What do Ironmans, 3-day meditations, writing books have in common?

Ironmans, 3-day meditations, writing books have a lot in common. Ironmans take most of what your body can handle. Three day meditation trips take all of what your mind can handle. During either of those, you want to quit, cry, stop; but, something compels you to keep going.

What does it have in common? IT TAKES EVERYTHING to DO IT.

Writing books is the combination. It takes everything you’ve got both mentally and physically. 

Mentally commit beforehand. In all three cases, you must make the decision, the commitment, to complete the task long before you do it. You should prepare and practice before deciding. You don’t do any of those three tasks without some preparation and practice.

What do you do to prepare?

Writing a book without doing ample writing beforehand is insane. Decide why you want to write the book; do the research that your book is unquestionably unique. Write enough to know whether you actually want to go through with it or not. You’d slowly train for an Ironman triathlon, wouldn’t you? So walk before your run.

Prioritize it. Find a 3-month window to commit to the project. Write a book when you have a dedicated amount of time to complete a draft. Though possible, try not to do it a little at a time unless you want to be like most people who’ve been working on a book for 10 years.

Plan it. You need 600 hours to write a clean manuscript. That’s about 150-200 hours of blogging beforehand. Then 3 months of 4 hours per day straight which is 360 hours roughly. Then you have another 50 hours to make final changes, acknowledgments etc… Plan the time needed to do it. That’s the most important thing.

Note: Don’t do what I do and forget people in the acknowledgments.

Set expectations that your effort may not warrant a lot. It’s how you set your own value. 

How is it Physical? Like meditating, you have to sit your butt in that seat for long periods of time. Like cycling, you need to sit your butt in the saddle and work, work, work. Meditating you try not to think; writing you have to keep thinking; cycling you have to pump. Totally opposite; equally as hard. Unlike meditating, to do that you must be physically ready.

In meditating, you fast and eat as little as possible to slow your body functions down and learn how not to crave food. When writing, you must eat, hydrate, and exercise to keep your brain functioning at optimal capacity. Don’t starve yourself and write. Impossible. Your brain needs 60g of glucose to function daily. Add writing to that and you can bump it to 100g. That’s why I eat lots of gummy bears. Physically prepare yourself.

Set expectations.

As I said in my last post, don’t expect to make money off the book. There are ancillary reasons to do it. You may get a speaking engagement or impress someone not in your network – or maybe impress someone in your network who didn’t think highly of you. You may do a video class (which is a lot more profitable and easier to do than writing the book). At some point, new doors may open. Unless you have a big platform, you probably won’t sell a lot of books or score a big publishing deals. Know that upfront.

Ironman triathlons, 3-day meditations, writing books are done for your own benefit and personal well-being. You get many ancillary benefits from them in physical and mental health. Learning how to eat better, learning how to balance time, learning how to control your thoughts and endure. Writing a book can give teach you these as well.

So in the words of Matt Dixon at Purple Patch. Want to write a book? Then give me EVERYTHING. That’s right: It takes everything. See the video below.