I’m an artist, most would say I’m a writer, I’m writing this in a Moleskine with a Zebra F-301 pen, the ones with the great smelling ink. When I get to my MacBook Pro it’ll be transferred into TextMate and when I think of a title it’ll be copied into Scrivener. Between those steps ideas for this essay will be typed into my iPhone using Simplenote and then synced to my Mac with Notational Velocity ALT. There will probably also be a Field Notes Brand Notebook and Space Pen involved. These are my tools. I trust them and keep them at the ready. My system is redundant and the only holes are human error.

All these things: the pens, the notebooks, the applications and the gadgets are magical to me, but a fucking Moleskine didn’t write any of my stories. Simplenote is not a muse whispering in my ear and a Space Pen didn’t make me a writer.

Even the process I’ve made for creating stories seems magical to me, but it’s just a series of actions that have proven to work well for me, at least for now. I’ve tried a lot of different ways to create, I’ve read a lot of books on how to create and I’ve only learned one universal truth while doing so, no matter what you do you have to keep trying. There are no shortcuts. Sometimes these shortcuts seem like they work, but they just leave you wanting an even simpler, easier, less frictional way to create. It makes you lazy and it makes you addicted to finding the one thing that will make you a great artist. The great shortcut. The holy grail to genius. The one thing keeping you back. It stagnates you.

There is no shortcut or life hack that will make you who you want to be instantly.

The greatest life hack is discipline. I wish I learned it sooner, I wish I wasn’t still learning it now, I wish I had it mastered. It might be better to say discipline is a muscle I wish I had exercised more.

If you’re looking for that one thing that will make you write that novel, lose that twenty pounds, run that marathon, or what ever you want to do, it’s discipline now. Not discipline starting Monday. Not discipline after one last cookie. Not discipline in the new year. It’s discipline now.

You’re future self is just as lazy as your present self. If you don’t start it now, chances are you’ll never start it. You’ll keep putting it off. You’ll keep dreaming and not producing results. Stop telling yourself that you’ll do something in X amount of time. Tell yourself you can screw off after an X amount of time. This is not a new idea, you’ve been told it all your life, get it done now so you don’t have to worry about it later.

I’m just figuring this stuff out myself. I’m just now figuring out not to worship your tools but to use them and not be afraid to use them. Anything idea is worthy of paper in any notebook no matter how much it cost. You can even put it in the Moleskine you dropped a Jefferson on. If you can’t do that, carry around a composition book that will only set you back a Washington. Feel free to bend that metaphor in anyway that makes you more productive. Really, if you can only run your five miles wearing a matching track suit somedays wear it, but run your god damn five miles everyday until you realize it’s okay not to match.