It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I last posted.
For me, blogging is an important routine, or habit, I try to maintain, just like exercising, healthy eating, doing crossword puzzles and reading the daily business press. These are activities that provide long-term but few short-term benefits, at least not many that are measurable. And as a result, it’s easy to “fall off the wagon,” to set aside these commitments to tend to short-term emergencies, indulge in other distractions, or just enjoy some personal down time.
But these sabbaticals, if you will, aren’t free – when I don’t blog, I lose connection with my network; when I skip my crossword puzzles, my thinking softens; when I don’t read the paper, I’m less aware, less curious, and may miss business opportunities; when I don’t exercise or eat right, ….. you get the idea.
What’s worse, it’s often hard to restart our good habits – “I’ll start my diet next week,” “I don’t have time to do the crossword today,” “I don’t have anything worth blogging about.”
We all have our own long-term goals. Typically their achievement depends to a large degree on our steady, long-term commitment to some set of small, regular activities. Skipping them, here or there, once in a while, doesn’t seem to matter much, until the skipping becomes the routine. Understanding the connection between our long-term goals and short-term habits helps us stay on a steady course, and achieve our goals.
Anyone for an early morning run tomorrow?