Tag: habits

Go Back to the Beginning

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 67 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

I finished Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work today. In the last chapter, he says something that stopped me mid-stride on my walk:

When you’ve learned something really well, go back to the beginning. Learn something new. Do it in the open. Do it in public. Show your work so you can keep going, keep expanding, keep building.

It feels like that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

Before I started the 7-40 Challenge, I’d been blogging on and off for years. I had over 630 blog posts written before 2026. I’d written over 50 songs. I’d done other challenges for myself.

Back in 2022, I created something I called 100 Days Strong. For 100 days, I practiced many of the same habits I’m doing now — exercise, water, reading, discipline. I wasn’t reinventing the wheel. I saw 75 Hard, didn’t love every facet of it, created my own version, and added 25 days. Not rocket science.

I muscled through it. Lost 40 pounds. Proved I could do it.

But here’s the thing: because I wasn’t able to iterate — because I wasn’t able to evaluate as I went — it became a fitness challenge wrapped in the guise of something bigger. 100 days was too long. Too drawn out. No opportunity for adjustment. And because the habits never got implemented in a sustainable way, I reverted. The weight came back. The momentum died.

In 2025, the 7-40 Challenge was born. I did the first round in August and September, right after moving back to Oklahoma City. 40 days. Pulled it off. It went well.

Then I tried Round 2. It failed.

I restarted. Failed again.

I had to sit down and ask myself an honest question: why does this keep falling apart?

And the answer wasn’t willpower. It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t the habits themselves. It was structure.

I didn’t have goals behind the habits. I didn’t have a daily cadence that connected what I was reading to what I was writing to what I was building. I didn’t have a vision laid out in front of me. I didn’t have a place to put my thoughts. I didn’t have project buckets to organize the multiple lanes I wanted to pursue. I was trying to restart on sheer determination, and determination without a system just burns out.

So when January 1, 2026 came around, I built the system first.

I laid out the vision. I set goals behind the habits — even if I don’t share them all publicly. I committed to blogging every single day, not as a chore but as the processing engine for everything I’m learning. I set up project spaces where I could build context over time instead of starting from scratch every session. I created assessment weeks between rounds so I could come up for air, evaluate, and adjust.

And I made a decision. Not a feeling. A decision. I don’t care how I feel. I don’t care what stands in my way. I’m not stopping this time.

That decision, backed by a system, is why I’m sitting here on Day 67 with no missed days. Not because I’m tougher than I was in 2022 or 2025. Because I’m better organized.

Here’s the other thing Kleon helped me see today. I used to think in very linear terms. I could progress in fitness, but it was harder to progress in creativity at the same time. I could progress in my career, but not in my eating habits. Everything felt like it had to happen one at a time, in sequence, or not at all.

I was selling myself short. I’m much more capable than I was making it out to be. But it was never a capability problem. It was an organization problem.

When I have my vision clear every day — when I can see the lanes, the projects, the habits, and how they connect — what would have felt like a chore becomes a rhythm. What would have felt overwhelming becomes manageable. Not because there’s less to do, but because everything has a place.

Before I had the right tools and structure, I couldn’t get my response cycles fast enough to actually iterate and change. I’d have ideas on a walk and lose them by evening. I’d read something powerful and never connect it to what I was building. Now, when I’m walking and voice-texting like I am right now, I can get all my thoughts out. I can process them. I can connect them to the bigger picture. And I can execute.

Austin Kleon says go back to the beginning. Learn something new. Do it in public.

That’s what this whole year is. I went back to the beginning — back to the habits that I knew worked, back to the discipline I’d proven I could maintain — and I rebuilt it with the structure it was always missing. I’m learning in public every single day. I’m showing my work. I’m pushing the edges in every area of my life that I want to pursue.

And I’m finding myself going much further than I ever expected to.

At the end of the day, I know I have to stay teachable. I have to keep the posture of a student. I have to keep learning and growing, because if I don’t, I’m not just setting myself up for failure — I’m not getting any better. And getting better is the whole point.

Keep moving forward.

