I’m sitting at my computer finishing a few blog posts (I usually work on a few at a time).  I’m working on articles number 98, 99, and 100; and I’m both excited and a little surprised that I’m at the one-hundred mark.  It seems like just yesterday that I was publishing the first few posts and hoping that people would read them.  How did I get to one hundred articles, with no signs of stopping?

In looking back I think I’ve found the reason that I could write over 100 articles, and it wasn’t with any of the tricks or gimmicks that you’ll find online (“Write 20 articles in 20 minutes…).  I just made sure that I spent a small, consistent, repeated amount of time working on my writing.  I tried to work on articles every day (but I couldn’t find the time daily), so I set as my minimum: 30 minutes of writing, 3 times a week.  And I stuck to that.  I added up the results in my head – that’s at least 78 hours of writing over the past year, or almost two full-time work weeks!

There really wasn’t a secret to writing my articles, I just spent time on the activity.  If you spent the next two weeks intensively working on one project, you’d probably get a lot accomplished.  I think one of the hidden (or not so hidden) paths to success is simply engaging in the activities you want to improve, or that will improve you.  Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book Outliers, posits that 10,000 hours is roughly the amount of time necessary to become a world-class expert in any activity.  Whether or not you are on track to spend 10,000 hours in an activity, and whether or not becoming a world-class expert is your goal, repetition is the key to developing skills and habits.

What is an activity that you could engage in with small, repeated, consistent amounts?  Do you want better health?  It could be 20 minutes of daily exercise?  Do you want to improve at your profession; read in your field for 30 minutes a day (I’ve read over 80 books in the last year just by reading 30 minutes a day – OK, maybe I’m bragging a bit, but it works).  Do you want a stronger relationship with your significant other?  What would happen if you spent 15 minutes every day having a totally engaged conversation?

The possibilities are endless.  The power of small, repeated, consistent activity is that it builds up over time, it accumulates.  In the short run, you might not see huge changes, but eventually you’ll look back and realize that you’ve come a long way.  To paraphrase the author Tony Robbins, “Most people over-estimate the amount of change they can accomplish in a year, but they under-estimate what they can do in ten.”

Decide today what daily activities will create the life you want, and make the decision to do them every day.