Today I am finally getting smarter. I know that people tell me things I know people tell you things and you’re either not ready to hear it or you’re just not in the mental space to hear it and maybe that’s the same as being ready.

I know when I teach I repeat myself because students don’t hear it the first time, maybe they’re not ready for the second time and sometimes it takes three times. I know from advertising data that it takes seven contacts to have you actually think about buying a product – so that’s the way your brain works.

Getting back to my learning of the day – I know from mentors that you’re supposed to do the thing you don’t like the first thing in the morning to get it out-of-the-way.

I hate editing and therefore I leave it till the end of the day. But today I was also involved in a little online group project where we were spending 4 hours getting a book done.

I can’t do anything for 4 hours straight and especially on a hot day [because I had to take the dog out and do other things before it got really hot] but it did get me working on the editing first thing in the morning and guess what? Editing got done.

I got the table of contents organized so that it flows for me and I got chapter 1 finished. It didn’t take that long to DO the actual work, as most of it was mental – not typing.

And as I know the way my brain works for books- now that those two things are done, the other chapters will get done more easily.

Since it actually was quite easy to do I again had to ask myself why do I tend to leave editing to the last thing of the day? or put it off until who knows when?

It has been almost a year since I finished and published my last book. But I have a lot of them almost done on my computer especially almost done since I started this writing 1000 words a day back in January.

I have somehow convinced myself that I don’t like editing and maybe I should take my own advice and think positively about things. So from now on I love editing and will do editing as the first task of the day.

And also as it was hot today or going to get very hot and as some of you know if you follow me on Facebook I have a two-year-old Labrador retriever. Retrievers have one job and life guess what it is Yep retrieving. Except for when it’s pouring rain when neither of us really wants to go out, we go out once or twice a day to retrieve tennis balls. I have one of those throwing sticks and I walk out onto the field it’s actually the levee that keeps the Columbia River from letting Portland and I throw the ball she runs I throw the ball, etc, etc, etc.

She has developed her own routine of wanting to go swimming when she’s tired or hot. And then she brings the ball back, sits down, and waits for me to walk with her maybe 3 feet before she goes down the bank in the river. But the grass was mowed yesterday and I think she is a bit nervous about the bank path, and maybe doesn’t want to go into the river because since the mowing she hasn’t taken her swim.

Note here, if you read any of my psychology books or courses, you have seen or read this. We all tend to anthropomorphize our pets. I have no idea if she is nervous, or can’t smell her way down, or what. But I feel she for some reason was a little perturbed by the mowing.

Anyhow, I’m off track – but that’s the content of the book I’m working on….

So what have I learned on day five of this trying to create new habits trying to get my brain challenged to do things normally rejects.

I’ve known for a while that my brain my body me I’m not sure it does not like consistency. I have never been able to stay at a job, working for someone else full-time, for more than two years.

I also know that if I get into a routine like going to a health club every day, it too dissipates after two years. And then it’s hard for me to go again. That was not true when I went to a club to play squash. I think the difference was that squash was an activity I loved it and I liked the people I hung around with. One of them is still my best friend. But going to a club, just to work out, just wore out after two years.

Maybe today, because of the heat and the online book writing thing I got into I had to do things in a different order. I did the editing. Then because of the upcoming heat wave I took my dog out. I have these great thoughts while I was walking the dog, so I took out my phone and dictated several hundred words of this article which meant that I was getting the thousand words a day partially out of the way. And when I am done writing this, I will shoot the video and then I will have the editing the writing and the video all done. And I still have the whole rest of the day.

Maybe I can get a few more chapters of the book done and that would be great as I will feel even better than I feel right now. And of course, the book will be on its way to getting even more done and soon I can upload it onto Amazon and hit the button “publish.”

And then what comes next? Another book to be finished.

That’s the point of my 90 day challenge: Finish! Finish! Finish!