When I hit issue #150 of Words Into Works last week, I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt surprised. Not because I thought I’d quit. But because I had never stopped long enough to imagine what it would feel like to arrive here.
There was no grand vision. No carefully plotted roadmap. No long-term strategy to carry me through. There was only this: one decision. Made quietly. Made often. Made again and again, by desk lamp and the stillness of many early Saturday mornings. That decision was this: “I’ll figure it out this week.”
It is easy to believe that willpower brings us to the page. Or that discipline holds us there. But in my case, it was neither. What kept me writing was something quieter. A set of small ideas—hardly noticeable at first—that grew heavier with each issue. Ideas that didn’t demand my attention, but shaped my behavior all the same.
Some of those ideas made it into this newsletter. Others remained out of view. But each one helped me write when the week felt too full, when the words didn’t come, when it would have been easier—not unreasonable—to stop.
I want to share them in this Issue. Not as advice. Not as tactics. But as companions. Because if they’ve kept me going this long, maybe they’ll help you keep going too.
1. This Week Is Not the Point
I almost didn’t write last week’s Issue. The draft felt hollow. Nothing landed. And for a moment—an hour, a day—I thought about skipping it.
But the point of writing that week wasn’t to write something brilliant. The point was to write. To continue. To put one more marker down in the landscape of work I’ve chosen to return to, again and again, not because it’s always good, but because it’s mine to do.
To paraphrase James Clear, each issue is a small vote cast for a certain kind of identity. The kind that returns. The kind that doesn’t wait for clarity or inspiration or certainty. The kind that keeps its promises—especially the quiet ones made in private.
If I write one ugly paragraph and walk away, that still counts. Because what matters isn’t polish. What matters is momentum. And momentum is built not by grand efforts, but by the smallest act: showing up.
2. The Endowed Progress Effect
When I sit down to write, I don’t begin from nothing. Not anymore. There is always something waiting—a fragment, a headline, a sentence that nearly worked. Something unfinished. Something flawed. But something.
That something is enough.
Because when you can see evidence of progress, however imperfect, the act of continuing becomes lighter. Not easier, necessarily. Just more possible. A half-draft is not a failure. It is a foothold. Each time I return to a document I once abandoned, I find the same thing: movement. And movement, not inspiration, is what carries you forward.
Progress doesn’t come from a breakthrough. That is the myth. Progress comes from the moment you realize you’ve already begun—and choose to begin again.
3. Only Deadlines Ship
Some of my best work wasn’t written in clarity. It was written because the clock said it was time.
Deadlines are often mistaken for constraints. In truth, they are architecture. They create edges. They close the door on endless refinement and force a hand to move—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes reluctantly, but always forward. Without a deadline, I would rewrite forever. With one, I finish.
Every Saturday, I block ninety minutes. Not because I know what I’ll say. But because the window is fixed. The room is quiet. (Sometimes.) And the question is no longer whether I’ll write. The only question is what gets done before the door closes.
Deadlines don’t generate pressure. They dissolve indecision. And indecision, I’ve learned, is the greater threat.
4. The Empty Boat Principle
For a long time, I took every unsubscribe personally. Each one felt like a verdict. A silent signal that something I said—something I believed—had landed wrong.
But most feedback isn’t judgment. Most silence isn’t rejection. It’s just noise. The world is noisy. People leave. People skim. People forget. And none of it is about you.
The Empty Boat Principle reminds me: not every bump in the current is another boat. Sometimes it’s driftwood. Sometimes it’s the wind. When I feel myself bracing—rehearsing responses to imagined criticism—I stop. I picture the river. I picture an empty hull floating past. And I go back to the work.
That image has saved more writing than I’ll ever know.
5. One Insight, One Emotion
There are weeks when the writing spirals. Not because the ideas are wrong, but because there are too many of them. Each one circling the other, none willing to step forward and lead.
When that happens, I stop. I ask two questions. What is the one thing I want the reader to understand? And—equally important—what do I want them to feel?
Everything else is noise. Not five ideas. Not three. One. One insight. One emotion. The rest is tension and digression and fog. But with that clarity—when it comes, if it comes—the page begins to move again. Clean. Straight. Like a single note, played in the right key, at the right time.
6. Boring Systems Beat Inspired Ideas
Every Saturday begins the same way. I open the same tool (Notion). The same workspace. The same template, waiting where I left it. This is not creative. It is deliberate. Because the moment you remove choice, you remove friction. And once friction is gone, the work begins.
I do not wait for inspiration. I do not trust it. Inspiration is mercurial. A system is steady. My system does not try to make me brilliant. It only makes me begin. And beginning, as I have learned, is everything.
Most weeks, I don’t feel like a writer. But the system doesn’t ask how I feel. It asks only that I show up.
7. The Life Razor
Some weeks, I wonder if it’s still worth it. The effort. The time. The slow pull of words across a page when no one is asking for them.
That’s when I reach for the same question, the one I’ve returned to a hundred times: Would I still choose this, even now? Not the glamour. Not the result. Just the work itself. Would I still choose to do it again next week?
That’s the test. The Life Razor. It cuts through impulse and hesitation and asks something harder: Is this how you want to live?
If the answer is yes, I publish. Not because it’s easy. But because it’s aligned.
8. Every Draft Is a Clue
I keep showing up, but the words don’t always follow. Some weeks, I write pages I’ll never use. Paragraphs that lead nowhere. Openings that collapse under their own weight.
But I don’t throw them out. I read them again. Slowly. Because buried in the noise is usually one line. One moment of clarity. And that line—the one that feels like it doesn’t belong—that’s the one I keep.
A bad draft is not a waste. It’s a map. It shows you where not to go, and sometimes, where you might. That’s why I keep them all. Not because they’re good. But because they’re trying to be.
9. Write to Remember
I forget what matters. More often than I’d like to admit. The noise of the week, the pressure to produce, the shifting demands, they pull me away from what I know to be true.
Writing brings me back. Not because I have answers. But because I need reminders. Most weeks, I’m not writing to share. I’m writing to remember. I keep a list of truths in Notion—quiet truths I once believed but now need to rediscover. The act of writing makes them real again.
Writing isn’t proof that I’ve arrived. It’s how I find my way forward. It’s how I stay oriented.
10. Keep the Bar Low. Keep the Fire Lit.
The weeks I try to be brilliant are often the ones I almost don’t publish. I chase polish. I chase clarity. And in chasing them, I risk the only thing that matters: showing up.
High standards are important. But there is a line—a line where quality becomes an excuse. Where perfection becomes avoidance. And beyond that line, the habit begins to cool.
Some weeks, the best I can do is 200 honest words. That’s enough. Not because they’re perfect, but because they keep the fire lit. And once the fire is lit, it’s easier to return. A warm habit, even imperfect, will always outlast a cold ambition.
Keep Going Anyway
These ideas aren’t techniques. They aren’t productivity hacks. They are principles—quiet, almost invisible—that shape the work more than any headline or habit ever could.
I don’t use all of them every week. But when the writing feels heavy—when the words won’t come or the doubt begins to rise—I reach for one. And it’s enough. Not because it guarantees quality. But because it reconnects me to the deeper thing: the kind of person I’m trying to be.
If you’re building something that asks for consistency—writing, parenting, thinking, leading—maybe one of these ideas will walk with you too. Not to make the work easier. But to remind you why it’s still worth doing.
Just like this one did.
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