Hey there! Today, I'm going to be answering a question, that I've received from Nick, one of my clients that I worked with last summer, and he continues to listen to my podcast, which is great. Highly appreciated and his question is, "How did you transition from setting up your podcast as a sprint goal that took two to three sprints to making it run consistently where it's no longer needed to be a sprint goal?" I think it's a great topic request. To make it more general so that other people can benefit as well, let's make it the question of, "How many sprints does it usually take to build a new habit?" Okay. Let's go. 

To give you an idea of how I look into goals, I usually divide them into two different categories. The first one is the goals that you do on a daily basis and then the second group of goals is something that you do regularly, but not necessarily daily. So, we were talking about with maybe once a week or  twice a week or something like that. 

Nick's specific question is for the second group of habits or projects or routines that you're trying to establish. But let me start off with the daily habits and spend a little bit of time there.

First of all, turns out that it's much easier to build daily habits or something that you do every weekday. So, let's say Monday to Friday and that's your working days and then weekend  is something separate or something that you do every single day. Given the fact that I worked with many people at building habits at this point, this group of goals tend to stick the fastest. 

 I remember when I was, I don't know 20, 21 years old, I was working with a great person named Tom. Tom was in his fifties or sixties.  I'm really bad at guessing someone's age. But anyway, he told me a great piece of advice that I still remember. We were talking about working out and Tom was an experienced person. He was in great shape and he said to me, Polina, you know what? It's much easier to work out Monday to Friday than it is to work out two times a week, or three times a week. For him, the rule was that every lunch from 12 to one, every day he goes to the gym.  

 now it's been Few years since then, and I completely agree with this logic. If you do something every day or at least every week day, then it becomes a part of your routine and it's much easier to build such habits.

Here's the thing. So, you set the habit for one sprint and then during your sprint review, you look at the stats at the numbers.   If your success rate is 80-90%,  It's a good size of a habit.

 I just recommend  sticking with this habit for the second sprint just to make it solid. You're like almost there, but just pay attention for three more weeks and then you're good to go.  I've seen it happened with my clients. Two Sprints is a good, good  times to build a consistent daily habit.

If your success rate is less than 75%, it means that the goal is too big, you need to review it and see how you can break it down. And then next sprint, don't just put the same habit for the next sprint.  It's kind of just tells me that you haven't done your sprint review and you haven't analyzed what went wrong and how you can improve in the next sprint.

 If you set the goal of going to the gym every Workday and you only went three times during the entire sprint.  Then the habits for the next sprint should be something different. Maybe it's going for a walk. Maybe it's doing a 15-minute workout at home. Something, like you need to realize where was the painpoint or what was stopping you from going to the gym every workday and then accommodating  this blockage. Okay? 

The last thing that I want to say about the daily goals is that if you're re-introducing the habit that you already had in the past, then that's a helpful exercise to re-introduce it to  sprint goals for one sprint.  One sprint is usually more than enough to re-ignite the consistency. 

But that's only for the habits that you've been doing before and you just want to improve or pay more attention to them.  Now, let's look at the second group of habits, something that you want to do on a weekly basis, something that might be a little bit more difficult and as Nick is asking, I could give the example  of me recording podcasts, or maybe doing some other creative, but consistent work. Let's say YouTube videos, or you want to start writing, right?

 You want to start painting. Something, that you don't necessarily have the luxury of doing every day, but something that you want to be doing consistently. 

Let's stick with the creative projects because it's easy. Maybe, it's a side hustle, maybe, it's just a creative outlet. Maybe, you want to create content and publish it on a consistent basis. 

 For these projects, I recommend starting with the rule of 10. I have an entire podcast episode on it.

I've created this concept of myself.  Basically, when you start a new creative endeavor, use the rule of 10.  

Let me actually go to my website and find the exact definition of the rule of 10.

So, here it goes. When starting a new activity or project, commit to 10 attempts and don't analyze the results of these first attempts. Since, Nick asked about  my own experience when I decided to start the monthly method podcast, I've committed to creating 10 podcast episodes, no matter what. Even if no one listens.

Even if it's a complete disaster, even if I don't like it. Even if I don't know I don't have equipment or any of that. I commit to doing 10. Only then, I would allow some stats or feedback, influence my decision going forward. But for the first 10, I don't care what's happening outside, what people are saying, how many subscribers I have. Doesn't matter.

