Show Up Every Day — Consciously

It doesn’t matter if you’re still in middle school or working a full time job — it is your utmost duty to be there every day. So you crawl out of bed, go to the classroom or the office, and hunker away. Or maybe simply sit there, oblivious to the stuff happening to you (which we all know from school, but it happens more often at the office than you’d think). At night, you go home, having showed up and having avoided the consequences that come with not being there.

Here’s the thing: life’s not about avoiding consequences. Life is about making something out of your time.

Not skipping school or work is just the beginning. What really matters is what you do while you’re there. Are you simply fucking around, waiting for time to pass? Or are you actually putting in effort to achieve the goals that you’ve set out to achieve?

I’ve personally struggled a bit with this recently. I show up to work every day, but sometimes I leave at night and feel like I haven’t really achieved much. I had a plan, I followed that plan too, but somehow it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to be.

I currently have a major project: the rollout of a new software in order to automate a lot of business processes. The more I learn about said software, the more I realize how little I know. And it’s killing me. I have absolutely no idea where to start, where to go next, and every time I try to implement something, new shit comes up that I do not (yet) know how to solve. Which has me starting all over again, going back to learning more about the software.

The problem is: I have a slight idea of where I’m going, but the exact steps are still very blurry to me. And that leaves me hanging, feeling unproductive and not like I’m putting in the effort I should be putting in.

But there’s a silver lining.

Ideas take time to incubate. You can’t learn a new skill overnight. Every minute you put in compounds. And this software project, like all other things, will eventually have a breakthrough — simply by showing up every day and focusing on becoming 1% better.

Showing up in its own isn’t enough, but it’s a great start. If you show up and put in the work, just to become a tiny bit smarter, you will have a breakthrough.

I recently learned this in my writing. I used to post something only once a few weeks, but last week, I actually sat down some mornings and just wrote away, focused on improving my writing. I received around 300 views that week, and while that may not be a lot for some writers’ standards on Medium, it sure is a lot to me. Especially considering that people that I don’t even know started reading my posts and commenting and everything. That didn’t happen because I simply sat down and wrote; it happened because I sat down and wrote and had the intention to become a better writer.

So whatever you do, show up every single day and put in the effort.

It’s a lot more fun than simply being there unconsciously.

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