Day 67 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer
✅ Walking
✅ Reading (Show Your Work — Austin Kleon — finished!)
✅ Calories tracked
✅ Water (100 oz)
✅ Gratitude
✅ Exercise
✅ BiblePictures365
✅ Creative hour

740Challenge #ShowYourWork #AustinKleon #GoBackToTheBeginning #Systems #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay #KeepMovingForward

Flow and Stock

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 65 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

I started reading Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work today. To me, he sounds like a modern-day Seth Godin — an artist who’s figured out how to say, very poignantly, not just how he found success, but how he built it. And he shares it in a way that’s both relevant and timeless.

Three things hit me today.

Maintain your flow while collecting your stock.

My flow is what I do every day. The habits. The routines. The framework. The stream of ideas, creativity, and writing that comes from showing up and doing the work. Flow is the engine.

My stock is what I produce over time because I stayed in the flow.

What have I produced over the last two rounds of the 7-40 Challenge? I edited one novel and got it published on Amazon. I wrote another novel and took it through its revision passes. I’ve blogged every single day this year — not just on challenge days, but during the assessment weeks too. This blog has become my daily creation habit — my response to how the habits are affecting me, how the reading is impacting me, and how I’m starting to put things together and see the world in ways I never have before.

Some of the visions and thoughts I’ve had over the years are coming back to me now and making more sense in the context of where I am and what I’m doing. The ideas didn’t change. I did.

Maintain your flow. The stock takes care of itself.

Small things over time get big.

We know this. If you’ve ever put money into a bank account and watched compound interest work, small additions over time can get really big.

If you’ve ever thrown your clothes down in a room and kept throwing them down, something as small as a single shirt on the floor can end up being something as big as your wife not being happy with you and a whole lot of cleaning to do because you let it go too long.

There are so many examples. But here’s the one that matters to me right now: if I proactively practice my habits every day — if I put in my time writing, put in my time creating, put in my time connecting on social media — then I will see those things get big. The same is true for exercise, eating well, drinking water. As I put in the repetitions, my body is getting more fit. The pounds are going down.

Sixty-five days of small things. And they’re starting to get big.

Your website is your own little corner of the internet.

I’ve heard this before. But Kleon added something that turned on a light bulb for me: your social media platforms — Instagram, Facebook, TikTok — can be taken from you. If the overlords of those companies decide to change the rules, your content lives on their land, not yours.

Your website is different. It’s yours. It’s where your content is stored, where your central hub lives, where you’re building the brand of you so you can speak on anything you want — and it’s a place you can lead people back to so they can see exactly who you are and what you do.

I saw a Gary Vaynerchuk video the other day where he said one of the things that’s working in social right now is making content about everything — not boxing yourself into one lane. I identify with that. I have interests in many different areas. I have many different things I want to work on. And having my own corner of the internet where all of that comes together? That’s the hub. The social platforms are the megaphones. The website is the house.

Maintain your flow while collecting your stock. Small things over time get big. Your website is your own little corner of the internet.

Three good nuggets from today’s reading. And every single one of them confirms I’m on the right track and doing the right things.

Day 64 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer (finished Numbers!)
✅ Walking
✅ Reading (Show Your Work — Austin Kleon)
✅ Calories tracked
✅ Water (100 oz)
✅ Gratitude
✅ Exercise (Workout B with Trey)
✅ BiblePictures365
✅ Creative hour

740Challenge #ShowYourWork #AustinKleon #Flow #Stock #SmallThingsGetBig #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay

Day 60: The Four-Day Hike

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 60 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

A long time ago, when I first got interested in being a writer, I thought about the kind of characters I wanted to create. I wanted heroes. Strong ones. Ones who couldn’t be beat.

It took me years to realize that a character worth reading isn’t a perfect character. It’s not someone who can’t lose. It’s someone who has to face something real, something that might actually beat them, and find a way through it. Even Superman has family issues. Nobody gets a free pass — not even in fiction.

I think that’s why Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years hit me differently this time.

The first time I read it, my son had just been born. I was the sole breadwinner for a young family — and I want to be careful with that phrase. I don’t say sole job-haver. My wife has had one of the hardest jobs there is, being a stay-at-home mom and running our household for years. But I was in survival mode. Working everything I could to provide.