So, the first suggestion here is to use the rule of 10 for any creative project. Go listen to this podcast episode because there are some other amazing benefits of using the rule of 10. I give more examples, just go and listen. Basically, get to the number of 10 as soon as possible, 10 units of work.

It might be 10 YouTube videos, 10 podcasts episodes,  10 blog posts, 10 paintings, 10 articles, 10 Instagram posts, whatever it is.

 Coming back to the question,  how many sprints will it take to get to the number of 10? Well, it depends on the content, right? Or the creative projects that you chose.  For me, it took two sprints to record 10 podcasts episodes.

 If it was something smaller, then you can probably batch things and do it in one sprint. If it's something bigger, then it might take you three sprints to get to the number of 10. You shouldn't just create, then save it onto your computer. You should ship it to the world.

  Basically,  I committed to recording 10 podcast episodes as soon as possible. That's what I did for the first two sprints. 

The second thing that I recommend is also using the concept of anchoring up. This is something that I've learned from Seth Godin, from his book Practice.   I've read this book in December, 2020, when I was starting this podcast and the concept of anchoring up was the one that  helped me with the first 10 podcast episodes. 

So, if you've listened to my previous episodes, you've probably heard me say at the end of each episode, please subscribe if you want to get a freshly baked episode delivered to you, next Monday. And you've probably thought that it's something that a lot of people say,  that something that you hear in a lot of podcasts.

 It's a marketing tool or whatever, but in reality, this phrase is not necessarily for you. I say this phrase for me. Meaning that when I say this thing, I promise you a new podcast episode next Monday and that's one of the anchors that I am using. And Whenever, I have resistance or confusion about,  should I record a podcast episode? Should I not? I always remember that I've promised you guys that there will be a freshly baked episode next Monday, and then it kind of forces me to go and record it.

Did I publish a freshly baked episode every single Monday?  As you've probably noticed, I haven't published any podcast episodes in November and December because it was crazy busy time at my full time job. Every week, it was bothering me a little, because in my previous 45 podcast episodes, I've made the promise to you that there will be a freshly baked episode on Monday. That's what forced me to come back eventually and continue doing this podcast. Another   way I use the concept of anchoring up is 

Marker

with hiring help for the monthly method.

 I don't just hire people and say, Hey I'm going to send you files whenever,  then please edit them whenever and send them back to me whenever. No, and that's very strategic. Again, I use it for my benefit. So, when I hire people, I say, hey, listen, this is the structure I want us to follow. I will commit to sending you my files by the end of Tuesday.  Let's say you have three days to edit it and then please send it back to me by Friday.

 Then the fact that when I hired this person, I told them that they will have my file by the end of Tuesday. It's another anchor that is forcing me to do my part by Tuesday.  It also gives them enough time to do their part. They're not stressed out. Nothing has happened in the last minute, so we can keep this consistent, normal, healthy relationship for a long period of time.

So, I definitely don't want to be that person who's  asking for things last minute and putting a lot of pressure on the people who work for me. So yeah, use your employees, use your help as anchors and give them some promises for when you will be able to deliver your part.

That brings me to the third point. And so, Nick coming back to your question, when you have these structures, first of all, you've made promises to the few subscribers or whatever clients you have, or even to your friends who are not necessarily your subscribers, but you said that, yeah, I'm going to do this every week. You don't want to look bad in front of other people or the people that you've made promises to.

Then you also have an anchor of some people relying on you or waiting on you like your employees or some help that you've hired on Upwork or Fiverr. So, that's another anchor.  The more anchors you put around this activity, the more forced you are to do this activity, even if it's not one of your sprint goals.

If the first two sprints are taken with doing the rule of 10, then you can spend another sprint just building these anchors around this activity.  When you have one to two to three, anchors, then you can remove this activity from your sprint goals because you know that you're now have enough external pressures on getting this activity.

Another recommendation that I have for these creative projects is connecting them with some sort  of pleasurable "Me Time" activity.  When I analyzed, when I was the most consistent with  recording of the podcast, when I was able to batch a bunch of things in advance. When I was the  most productive, when it comes to recording these episodes was when I was,  in the UK,  I had this habit of going for a long walk  just exploring the city and kind of having "Me Time" to think about different ideas about what I wanted to cover um, the podcast, and then I was coming home and I already had all these ideas.

I kind of thought through the outline. So, I was using my walking time as my brainstorming time.  Once I've realized  that was the time where I was the most productive with this particular aspect of my life.  When I wanted to re-introduce this habit, I knew that I had to re-introduce the long walks again.

