The 7-Day Experiment

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED If you listen to the last episode, episode 58 with Jamie Jensen, you will have heard her challenging me to pick up free writing. Free writing. If you didn't listen to the episode is basically just a stream of consciousness. You just open up a page, you set a timer and you just write and off you go and anything and everything can come out. There's no need to edit it. It is just for you. This is something that I've known about for a while. And. Have tried multiple times. It's not just that I have resistance to this idea. It's that I have tried it and I have failed multiple times. So you'd think I'd hear Jamie suggested I do it. Smile politely and move along. However, Jamie is one of the most prolific writers that I know. Okay. Fair enough. It's her job. But if I could harness one tint of her writing energy or her creativity, what difference? So would that make to my business? So I'm prepared to listen. When advice comes from a source that I trust, what I'm not prepared to commit to is her timeline. she suggested that I try it for five minutes a day. For 90 days to allow it to become as natural as talking as for me now, she's not wrong. James clear the author of atomic habits. One of my favorite books, if you haven't read it, go read it. He talks about it being an average of 66 days, backed up by research for us to develop a new habit. So 90 days makes sense. Right. However, for me looking at something that sounds like great advice that I have tried and failed at multiple times before the idea of committing to something for 90 days and having this external obligation where I would feel like I needed to show up for Jamie, even though obviously Jamie's doesn't really have any skin in the game. Feels like too much of a commitment for me. So I know that I'm going to rebel. I'm not even going to try it, even though I think it's really good advice. So how do I get a Robin that's how do I play with my own brain? When something like this happens, I like to do what I call the seven day experiment. Seven days feels really manageable to me. I can imagine this time next week. So feasible is a really manageable timeframe for me. Second of all, I like the term experiment because you can't fail an experiment. It's all just data. So I really liked that. It kind of like, lets me off the hook. Like I can try this for seven days and then I can stop. I can try this with seven days and be rubbish edits and it doesn't matter. It's just given me information. I also know that I'm the type of person that once I start something, if I'm enjoying it, if I'm finding it helpful, it's easier for me to continue. So only did I take on Jamie's challenge of writing for five minutes every day for seven days? And yes, she checked in on me and yes, she held me accountable to it and yes, I'm still doing it because what I found was that it worked for me. However, I still haven't managed to go much beyond those five minutes. I think I'm at seven minutes at the moment and that's okay. That's me taking something and making it work for me. So, what is a piece of advice that you have been given that felt overwhelming to you? That felt like a huge commitment. Like if you were thinking, okay, this needs to be a 66 day process for me to develop this habit on average. Like it could actually be more, what has felt like that feels like really good advice, but I don't know if it'll work for me. And so you haven't really tried it. What could you set yourself as a seven day experiment? What could you try? That feels really small and bite size for seven days to test the waters for, am I going to do this as part of my day to day going forward.