JUSTIN ROGERS

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Practice

Cause and effect

August 19, 2026

Cause and effect is important to notice. They say if you don’t measure it, it can’t improve.

Some things are easy to measure. How many words you wrote on a page. How much weight you can lift at the gym. Other things are harder to pin down.

But if we can figure out a way to quantify the things we actually want to improve, to measure them somehow, we start to see the cause and effect of our own actions. When I do this, this happens. And once you can see that, you can adjust.

So what do you want to improve at? And how can you measure it, so you can actually improve it?

Learning backwards

August 7, 2026

“How do you learn all those lines?”

Actors get asked this all the time- and honestly I don’t know the answer!

But here’s what I’m trying…

I started learning the script from Act 2. Then I worked my way backwards through Act 1.

Why?

Act 1 Scene 1 is too loaded.

Even in the line learning phase, it’s hard not to imagine, dry mouthed, pupetting yourself out onstage for that first moment of the show.

I’d also end up going over that section over and over again if I started there.

So I just mixed it up. Actor’s are time travellers, anyway. We don’t relate to sequence, we relate to emotion; that’s our only timeline.

Is the order you’re doing something in helping or hindering you?

A place for the project

July 17, 2026

Special things require special places.

A beautiful gift is seen as beautiful because it’s in a lovely and thoughtful box.

We remember to use our tooth brush because it has a little home in the bathroom.

I’m about to begin rehearsing a show and I wondered why my relationship to the actual script wasn’t feeling as strong as other projects.

I realised it was because the script was floating around the house in random places; it didn’t have a home.

So yesterday I hole punched each section and put it neatly in ring binder. Everything I need to do that work is in one place.

When I look at the folder I get a little gleeful flutter. That project has a little home now and I’m much more likely to do do productive work with it.

You get what you see every day

May 31, 2026

They say you have to look at your goals everyday.

Why?

It’s so simple it seems silly. You actually just need to remember where you’re going.

Don’t get stressed by the how, just look and remember what you want.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to forget goals- and if you forget them you can also forget about ever attainting them

It’s amazing how just by seeing and remembering what you want helps the universe conspire for you to achieve it.

Two options

May 26, 2026

In the pursuit of something you want to do or make happen, there are two options that might run through your mind:

  1. The thing goes really well! Perfectly, in fact. You exceed all your ecpectations and you enjoy the process.
  2. It goes terribly, terribly wrong.

I don’t know about you, but my brain LOVES to picture option 2. But just like when you buy a new shirt and suddenly see it everywhere, you tend to get what you focus on.

Let’s spend no energy on option 2.

Let’s spend it all on option 1, shall we?

Passion cuts through

May 13, 2026

You might not need killer productivity

Or the best ideas

and you might not to be the best.

All you need it passion. That vital SPARK that emboldens others, makes them their best and brings out your best.

I’m pretty sure just priming this state each day is about 80% of the battle.

You just have to do it

May 6, 2026

You know the one.

The task that would actually only take 7 minutes and thirty seconds to do…

But you keep putting it off.

Here’s your chance to get it done.

Too much too soon

April 24, 2026

It’s new years day and you have a big beautiful piece of paper in front of you. It’s got scribbles in different colours with words and sentences of all different sizes; this is you LIFE PLAN.

It’s so exciting! You can see it all there in front of you. The energy of the fresh cup of coffee coupled with the momentum of the first day of January has hit you hard and this grand plan represents your entire vision.

This was me on new years day- I had the added inspiration of being on the beach at Oakura Bay in the north of New Zealand. My inspiration quickly turned to overwhelm. I had no trouble getting all my visions and goals down on the page. But just a few hours later I looked at the page again. What was once a battery pack that charged me up with energy now seemed like the opposite- I felt drained and daunted by what lay in front of me.

Inspiration isn’t enough.

Being inspired feels great, doesn’t it? New Years Day does it, but we see these moments in other bursts throughout the year too. The beginning of term or the start of a new flashy program at school… these ‘launch’ moments have a tendency to burn bright and burn fast. The problem isn’t the vision, we need a clear direction. The problem is too much too soon.

One of the grand goals I had was for the kids I was teaching to have a full Te Reo exchange with me at the beginning of class. I barreled into our first session together and began laying out a multi-step greeting and conversation exchange… It felt exciting and new and I got some great initial progress. But the next time I went in, the kids had forgotten and each subsequent lesson I had to start from scratch. The kids were over chunked; it was too much too soon.

Out of frustration one day, I decided to drop it. So I just did the opening greeting. Some of them remembered it… cool! I drilled it again for those still not confident. The next few lessons I just did the same.

What I’d hoped would take me one lesson actually took more like six- but I was stoked.

I learned to use the moments of inspiration as the ‘lift off’ and chunk down the subsequent bits. It doesn’t all have to feel like the raging fire of a rocket taking off.

Sometimes it’s just striking a match.

And when you strike enough of them, you get a pretty bright light.

The working out is in the doing.

March 15, 2026

One of my favourite flavours of procrastination is planning. There’s an action I know I need to take and when I finally get a moment to take the action, I spend the whole time planning.

Now, this isn’t always a bad thing. The whole “spend time sharpening the axe” thing is true and valid.

But if you find yourself never cutting any trees down you might have yourself a problem.

If we get trapped in the planning phase and find ourselves stuck “working things out” it’s probably time to just jump in and do it.

Just imagine yourself at a gym. You don’t have to work anything out to work out.

The working out is in the doing.

It’s time to stop planning, I think.

Monday Move

February 13, 2026

What is a Monday Move?

A Monday Move is how your Saturday morning dreaming is put into action.

You’re out to coffee with your friend on a Saturday and you are both dreaming of that big amazing goal. It’s easy to picture it, the details fill themselves in and you have a glistening masterpiece in your head.

The trick is turning that vision into a Monday Move.

What do you do on Monday?

Why “Monday”? Well Monday has strong “back to work” connotations in the culture. It implies getting to reality.

Why “moves”? Well like a chess move, a really good move isn’t random. It’s calculated. It’s a step toward. It’s also just a move. Not a whole dance.

Monday Moves are there to remind us to to bring the glistening dream to the reality of Monday and do something about it.

What’s your Monday Move?

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