Tag: writing

The Robbie Hart Insight

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 70 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

I went to college on a full music scholarship. Bass baritone. Show choir. The whole deal. Singing and dancing literally paid for my education.

I sang in everything I could find — college choir, a professional chorale that was just starting up, church worship teams, a summer-long ministry tour where I sang at a youth camp for over two months. By the end of that summer, I was sung out in ways I didn’t even know were possible.

And when I got back to campus that fall, I realized something had shifted.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t sing anymore. I could. It was that the environment around music had started to change me into someone I didn’t want to be. The music department had started a critical spirit in me — a snobbish perfectionism that I was fighting without realizing it. And I didn’t have the tools at that age to separate the pursuit of excellence from the culture of superiority.

If I’d had the work ethic I have now — the ability to self-assess and improve — I probably would have excelled. But at nineteen, I didn’t have that in my toolbox. And honestly, I didn’t need to stay. That path wasn’t going to serve me. I just didn’t have an adult come alongside me at that moment to help me figure out what should come next.

So music faded. Gradually. Not with a dramatic exit — just a slow drift into other things. I even spent a season as a music pastor, where singing was my entire job. And it took the fun out of it completely.

Years later, I found my way back to performing. Not as a career. Just for the love of it. I joined a theater group in the DFW area and ended up playing Maurice in Beauty and the Beast — ten shows, not an empty seat in the audience.

Something was different this time. I was just there to do my best and enjoy the ride.

In the version of the show we performed, the original script had included a duet between Belle and Maurice. But the musical’s writers had replaced it with a short solo that Maurice sings as he gets lost in the woods. The removed the duet completely. They did it because the duet weakened Belle’s character — it undercut her agency in the story.

Would I have loved singing a duet with the actress playing Belle? Absolutely. She was an incredible singer. But it’s not what the story needed. It’s not what the character needed. It told a better story without it.

And I was completely okay with that.

That’s when I knew I was a different person. The younger version of me would have been devastated. This version understood that the talent exists to serve the story — not the other way around.

I’ve been thinking about this because I just started reading Todd Henry’s Die Empty, and he talks about identifying your through line — the thread that runs through everything you do and connects it into a single coherent purpose.

My through line isn’t singing. It never was. Singing was a tool. A resource. A gift I was given that served me well for a season and still sits on the bench ready to be called up when the moment is right.

But it’s not the thing.

The thing is what I’m doing right now — writing, creating, documenting, building something that helps people see what they already have and use it on purpose. That’s the through line. Phase Defiant, the 7-40 Challenge, BiblePictures365, this blog — they’re all expressions of it. The singing, the thirty voice impressions I can do, the odd jobs I do around my house — those are resources. They’re talents. They just don’t run the show.

There’s a moment in The Wedding Singer where Robbie Hart, played by Adam Sandler, realizes something about himself. He used to play in a band. He performed at weddings. But what he really wanted wasn’t to be the guy on stage. He just wanted to express the feelings and create the things. He wanted to write songs people loved. He didn’t have to be the one up there singing them.

That’s me.

I’ve written over fifty songs. I’ve performed on stages large and small. I can sing, and I can do it well enough to hold my own. But I don’t need to be the guy on stage. I need to be the guy at the desk — writing the story, building the framework, documenting the journey, creating something that lasts longer than a performance.

If you’re reading this and you’re in that spot — talented at something, maybe even genuinely good at it, but sensing deep down that it’s not your thing — here’s what I’d tell you:

There’s a difference between what you’re talented at and what matters to you.

Start with what you value. Your family. Your faith. The work that makes you come alive. The problem you can’t stop thinking about. Then ask yourself which of your talents actually serve those values — and which ones are just things you can do.

Your talents are resources, not assignments. The through line decides which ones get deployed. And having a real gift sit on the bench isn’t waste — it’s wisdom.

Let the story decide what it needs. Not your ego.

Day 69 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer
✅ Walking
✅ Reading (Die Empty — Todd Henry)
✅ Calories tracked
✅ Water (100 oz)
✅ Gratitude
✅ Exercise
✅ BiblePictures365
✅ Creative hour

740Challenge #DieEmpty #ToddHenry #ThroughLine #TalentVsCalling #TheWeddingSinger #RobbieHart #ShowYourWork #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay #LifeOnPurpose

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

1,200 Letters

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 62 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller tells the story of the first time he met Bob Goff.

Miller and his friends had been paddling through an inlet somewhere near British Columbia when they came across a house tucked back in the water — a retreat that Bob had built for visiting world leaders. Bob saw them coming. He didn’t know who they were. He waved them in anyway.

