Yesterday, I started building a paper clip chain to track my progress on my goal of walking for at least 45-minutes each day for 40 days in a row. That single paper clip looked very lonely hanging next to my home office door. I’m happy to announce that it now has a friend, and I must admit that the pair seem like a perfect match.

Yesterday I was reasonably motivated to walk. I’m not sure why, but I was. This morning, I really didn’t want to go. I looked at that little lonely paper clip and decided that I would go ahead and do it. I’m really glad that I did now.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve tried several things to motivate me to walk. For a while I listened to motivational audio books and podcasts on my MP3 player while I walked. For a while I listened to fiction audio books while I walked. My own neighborhood gets a little boring after a few days, so I’ve tried walking other nearby neighborhoods. All of these things have eventually became boring to me.

Right now, it seems like using my walking time as “thinking time” is the best use of my time. I’m not really paying much attention to the neighborhood. As I build the Ricky Spears brand and look to expand Spears Technologies, Inc., I certainly have plenty to think about, and over the past two mornings, this has been very valuable time.

Yesterday at Lifehacker.com, Gina posted a Quote of the Day that seems particularly relevant to this:

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I have a high degree of confidence that my morning walking routines is going to have a major impact on my life success, in more ways than one.