Month: November 2021

Support Your Focus Part 3

Support sour focus is a strange kind of thinking but it’s a true need. Let’s dip into this concept. You need to have a support system for your focus outside of the writing. Your work is not just the result of your writing time. It is everything you do in your day. You bring all of it to the table when you sit down to write. If you want your A game when you sit down, you have to have an A game support system the rest of the day so that it can replenish your focus resources and build new reserves.

Be Active

One of the keys to keep your focus strong is getting the blood out of our feet and into our heads. We also need to build our capacity for work, aka our physical fitness. We need fitness for focus. For the writer this is available at two times during our day. One is found while writing and the second is found in the rest of the day.

The power break

Taking breaks at regular intervals while you are working maximizes our reserves, allowing us to maintain peak productivity. When we are writing these breaks can be as short as five minutes and as long as half an hour at the end of our twenty five or fifty minute work periods. Yes, the Pomodoro system is based on this concept. For the writer these breaks allow us to clear our minds and let the subconscious do its thing with the work while it allows the body to sustain longer work times.

Using your break times for surfing on line or similar online distractions do not yield much gain. These power breaks work best when we get some body movement in.

You do not have to put in a Tobata or some other short type of workout, though you could do that for a break during a longer series should you want to blend in a more vigorous approach. You do not have to be this aggressive though.

Most people will be happy to know we get excellent results just standing up and walking around at your normal walking pace so that you can circulate the blood. So get up walk, walk some stairs, go to the toilet, get out of the building for a minute or two and breathe deep, look out a window if you cannot go out, stretch a bit and again breathe deep. Movement refreshes the body and the mind while prepping you for the next round.

My take on supporting your focus

I have used these kinds of breaks for years. Even an hour of writing in the evening runs better when broken up by a five or ten minute moving break. When you remember that being too sedentary is a big problem these days, these simple breaks can be part of your cure along with better focus and higher quality production. Total win win.

They are not limited to your writing time either. The same technique can be spread throughout your day with either 25 minute or 50 minute work periods to maximize your energy and focus for the day.

The rest of your day

Aside from breaking up your day there are other things you can do regularly to support and improve your focus.

Fitness

Being fit has been proven to improve both focus and energy. You don’t have to be a marathon runner either to achieve the laser like focus that runners do. Though if you do happen to be an endurance athlete or aspire to be one there are plenty of writers like Haruki Murakami or Joyce Carol Oats, among others, to draw inspiration from. You can read a better line of thought from Oats in To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet or Nick Ripatrazone’s Why Writers Run

You can skip the hard core, just going for a walk, swimming or adding other low impact workouts still reduce stress, improve health, and strengthens your focus for writing. Plus some exercise and fresh air does wonders for excellent sleep, which is so essential for all kinds of mental skills from hatching your plots, avoiding deus ex machina and of course focus.

Plan as you go

Keeping a note book or pad on hand to take notes when ideas come through out your day is a great way to improve your focus while writing. When we know what we are going to write about focus becomes more natural.

To support your focus practice focus

Focus is like any other skill. We get better when we do it more. Learning to stay focused does not happen overnight. You need to learn it and then practice.

Another common problem can be trouble keeping a schedule. You are fine. Experiment to find what works for you.

If you fail to write for weeks or years, how do you avoid discouragement long enough to start? Like Nike. Just Do It. Make yourself sit and write, even just ten minutes. You could use micro habits to build the practice and as a fall back for those days you are tempted to skip. Find the smallest part of your task you can do. Make it so small that you can not come up with a reason not to do it. Then place that micro habit at a point in your day where you cannot avoid it. The classic example of this is building the habit of daily flossing by starting with just one tooth every day for the first five days. Five days gives you the habit. Building off of it happens rapidly.

Writing is no different. Put down the equivalent of flossing just one tooth, like say write just five words and quit. No more no less for the first five days. Then let yourself build your habit from there. It also helps if the work is something you care about since our emotions do give us energy to do things we care about. You can use anything that works.

