3 Things...
I’m not sure how long ago I listened to it, but a few years back (maybe four or five years ago) I took an early morning walk while playing a podcast episode from Tony Robbins. It was a weird “special episode,” if I recall. He was in a sound booth, and I think he had just finished a session recording an audiobook or something else “official.” The producer kept the audio recording going, and captured Tony talking to the sound engineer and anyone else in the room about goals and success.
At one point he addressed the “problem” of not having any ideas about what to create, how to market something you’ve built, what to do with your life, etc. I won’t try to recall the exact wording or even the exact topic, but his answer was something that hit home for me.
“Get a journal and every day write down three ideas. And at the end of 30 days you’ll have 90 ideas to work with. At the end of 365 days you’ll have over a thousand ideas (1,095, to be precise).”
At that time I was trying to think of ways to market my books, beyond the typical “pay for ads, engage in social media” blah-blah. That stuff works, by the way, but there’s a sort of diminishing return. Maybe I’ll got into that some other time. But “build a mailing list” is still the best marketing advice I’ve ever gotten.
I spent 30 days writing down three marketing ideas, every morning. I was already keeping a daily journal by that point, so I just made that part of the routine. And, true to Tony’s word, I had 90 ideas for marketing my books by the end of that month. Some of them were good. Some weren’t. Some worked. Some didn’t. But the point was made for me: This is the way.
You can mine your own wisdom, three chunks at a time, and get results.
I was tired of trying to come up with purely marketing ideas by that point, so I tried it for other things. Three daily ideas about how to be a bitter husband; three ideas about losing weight and getting fit; three ideas about improving productivity. If I spent 30 days writing three ideas about any topic, I came away with a month full of things to try. And the result is always the same—I always find something that helps.
Somewhere along the way, I decided I would see what else this method was good for. And what I landed on was “three pieces of wisdom.”
I have always been a “pantser.” In the writing world, that’s shorthand for “writing by the seat of my pants.” Meaning I don’t plot or outline, I don’t pre-plan. I just sit down and write. This post, by the way… also a pantsed post. I did what I do with most of my books, and started with a title. And then… words happened.
It’s like magic.
So much like magic, in fact, that I wanted to see what would happen if I just decided to write down “3 Pieces of Wisdom” every single day. Since my writing is somewhat automatic, and I figure my subconscious is responsible for steering the ship when it comes to the ideas I express, I wondered if I could tap into that to learn and record some innate wisdom—some piece of spiritually refreshing thought that might be a useful guide in life. Basically, 3 Ideas from My Soul. Though this is literally the first time I’ve ever referred to it that way.
Every day, then, I started my journal entry with “3 Pieces of Wisdom.” And I did that for 30 days.
The result was… profound. There were ideas there that I couldn’t believe came from me. I mean, I would really like to think of myself as a wise person, but I don’t always prove that out with my actions, or with what I say out loud. But when I looked at the results of this daily exercise, it struck me that I was somehow sitting at the feet of a wise man, getting answers for questions that only my soul could ask. And, apparently, my soul could also provide.
This was so profound to me, in fact, that I passed right by the 30 day mark, and just kept going. And for years now, every single day (with surprisingly few gaps), I sit down with my little pocket Moleskine notebook, I write the page number, date, time, temperature, and location across the top of the page, and then I write three pieces of wisdom. Every day. For years. It’s stacked up.
For example, here are three pieces from just a couple of days ago:
In the end, as in all your days, it’s just you and God.
Build an inner place that relies on nothing to exist.
Many have and will lose their way, so be gentle and lead.
Here’s set from a few weeks before that:
Stand for what is right, even if it makes you fall.
Refuse to kneel to tyrants—even if they force you to your knees, your spirit will not bow.
Know that not all victories are evident in the moment.
And this set, from the day after I returned from a conference in San Francisco:
The right answers only come from asking the right questions—questions are more important than answers.
When you don’t know how to solve your own problem, solve someone else’s problem.
Journaling gives you a way to spot the patterns in your thinking.
I could definitely go on. I don’t even think these are necessarily the best of the best. There have been times when I wrote something that sounded so unlike me, that was so far outside of my usual thinking, it shook me. It changed my direction. It made me try to be a better human.
Over time, I’ve added more “3 Things” to my daily routine. In those Moleskine notebooks, I have the three pieces of wisdom, but a couple of years ago I also added “3 Things I’m grateful for and bless.” These can be literally anything—”I am grateful for my Moleskine notebook, and I bless it.” But I feel like it’s helpful to start my day being grateful for things big and small in my life, and blessing them. We don’t bless things (or people) enough.
More recently, just a few months ago, I created a new journal in the Day One app called “3 Ideas.” This is where I daily type up 3 ideas (go figure) about any given topic. The topic changes from day to day, and sometimes the ideas are kind of mundane. But it helps me get my head in the game, and to occasionally get that aha! spark—the moment of excitement when something occurs to me that I’ve never really thought about before.
Here I jot down three ideas about marketing, or about products I could create, or about story ideas, or about what to have for lunch. It can be anything. But the regular practice and routine of doing this helps put my mind in an open and receptive state. Plus… well… I have a whole journal full of ideas I can mine, if I need them.
Doing them in Day One lets me tag them by topic. So if I ever need marketing ideas, I can click on that tag and scan through all the entries I’ve written that talk about marketing, and see if there’s anything I can put to work.
The power of three.
I can’t explain why it works. I have theories. But it does work. It’s useful. It’s something literally anyone can do.
Try it yourself. And let me know the results you get. You can leave a comment here.
If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!