Living life one-pearl-at-a-time.
How to build identity through repeated daily action.
Welcome to EFFIGIES, a weekly newsletter offering actionable insights from my journey through reading and writing comics, designed to inspire you towards building a better life. To become our best selves, we must burn away who we are today.
What’s Inside:
My need to build better habits if I wanted to be a comic book writer.
James Clear, Atomic Habits, and the power of small beginnings.
Dr. Phil Stutz’ String of Pearls concept explained.
How to build identity through consistent, small daily actions.
I was talking with a friend the other day and she said to me: "I think the only habit I have is that I can’t form any good habits.” It was a small throwaway comment, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.
Little things like that have a way of growing.
If you’ve ever sat down to write, you know that even getting to the chair can be a painful experience some days. This is true for so many things in life. And some days, you can get by on grit. You can force yourself to the chair and type. But I figured out very early on that this approach isn’t sustainable.
If I wanted to be a comic book writer, I’d need to find ways to build better habits.
Small Beginnings.
Over the years, I’ve found lots of ways to build habits and to get writing done. But during the pandemic, I discovered James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. Clear’s thoughtful and scientific frameworks for forming (and breaking) habits are second to none. If there were 5 books that I would recommend to anyone, this book would hands-down be on the list.
There are probably over 200 quotes from Atomic Habits that resonated with me, but there’s one I think about pretty much every day:
"All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger."
There’s something very simple and very beautiful in the idea of growing a habit (and yourself) through small, daily repetition. I think Clear’s use of the word “seed” is purposeful, too. I live not-too-far from Muir Woods (aka Endor), home of the California Redwoods. Every day for the last 700 years (255,675 days) or so, these trees repeated to key actions: they’ve collected nutrients in their roots and sunlight in their leaves. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. And now, they are among the tallest trees on this planet because of simple daily repetition.
We don’t have to be trees to leverage this beautifully simple framework, but I do think we need one additional idea to create a solid habit-engine.
String of Pearls.
Clear’s idea of simple daily repetition reminded me of another framework that has helped me build better habits. In the 2022 Netflix documentary Stutz, the titular Dr. Phil Stutz’ life and teachings are explored. One of the concepts Stutz discusses is the “String of Pearls” theory.
In the documentary, Stutz draws a string of pearls on a piece of paper and explains that each pearl is an action.. Every action is important, but no more or less than the others. Then Stutz explains, "I am the person that puts the next pearl on the string.”
Stutz adds, for me, a key additional layer to the idea of daily repetition — performing the daily action is about forming habits as much as it is about forming identity. He doesn’t just want to put pearls on the string each day. He wants to be the kind of person who does.
This is the difference between doing something and becoming someone. When you think of a habit as just a thing that needs to get done, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, it won’t stick. But when you form an identity around doing that thing, the action becomes part of who you are. It becomes inherent.
Questions.
So how do we put this into action? As I’ve said before (and will say many more times in the future), it starts with good questions. Let’s work backward.
Question 1: What is the identity I am trying to cultivate?
You can’t know the path if you don’t know the destination. In this case, you need to know who you are trying to be. Do you want to get in better shape? Do you want to paint? What is the identity you want to cultivate?
Identity: Comic book writer
Question 2: What daily actions belong to that identity?
Once you know who you want to be, the next step is to identify the daily action of that person. What is a singular action that is built into the DNA of that identity?
Daily Action: Comic book writers write comic book script pages.
It doesn’t have to be just a single action either. There may be a handful of key daily actions that reinforce the identity you want. If you want to get in better shape, you’d focus on your nutrition and put in time at the gym. If you wanted to be a painter, you’d practice brush strokes and study the masters. But remember, you want to focus on the most important actions.
Point is, you want to identify those 1-3 actions that reinforce the identity you’re trying to make your own.
Question 3: Did I perform the daily actions today?
Finally, ask yourself: Did I perform my daily actions today? This step requires a healthy amount of self-evaluation and honesty. If you performed the action, your identity is reaffirmed for another day. That’s who you are. You put the pearl on the string.
If you didn’t perform the action, being honest about that can be hard, painful even. Ignoring the truth and making excuses doesn’t serve us, though. No matter what identity you’re trying to curate for yourself, one of your key daily actions is always to honestly self-evaluate.
Honest Self-Evaluation: Yes, I wrote pages of comic script today.
It’s also important to remember that we all stumble. If you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up. Guilt doesn’t serve us, either. Instead, make extra sure to be the person you want to be tomorrow. And the next day. The goal is to string as many pearls together for as many consecutive days as you can.
Framework: Building Identity.
When you stack quality questions, you can create powerful solutions. Being the person you want to be probably isn’t as hard as you think.
Use these three questions to adopt any identity and be the person you want to be:
Identity - What is the identity you want to create?
Action(s) - What are the key actions of the identity?
Honesty - Did you perform those key actions today?
I am a comic book writer. A comic book writer writes script pages. I put another pearl on the string today.
Who are you trying to be? What daily action does that kind of person repeat each day? Did you put the next pearl on your string today?
- Frank
I’m Frank Gogol, writer of comics such as Dead End Kids, No Heroine, Unborn, Power Rangers, and more. If this newsletter was interesting / helpful / entertaining…
You can also check out some back issues of the newsletter:
After Credit Scene
I’m a bit under the weather this week AND still catching up from a some quick travel this past weekend, so nothing too deep here. Between planes and hanging out in bed, I finally finished reading through all of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Criminal this week, though.
I’d put it off because I was sure that, had I read it before writing the final volume of Dead End Kids, I would have been too influenced — and I was right. These are, for me, some of the best crime stories of the last two decades. So if you’ve never read then, I strongly encourage you to check them out, especially if you liked DEK.