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Go to the Plate and Swing the Bat · The Daily Writer

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for writing success.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, yesterday on our episode, we talked about the value of hitting singles, and the main idea was this: if you focus on getting small wins every day, you'll eventually win the game.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at this from another perspective.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Recently I was doing a little 90s musical reminiscing and I was listening to some Backstreet Boys.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, don't judge me, just suspend your judgment for a second.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it dawned on me as I was listening to the Backstreet Boys that I only knew a couple of their songs.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this got me thinking, the Backstreet Boys have only had a few big hits over the years, even though they've been making music since the mid-1990s.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And with nine studio albums under their belts, that's not really a great batting average.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you compare nine studio albums versus just a few big radio hits, that's not really so great.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the interesting thing: it's the same story for almost every popular musical artist.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: On average, a full-length album might have only one or two big hits on it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of a little discouraging if you think about it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the same holds true in other industries.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: If we go back to the baseball analogy that we were talking about yesterday, my research shows that the Major League Baseball batting average for 2019, so this has been a little while back, but it's probably still true today, it was 0.252.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now that means that baseball players, on average, are successful, quote unquote.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're successful less than 30% of the time.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if a professional baseball player has a 300 batting average, they're considered excellent.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my point.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: We can't expect to hit a home run every time that we write or create.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever written something and expected people to immediately love it?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you wrote an article, a book, or a social media post and felt disappointed that it wasn't a home run in your eyes.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you felt frustrated that it didn't get the likes, it didn't get the reviews or the traction that you expected.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at both the music industry and the baseball industry as a standard, we will have hits, quote unquote, less than three out of ten times.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, does this mean the other seven attempts are failures?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think so.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it does mean three specific things.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, it means that you don't get to choose what is successful and what is not.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Your job is to write consistently with excellence and let other people decide what is a hit.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, every time you're at bat, quote unquote, it's practice.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you step up to the plate, you're putting in the work, you're developing your craft, and you're getting better all the time.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then number three, games are normally won or lost by singles.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this means that you shouldn't denigrate the value of a small chunk of work.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those small chunks of work add up over time.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The author Seth Godin has been publishing a daily blog post for, I think at this point, well over a decade, probably a lot longer.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And many times his books are made up of those blog posts, and those little chunks of daily work have allowed him to have a very, very successful career as a writer.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the fact of the matter is that you can't control whether somebody else will love your work.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many factors of play that it's it's almost impossible to engineer a hit.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the more times you step up to the plate and the more times you swing the bat, the more likely it is that you'll get that occasional hit.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So today, don't worry about hitting a home run.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just focus on hitting a single.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or to put it in artistic terms, be like Michelangelo and keep chip chip chipping away at that marble until your masterpiece is done.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, those little victories add up quickly.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your daily question Is your desire to have a big hit keeping you from achieving a small win every day?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at daily riderlife.com.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.