Consistency: The Peaks and Valleys Challenge

Readers, I have been to the peak and to the valley this week. I much prefer the peak. 

In case you were wondering how my 66-Day Challenge chart is doing, I will show you. But first, let me tell you about my week. 

But before I tell you about my week, I have to tell you about a book I read a couple of months ago. It was a memoir by Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Or possibly A Thousand Miles in a Million Years. I can’t remember. I heard about it from someone on the Internet who posted a list of her favorite memoirs. Anyway, it was a good memoir, about Donald Miller’s life, about how a filmmaker contacted him about making a movie about one of his previous books about his life. The filmmaker and his cinematographer and Donald Miller spend a lot of time together, and they tell Donald Miller about this seminar called Story, taught by a famous teacher, Robert McKee. McKee is this guru of the film and TV writing world. Everyone famous goes to his seminars. So Donald Miller goes to it, too, and the memoir A Million Miles or Years turns into a book about writing a story, too. There’s a funny bit about how Donald Miller fills almost an entire notebook with notes during the three days of seminar, while his roommate, who also attends, leaves with this: A story is about a character who wants something and overcomes obstacles to get it. Or so. Anyway, reading about the seminar piqued my interest, because I also like to tell stories in writing, and I’m kind of bad at the plotting of stories. My novels have foundered on this.

So I looked up this seminar Story, which Miller described, and discovered that the famous guy who teaches it four or five times a year around the world would be teaching in New York City right around now. It was expensive, but not out-of-the-question expensive. So I talked about it for a while. I talked about it with the husband, who encouraged me to do it. But I didn’t sign up. I talked about it some more. I googled it. Is the guy who teaches it for real or a crook? Is the thing actually world famous, or is it just a line, like “Going out of business. Liquidation sale” on one of those stores that never closes? It just hangs the sign there permanently. I didn’t sign up. 

I asked the MIL if I could stay with her while I took this seminar, and she said yes. I still didn’t sign up, though. What about the 10th grader’s eye appointment on Friday? What about my hair appointment on Thursday?

What if attending this seminar poisons whatever intuitive sense of narrative I have and I feel oppressed and start writing by the numbers? 

Maybe that would help me sell my writing.

I told myself it’s good to learn theory. It doesn’t mean I will be a slave to it. More likely, I will assimilate this knowledge the way I assimilate all knowledge. I will suck it in and it will turn into a sludge pile somewhere in my unconscious, or my subconscious, and will become part of the intuitive process.

I texted my cousin’s son who works in LA in the business, but he didn’t text back. I thought he might have insider information, and he might, but I haven’t heard yet. Still I didn’t sign up. But finally, on a Thursday, after walking the dog and listening to a podcast on which Dan Pink mentioned the importance of telling a story in all kinds of work, I hit the tipping point that sent me home and got me to register for the seminar. I even bought the train tickets.

So I went to the seminar, and it was sublime. Fascinating. Exhausting. Three days of lectures, starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 8 p.m., with three twenty minute breaks and one hour for lunch. I learned a lot about structural analysis of story, and it made me think about my current and past books in a new way. I also met some fascinating people, from all around the world. A TV producer from Finland, a marketing executive with a desk drawer screenplay from Toronto, a textbook writer and YA novelist from England, a TV writer who does something I’d never heard of called Second Screen writing for TV shows who wants to write her memoir about transitioning to female, and a prolific and famous writer of nineteen novels. We all felt the seminar was transformative. 

I also delighted in the lattes with oat milk I’d read about months ago and was finally able to try at the cafe on the corner. 

I arrived home at midnight on Saturday, and by 1 am, was trapped in the valley. The 16 year old became terribly ill, all night, and ended up in the ER the next day. The husband spent the afternoon and evening in the ER with her, and when they admitted her, I spent the night in the hospital. By the time we got home Monday, all memory of the seminar was as remote as if it had happened ten years ago, or possibly to someone else, on a TV show. 

But the 16 year old is fine. As I write, she’s playing tennis. And after a few days away, for the seminar, which I counted as writing days, and for her illness, I am back to my 66-Day Accountability worksheet. 

Jerry's Chain--Don't Break It

When we left off, I was reading a book about 12 steps to becoming a person of impeccable character and manners. Here's that post, in case you missed it. 

Well, that failed.

Not that I have been particularly rude. But I did experience some road rage the other day. I ended up flipping the bird to some twenty-five-year-old dude. 

Maybe I shouldn't have returned the book to the library quite so soon. It was due, though, and it would have been bad manners to return it late. Especially since it's a new book, and it had a hold on it. I didn't spend enough days with it to establish all the good habits it recommends. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, reading that book made me aware of my shortcomings around consistency. I am not consistent. I’m not consistently inconsistent, either, I hasten to add. But over my life, I see, much as I wish I didn’t, my tendency towards failures of consistency. These failures affect myself, particularly. I’m the one I usually let down. If someone else is depending on me, I'm there, on time, or perhaps even early. If it's for me, though, the winds of willpower drop away and leave me in the doldrums.

Just the other night I had plans to go to an event, a political gathering. I was tired, though. The meeting was scheduled for late afternoon, and that's when my biorhythms are low. (Anyone remember biorhythm theory?)  My point is, I was going to poot out. I was going to stay home, eat almonds, and snoozle on the couch. The husband nudged me to the door, though, and I went. And, yes, the moral, Readers, is that I was very glad I had gone. I needed that nudge, though, to get over my inertia. I did not have a habit of consistency towards myself. 