Make your schedule a habit

Having a schedule for our days builds a mental pattern for us to lock into so we can tap into our natural flow. It allows us to write when our focus is at its peak and custom build your schedule to meet your needs. Write when you want to. That can be before breakfast, a couple hours in the afternoon or an hour before bed. Even just seven hours on weekends. When does not matter. The only thing that matters is consistency and regularity over time.

When you first start, develop the habit to write first. The reason is till your writing is more of a habit, and even after to some degree, writing can take more time than you will expect from interruptions, illness and unforeseen technical problems. You will avoid much frustration if you work your projects without a schedule till you have enough experience to know how long a given amount of work will take.

So skip setting a dead line for finishing a novel by January 1 or writing a blog post every Monday. Avoid the overwhelm, the need to pull an all nighter or even just giving up on the project. Skip writing deadlines, along with deadlines for all the other writing tasks from research to edits on through to rereading, in favor of using chunks of time at regular intervals. You will give yourself a better chance for success.

Getting back to work

Schedules are often made just to fail. Life happens. Things need to get done.

It is not uncommon for issues from kids to selling the house come between you and your schedule. You are going to lose writing time at times.

What can you do?

Go with the flow and then get back into the schedule as soon as you get past dealing with life’s curve ball. Consider adapting your schedule that you loved to the new situation. Completely revise it if you need to. You can also use what I call habit keepers to ride things through, or bare bone minimums that you cannot skip. For instance you can peel back your writing to just five minutes instead of an hour but keep your normal start time.

The thing to remember is that your feelings and thoughts can fool you into thinking your work is not all that important. You wind up procrastinating. The longer you do that the harder it gets to jump back into the game. Don’t wait too long. Jump into the ice filled water.

Feelings and thoughts

One of the bigger false realities comes from what you feel or think. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, feel fear or dread or worry, or have that critic in your head going off on how your writing is not any good and that you can’t complete it. We can easily feel tired or think we are too distracted to write right now.

The reality is you are not your thoughts or your feelings. Thoughts are, as the monks say monkies chattering in your mind. They are nothing more than the habitual thoughts you have picked up from others. Your feelings are the emotional responses to your thoughts and conditioned responses. Become aware of them both, but let them pass through your head without attention. Don’t let them stop you from getting to your work. Make the choice to write, then act on it.

One practice is to free write for a chunk of time, say twenty minutes. As you fall into a groove the critic and feelings will fade away. It may take time but it will happen.

You can’t do it all

The fact is we all have things we like to do besides writing. We have desires to hit the beach, go skiing, hang with friends, almost anything that is fun and easy. Social media is a huge addictive distraction for many.

The only choice we have is to make cuts and simplify our lives in other areas so we can work on our writing. Ask yourself the hard questions “Are you going to write or not?” “Is your novel going to be ship ed?” Be choosy. Find what you really can live without then move some writing into that slot. Be sure to keep some healthy activities like eating right, staying active and spending time with family and friends.

The key for better focus really comes down to commitment and work. Make the commitment and do the work. Supporting your focus will give you gains. It is also very useful when you are in the belly of the beast.

Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

Writers Get Physical Focus Part 2

Writers, get physical focus and improve how you interact outside your head when you are writing. With just a few simple changes you can actually support the focus in your head with things outside your head. All we need do to is make a few changes we do outside our heads. So let’s look at how we can do that.

Get some real paper

Sure everyone loves their computers. I would not be able to work without one neither would most writers. They have their purposes, but when it comes to getting our ideas crystal clear in our heads, you need to get focus. There are times when we need to focus our minds most. It is then that paper that rules. Why? Because paper is something physical you can touch. We learn by touch. Touching something like pen and paper, changes the way we thing and allows a deeper focus.

I use both my computer and paper in my work. I’ve found that I get a better flow from the start if I do a little of the planning and sweep my mental decks a bit with paper and pen. I also get a better rough draft if I write longhand at times then transcribe for the edits and rewrites. It depends on the project.

