The river at six

I walk the American River at six most mornings, and people who know this assume it's discipline. It isn't. Discipline is what you need when you're deciding. I stopped deciding years ago. The walk is at six because the walk is at six.

Motivation is weather. It arrives, it's lovely, it leaves, and building anything on it is how people end up with three chapters of a novel and a treadmill that holds coats. Jenavieve wrote the January version of this in her resolutions piece. Routine is a building: dull, load-bearing, and there whether or not you feel like it.

The dispute you'll finish

I've watched people start disputes on a wave of anger at a bureau, write a wonderful letter, mail it, and then nothing, because the anger passed and the thirty days were long and the results letter came on a Tuesday when they were tired.

The disputes that finish are the boring ones. A folder. A date. A tracker with four columns. Calvin's checklist, Tess's twelve minutes. The next action is always known and always small, so no motivation is required to do it. You do it because it's at six.

The question under the question

People ask how to stay motivated through sixty days. The honest answer is that you shouldn't try. Motivation is the wrong tool for sixty days; it's built for sixty minutes. What you want is to make the process so plain that it runs without you: the letters printed, the counter trip on the calendar, the re-pull on the twenty-fifth.

The river

Some mornings the river is beautiful and some mornings it's just wet. I've never once regretted going, and I've never once decided to. That's the distinction. Build the dispute the way you'd build a walk. Then it's at six.