Long story short, I knew that once during the week, I need to re-introduce long walks and that is the time that I will spent thinking, brainstorming some of the podcast's ideas and that's what I did. Now, every Saturday, I go for a long walk to a nearby forest, even if it's cold but it's been awesome.   I might use the first 20 minutes to listen to   someone's podcast or a book, but then my goal is to turn it off and just spend time in my thoughts, brainstorming, organizing my thoughts and creating an outline for the upcoming episode.

And Then, when I come home, I go and record the podcasts straight away because I already have the outline and everything.  So, yeah, that's my advice as well. If you want to have some sort of creating project going on a consistent basis especially if its content related, you need some thinking time.

In my experience, just like sitting at the desk and trying to come up with something. It's not necessarily the most pleasurable experience, especially if you have  a full-time job and you have like this computer, this desk that is associated with your full-time job. You have the sticky notes around reminding you about all the things that you need to do.

It's like you need to have some separate thinking  environment for your creative thinking.   Also, since you enjoy it, I enjoy walking. I enjoy going to the forest when I was in the UK. I enjoyed walking around Manchester because it's a beautiful city, the weather was nice and I truly enjoyed it.

I was looking forward to walk and just the brainstorming was kind of  a side effect of me going for a walk. 

 The last advice that I have, if you are still finding that you've created your 10 units of work, you've promised a consistent delivery to your listeners or     other consumers of your particular project, where you've connected it with some pleasurable thinking time and it's still not consistent,  then study your resistance and delegate accordingly. 

 Again, coming back to the example of this podcast episode, as you probably know, I have a full-time job, very demanding, very tiring at times, but I still want to do this podcast on a weekly basis.

 I was studying the entire process from brainstorming into recording, to editing, to then creating a transcript and upload it to my hosting platform. Then, creating a blog post and all of that. I realized that brainstorming and recording the podcast was the exciting parts. But then everything else kind of like editing and then cleaning things up and creating a blog post and all of that, was a part of that I wasn't really enjoying , and that was the most draining part.

It's necessary for a final product to look good because you don't want to hear me rumbling or some sound issues or whatever   It  is necessary. But, my main point is generate new ideas and share them with you.  I can delegate these other parts and these other parts caused the most resistance that prevented me from even  doing the parts that I was excited.

I was thinking about all the hours that I need to spend editing a podcast, then all the hours that I need to spend kind of re-writing this whole thing so  that it looks good as a blog post. That was not the part that I enjoyed and because it was anticipating all of these other parts, I didn't even want to do the parts that I enjoy.

 So, the solution here is probably obvious to a lot of you is to hire help. I do have a wonderful podcast editor, who is looking at the sounds, who is  creating the transcript that I can later upload to my podcast so that, that its searchable by people who are looking for specific things, then I also recently hired a wonderful writer who then takes this transcript and transforms them in beautiful blog posts that are so much better than what I could have written and I get to do the parts that I enjoy.   A lot of you might say, well, that costs a lot of money. Well, first of all,  not necessarily, you can do it in a very budget friendly way. There are people from all over the world that you can hire, check out tools, such as Fiverr, Upwork.

 You can find people very inexpensively. And second of all, I invite you to even if you're not making any money yet off of your project just treat it as a creative hobby. You know, if you look at other creative hobbies right? There are people who like to paint. They still need to buy supplies. They still need to buy paint, paper, all of the stuff. Have you been to the creative stores recently?

It's not cheap, but they still choose to spend this money on tools and supplies because that brings them joy. If, for example, if you like snowboard, that's a very expensive hobby, right? You need to buy a snowboard, you need to buy all the equipment.  Then every time you need to drive to the mountains,  you need to buy the pass.

 All of that, that's a lot of money, but people are happy to pay this money because it's their hobby. That's where they get their positive emotions from. So, why not treat the investments that you paid to this people who are helping you with your creative project? The same way, just treat it as a hobby that requires some financial contributions. But at the end of the day, that's something that makes your life better, more enjoyable. You feel proud of yourself and it's your creative outlet. Why not?

Yeah, that's my very long answer to Nick's question. If you have your own questions that you want me to look into, send me an email or go to monthlymethod.com. Contact us page. Write your message. I read every single email.  As you see, a lot of my podcasts are inspired by the questions that I get from you guys. So, yeah, definitely, don't be afraid to reach out and have a fantastic week.

Please subscribe, if you want to get a freshly backed episode delivered to you next Monday. And now you know the reason why I'm saying this thing. That's it. Have a great week!