I recently was in Austin, one my favorite US cities.
I stayed with a good friend who can do anything, from guitar building to running a podcast to starting a company. He’s really inspiring. I recommend hanging out with people like that as much as you can.
In addition to his vintage camera he snapped this moody pic with, he has a 1940’s Royal typewriter sitting in the middle of his living room. It weighs a ton. I asked him about it and he explained it’s where he writes his songs. “It has no delete button, oh, and also the Q doesn’t work so you need to use the O and draw a tail on it after,” he said.
Vintage stuff is cool looking and romantic, but there is another important reason the manual typewriter is so effective. “It changes how I write for the better, “ he added.
I tried it. He gave me a prompt and I started typing away. I made a lot of mistakes but I kept going. Quickly, for the first time in my life, I was in the flow during creative writing. It did change writing for me, I can attest to that as I am struggling writing this in front of an eye-irritating screen. So I picked one up off of Craigslist and write for 10 minutes a day.
Here’s my point and my challenge for you.
Pick one thing that you love doing, and:
Step 1: Make it super convenient to do that even the laziest person in the world has no excuses.
Step 2. Revisit step 1. Often.
Example: I play guitar. Therefore I have a guitar two feet from my desk, at eye level, at my office and at home.
This can be done with anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sport, being social with friends, traveling, or even sex. The key is to start on one thing. Spend as long as you need getting that thing dialed-in. Then, you can add another.
This is a big part of Jaunty’s approach to our social intelligence course. Immerse yourself with accountability and accessibility until it becomes second nature, it might even become easy. Try it out.
Written by Eric Waisman
