I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
I feel like I’m not going fast enough now that I (think I) know what I want to do for the next ten or fifteen years of my life: run an indie author and publishing business. This is not the first time during my career reboot that I’ve thought, “I’m not going fast enough!” During the year-long reinvention project that preceded this 1000-day project, I wondered then How do I make faster progress?
In that blog post, I shared a quote from podcaster and author Cathy Heller: “Patience is massively underrated when it comes to launching a successful business.” So let me first remind myself to cultivate patience.
But the second thing I want to do is to establish daily and weekly practices that will bring my business into being, over time, ideally by the end of this 1000-day project (when of course I will still be working on it, but maybe then I start the “rest of my life project”?)
Yesterday, instead of writing and publishing a blog post, I worked to refine my daily and weekly schedule. I intend to make the following changes:
- Instead of writing a blog post as my first task of the morning, I’m going to work on the book manuscript. Today I did that, and I edited two chapters and started on a third. I feel a good sense of accomplishment from that.
- I’ve added a 10 am workout time to each day, after I get my morning writing and dog walk done. I usually go to the gym three times a week, but not at any set time, just whenever it is a day to workout and I feel like it. Now I’m going to alternate gym days (in which I do cardio machines) and at-home days (in which I will do a yoga video or an at-home strength training workout), and I have a set time for it.
- I’ve added a two-hour block after lunch for working on my author platform–website, email marketing system, advertising, and so forth. Today I’m going to start setting up a new author website under the pen name I’ve chosen.
- I’m tentatively planning to move my daily blogging to the afternoon, as a capstone to my workday. But I’m writing this at 7:20 am, so maybe not today.
Today is a little different because I am meeting a friend for brunch and then having dinner with my father, his girlfriend, and Ray tonight. But the rest of the week is open for me to make good progress on my book and my business. I feel inspired and excited.