For the past month, I have written every day. The commitment is to continue for 40 days. I’m writing my 3rd business book on customer retention and churn.
It began as a practical decision. I am working towards completing the manuscript for my third book, and I knew that waiting for clear space in the diary was not going to work. There is always another meeting, another client commitment or another piece of work that feels more immediate.
The book needed a protected place in each day.
Writing daily has created momentum. There is no need to spend the first hour trying to remember where I was or reconstruct the thinking from the previous week. The ideas remain active. The unresolved questions follow me from one day into the next.
That continuity has been one of the greatest benefits.
It has also made the thinking more rigorous.
Writing a book like this is not a stream of consciousness. An idea is only the starting point.
The idea has to become a hypothesis. The hypothesis then has to be tested against research, executive experience, practical examples and competing explanations. It has to be unpacked, challenged and reconstructed before it is ready to be written with any confidence.
Sometimes that process strengthens the original idea. Sometimes it reveals that the idea was flawed. That can be one of the most frustrating parts of the work.
Several days may have been spent developing an argument, researching it, writing it and beginning to connect it to the broader manuscript. Then a contradiction appears. A discussion exposes a weakness. A piece of evidence does not support the conclusion. The logic no longer holds.
The work has to begin again. It can feel like time has been lost, particularly when the deadline is approaching, and the discarded pages were hard won.
But the alternative is worse.
A weak idea does not become stronger because a great deal of time has already been invested in it. It simply becomes a weak idea carried further into the manuscript.
When you return to the same subject every day, weak thinking becomes harder to avoid. An argument that appeared convincing on Monday can look far less certain by Thursday. A paragraph may be well written but still not say anything particularly useful. Sometimes an entire section has to be reconsidered because one sentence exposes a flaw in the logic.
This is the difference between producing words and resolving an idea. Some days, the progress is visible. Pages are written. Chapters move forward. The word count increases. Other days, several hours of work might result in the removal of three pages.
Those days can feel unproductive, but they are often where the real progress happens.
The process requires research, synthesis, critical thinking and perspective-taking. Research provides the evidence and context, but it does not provide the argument.
Synthesis involves looking across different sources, industries and executive experiences to identify what may be connected. Critical thinking tests whether those patterns are meaningful or simply convenient. Perspective-taking requires stepping outside the organisation’s view of the problem and considering how the same situation may be understood by the customer.
Each stage has a different purpose. The challenge is not simply to describe what is already known. It is to look at an obvious and familiar problem from a different point of view.
Most business problems come with an established language, accepted measures and familiar assumptions. Over time, those assumptions can become so embedded that they are no longer questioned.
The opportunity is to return to the known problem and ask whether we have been looking at it from the only perspective available, or simply the perspective most visible to us. That is where a different interpretation can begin to emerge. Not by inventing a new problem, but by seeing the existing problem from a position that has received less attention.
The unknown is often not completely separate from what we already understand. It may be sitting inside the familiar, obscured by the way we have chosen to define, measure and discuss it.
Finding that different perspective takes time.
It also requires a willingness to let go of ideas that are interesting but unsupported, language that sounds persuasive but lacks precision, and conclusions that extend beyond the evidence.
Alongside the writing, I have now held nearly 20 discussions with executives and senior leaders across different industries. These conversations have become an essential part of the process, not because they provide ready-made answers, but because they continually challenge the assumptions behind the work.
A few things have stood out.
The first is how generous experienced leaders are when they are invited into a genuine discussion rather than asked to perform as experts. The most valuable moments often occur when someone pauses and says, “I have never thought about it that way,” or when they disagree with the premise altogether. Those moments create far more value than polite confirmation.
The second is that the strongest insights rarely arrive fully formed. They emerge across conversations. One leader describes a problem in one industry. Another explains a similar tension using entirely different language. A third provides an example that reveals what the first two observations may have in common. The insight is often found in the pattern, not in the individual quote.
The third is that research does not always make writing easier.
It frequently makes it harder. Every new perspective adds complexity. It tests the boundaries of the argument. It creates exceptions that must be considered. It forces greater care in separating what appears to be happening from what can reasonably be claimed. That is the standard I want the book to meet.
The downside of writing every day is that it is mentally relentless. There is very little distance from the work. Even when I am not at my desk, I am often still thinking about a question, a contradiction or something that does not yet feel right. The discipline that creates momentum can also become exhausting.
Writing a book is not simply a creative exercise. It requires sustained decision-making. What belongs? What does not? Is the evidence strong enough? Is the idea genuinely different, or simply familiar thinking expressed in new language? Is the argument clear enough for a reader who has not spent months living with it?
There is also the emotional swing between confidence and doubt. One day, the manuscript feels as though it is coming together. The next, the same work can feel incomplete and uncertain. I have learnt that neither feeling is particularly reliable.
After more than 30 consecutive days, I am tired. I am also much further into the work than I would have been without the commitment. The 40-day discipline has not made the writing effortless. It has made avoidance more difficult. It has created a daily confrontation with the work, including the sections that are uncomfortable, unresolved or not yet good enough.
Perhaps that is the real value of the exercise. Not the number of words written. Not the number of days completed. The willingness to develop an idea, test it, discard it when necessary and begin again.
And to keep returning to a familiar problem until a different perspective becomes visible.