The lesson that took me 17 years to learn

_{Day 155/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

I’m hunched over a light‑box, dragging a 2B across paper for the 100th identical ball today. Squash. Stretch. Arc.

No music, just that scratch‑scratch rhythm and the steady drip of self‑doubt:

“Does any of this even look good?”

At 24 drawings a second, those two seconds of animation will swallow 48 frames and hours of graphite‑grinding repetition.

Back then I only saw the smudged pages piling up beside the desk.

I couldn’t see the body of work I was quietly stacking for Future‑Me.

Seventeen years later the penny finally drops:

Make Your Loops Intentional

What does this have to do with writing? Everything.

We already run loops - refreshing inboxes, doom‑scrolling dashboards, fidget‑checking Slack. They’re unplanned reps that make us twitchy, not talented.

Flip the mechanic.

Pick the craft you wanna be great at, and make it a daily.

For writing that could look like:

• One opening hook before the kettle boils.

• A micro‑analogy while code compiles.

• A CTA right before shutdown.

Do that for 365 days and you’ll have 365 live‑fire reps. That’s compound interest for skills: invisible for months, then sudden as a slap.

We’re all accidentally good at habits we never chose—answering Slack pings, skimming briefs, topping up coffee.

Proof the reps work.

So what happens when you aim the reps at a skill you actually care about?

I’m 155 newsletters deep - roughly 77,000 public words—and only now feel the first tremor of competence. Why hammer send every day?

1. It grows Penfriend.

2. It grows the list.

3. It’s my dojo. A promise to get really fucking good.

One day today’s words will pay for tomorrow’s flights. Daily practice is the ticket.

Intentional loops beat accidental ones. Swap the mindless scroll for deliberate reps and watch outsiders call it “talent.”

The 5‑10 Frame Head‑Start

You don’t have to wait for volume to sneak up on you.
On Day One crank out the first ten reps:

1. Draft ten subject lines.

2. Sketch ten openings.

3. Spin ten CTA variations.

Give Future‑You something chunky to look back on sooner.

See you tomorrow.

✌️ Tim "Drop and give me 20!" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. I wrote 12 newsletter before I sent my first one.
Let today be day one. Reply to this email with the thing you’re gonna do, and I’ll add a reminder to my cal to ask how it’s going in 10 days.

Penfriend.ai
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