When you commit to making something, and not stopping until you’re finished, you’re tapping into an incredibly powerful energy. This is the power of one sitting. It has the same energy as a sprint.
For example, hackathons take this force to the extreme, stretching the time window out to a full day or two. If you’re participating in a hackathon, you are setting out to build something and complete it before the hackathon ends. Getting sleep in between the days can seem more like taking a long nap.
But of course, any time window longer than maybe a couple of days starts to show the limitations of this structure; you’ll run out of energy. There’s only so much your brain and body can give you before it needs something back.
When you are working on a bigger project, but you still want to tap into this sprinting energy, you might be well-served breaking it down into things you can do in one sitting.
Scope each task down, and simplify it. Then, you won’t need to beat yourself up about procrastinating or whether or not you really like what you do—just spend 15 minutes on making progress, or ideally getting a small part of something big done. With each sitting, you are building and maintaining momentum and progress.
This works in your personal life too. The nice thing about picking up the phone and calling a friend is you can do it one sitting. You don’t need to ask when they’ll be available, or accommodate a reschedule, or wonder what that means for your friendship. One trick to do this is to send recurring invitations to chat. Another is to ask your friend if it’s ok for you to pick up the phone and call them sometimes—and let them know it’s ok for them to decline if it’s not a convenient time to chat. Make a list of friends who have said it’s ok—everyone I’ve asked has, although some ask for modifiers like texting them ahead of time or suggesting time windows—and then actually call them.
After I outline or take notes throughout the day, I write and publish most of these blog posts in one sitting. Yesterday’s blog post was done in one sitting. I’ve had a different draft sitting around for years, and it’s way better and more thought out—but it’ll need a few more sittings before it’s ready to publish. In the world of my blog, it’s better for me to write and publish that one yesterday and to keep polishing the better one for another time and place.
I spent one sitting preparing the notes for this post, and a second sitting drafting one version, and finally editing and publishing on this third sitting.