Clear the mental deck

I like to clear my mental decks every morning by free writing three pages by hand. Getting all the mental junk and any of the negative emotions out of my head allows me to uncluttered my thinking for the rest of my writing. It also seems to have a carry over for the rest of the day. I do seem to think better when I freewrite in the mornings. While freewriting I may write on anything but my work or I might find an idea for my book or blog.

It does not matter. I am focusing my mind to the work that is coming along. I’m grateful that so many writers, thinkers and artists that passed on the wisdom to use pen and paper first to me. I have seen variations of it from Steve Jobs on thinking clean to Julia Cameron (Moring Pages) to Pamela Hodges who teaches that doodling is a great way to kill writer’s block.

Set your deadlines

Deadlines are a fact of life for a writer. Neither your love or your hate matter to your deadline. Deadlines are a fact if you are going to be productive, much more so if you have bills to pay and a need for food. The only choice is which kind of misery does one choose, to have nothing done or plain productive misery?

Deadline positive

You can use deadlines to your advantage. Sure you still need your weekly and monthly deadlines for projects, but they are useful in other places too. A deadline can be a set for shorter periods to increase productivity and decrease drudgery by setting a target for how much work you need done before lunch. You can use them in micro writing sprints of five minutes. Word counts can even be tracked to see how much better you are getting over time or as a target to hit consistently for a week or month as a challenge.

When we set deadlines we focus better because we know exactly what we will do before we even sit down. When I make my deadlines I feel more confident and know that I am improving my skills.

Set your pattern

Humans are creatures of habit. Without a good series of habits, a pattern, in our lives we tend to rely on our feelings to guide how we get things done. When we harness hour habits into a repeatable daily work pattern we harness the control mechanism of our days. A solid working pattern will make you more consistent and focused in your practice.

It is not even just our writing pattern that matters. How we lead the rest of our lives matters as well. For instance there is a study that shows how many famous writers’ sleep habits gave them more focus and made them more productive. In the end consistency is one of the keys to success in writing and life. An effective plan just makes a lot of sense.

Set your place

This idea is both simple and complex. You need to know where you can write. Just as no two writers are exactly alike, so too no two places are going to be as effective for you.

For me, I have tried to write in many places from buses to restaurants. Most of them never worked too well. Some worked really well. The breakthrough for me was when I found that I preferred the more silent and emptier places, like large spaces in old libraries and espresso shops when the customer traffic was low. I also adapted. When I first had kids they made such a fuss that I could not think, but these days I can hear two teens bickering and just blow them off. I still cannot do this outside of my own house though.

The key is to be on the lookout for places where your production is high. A friend of mine swears by crowded buses and large scale sporting events. For him he needs the energy of the crowd to lock down.

Mindset

A little meditation

Now how about when we become distracted and lose our focus? Is the day lost or can we reclaim it? For that we have meditation. Not the spiritual kind. The best meditation for a writer comes from those times we need to calm the mind down so we can concentrate. Focusing on our breathing is just the right tool for the job. It works too.

Here are the guidelines:

Set your timer for 10 minutes. That’s all the time you need. The timer removes worry over the time and lost focus.

Keep pen and paper at hand in case you have an insight you want to remember.

Get comfortable. Choose a seated position that works for you, just do not choose one that relaxes you so much that you go to sleep. Sitting cross-legged or any other position that puts your feet closer to your buttocks is great. The more compact our legs are to the heart, the easier it is for the heart to work. Less stress means more concentration.

Close your eyes. Become aware of your breath. Feel the body’s tension as you inhale and exhale, place your focus on the exhale and relax consciously as the air leaves the body.

Next move your awareness to your nose. Feel the air enter and leave through the nose.

Keep your mind focused on the air entering and leaving through the nose. Just observe the flow. When you catch yourself wandering from watching the breath, just move your thoughts back to the breath and observing the feeling in the nose.

It’s not uncommon to be unable to focus on the nose in the beginning. Just count the breaths one to ten then start back at one. If you miss or lose count, just start with one.

Continue to count and watch the breath till the timer goes off.

Getting in your head

Talk to a specific person.

It’s easier to talk to a friend or someone you know. So use your imagination and pretend you are talking to them while you are writing. Ask yourself, “What can I say to Bill about this topic or book chapter?”

