Years ago, I was grumbling to another coach about how much time a project was taking and, in the course of the grumbling, I said something like ‘It’s prep stuff that really annoys me. I don’t mind spending time at the ‘real’ work, I hate all the gathering of information and sorting of papers.’

After empathizing with me a bit, she then offered up an important piece of wisdom that has stuck with me to this day:

The preparation is part of the work.

I had never thought about it in those terms before.

Obviously, since the prep work had to be done before the ‘real’ work could begin, the prep work was real work, too.

It was step one of the real work, not some foolishness to get out of the way first.

I thought of that fact when I was writing my post for yesterday and considering how to comment on the common fear of starting with the wrong thing – the fear of ‘wasting time’ on something that wasn’t the ‘real’ work.

To go back to my driveway-shovelling analogy from yesterday, it’s kind of easy to see that tasks like putting on warm clothes, getting a water bottle, and selecting a shovel could be considered part of the real work – necessary prerequisites to shovelling.

However, if you have your warm clothes on, your shovel in hand, and you are standing in your snowy driveway not knowing where to start, you might have trouble seeing that as part of the work.

And if you just start anywhere in the middle and then realize that it actually makes sense to start by the steps, you might feel like you wasted time with those first shovelfuls.

However, I’m starting to see those kinds of things as just another part of the work.

Pausing to survey the landscape in order to develop a plan *or* just getting started until a plan reveals itself are both methods of starting the work.

They are both first steps to getting the driveway shovelled – or to building a habit.

And we don’t have to be hard on ourselves about either of those methods…they will both bring us toward the key tasks that will form the most tangible parts of the work.

And, surveying the landscape/starting anywhere will both give us further information for the next part of the project.

In the driveway, they will tell us where the snow has drifted, how heavy it is, whether we have the right shovel, and if we will need to call in reinforcements.

In our habit-building, either of those methods will tell us what feels easy and what feels hard, what we enjoy and what we dislike. They’ll tell us if we need more information or if we haven’t been clear on our plans. They’ll let us tune in with our bodies and brains to see what we need and what works for us in certain situations.

But they won’t be a waste of time or effort, they are part of the work and they will shape and inform our next steps.

Sure, with enough abstract contemplation and research about your habit you *might* hit on the perfect way to start and the perfect method to proceed.

But you might also find yourself weeks later overthinking and with nothing started at all. (Go on, ask me how I know this. Sigh.)

However, if you do enough prep work to safely get yourself into the middle of things, survey the landscape up-close, and get started wherever makes sense* at the moment, you will make progress and you will bring yourself to the point where the most tangible part of your work can begin.

Because, like we talked about above, the preparation is part of the work – a necessary and vital part of the work – and it makes sense to spend time doing it.

Today, I’m offering you a whole spiralled string of gold stars to celebrate your efforts.

If you like, you can think of the stars in the spiral as celebrating all of the different types of work you put into building your habit – thinking work, prep work, and the most tangible, recognizable tasks that make you feel like you are really getting somewhere now.

Be kind to yourself about the whole process, Team. Your efforts matter, no matter what size and shape they are. 💚

*Any arbitrary definition of ‘makes sense’ works here – choose based on knowledge, on the colour of someone’s shirt, on what feels easiest/closest/doable, on your whim at the moment. It’s all good for getting started.

We had a giant snowstorm here yesterday, around 50 cm/20 inches, and as I looked out at the snow this morning, I was reminded of one of my favourite writing analogies and I realized that the analogy works just as well for habit-building as it does for writing.

Lots of times when people want to start writing, or revising, they get caught up in trying to do the whole thing at once. I mean, if we stopped to think about it, we’d know it’s impossible but mostly we don’t even realize what we are trying to do.

So, when I realize that I am making that mistake with my writing (or that my client/student is making it) I compare the process to having a driveway full of snow and expecting to be able to shovel it all at once. (If the person hasn’t had that experience, I compare it to having a huge pile of laundry to fold,)

I think we often do that ‘try to do it all at once’ thing for habit building, too. We may not realize that we are trying to develop the whole habit in one go but if we are overloading ourselves with exercises, putting a lot of pressure on ourselves, or hoping for immediate results, we are probably falling into that trap.

