Lauren van Vliet, author

Never miss a Monday. It’s a common (almost clichéd) phrase used particularly in fitness circles, to motivate people to start their week on the right foot, perhaps with a good solid sweat session or healthy meal.

The phrase may not apply directly to other goals, but the sentiment does. Start your goals strong to set yourself up for success. Get lots of practice in, write a whole bunch of words, tackle the most difficult task first. And there’s nothing wrong with this. Starting goals strong, with early success can help keep the momentum going for longer, and encourage you to keep going when it gets tough.

But inevitably, we will miss a workout, deadline, or practice. Life will happen and give us plenty of good reasons, and even more excuses, to miss our appointment with our goals and habits. We’ve reached Wednesday, the messy middle, or the hill.

Whatever you call it – it’s bound to happen.

I call it Wednesday, because by the time Wednesday rolls around, I have just two more work days to go until my Sabbath. I am tempted to sleep in, skip my healthy breakfast, and/or procrastinate on prayer because I am tired. But on Friday (my Sabbath), I am keen to get up and work out, eat well, and pray because I know I have a glorious day of rejuvenating self-care ahead of me. I’m excited because the week is done, and to start the next one.

This pattern is everywhere in my life. Towards the end of November, I set a new writing goal: to write one million words between November 1, 2017 and October 31, 2018. Because I set the goal retroactively, I didn’t hit the word count for November (although I still won NaNoWriMo). Due to travel and holidays, I didn’t hit it December. At the rate I’m going, I likely won’t hit it for January either (even as a student I don’t think I wrote 77,000 words in two weeks). At this point, it’s tempting to throw in the towel and say that I’ll try again next year when I can plan properly. I’m in the Wednesday phase of my Mil-Wordy goal – it came early, and it’s strong.

So I remind myself I can’t miss a Wednesday. Yes, it’s easy to skip just one day because you may not see the consequences. When I skip one day, I’m even more tempted to skip the next day, and the next. So, while I don’t have to be perfect everyday, and yes there may be legitimate reasons to not hit the goal/deadline/whatever, the days I’m making excuses are the days I need to show up even more, that I need to try a little harder (even if I had to bribe myself to get started in the first place).

Showing up on an un-motivated Wednesday is better than constantly re-starting on a Monday. No matter how small the attempt is, it will take you a little bit closer. In December when I was really busy, I watched small word counts add up to about 7,000 words. While it’s a far cry from the 84,000 words I needed in the month, it was 7,000 more words than I had at the end of November.

So even though 2018 is only a few weeks old, I’m already hitting my Wednesday in all of my goals, and I will continue to remind myself to never miss a Wednesday (even though I’m actually writing this on a Monday).