Notice tightness when you start to write.

That tightness is tension. You don’t want to write and would rather do something else. Recognize it and let the tightness go. Relax. Enjoy your work.

Watch for the urge to do something else.

Watch only. Do not act on the impulse, instead let it come and then go away. Then back to work.

Bonus observation:

Relax and enjoy the work itself.

Do the work for the work itself. Not for the money or the productivity or anything else. The work is its own reward. Viewing your work in this way allows you to set up a biofeedback loop that revitalizes you for just having done the day’s work. This is the same kind of loop that a daily swimmer or runner gets when they hit the laps or run first thing in the morning. They may start out feeling lousy and out of sorts, but by the end they are back in sync with themselves and the world.

Acts create perfection

Last piece of advice comes from Margaret Atwood. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

Physical focus is a great tool, especially when you have that long project you want to finish. Here’s an article to help. Finish Your Long Project In 11 Steps

Photo by Joshua Gresham on Unsplash

Ability to Focus Part 1




The ability to focus is one of the key writer skills that really determines whether the writer will actually get the work done. It is also not a magical or inherited trait either, nor is it a talent. Focus is a skill that can be learned, practiced and mastered.

“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.” ~William Faulkner

I love that mindset. So many of the classic writers have said this very sentiment so very often that you might think it as natural to us as swimming is to a duck…So why do we struggle to get there and how do you get to that point in your own process? Well then I guess it is time to talk …

Let’s talk focus

Writers need the ability to focus on many different areas from the business of writing itself to the actual work. In the end the real goal is not the process of focusing that we really want but to get the work finished. That is what we want, but if we are not careful we can miss the target because of a lack of focus. So how do we get those words done?

We need a plan, a process and a frame of mind. Most importantly we need a method to reach that frame of mind long enough to effectively get the work done.

Setup your ability to focus

How you go about your focus setup will change depending on who you talk to. These are a few ideas I have run across and tried to get you going. Each is a learning opportunity about you and the process you can and will create. Treat them like an experiment over a few days. Give yourself time to adjust and learn so you can see what works for you.

Start with your time and your head space

Time

Listen to the deep thought of Cal Newport (Deep Work). Use time to help give you better focus. Cal recommends setting aside longer morning long streatches of your work day for deep thought. Even two to three hours is a great way to get deep into the project. We need time without distraction when we work deep. Cal talks about time use in avoiding shallow work in Deep Habits: The Danger of Pseudo-Depth.

Reserve some time for focused work

We work best when we have longer stretches of undistracted time, such as an entire morning or afternoon that allows us to dive deep into the other world of our thoughts. This allows us to get a better grip of the subject when we take it up again as well as allows us to better know where we are going when we finish for the day.

While focusing for an entire morning sounds great, most of us do not have that kind of flexibility in our schedules. So with you on that, so I reserve time to write on my books and blog separately. With a little experimentation out of my comfort zone, I have found that I am far more agile when I am on my book time, which I do in the morning, than when I do my blog which is done later in the day. For a long time I thought that my night owl tendencies would made the evening work easier, but that has not proved the case. I guess the experts are right, working when you are fresh awake does make a difference. The earlier you can get to your work the more focus you will have.

Next step is to write your time block down. Even if you start with just 15 or 30 minutes, put it down on your calendar and treat it like a job. Show up every day on time. Nothing gets in the way of your job. Your writing is also you work. Treat it like it is.

Divide time and conquer

Often slogging through our work becomes a drudgery unto itself. Breaking down your work into targeted sessions allows our minds to create a rhythm of work and respite for the mind to figure out where it wants the climb to go next.

One of the best aids to improve our ability to focus I have ever come across is the Pomodoro technique. The concept is simple. The mind can only maintain focus for just so long before it starts to wander. So you divide your hours into smaller chunks of work and give your brain a break between work periods. Originally the technique broke tasks down to 25 minute segments with a 3-5 minute period. A full set was four segment and breaks with an extra ten minutes break at the end. Then it was up to the person if they wanted to run another set or not.