They were wet. They smelled horrible. They had planned to stay for an hour. They stayed for almost eight.

What Miller learned during those eight hours is one of the best stories I’ve ever heard about what happens when you throw your family into a better narrative.

Bob Goff had become — I forget the official title — essentially the honorary consul for Uganda. Part of the job meant meeting with foreign diplomats, and he’d come home and told his kids he was a little nervous about it. So he asked them what they would do.

His youngest son said he’d invite them over for a sleepover. Because you get to know people better when they stay with you.

His daughter said she’d ask them what they hoped in. Which might be the best question you can ask any human being — not what do you do, not where are you from, but what do you hope in? What’s your vision for the future, and how do you hope it will happen?

Their oldest son said he’d want to record it.

And Bob, being Bob, took all three ideas and turned them into a mission. His kids wrote twelve hundred letters to world leaders around the world. The letters said, essentially: we want to know you, and we want you to know us. If you’d like to come visit, here’s a key to our home in San Diego. And if you’d rather we come to you — we will.

Twenty-nine responded. Out of twelve hundred.

And Bob kept his promise. He flew his children to every country where a leader said yes. Those kids got to hand world leaders a key to their home, ask them what they hoped in, and film the conversation. One leader actually came and stayed with them in San Diego.

What Bob realized was simple and profound: people are people, no matter where they’re from. Get past the hype, and we’re more alike than we are different.

But here’s what hit me about the story.

Bob didn’t just teach his kids about diplomacy. He gave them an inciting incident. He threw them into a story where what they thought mattered — and where what they thought led them halfway across the world to make connections they never would have made otherwise.

The children were changed by the journey. Not by reading about it. Not by watching someone else do it. By doing it themselves.

Twelve hundred letters. Twenty-nine yeses. A lifetime of stories.

I have to look at my own life right now.

Am I writing letters to dignitaries? No. But I’m standing at the edge of my own inciting incident, and it’s one I’ve been avoiding.

I am not uncomfortable with writing. I’ve been blogging for years. I have hundreds of posts out there with my opinions on everything from faith to fatherhood to data management. I am not afraid to write a book and put it online. I’m not afraid to sing a song and upload it. I’ve done these things.

When I create something and put it out into the world, it feels like giving a gift. Here it is. If it does good for you, I’d love for you to see it. I’d love for you to have it. I’d love for you to experience it the way I have.

That part doesn’t scare me.

The part that scares me is asking.

Not just “it’s here if you want it,” but “will you go look at this? Will you actually take time to consider reading what I’ve written? Will you consider buying what I’ve published? Because I think it will do good for you.”

That’s a different sentence. That’s not leaving a gift on a doorstep and walking away. That’s standing on the porch, knocking, and saying — I made this, and I believe it has value, and I’m asking you to give it your attention.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

Instead of twelve hundred letters to world leaders, I’m going to start posting to the people in my life — and the ones I haven’t met yet — and saying something I’ve never quite said before:

In case we haven’t talked in a while, this is who I am.

I may never have shown you this side of me. I may never have mentioned that I write novels, or that I’m sixty-one days into a personal transformation experiment, or that I’ve been creating daily Bible illustrations since January 1st.

But this is genuinely who I am. And I’ve done some things that I think, if you’ll go check them out, you’d really like.

Would you do that for me?

I’ll be honest. That freaks me out a little.

Not because I don’t think the work is good. I know it’s good. I’ve put too much into it to doubt that.

It’s because asking is a different kind of vulnerability than creating. Creating is between me and the work. Asking is between me and you. And “no” hits different when you’re the one who extended the invitation.

But I have a feeling — the same kind of feeling Bob Goff must have had when his kids started sealing those envelopes — that if I do this, I’ll be changed by the journey.

I’ll continue to write and create and produce things I believe are valuable. I’ll continue to want to get them in front of people who can use them. But I think something else will happen too. I’ll learn what I’m capable of. I’ll develop a confidence that can only come from stepping out and declaring to the world: this is what I want to do, and this is who I am.

Bob Goff threw his children into a story. Twelve hundred letters. Twenty-nine yeses. Changed forever.

I’m throwing myself into one. Day 62. The inciting incident isn’t the creating. It’s the asking.

Here’s my letter. I hope you open it.

Day 62 Scorecard:

✅ Bible study and prayer ✅ Gratitude ✅ Reading (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) ✅ Calories tracked ✅ Water (100 oz) ✅ BiblePictures365 (Numbers 31, 32) ✅ Exercise (Workout A with my son) ✅ Creative hour

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.