Making Time to Write: 30 Posts in 30 Days

A Personal Essay on Surpassing Comfort

Today I begin something new. It’s Day 1 of 30 days of writing and publishing a finished product. It’s a big yikes, uncomfortable, motivating, and fun all at the same time.

Do I have time to write 2hrs a day for 30 days?

I do not, so I’ll make the time.

Will I have novel ideas day after day and will I look forward to sitting, scribbling, researching and typing 2hrs daily for a month?

I’m thinking I will not.

I have assurance in one area however — short of an impossible-to-anticipate serious personal/family illness or calamity, I will not miss a day. I don’t miss. I never miss. Not missing is one of my things.

Is It Discipline?

When I decide to engage in something that’s important to me, a family member, a friend, or a work colleague — something that makes a difference to someone or to a larger cause, I follow through. I’ve been told I have great discipline when it comes to follow-through.

For many people, there is weight that comes with the word Discipline. I've learned there's a punitive, unwelcome something about that word.

I am habit and routine-oriented for sure. Is that discipline?

I am definite and focused and orderly about the way I work and behave. Is that discipline? Am I disciplined?

I prefer to say I’m deliberate. I’m intentional. These words are more round and warm. Many people associate the word discipline with rigidity.  I do not. I associate the word discipline with freedom.  With options. With making space for what and who I care for.

Am I deliberate? Yes.   Am I disciplined?  I would say yes.

Am I rigid?   No.

I love fun and flow and spontaneity. I am people-first, and I know that the fact that we are here at all is a miracle. I putter, take breaks, realize there will always be more work to do, and consider getting 15 minutes of a 60-minute workout in to be a triumph that counts. If we think about discipline in terms of adopting habits and helpful routines that simplify life, then I am indeed disciplined. If you operate with a similar mindset, it's likely you're quite disciplined too.

Brent Gleeson knows discipline. A sought-after performance coach and former Navy Seal, Gleeson points out that people who employ routine-focused methods to manage life and themselves spend less time contemplating what to do and when. They are more decisive and less impulse-driven. They, more than most, are architects of their time, beliefs, values, and pursuits. As a result say Gleeson, those who employ routine-focused methods to manage life and themselves they are not as easily blown off course, and they tend to feel more satisfaction in life.

Moving from Comfort to Growth

The phrase “leaving one’s comfort zone” became part of America’s business and cultural landscape in the mid-90’s when then UC SanDiego Professor of Psychiatry Judith Barwick published her noted treatise Danger in the Comfort Zone. In the piece, Barwick identified a behavioral state common to all people which she called the Comfort Zone. She defined Comfort Zone as a “state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition using a limited set of behaviors, usually without a sense of risk.”

Each of us has comfort zones that feel controlled and ok and familiar. Beyond our zone of comfort lie three additional zones: a Friction Zone, a Learning Zone, and finally, a Growth Zone. The Friction Zone is populated by excuses, inner and outer critics, lack of confidence, etc.. Just beyond the Friction Zone however, is the friendlier Learning Zone. This is where we begin to extend ourselves, acquire new skills and new ways of thinking, and develop strategies for meeting challenges. Just beyond the Learning Zone, lies the Growth Zone. This is where we realize, where we self-actualize.

While it’s tempting to anchor ourselves in our comfort zones, it is of highest importance that we enter and move through Friction to Learning to Growth.  Why?

Because human beings are BUILT to self-actualize. Self-actualization is a concept that was formulated by psychologist Abraham Maslow in the 1950’s. The concept is illustrated in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid below:

Maslow’s studies on Self-Actualization were carried out in conjuction with his ground-breaking theory on Human Motivation. In his celebrated work entitled Motivation and Personality, Maslow states:

What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”    — Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 1954

The Happy Task At Hand

As I contemplate my comfort zone and leaving it, and contemplate human motivation and our universal need and drive to self-actualize, I am brought back to the task at hand which is to write and post a finished product for 30 days. The task is under way.

I’ll bobble and slide and slip and trip through the Friction Zone for a time — we’ll see how things go. Hopefully well before Day 30, I will enter the Learning Zone, and if I’m lucky and deliberate and intentional, which I am, I’ll make it to Growth.

Thanks for sticking with me these thirty days to see how things evolve. Let me know your approach to tackling something important thirty days in a row.