Doing is a habit

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? Although my ideas ebb and flow for this podcast, as I've done this podcast, I've gotten better at sitting down without needing to hype myself up to get to it.

[00:00:28] When I first started this podcast, I was pretty excited and I had a lot of momentum, so of course, sitting down and recording every day was super easy. There were even days in the beginning where I would have so many ideas and so much I wanted to say that I would record two episodes and be super pleased with myself about being ahead of the schedule.

[00:00:52] In the back of my mind, I also thought that this way if I did miss recording a day or two at least I would have a buffer. Now, eventually I messed up and one I accidentally deleted a couple episodes and there was one day where I published two episodes in a single day and that buffer went away. What also went away was that initial excitement that made it so easy to sit down every day and speak for five minutes.

[00:01:19] What was at first a 20 minute workflow where I would record for about five minutes and then correct the AI generated transcription as I listened to back, then uploaded, wrote some brief show notes and then scheduled...turned into a 45 minute to an hour long ordeal where I would sit and stare at my mic or have four or five false starts before I got something recorded that felt good enough, if not, great.

[00:01:48] Like I said, the ideas ebb and flow – as the idea started to ebb. There were definitely times where I'd say to my spouse, "I really don't wanna do this today, but I'm going to," and then I would come into my office and I'd record it sometimes half-heartedly, but now, although I'm still feeling pretty tired and I don't have a great fountain of ideas at the moment, doing the podcast isn't hard anymore.

[00:02:18] It's a habit. It's just a matter of fact part of my evening. After dinner, I sit down at my computer, open up Notion, think through a few ideas, write a couple notes, and then I start recording. It still takes longer than it used to. I'd say I average about, mm, 35 minutes per episode right now from start to finish, but I've gotten better at composing my thoughts as I speak, even when my thoughts are not exactly gems and I just do it.

[00:02:51] The longer I do this podcast, the more those days add up, the more habitual it has become, and I'm starting to trust the process more. I look back and there are some weeks where the episodes are great and I really like them, and some weeks where they aren't as great, and then there's some weeks where there's episodes that seem interesting to others and they generate a lot of like DM conversations, but weren't actually episodes I thought were good.

[00:03:21] So that's interesting too. I know that there will be good weeks again, it's a long game. I've set the episode goal of 365, you know, 365 episodes is a lot. I don't and shouldn't expect every episode to be awesome. But I can and should expect that I can record every episode. So I do feel like I'm accomplishing my original goal.

[00:03:49] I'm getting better at shipping, and I'm getting better at letting go of needing things to be perfect before I ship them. You know, I don't edit out my weird stumbled or anything in this podcast, and hopefully I'm getting better at iterating too. I remember reading somewhere – a random tweet that just kind of stuck with me saying something like, "don't jump from project to project.

[00:04:12] Stick with something, damn it. No matter what, it's gonna take like five years to build something of significant value." Now, I don't know how accurate that five number is, that five year number, but intuitively it sounds about right. But the more important part is it takes time to create stuff and you have to stick with it if you want something real to come out of it.

[00:04:34] So let's keep doing it. Let's keep sticking with it. Let's keep applying a little bit of grit, right? Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.