So when Miller wrote about watching too much TV, buying things he didn’t need, drifting through a comfortable life without meaning — I didn’t connect with it. I didn’t have the money to waste or the time to drift. I was running full speed just to keep up.

I didn’t understand his struggle with fatherlessness, because I have a very good dad. I didn’t understand his hang-ups with relationships, because I got married early and never struggled to want to be in one. I didn’t understand his need to sit and contemplate everything to the nth degree.

I read the book. I enjoyed the narrative. I put it down.

But now, all these years later, with a lot more life under my belt and a lot more clarity on who I am, I can empathize. I can put myself in someone else’s shoes in a way I couldn’t before, because I have so many more experiences to draw from.

I can see how you fall into routines without noticing. I can see how you live vicariously through other people’s stories instead of writing your own. I can see how you’d avoid meeting a parent you haven’t seen in thirty years. I can see how working up the courage to pursue someone could feel impossible.

The book didn’t change. I did.

And the stuff Miller says about story — about living intentionally, about doing things on purpose, about making your life mean something — I always understood that on some level. But I segmented it. I applied it to my day job and nowhere else. I’d tell myself I wanted a side hustle, wanted to write, wanted to build something. But then I’d pour all my energy into the work that paid the bills and let everything else sit in notebooks.

Two years ago, in a different city, with a different job, under very different circumstances, I don’t think I would have been ready for this book to hit me the way it’s hitting me now.

Miller tells a story about hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. He arrived in Peru a couple of days before the hike started. The town they were in sat at 11,000 feet — the same altitude as Mount Hood, a mountain he could see snow on from Portland every day. Just being there made it hard to breathe.

That detail stopped me, because I remembered standing at the top of Pike’s Peak in June of 1998. I was with a college group. My future bride and I were in a van together — on the top of the mountain in shorts. It was cold. So cold that we decided to stay in the van. On top of that, the air was so thin at the top that I fell asleep. Couldn’t hold my eyes open. I know the feeling Miller is describing.

Miller and his group started hiking, and they reached a point along a river where the guide told them it was a six-hour walk to Machu Picchu along the trade route. That’s how people used to get there. Easy. Flat. Direct.

Then the guide pointed in a different direction and said the hike they were taking would be four days. The reason? The ruler of Machu Picchu once declared that the more painful the journey, the more the travelers would appreciate their arrival.

Four days later, Miller wrote that the journey had made them different characters than they would have been otherwise. The journey changed them. Had they taken the river route — the six-hour shortcut — they would have missed the beauty, missed the meaning, missed the culture, missed the experience of doing something so physically taxing and mentally draining and still making it through to celebrate at the peak.

I feel like that’s what this journey is.

The easy way would be to do seven habits, tick the boxes, and float along the river. And honestly, that’s close to what I was doing for years — circling the same goals in different notebooks, never building the infrastructure to actually move.

But I’m noticing something as I lean into these seven habits. As I lean into questions I’ve been asking for years. As I lean into being more creative than I ever thought I could be. As I lean into my skills, and into that nudge that says keep going.

I’m transforming into a different character.

A character who expects more. A character who wants to risk more. A character who won’t find it satisfying to play it safe anymore.

I’ve had my inciting incident. And now it’s time to live a better story.

Does the book read differently because it’s good? Yes, it’s a very good book. The foundation Miller is standing on — that if we’ll willingly sit for hours watching a character overcome obstacles in a movie, it makes complete sense that living our own lives with the same kind of intentional effort would be just as meaningful — that’s a powerful argument.

But the real reason the book hits different is because I’m different. When I was younger and just trying to survive, I didn’t realize I had the capacity to start building something beyond the paycheck. I had the desire. I had the ideas. What I didn’t have was the organizational structure to execute.

That’s what sixty days of the 7-40 Challenge has given me. Not motivation. Structure. And because of that structure, I’ve been able to do more in two months and six days than I did in several years otherwise.

The book is the same $12 it was the first time I bought it. The reader is the variable.

Day 60 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer ✅ Exercise (Workout C with Trey) ✅ Walking ✅ Reading (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) ✅ Calories tracked ✅ Water (100 oz) ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour

Sixty days down. Two hundred and twenty to go. The four-day hike continues.