Head space and your ability to focus are like time can be control by your process.

Write before you net

It should go without saying to not get distracted before you do your writing session. The most offensive distraction these days is the internet. It is literally everywhere just robbing your ability to focus by the hour. The golden rule for the net is “Thou shalt not go on line before thy pages are done.” That means till you finish your day’s writing work, you will not check the news or social media first thing in the morning. You will also not check out some blogs or Insta-chat a friend. Nor will you, by all that is holy, check your email. Not even a quick glance to see what might be there.

The reason this is simply because it is so easy to get lost into the net so deep that a morning glance will leave you coming up for air sometime around dinner time when you finally realized you have not eaten all day. The net is not something to play with when your pages are on the line. Fight the resistance. Any emergency, if there really is one, will likely wait till you are done writing. Don’t stress. Don’t succumb to the resistance in your head. WRITE FIRST.

I give one exception here. If you are an expectant father or someone else involved in the birthing process, then you get a pass to both look and to respond to the woman on the other end of the conversation. For you on this day the writing can take a back seat. This is why we have fall back habits.

Clear out destructive distractions or better don’t start them

If you are scheduling your writing session some time later in your day than first thing, it’s likely you will have turned on a few things in the course of your morning. The path to success it to activate as Chris Fox put it in 5000 Words per Hour, your turtle box. For our purposes that means first we must disconnect with everything to the outside world. Turn off the internet. Use an internet block like Freedom. If you that does not work, you can unplug the router and give it to someone with instructions not to return it for your work session. You will also need to close any other program other than you writing program be it Word or Scribner or some other, and maybe a distraction free writing app. Lots of them out there. WriteRoom, OmmWriter, and Byword are good options.

Distraction in this Age

Jonathan Franzen framed the difficulty of writing today in an article for The Guardian’s ‘Book Club’ page:

“Rendering a world is a matter of permitting oneself to feel small things intensely, not of knowing lots of information. And so, when I’m working, I need to isolate myself at the office, because I’m easily distracted and modern life has become extremely distracting. Distraction pours through every portal, especially through the internet. And most of what pours through is meaningless noise. To be able to hear what’s really happening in the world, you have to block out 99% of the noise.” —Modern life has become extremely distracting, October 2015

In my own experience, whatever you do keep that phone away from your space is a valid here. My preference is just turn it off or put it face down, out of arm’s reach and out of line of sight in silent mode and vibration off. Putting it in another room might be need for the more determined phone addicts. Writing becomes hard if easy distractions are near by preying on your ability to focus. Extra obstacles really help lock in the box.

Be Aware

Keep an eye on your behavior as you move to write. Take notice if you are starting to resist starting. This is simple. When you see that you are avoiding sitting down to write, let it go and turn your focus to getting started. All you need to start is just a few words written down. That’s why you need fall back minimums for those days when everything goes wrong. The best I have found is to write just five words. You are free if you get that.

It may not seem like much, but because of that habit I have not missed a single day of writing for over three years now and counting. The part to remember is that this technique is so effective because is it so simple there is no reason not to do it. You cannot give me a reason not to write five words. It’s too easy not to. Which is the point. It is also a great starter. Four words can make a full sentence but there are few times you will be able to use just one word. You will have to write two more to hit five, likely far more. Once you are past five words, it is likely you will have several sentences before you stop, if not more. I have rarely written just five words. Often it’s a page or more before I quit.

Now we have the time set, so what’s next? Time to get physical in Part 2

Photo by Fineas Anton on Unsplash

Keep Writing – Work in the Belly of the Beast

Arguably the longest and most painful part of writing is the middle where all the fears and phobias emerge to resist our best efforts to put words on the page. These are the dark days deep inside the belly of the beast when we no longer see ourselves, much less our work, in a positive light.



To keep writing in the middle of the longest and most painful part of writing is the quit point for many. It is in the Belly of the Beast where all the fears and phobias emerge to resist our best efforts to put words on the page. These are the dark days deep inside the fire beast when we no longer see ourselves, much less our work, in a positive light. We tend to doubt every word we pull through the membrane. This is the time we cannot call ourselves a writer. We feel like fools and charlatans.

