002: You don’t get to give up half way.

Four Hundred Newsletters (starting yesterday)

#focus #commitment #persistence

To close the gap you need to pick something and push through. It’s saying NO to many things so you can say a big YES to a few.

I got to hang out with Andy J. Pizza (creator and host of the Creative Peptalk podcast) and A few of his other patreons yesterday. A story that I’m going to butcher.

Basically, when he chose to start the podcast, he believed in it enough to commit to doing 100 episodes. This commitment was in proportion to how much he believed in this path.

He deliberated and made a choice that he would give up other options for a while to do this. And one of the rules is, you don’t get to give up halfway.

For the newsletter, I’m choosing to focus on the idea of closing the gap between our tastes and our current abilities. And I’m choosing to write about this topic for 400 days (basically a year and a bit).

If you want to close the taste gap, you don’t get to quit in the middle

It’s a diary of closing the gaps between the people I admire and my current ability. I’ll need to be vulnerable to articulate where the gaps are and who are the creatives I admire and then show you the steps I’m taking to close that gap.

Right now Andy has dropped 389 podcasts, going way beyond his target of 100.

And Me, I’ve started and stopped:

three 27 Day Challenges,

two 100-Day Challenges

I’ve only done Four out of Seven folktale week posts.

Sure I have REASONS, but I don’t know what’s at the end of any of those challenges.

The gap is between being the guy who’s great at starting stuff vs the guy who sticks through a project through to the end. I write every day anyway. The challenge really is to keep the focus on this angle of closing gaps.

Close the gap

Commit to a project, make it as big or ¹small as you like, and don’t quit till you reach the end.

1. Check out Brendan Oscars ‘small’ project of drawing in a calendar every day!