September 6th 2024

360 words; 2 minutes to read.

A Writing Habit

One of my favorite people on the internet is the writer, podcaster, and productivity extraordinaire Merlin Mann. I’ve been following Merlin since he co-created the podcast Do By Friday, which led to discoveries of all of his podcasts on the Relay FM network. His recent passion project is something that he’s been calling “Merlin’s Wisdom Project,” and it’s one of my favorite things to peruse when I find myself bored on my computer. It’s basically just a bulleted list of easily digestible wisdom told from the perspective of Merlin based on his own life experience.

Some of my favorites include

• Say hello to every dog.
• Always wave back at children and all persons on trains.
• Flirt with all elderly women.
• If you see someone photographing a group, offer to take the photo for them so they can get in the picture. Please do not steal their camera.
• Related: when you shoot a group photo, always take at least five shots from at least two angles. For the last couple photos, say: “Everybody say ‘BUTTS!’” You will instantly get many totally natural smiles, plus you just gave them a fun story.
• Sometimes in life, even though it’s not your fault, it’s still your problem.

The one that matters the most for this post

• Write at least a paragraph a day. Of something.

When I read this, I thought to myself, when was the last time I wrote something just for the sake of writing something? It bothered me to the extent that I created this new section on my site to start a daily writing habit. I don’t know the kinds of things I’ll be writing about but I’m excited to get started and hopefully become a better writer over time.