I’ve been getting the nudge recently to exercise my muscles.

“OK, OK,” I tell my health angel self. I’ll do some push-ups. Right after I eat this bowl of cereal at 9:30 PM and watch a Father Brown mystery on BritBox.

(We’ve hopped aboard the Father Brown train. It’s got the remarkably high murder rate for a small Cotswolds village, a sufficiently hubristic conclusion-jumping chief inspector, and just enough scenery and scones to make you feel cozy when you’re at day’s end exhaustion.)

But yeah, Lady Felicia screaming (she always seems to discover the bodies) isn’t a big inspiration to align my body in a perfect plank and execute push-ups.

My brain says, “Just do 25 push-ups a day” and I reply, “OK, but first, a cookie.”

I was talking to a student at the Conservatory about practicing. We were working on an exercise to get chest voice and head voice to play nice.

I said “eight minutes a day with one day off still gets you to 48 minutes of practice in a week. That’s 48 minutes you wouldn’t have banked if you told yourself, ‘Well, I don’t have an hour, and the practice rooms are full.’”

The terrific thing about being a singer is that you can practice anywhere.

You can work breath coordination walking down the sidewalk.

You can go full Carnegie Hall in your shower.

You can mark through lyrics and imagine stuff in the car or on a train.

You can even get curious about the crusty woman in line at the Boston Whole Foods and wonder, “Maybe my character in that William Finn song had a similar morning.”

Chances for layering and integration are everywhere.

I then confessed to my student that I do the same thing with exercise.

“Oh, no full free weight set-up here with inspirational music and a water cooler? I clearly can’t move my body today. I mean, I already take the stairs!”

And I said to the student, “You know, 5 pushups is better than no pushups.”

So, I got down and did 5 pushups. Not so hard! The next day, I did 6. The next….

This is a tool I picked up from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. By atomic, he means teeny — and impactful.

If a plane in Los Angeles adjusts its nose a mere 2 degrees, that’s the difference between landing in New York City and Washington DC.

What’s a thing you’ve been getting a nudge about?

Something you know would be satisfying but you say, “I rarely have time, and seriously, what difference is five pushups going to make?”

What’s the smallest representation you can make today to show yourself you value this?

Will you put your butt in a chair and write and/or look out the window for 15 minutes?

Will you find the sheet music for a song you’ve been wanting to learn?

Will you give yourself a moment to remind yourself what your values are?

I’ve found I have to go back and revisit the values I wrote down in January because I forget.

There’s a reason the Old Testament writer said, “Scribble these down everywhere and tie them on your head.” We blank. Humans slide right into entropy if we don’t attend to and nurture the things we value.

Do an experiment this week, please. 🙏

Pick one thing, and do something so small that your ego committee scoffs, “What difference will that make?”

Do it, and tomorrow, do a little more.

And when the day comes that you don’t do the thing or you forget or you eat Doritos instead, gently re-board the train the next day.

What would happen if you rode that train for a year? Future You knows the approximate depot where you’ll disembark. 

Future You also knows there’s only one you, and you’ll love it if you do what it takes to sing the song only you can sing. I say this every week because I need to hear it the most.

Now go sing!

Love much,

Dan