If you look at a driveway full of snow (or a huge pile of clean laundry), you know very well that you can’t just clear it all away at once. And you know that you can’t dig out the front steps at the same time as you are digging the bottom of your driveway. You have to choose a place to start and clear it away one shovelful at a time until it is done.

If you are trying to build a habit (or if you are planning to write or to revise something), it’s like having that driveway full of snow. You aren’t going to be able to just do all of it at once, you have to pick a place to start and keep plugging away at it until it is done.

In your driveway, you might use a shovel, you might use a scoop, you might use a snowblower, or you might use a plow on the front of your vehicle. But, no matter what tools you use, you still have to do a series of repeated actions to get that driveway cleared.

With a habit, you might start daily, you might start weekly, you might start small, you may start big, but you will have to choose where/how to start and keep plugging away at it until you get your habit established.

If you have to get your car out quickly to get somewhere, you might not shovel a path from the car to the house, you might just clear the car’s windshield and shovel out behind the car and drive off, leaving the rest of the shovelling for later.

Similarly, if you quickly need something specific from your habit, you can start with the tasks that are most closely related to it. For example, if you are trying to improve your overall fitness but also you have a lot of back pain – your habit might start with emphasizing stretches for your back or with focusing on strengthening your core muscles. Or if you are finding that racing thoughts make it hard to fall asleep, the first part of building your meditation habit might focus on pre-bed relaxation practices.

Meanwhile, if you have no idea where to start with your driveway or with your writing or with your habit, it’s ok to start anywhere and just keep doing a shovelful at a time.

The driveway will get done, no matter where you start.

The thing will get written, no matter where you start.

And, if you are trying to build a habit and you return to it a metaphorical shovelful at a time, over and over, you will create the habit you want to create – no matter where you start with it.

I wish you ease with your habit-building, your writing, and with any snow-shovelling or laundry folding you need to do.

Here are your gold stars for your efforts today, whether they are small or large, whether they are a fresh start or part of the momentum you are building, or whether you are just trying to be kind to yourself while you figure out where you put your shovel.

Would changing a few things about your environment or your approach make it easier for you to build the habits you are trying to build?

Could you enhance your exercise or meditation space to make it more appealing?

Could you move things around to make your practice feel more accessible?

Is there anything you can change about the details of your tasks that will make them more fun or at least less annoying?

Let me give you some examples.

Today, I’m moving my rowing machine up into my living room.

Up until now, it has been in the basement which was perfectly fine until I started decluttering. My decluttering project has many stages and some of those stages take a week or more so there is stuff lying around partially sorted or half organized. And the thought of using my rowing machine amid that chaos has kept me from using it regularly.

I want to use my rowing machine but I know I can’t speed up the decluttering, so the machine has gotta move.*

Years ago, when I first tried strength training, I realized that I found it irritating to count up my reps. I wasn’t sure what bugged me about it at the time so I started experimenting with different methods of keeping track and I found out that using short periods of time (Do squats for 30 seconds) helped, saying letters instead of numbers (Why do I not mind doing H bicep curls but doing 8 is annoying? Who knows?), or simply counting down instead were all better than counting up.

Moving my rowing machine, changing how I track reps, using a small gardener’s mat for extra knee padding during certain yoga poses, putting a blanket in the spot where I meditate, lighting a candle when I write in my journal, using a textured sticker to focus on mindful breathing, all of these tweaks make it easier for me to do the things I want and need to do to build and maintain my habits

Yes, I know that some of these things might seem silly or weird.

Maybe they seem like hardly worth doing, like something I should be able to just ignore or just push past.

But I’m not out to prove anything here, I just want a straightforward path to doing the things I want to do?

Why add extra static to a task that already requires a fair bit of physical and emotional energy?

Why not make things easier on myself?

By tweaking the details of my environment and my approach, I remove a whole set of obstacles from between me and my tasks.

Removing those obstacles makes it more likely that I will be able to follow through on my plans.