Day 59: Point Toward the Horizon

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I was reading Donald Miller today — A Million Miles in a Thousand Years — and he tells the story of a friend who runs a law firm. Not just any law firm. This firm rescues girls from human trafficking and the sex slave trade.

When Miller asked the man what his primary job was, the answer wasn’t legal strategy or fundraising or case management. The man said his job was to show up every morning and remind his lawyers what their mission was. To point them toward the horizon of saving the powerless.

That’s it. That’s the job. Point toward the horizon.

I’ve been thinking about that all day. Because I think most of us wake up and start working without ever looking up. We open the laptop. We check the list. We push the cart forward. But we never stop to ask — forward toward what?

A ship without a horizon is just a floating room.

I spent twenty years with notebooks full of goals and no horizon to aim them at. I had tools. I had ideas. I had desire. What I didn’t have was a clear picture of where all of it was supposed to go. So the tools just sat there, and the ideas piled up, and the desire burned slow and quiet and never caught fire.

December 2025, I finally pointed at something. I wrote a document. I named the habits. I set the course. And sixty days later, everything that felt like wasted time has started to look like foundation.

The horizon doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be visible. And the first step toward seeing it clearly is being willing to ask: where am I actually trying to go?

Day 59. Eyes up.

I write every day about transformation, habits, and what actually happens when you stop planning and start doing. If that resonates, join the list at subscribepage.io/5g8Hdy and I’ll send you one email per week with the best of what I’m learning.

Day 57: A Character Is What He Does

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 17
Tuesday, March 3, 2026

I remember hearing Randy Travis for the first time when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. Late ‘80s. This was right after he’d gotten big — Forever and Ever, Amen was everywhere. But when you grew up the way I did, you didn’t just hear the singles. You got the whole album. You listened to every track. And you picked up songs that most people never heard because they only listened to the radio.

There’s a song on that same album called “Good Intentions” — and I can still sing the chorus almost 40 years later:

I hear tell that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, Mama, my intentions were the best. There’s lots of things in my life I’d just as soon not mention. Looks like I turned out like all the rest. But Mama, my intentions were the best.

That chorus came back to me today during my reading.

I’m still working through Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and he’s unpacking what he learned turning his memoir into a movie script. The screenwriters and story experts taught him something that sounds simple but cuts deep:

A character is not what he says. A character is not what he thinks. A character is what he does.

Think about every book you’ve loved. Every movie that stayed with you. The characters that endure aren’t the ones who talk big. They’re the ones who act. We don’t remember them for their speeches. We remember them for their choices.

If you’ve read the Harry Potter books, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Severus Snape, judged by what he said and how he appeared, was a villain. Cold, cruel, seemingly loyal to the enemy. But when you see the full arc — what he actually did — he’s the hero of the entire story. He was a mole inside enemy territory for over a decade, driven by love for a woman he could never have, protecting her son even though that son reminded him of the man he hated most. Strip away what Snape said. Look at what Snape did. He was one of the bravest characters in the story.

Miller’s point isn’t just about screenwriting. It’s about how we live.

Are we the character who talks about what we’re going to do? Or are we the character who does it?

I spent years saying I wanted to be a writer. I told people I was going to write a book. I had notebooks full of ideas going back twenty years. But I wasn’t a writer. Not really. I became a writer when I sat down and actually wrote the book. The doing made it real. The wanting never did.

I can say I want to be a good husband. I can say it every day. But until I actually love my wife and put her needs above my own — consistently, not just when it’s convenient — am I really a good husband? Or am I just a guy with good intentions?

Randy Travis had it right. The road to hell is paved with them.

This is why the 7-40 Challenge matters to me. It’s not about the checklist. It’s about becoming the character who does the thing instead of the character who talks about the thing.

Fifty-seven days in, I haven’t missed one. Not because I’m special. Because I decided that the gap between what I say and what I do needed to close. And the only way to close it is to do it. Every single day.

So I have to ask myself — and I’m asking you too: What is the character you want to play in your life? Are you doing the thing, or just talking about the thing?

Because a character is what he does. And good intentions don’t count.

Day 57 — Seven for Seven

See you tomorrow for Day 58.