Habits

Every day. Every single day. For seven years. Seven years!
Every day the same thing. Every day coffee with sugar and a chocolate milkshakes. Every day the same lunch. For seven years. Why? It was something he never had to think about to make a decision. It left his mind open to do creative things. So for seven years he went to Bob’s Big Boy and had the same stuff every day. And he wrote. He wrote ideas and whatever on the napkins there. He, in this case, is David. . Lynch. You might know him from Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet (a favorite of mine), Wild at Heart, Mulholland Dive, and a bunch of other movies, paintings, and other things.

And Twin Peaks, I cannot forget Twin Peaks.

Why? It was a habit. He used the habit to free up his mind to work on whatever, mostly ideas for movies. Keeping a habit kept him working. Every day. You can do it, you are doing it, every day you do a One Typed Page. Not to free up your mind, but to do, kinda sorta, the same thing that Lynch did during lunch every day. Which is why you are encouraged to type one page (or a half page or a quarter page) every day. It is a habit. If you adhere to your habit good things will come from it. Like Isaac Asminov who had a habit of typing for six hours every day. He felt he could not just type crap all day every day. There had to be some good stuff in what he typed every day. He just needed to find it among all of the stuff that he created.

Of course it may not be your goal to type up something great. You might be keeping track of your days like Samuel Pepys, who tracked all the things that happened in London like we track what is happening during the Covid-19 outbreak. Or whatever is happening to you today. It comes from your practice.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

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