At times life gets busy. Very busy. We find ourselves so occupied by stuff around us that we neglect the routine activities- be it taking medicines on time or going out for the post-meal walk.
For me, the past month has been one such time. I had on most days forgotten to keep up with my commitment to read every day and to stay updated with the world news.
Is there a way around this or are humans limited by their mental capacity to focus only on the most pressing issues at hand and ignore the lingering tasks? I don’t know.
However, one thing I do know is that the best way to combat this is to bring consistency into your life. I know it’s easier said than done. One day you might have a lot of free time on your hand and find it easy to complete an entire novel in one sitting but the very next day you might have to meet three deadlines, go do the weekly grocery shopping, attend a friend’s wedding and god knows what else. On those days you don’t even have time to think about picking up the novel let alone trying to read it.
The cure? Well, it’s consistency. Try picking up habits and breaking them down into manageable chunks of blocks which you can easily swallow. Want to pick up the habit of reading? Read a single page every day. Don’t try to read for half an hour daily but just one page. Want to start blogging? Write a small blog every week (just like I am doing now). Don’t focus on trying to write a masterpiece every week but just one article every week. Someone once told me that the first hundred outputs that you produce are going to be mediocre and so you might just want to get done with them as soon as possible. That is exactly what I follow when I write an article a week.
Get started NOW, get perfect LATER.
Whatever you want to do- just start doing it. Just put pen to paper and don’t worry about the result. Even a very rough draft is better than none. Even a half-hearted sketch will teach you more than not doing it. You will accomplish infinite times more by just trying.
If there is just one thing you should get out of this, it is to get started now and get perfect later. That is the golden rule.