The perfect repeatable week

I notice that one possible way of progressing on something is through merely showing up consistently. There are some activities that can be conceptualized as a set of rituals and practices that you can do with regular cadence in order to progress on the thing you are focused on. I have applied this concept with writing, for example — making it an everyday habit constricted within a specific time window in the morning. And then I have been executing it every single day within that time window, regardless of inspiration or motivation. On days when the time window is not available for some major cause, I would shift it to another part of the day and still do it.

Consistently doing the thing can produce consistent and high amounts of output (e.g., all the posts, videos, and newsletter issues I have published every week for the past 2-3 years), but it doesn’t significantly improve the quality of the output (for most of the people most of the time) unless there is a clear feedback mechanism that provides input into the repeatable system. For some practices, this is more true than others (e.g., it can be truer for writing (clear output) than for reading or meditation (more process-oriented, no clear output)).

Then the habit becomes fully incorporated into your identity and feels like a natural part of your day. At this point, a different conundrum arises — that is: how to get it out of your identity. Because when something becomes part of your identity, it can get very sticky and get in the way of your well-being, so dependent on it that you become for feeling ‘yourself’. And particularly when the ego holds onto it because it associates stopping something with ‘failure’, it can become very challenging to remain malleable and shift course along the way.

This is especially true if you have internalized the thought that sticking with it in the long term is a way of success. So, it becomes an interesting situation where a part of you recognizes the relevance of sticking with the habit for long in order to succeed, while another slice of your conscious or unconscious self feels dragged down by the habit and morbidly attached to it through identity. So the thing you started to achieve progress can become a sort of addiction/obsession you endure for sticking with your identity.

Some may say that obsession over something is required for great success in that field; others argue that it is a recipe for a dissatisfied life. I am not sure and my natural predisposition appears to attract me more to the “stick with it long term no matter what” mindset, though the other side of the equation has gained greater relevance and significance for me, particularly through principles from Eastern philosophies.