Creating streaks has defined me for the last few years. However, you cannot continuously add things to your daily routine.
I decided to evaluate the amount of time it took to do my streaks and the joy they were giving me. In my most recent post, I noted that I had reduced my running from 10 miles to 8 miles every day. Not a huge change, but it returns about 20 minutes to my day.
Not So Funny
Last January I started writing jokes every day. I was trying to clone Jerry Seinfeld, I failed.
May 16th forgot to write jokes about the chicken dance.
It could take me 45 minutes some days to think of ten mildly funny comments about asinine things. When no one else is reading them or encouraging you, it’s a fool’s errand.
I was so focused on writing the jokes and not performing them. I wrote over 4000 jokes and barely told a soul. I never went back to refine them either. Was I hoping someone found them 100 years from now and would make me a legend?
Instead of writing two days’ worth of jokes to make up for my missed day, I stopped writing them entirely. I plan on reviewing them and seeing if any are worth putting together for a standup act.
My Hands
I started with a handwritten journal. I’ve always had very nice handwriting and took pride in it. In 2021, I decided to try to improve my handwriting even more. I diligently went through different Google Fonts every four days, trying new styles. It was interesting to see the different typefaces and make different letters. I was spending over twenty minutes just writing things down.
Not only was the handwriting not really changing my life for the better, but I realized my journal itself was unnecessary. I didn’t want to stop journaling, but I wanted to stop carrying around a notebook and to have to go back to reference it.
I would forget if I did a task or not because I didn’t want to go check my journal.
I saw someone using TimeCap in a Reddit post and within minutes I was able to have my streaks in a phone app. I could easily check them off and can even do timers now. It also keeps some nice stats.
All that I had left was my actual journaling. I have the blogs that I do in WordPress, but I wanted something lighter weight. Penzu was the answer. Most other apps had yearly subscriptions that I felt were unnecessary since it’s just a simple data store. I’ll happily pay a one-time fee like I did to get the pro version of TimeCap, but I’m not getting trapped.
Penzu has been very clean and easy for me to just write down about 100 words a day. I feel more willing to type more now as it is so much faster than writing by hand.
Feeling Lighter
It has been two weeks and the changes have been for the better. I’ve cut about an hour off my daily routine and am more adaptable to the day.
You can’t keep growing without pruning a few branches.
