8 years

When I mentioned the fact that this blog would be turning 8 years old to a friend yesterday, she suggested I share my 8 favorite posts. It is a great idea. I would love to do something like that sometime. But, not today.

Today, I’d like to share a post I stumbled onto on May 25th, 2008. This was 13 days after I committed to writing a learning a day.

Sustainability

I’ve missed 2 learning days in a row. Well, I ‘can’ blame it on long/irregular/busy days among other things but its best if I learnt from this and moved on and hopefully did continue posting a learning a day..

Sustainability – I never really understood the concept till I came across the idea in various similar forms; like consistency, dependability etc. In simple terms, I understand sustainability to be the essential difference between a pro and an amateur, a business and an idea, a billion dollar company and a million dollar company and so on..

In simple terms, the implications are immense – for instance, you would expect Fedex to deliver within a day, whether it means travelling through rain, shine or even thunderstorms. And many such basic examples. What I have further learnt is that it is not easy to think of it in simple terms but in any case, if, hypothetically, this blog had 1 reader who came back for a blog every day and found no entry even on 1 day(forget an unforgivable 2 days..), the chances that the reader would want to come back is never, and when you talk about a service that caters to a few million customers a day, there is just no choice but to be sustainable….

First, I think my writing has gotten a lot better – thank god. But, most importantly, I wanted to share this because sustainability is the single hardest challenge when we commit to a regular system/habit. I missed many days when I first started writing here. For most of the first 2 years, I hacked the system by creating mini-systems – quotes between Monday-Friday and a “Book Learning” on Sundays. So, I largely converted writing to an auto pilot system of sharing content created by others. Once I felt I had developed the discipline to show up every day, I was then free to begin writing.

This experience has been life-changing because it has taught me more than I imagine. But, I imagined there isn’t a lesson that has had a more profound impact on my life than understanding the importance of showing up every day and doing my best.

Here’s to the next 8 years.