When I began walking for exercise I usually walked three days a week. Some days, I didn’t feel like it and had to force myself out the door. Some days I simply forgot.

Now I walk six days a week and I do it without thinking about it.

My walks are longer, because I’ve built up my strength, and I enjoy them. Not only are they good for my health, I use the time for thinking, dictating, or listening to podcasts.

Because I walk every day, I don’t have to be reminded to do it or talk myself into it. It’s part of my routine. And I (usually) look forward to it.

I had a similar experience when I started writing a daily email/blog post. Before I wrote daily, I wrote once a week. It was easy to do but what’s easy to do is also easy to not do. Miss a day and it could easily turn into a week. Before you know it, a month has gone by and you’re on your way to not doing it anymore.

Am I saying it’s easier to write every day instead of once a week? Yes.

If you write a newsletter, blog post, or article once a month or once a week you have to plan for it. When the day comes, it’s easy to postpone it. “Hey, I’ve got the whole month”. But do you? Without a deadline, it’s easy to blow it off.

If you write once a week, or every day, it becomes a natural part of your workflow.

So, write shorter pieces but more often. Make it a habit and you’ll get it done.

Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, whatever habit you want to create, start where you need to start but look for a way to transition to doing it every day. Because every day really is easier.

Are you getting daily referrals? 

Imagine drinking 30 cans of cola a day, every day. I saw a program profiling a 20-year old girl who’s been doing that for years and can’t seem to stop. To make matters worse, the rest of her diet consists of Twinkies and Ding Dongs and an assortment of other blocks of sugar.

Yikes.

She’s pre-diabetic and has the lab report to prove it, but she isn’t doing anything about it. She’s in the medical field and should know better, but like a lot of addicts, she’s in complete denial.

Call in the professionals: a nutritionist and a mental health doctor, tasked to help her.

They couldn’t have her quit cold turkey because she would suffer withdrawal symptoms that could put her in the hospital. They asked her to reduce her consumption in stages. Within a couple of weeks, she was supposed to be off the sauce.

She didn’t last a day.

Why? Two reasons, as I see it. The first reason is that they had her cutting down too quickly. Not only was she physically addicted to sugar (and caffeine), she had long-term emotional attachments to her habit.

It was too much, too soon.

I’m a doctor of laws, not medicine, but I would have asked her to cut her intake by a single can per day, or even every two or three days. Wean her off the stuff slowly. In a month or two might be down to a few cans a day, and from there, quitting would be relatively easy.

Breaking a bad habit, especially one that has physical and emotional addiction components, should be done slowly, shouldn’t it? A little bit each day.

That’s equally true for adopting good habits. Don’t run a half marathon this weekend if you currently do no exercise.

I talk about doing marketing 15 minutes a day because (a) anyone can do 15 minutes, and (b) if you do 15 minutes every day, eventually you might build up to 30. (NB: if you can’t do 15 minutes, start with 10. Or five.)

Do a little, but do it every day until it becomes a habit.

Besides being asked to taper off too quickly, the second reason cola girl couldn’t quit is that she didn’t want to. She admitted as much at the end of the program.

Even when a habit poses serious health risks, if you don’t want to quit, you won’t. Or you’ll quit but go right back to your old ways.

That’s also true for starting a good habit.

A lack of marketing might pose a serious risk to the financial health of your practice, but if you don’t want to change, you won’t.

Start with a simple marketing plan