Let me show you how every morning begins for me at the moment.
Here’s how:
I wake up, make the coffee, and take a stroll through the garden down to my little writing nook.
To be honest, I don’t actually know if this is a “nook”. I have no idea what a nook is. I just heard people using the word and there’s something satisfying about saying it.
”Nook”.
(Give it a try!)
Basically, it’s a small wooden building in my garden
A secluded spot in my garden, away from the house, where I go and sit to write.
Inside, it’s bare.
A designer friend explained at length how I could kit it out with some kind of country-style baton cladding on the inside, make it into a really kitch room worthy of a British country home magazine feature.
I didn’t want to.
For this, I don’t want comfort. I want simplicity.
So, what’s this all about?
This isn’t about me pretending to be Marcus Aurelius, sleeping on a stone floor to prove to myself that I’ll always be ok even if I lost everything.
It’s about channeling discipline.
Now, you have to understand:
I’m not a particularly disciplined person.
At all.
I know it probably doesn’t seem like it from the outside. Surely everything I’ve done is the hallmark of a disciplined person?
I don’t see it that way.
I’m not naturally disciplined. You’ll never find me working long days.
But I make up for that by channeling the energy I do have into a small number of very focused things.
Simply put: I know where to channel my efforts to have the biggest impact.
I’ve found that there are two parts to harnessing discipline:
- Know where you have ‘flow’ in your work
- Commit to working on that every day
#1 is important.
We all have flow in certain things, and by pointing discipline towards those things, we can achieve outsized results.
This is when you look at certain people and say
> “Why is it that everything they do seems to just work?“
I think there’s a secret:
It’s not that everything they do works.
It’s that they only focus on stuff they’re great at.
For me, it’s writing.
It’s my natural habitat.
I’m great at it.
I can do it every day and I love it.
And so, I build my entire routine around it, by heading out to my garden writing room every morning and getting it done.
Inside, it’s often cold.
Floor covered in leaves and bits of random garden stuff that blew in.
I sit on a regular fold-up chair.
Write at a camping table I bought on Amazon for $40.
It’s basic.
I enjoy this simplicity. It focuses me on the writing.
I enforce this very simple routine every morning, because that’s where I have flow.
I know that’s the one thing I can do where I get 10X the results for every ounce of energy put in.
So, I sit down with my iPad + magic keyboard, no distractions.
Right now, I’m following a writing schedule I learnt from Ross Ó Lochlainn, which he calls The Frequency.
But it doesn’t really matter how I write.
Point is:
I just write. Every day.
Anyway…
That’s just a look into my daily routine. Nothing particularly profound.
I know you guys tend to like this stuff.
You’ll let me know, I’m sure.
Namaste,
Olly
