My full-time job is writing. Almost two years ago, I quit my job working at a church and decided I’d go into writing. It was an overnight change and I survived. I made enough to live in a great apartment in Dallas and support my wife as she pursued her dreams.
But for the first two years of my writing career, I made no money. I had to develop my platform and skills slowly. I worked my full-time job during the day, then blocked off a couple hours each week in my spare time to write to a tiny audience. If I had stopped any time along the way, I wouldn’t have been able to make that overnight change to full-time writer.
Now the nature of my job is such that I get paid by advertisers to write and help others write. And the truth is I could literally stop working for two weeks and still get paid. I could sit on my bum all day and watch TV, and I’d still have money coming in through advertisers. In the short term. But it would catch up to me.
Eventually my audience would slip. Eventually I’d forget to renew my advertisers or they’d lose interest.
So I fill my to-do list with items that don’t result in direct cash. I post up a few photos each day on Mopho.to. I blog three times a week. I post up stage designs and work on new articles. Everything I do is indirectly making me money. And if I lose sight of the benefit of those intangible things, I run the risk of slipping into laziness and missing out.
While I’ve seen that to be distinctly true in my job, I’ve also seen that to be true in life. It’s the intangible things we do that indirectly bring the results we want. When we spend time with our spouse. When we spend time in prayer. When we choose to follow our dream instead of watch TV.
It’s those small disciplines that bring us lasting results.
Don’t get lazy. Don’t discount those things you do because they’re the right thing to do.
Press on. Don’t get lazy. You might get by with it for a little bit, but it does catch up with you.
You will succeed.