#33: Start with Three Sentences
Show Notes\n\xa0\nSummary:\nLast week I urged you to write that thing that scares you...and to get started by writing three sentences.\n\nDid you do that? Did you write those three sentences?\n\nI did. I dove straight into the thing that scares me and wrote three sentences. Then three more. Then a whole paragraph. And another. I got going and didn\u2019t stop for two pages. Then, okay, then I stopped because I started to feel a bunch of feelings sloshing around inside me and I was sitting in the library and didn\u2019t want to slosh out a lot of tears in front of the librarian helping a woman search for a biography. So I stopped writing for the day.\n\nThe progress reminded me that a few sentences quickly grow to be a paragraph and another and next thing you know, you have a scene or a chapter. Committing to those first three sentences engaged my mind; once engaged, the ideas flowed. I would have continued had I been in a more private location.\n\nAnother way of looking at those three sentences is that even if I\u2019d managed only three sentences and no more, I would have made progress.\n\nThe only way I won\u2019t make progress is by not writing at all.\n\nIf I manage to write three sentences and stop, the piece has begun, ever so slightly, to exist and take shape.\n\nDon\u2019t underestimate the power of those first three sentences to get a project\u2014especially a scary one\u2014in motion. It\u2019s like you\u2019re committing to more if you get three sentences down and return the next day and add three more. In fact, next time, you might add four.\n\nAuthor and speaker James Clear explores how small habits can change our lives.\n\nIn one article, he tells about Dave Brailsford, the General Manager and Performance Director for Great Britain\u2019s professional cycling team, who started to train his team in 2010 using an approach he referred to as the \u201caggregation of marginal gains\u201d which was \u201cthe 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do.\u201d\n\nThe idea was those small gains would add up and you\u2019d meet your goal, over time. Their goal was to win the Tour de France.\n\nThey looked for 1 percent improvements in every aspect of these cyclist\u2019s lives, from what they ate to how they slept. Brailsford anticipated they\u2019d win in five years. Surprise! They won it in three years...and then they went on to dominate the 2012 Olympic Games, won the Tour de France again in 2013 with another rider on the team.\n\nHow does the Aggregation of Marginal Gains affect us today, as writers, writing three sentences a day?\n\nJames Clear says, \u201cAlmost every habit that you have \u2014 good or bad \u2014 is the result of many small decisions over time...And yet, how easily we forget this when we want to make a change.\u201d\n\nHe did a \u201ctiny gains\u201d challenge with exercise, adding on a tiny bit of weight to his strength training program and encouraging others to add a tiny bit to whatever their exercise was, whether it\u2019s squats, pushups, or walking.\n\nIn other words, tiny gains add up.\n\nThree sentences per day on any project, whether it scares you or not, will add up. Start with three sentences, and to make tiny gains over time, try adding an extra sentence each week. This means you'd write three sentences every day the first week. The following week, you'd write four sentences each day, and so on.\xa0If you have a crazy week\xa0or day, revert back to the minimum of at least three sentences to ensure you'll make progress.\n\nBut think of ways you can make tiny gains, because a\xa0few sentences will become a paragraph, a few paragraphs become a chapter. And a few chapters become a book.\n\nSet out to write at least three sentences. And then the following week, try to make a tiny gain, whatever that means for you.\n\nAnd sentence by sentence, you're going to meet your goal, because tiny gains over time add up.\n\nListen for the full podcast.\nResources:\n\n\t#32: What's the Thing You Really Want to Write...That Scares You?\n\t#14: Progress, Not Perfection\n\tThe 2015 Tiny Gains Challenge (James Clear)