My foot, Puerta del Sol, Madri.
Kilometer 0.0: The Power of Daily Resets
That’s my foot, you see.
Puerta del Sol is in the heart of Madrid, in the heart of Spain. I’m at “Kilometer 0.0” … a measuring point for roads and so on, but also – *melodramatically makes sweeping gesture with his arms* – the beginning of everything.
Now, my journey to this day is an easy one. After pausing here briefly, I’m heading off to begin “daytime drinking” with a vermuth and some delicious tapas for lunch.
Meantime, on the other side of the world, Lachlan Morton has just completed a mind-bending 14,200km journey around the entirety of Australia. In just 30 days and a few hours, Morton pedalled his way into the record books, averaging a staggering 300-500km per day. With typical Australian understatement, he summed it up as, “It’s a lot of pedalling, mate.”
There’s not much overlap between Lachlan and me. He looks good in lycra, I don’t. He has thighs of steel, I don’t. He does foolish things … and I do foolish things, too, but at a different scale.
However, we do share a commitment to the power of km 0.0
“I wake up each day, and I go again,” Morton shared. It’s a framing that allowed him to break an overwhelming challenge into manageable, daily chunks. And I’m all in on it.
I’ve got an easy suggestion (compared to cycling 300km)
Rather than getting on a bike, I spend 3-5 minutes most mornings journaling.
It’s how I reset my “Kilometer 0.0” each day.
Rather than getting swept up and swept along by habit and momentum and obligation and expectation. I take those few minutes to figure out a few big things.
I’ll lay out my full approach to journaling in upcoming newsletters (because, spoiler, my Do Something That Matters Journal arrives in January, and I’m excited to start telling you about it.)
But the questions I use and the structures I think about are secondary to the discipline of taking a moment each morning to pause and breathe and think.
Just like it doesn’t matter so much at the start of the journey what type of hiking shoes you’re wearing, what brand your backpack is, and your preferred style of energy bars.
What matters is that you’re setting yourself up to head out into the new day.
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