And so, I had to face my lack of consistency. I fessed up to it on my monthly phone call with my college friend C, and E. 

Now, it’s easier to fess up to a bad habit if you’re not currently engaged in it. So when I told them I realized I had a problem with consistency, particularly around my writing and things that were mostly for me, I spoke from the middle of a pretty decent streak of daily work on the book. But I knew that if I hit a bad patch with book, my consistency would suffer. 

Afterwards, my college friend C sent me a chart called the 66-Day Challenge* and I’ve been using it to keep going. Here's a photo of it: 

This 66 Day Challenge apparently was inspired by Jerry Seinfeld. He gave an interview, which I, too, read. I, too, was struck by the comment he made about his work habits.** That is, he writes every day. No matter what, he writes. The husband pointed out that Jerry Seinfeld doesn't have to write very much. He writes jokes, not novels. One-liners. Not essays. But to the husband, I say, "Pish! Humor writing is hard. Being concise is hard. Concise humor writing? Well, how many Jerry Seinfelds are there?"  Anyway, the husband was joking. This may underscore my point about the paucity of Jerry Seinfelds.  

To help himself stay motivated, Jerry hangs up a giant wall calendar in his office. He puts an X over every day that he writes. He started doing this long ago, and the desire not to break the chain is sometimes what he needs to get to work. “Don’t break the chain,” he says. That's the secret to his consistency. That’s all. 

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” So said Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher. 

What about a non-foolish consistency? That’s what I’m after. 

I have to clarify my terms here. Consistency as I am using it means reliable, regular, dependable. R.W. Emerson seems to be using it to mean irrational rigidity. 

“I’ve been exercising my whole life—and I hate it,” my father said, not long ago. He is 92. Is that a foolish consistency? No way, José. That’s a rational consistency. I also thought it was probably untrue. Would he really do something he hated voluntarily his whole life long? I doubt it. Perhaps because it’s untrue for me. I like to exercise--usually. My dad is the person I credit with demonstrating this habit. Is that ironic? I think it is. “It’s almost always better to exercise” is one of my slogans, and I enjoy it. Exercise, I mean. Well, and my slogan. I enjoy that, too. 

But I digress. When you combine this X strategy with the theory of habit formation, which says it takes a few weeks to establish a habit, you get a handy PDF that you can send around to your friends who lack consistency, to light a figurative fire under their figurative butts. That is what C did for me. Fair enough. 

Hey, whatever it takes, right? I’m trying it now. You can see I’m not that far along. I am optimistic, however. I am optimistic because along with the X strategy, I am also employing the strategy of setting the bar low for this daily goal. I do not have to write for a certain amount of time. I do not have to write on a particular thing, like my book. I just have to write. Every single day. I find I like to get it out of the way in the morning. Put down some words. Put down an X. I can then put down plenty more words, but I’ve met my goal. 

By the way, experts disagree about how long it takes to establish a habit. Some say it takes about 21 days to form a habit. The guy who created the 66-Day Challenge says the magic number is 66. Habit formation is complicated. So is the term "expert." I don't even know if this 66-Day Challenge guy is an expert on habits. I do know he's written a book and he has a website. Hey, kid, want a piece of candy? Yeah, he could be anyone. But his chart is a-okay.

Anyway, it’s one thing to want to get rid of a bad habit. Extinguish is the behavioral psych term for that. Extinguishing a bad habit takes one kind of strategy. Ingraining a positive habit takes other strategies. One of them is this habit of maintaining the change. In other words, don't break the chain. 

We’re all just little kids inside. We like our charts and stickers. In fact, maybe I will use stickers instead of Xs. Not too long ago, I found an old folder full of stickers I used when I taught elementary school. Behavior modification comes down to reward and punishment. The reward for my habit of consistency is my chain of Xs—and my ballooning files of writing. The punishment for failing to write? I don’t think I could face my broken chain. 

Let us pause and remember that a goal is different from a habit. A habit is something you do automatically. Whether good or bad, it’s programmed into you and you need to deprogram yourself, or program yourself to ingrain a habit. A goal is something you actively pursue. It’s not automatic. But of course habits can help or hinder us in pursuit of our goals. Thus, consistency in writing is a habit I want to develop. You could say it’s a goal to develop this habit. In fact, I am saying that. I have a goal to develop a consistency habit. This is a good goal to have. It’s an achievable goal. It’s even a SMART goal—Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-Related. 

I'm pleased with my X strategy so far. I don't know that it's a habit, yet. As a strategy for continuing to write, it seems promising. I'm hopeful it will eliminate some of the resistance I feel when I've been away from writing and have to bring myself back to it. We all need strategies for continuing. Life is continuing. Things I am in the middle of I am still in the middle of. The book. The quest for success. The drive to be kind, or at least polite. Systems are going, which, to be honest, is something I appreciate more and more. Every day I wake up, I’m grateful for that consistency. Trite but true, as someone wrote on someone’s yearbook page decades ago. 

* You can download your own 66-Day Challenge chart to light that figurative fire under your friend's figurative butt at https://www.the1thing.com/resources/66-day-calendar/

**https://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret