago, I decided to blog every business day.
I didn’t say anything to anyone, I just blogged one day, and the next, and the next.
Until I did say something to my teammates in our weekly standup a week or two later. I told them if I could run every morning, I could blog everyday. Each took the same time, about thirty minutes plus, so why not.
I blurted it, without a lot of thought (maybe a mistake), to make me blog and to encourage my teammates to blog – for personal growth, to grow their professional network and to build LexBlog’s presence and reputation.
I also wanted to demonstrate to my team that I’m working my way back into the saddle and will be regularly blogging as a means of networking through the net. Such networking always results in relationships that grow our business.
So where am I at?
Contrary to Godin, I do have to run everyday. It’s both a habit bringing personal benefits and something on which I can’t let myself down.
I need to finish. I need to run every day until I can’t.
Unfortunately, I’m with Godin on blogging. I didn’t have to start blogging every day, but now that I made a promise to my team, trust matters. I need to blog every day until I can’t.