This lost time not only happens to the novelist, it also happens to the humble blogger and copywriter as well. In fact it happens to anyone who writes at all. We berate ourselves while we wait for some omniscient force outside ourselves to proclaim our work and us valid.

Writer Error

Ultimately though, we have made an mistake that , as Marcy McCay at The Write Practice put it, is “…both unnecessary and abusive.”

The start was hard, but now the gale sets in. Everything could have been all roses or hell for the first part. Now none of that matters. Now you are past the gates of hell. Out of now where you have been hit and there is really nothing but a shambles, or at least you think that is what you see all about you.

What it does…this fear?

The cause of the mayhem may have been anything. It could have been illness, lost the beat of your working rhythm, or even that someone dared like what you wrote. None of that matters. You have lost the momentum. You are dead in the water and the work has gone into the drawer along with several other unfinished works.

Answer: Keep Writing.

Everyone gets this. It’s expected. You are not cursed, untalented, lazy or a loser. No one creates flawless prose. Even Asimov, as close to a once copy writer as you will find still had to let his brain work through his work a bit to get his work right when he typed it out.

So what can I do? You ask.

How about some tips? Sure. Keep writing. That’s the most important one. Here are more seven ways to slog through the beast instead of giving up.

Start with some grit.

Research by Angela Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania indicates the most important factor including intelligence and talent to achieve a goal is grit. It is our resilience in times of failure and adversity coupled with our consistent pursuit over time that seems to make the key difference.

“’Grit’ as Duckworth defines it, is having passion and perseverance, sticking to long term goals and having the emotional stamina to keep going, when others have given up. Grit is living life like a marathon, not a sprint. ” from Why You Should Live Life as a Marathon not a Sprint

Duckworth’s research shows that most people tend to quit at the first sign of frustration or confusion. It is not uncommon for many people to stop working to improve after they have achieved a certain level of proficiency.

Grit is Everywhere

We all have grit, our problem is we often forget that we have it. It takes grit to achieve any long term project from a high school or college diploma to rank in a martial art to becoming an instructor of any kind. Every human effort of any worth requires we access some grit. The trick to remember is that you already have it.

We need not look too far to find grit in others either. The sheer number of people who needed grit is found everywhere from Nelson Mandela who said, “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” to JK Rowling who was rejected by a dozen publishers before Scholastic Press accepted Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone then took seven-teen years to finnish the entire series itself. The record is pretty clear. No one gets a free ride to success. You are going to fall down, likely a lot. The only free ride is the one to achieve nothing. The writing world is no different than any other either. Here is a list of 50 famous authors and their track records.

What is Grit?

Grit itself is a form of self-control by delayed gratification and distraction management. Grit is the work you do when you keep writing.

Marshmallow Study

The long documented marshmallow study that gave kids a chance for two marshmallows instead of one by waiting has long been held as an example of how people could control themselves. The long terms of the study have been shown that the kids who could defer gratification in the test tended to do better in other key areas like grades, popularity, income, lower BMIs down the road, and less drug abuse.

Resillence

Writers have to write consistently to improve their skills and create the library of work that will ensure their eventual success. A writer must be able to resist temptations or distractions that pull them from the pages and allow them to bounce back when they do fall.

Keep Writing

To that end here are some suggestions to keeping going when you feel you want to quit. You can also add in a little Unlimited Willpower to the mix. Now write. Finish that project.

Know what motivates you.

Knowing why you want to finish is about the only way to have a clear sense of purpose from the start. Our whys are the keys that inspire us to get up and get things done. We do not act on what we want to do, but why we want to do it. Simon Sinek has a great talk on this. Start with why — how great leaders inspire action

Often we get caught in the how of our projects because we lose sight of the why. Why would anyone spend time every day just scribbling? There are a lot more fun and interesting things to do than opening up a vein and letting your inner thoughts flow out into the keyboard.

Take some time and ask yourself why. That why is what will pull you through not only the dark night that is the middle of your project, but every other point in the project as well.

