We have a limited amount of self-discipline each day. So how you use what you have is crucial. Robbie Swale started writing a blog post every week on the train in-between stops.

What started as 12 minutes every week ended up as an 80,000-word book. Robbie is now three books into a four book series about how to start a project, keep it going, and create the conditions for great work.

Key takeaways

• Confidence comes from the actions you take, not the other way around.
• Similarly, the mindset to take action rarely just appears. We need to take small steps to build up that mindset.
• If you want to define yourself as “the type of person who does X”, you can’t ever be that person without taking the first step.
• Life will always get in the way. How can you leverage your practice so that it’s resilient in those times?
• Build the rep of recommitting when you lose your streak.
• Raise the activation energy for the tasks you don’t want to do, and lower the activation energy for the tasks you do.

Links

• Connect with Robbie on LinkedIn
• Check out Robbie’s books
• The 12-Minute Method Podcast
• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield
• Big Magic: How to Live a Creative Life, and Let Go of Your Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert
• You need 3 types of confidence – Rich Litvin
• Tim Ferris’s podcast gear
• Contours of Courageous Parenting: Tilting Towards Better Decisions, by Karena de Souza
• Lead. Learn. Change. by David Reynolds
• W Somerset Maugham