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Like many creative folk, I have interests in more than one area of the arts. Writing is one of them. For quite some time, I’ve been learning and writing in bits and drabs. One of the cool resources I turn to is The Writer’s Store. Often they have excellent tools, suggestions and books on writing. It’s more of an interest to me rather than ever thinking of publishing a novel or screenplay. Narrative interests me.

Yesterday, a very cool email came out from The Writer’s Store with a newsletter tip on how Jerry Seinfeld worked his craft. He had a very simple system to mark off X’s on a 365 day, one-pager calendar. The mantra is…
“Don’t Break The String”.

In other words, write every day, and mark a red (or any other colour) “X” that you want on your calendar and don’t break the string. If you’re awesome, you could have a red “X” on every day of the year. There has been much written on how to create habits, and what I’ve taken away from that leadership reading and training is that doing something for 21 days in a row, creates a habit.

Thinking about that simple system yesterday pushed me back to the easel. Instead of fiddle-farting away at admin work in the office, I thought…heck, I need to get my red X on that sheet. Without that reminder, I’m not sure that I would have gotten off the computer and into the paints, but I did!

Here’s a free PDF copy of my own version of this document –

 “365 Days of Painting – “X Marks The Habit” for you.

365 DAYS OF PAINTING – “X Marks The Habit”

Just click on the link above. A PDF document will open in another browser window.
Print it off, or save it to your hard drive. Enjoy and happy painting!

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Stephen R. Covey – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Ten Habits of Successful Artists: New York Foundation for the Arts

8 Habits of Mind – Studio Thinking Framework: Harvard

Artists 16 Habits of Mind – Costa & Kallick

Living A Prolific Life: A Zen How-To Guide – Clay Collins