So, Team, I’m wondering if you can give yourself permission to do similar things for yourself?

To reiterate the questions I asked at the beginning of this post…

Is there anything about where you exercise or meditate or journal or rest that might improve that space?

Is there anything about *how* you approach or undertake your tasks that you can tweak to make things easier?

Your obstacles may not be obvious at first. You may have to poke around in your reluctance a little to see what’s bugging you (it took me a while to realize that the mess of the decluttering process was interfering with my rowing) but it will be worth it to figure it out and experiment with how to make things better.

Whether your routines, systems and tasks are unfolding smoothly or whether they need a few tweaks, I wish you ease and self-kindness today and always.

Here’s your gold star for today’s efforts, no matter what they are:

*Luckily, it’s not a very fancy rowing machine so it’s pretty compact and the long part folds upward when I remove a pin so it won’t take up all the space in my living room.

If you are old enough to be reading this, you are standing atop a stack of past victories.

I know, our brains like to remind us of the times things didn’t go so well but we can also consciously choose to remind ourselves of the times that everything worked out just fine.

You have sailed through some things and struggled with others but, more often than not, you have been victorious.

The victories may have been small, they may have been enormous or they may have been anywhere in between, but they are all right there, tucked away in your mind, waiting for you to recall them.

So, today, let’s do that.

Let’s revisit our victories of all sizes.

And literally anything counts.

If it is hard for you to get out of bed but you somehow made yourself do it? That’s a victory!

If getting out of bed wasn’t in the cards today but you texted a friend to commiserate? That’s a victory!

If you were running and kind of wanted to cut things short but you forged ahead a little more? Victory!

Last month, when you had to make those phone calls for work and it took you three days to work up the nerve but you did it? Victory!

When you finally decided to tackle the clutter in your basement and it took you weeks to get rid of it bit by bit, but you persevered? That’s a victory!

When you went to the job interview. When you stood up to that jerk. When you stepped away from the argument. When you studied for the exam. Victory. Victory. Victory. Victory.

It doesn’t matter how long ago these victories were, they still belong to you and the efforts you put into them still matter.

At this point, you might be asking yourself ‘Why is Christine bringing up all of these unrelated things? What does this have to do with the habit I am trying to build?’

Well, Team, like we have said lots of times – habit-building is hard work. It takes perseverance, it takes repeated actions, it takes a willingness to endure the stress of challenging ourselves, it takes a lot of plan-adjusting, a lot of restarting, a lot of picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves off and diving back in.

And I want you to remember that you have done this before. You have all of those skills and resources and that you applied them in a variety of contexts and were victorious.

By revisiting those past victories, you can see that there have been many, many times when things were challenging but that you were able to pull together the energy, the strength, the persistence, to get the thing done.

Sure, you may be facing different challenges this time, and you may need different help or different resources but you already have the key skills you need for habit-building and you can call on them again.

This isn’t about willpower or any kind of ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ approach, this is about reminding yourself that victory is possible. And that you know it is possible because you have done it many times before.

So, bask in those past victories. Remind yourself how you felt in the process and how you felt when you were done.

Use some of that energy to help carry yourself forward through any challenges you are facing on the way to the victory ahead.

Oh, and please be kind to yourself in the process.

Here’s a very goofy looking gold star to celebrate your efforts, past and present:

This post is another one of those times when I try to lead by example.

My day took a (positive) turn a few minutes ago and now I have limited time to write this post. So, instead of getting into a story and lots of examples, I am going to take the idea I wanted to communicate and just frame it as a series of questions for you to consider:

How can you make the habit you are building an automatic part of your day?

What is the smallest, most straightforward version of your habit-related tasks?

How can you make that version possible on even your most unexpectedly busy day?

What does an automatic version of your habit-related task look like?

How can you increase the chances of fitting that automatic, streamlined version into every day that you want to fit it into?

There will be lots of days when you will be able to do the extended remix versions of your habit-related tasks too but today, I am inviting you to go full robot and develop the automatic version.

And here is an inspirational robot with your gold star for your efforts to automate.

She’s proud of the self-kindness you are demonstrating with your approach to your habit today.