Practice mindfulness.

Being aware and accepting in the moment is one of those key skills that helps us not only to focus on the project but also releases a lot of negative issues like stress. It also allows you to avoid those emotions that knock you off track. Most key here is the fact that mindfulness practices inhibit impulses so we procrastinate less. Here are some ways to integrate some mindfulness into your work and a mindful writing practice.

Manage the self-talk

The inner critic is sneaky. Your critic hates it when you keep writing. Becoming aware of what you are actually telling yourself about your work and yourself is one of those devilish details that is heard in every writer’s head. The winning game plan is to have some self-compassion for yourself and work the problem.

Most people are very hard on themselves in the hope that they will do better. The reality though is that it is not very useful because people fail to see the difference between useful criticism and harsh judgment. They default to harsh self judgment. Being judgmental when you slip up makes it harder to stay on track.

Being compassionate for your failures allows you suspend harsh personal criticism in favor of seeing your errors as problems to solve.

“Because the prolific person is focused on problem-solving rather than remorse and self-recrimination, she will typically either a) recover quickly from obstacles and triggers, or b) not even perceive them in the first place.” Hillary Rettig, The 7 secrets of the Highly Prolific

Shift your focus to keep writing

Too many people tend to spend most of their time focuse focus on past or future at the wrong time to work in the present. There is only one place to keep our minds while we are working. That is right here and right now. You will flub up if you are busy in the past looking at some failure or off in the future with some win that is not even moving forward. As Steven Pressfield is fond of saying “Do the work.”

When we put our focus on the work we need to do today, things get done. It is that simple. Looking at the past is great when planning. A view to the goal is great for inspiration and lining up the day’s work with your goal. Use those viewpoints that way. But the work is totally the only thing you should think about when you are at work today.

Learn how to regulate your emotions

Our emotions can trip us up. A bad mood about the work or in general can bring on procrastination in a rush. Getting a handle on our emotions is another area to develope a professional mindset that keeps us at our pages regardless of our mood. The fact is the writer who gets his pages in every day is much like the swimmer who gets her laps in every day. Both will always feel better for the session than having not skipped it.

A couple of tricks to keep writing

Celebrate the small wins, especially those days the emotions started out bad. Beating your off days by doing the work is a win. Celebrate that win.

Write on your feelings first. This can help you process the negatives and warm up for the writing work in one shot.

Reframe your fear as excitement. Alison Wood Brook, performance anxiety researcher, explains it as:

“When people feel anxious and try to calm down, they are thinking about all the things that could go badly. When they are excited, they are thinking about how things could go well.”

Shift into a growth mindset to keep writing

If you work from the perspective of getting things right, psychologists say that you are likely going to see mistakes as failures and a poor reflection of your skills. You are also likely to avoid getting feedback on your work or try to do everything yourself.

Shifting your mindset from perfectionism to a learning growth based reference with the goal to get better focuses us on getting feedback and taking challenges that improve us. It also allows us to reframe rejection and failures as learning experiences so that we can bounce back faster to move on to the next step.

My take

Getting through the grind of your beast is going to take a lot out of you. It is going to force you to grow and will force you to meet and take out your personal fears. That is the key point. The only thing holding you back is fear itself. Don’t let it. Write. Then keep writing.

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Start Writing

Start writing is among the three hardest things to do as a writer. The other two are simply to work, and finish. Each of these diabolical phases kill off more writing than was lost in the library at Antioch. At no point is the writer home free till he can willingly walk away knowing there is nothing more that can be done. What a writer need to get past that trio of traps is a lot of little habits and traits that push us through to the end.

Starting Writing

I have to agree with Walter Mosley on starts. The first few words of anything you write is the highest hurdle. It seems that there is nothing there to write when you sit down, and that is where so many writers stop without so much as a word being produced.

That first hurdle is also why there are so many ways to cajole, persuade, rationalize, bribe, and threaten ourselves to sit down to scribble a few lines. Some have a ritual to transition, others skip it to dive straight into the ice water. There are arguments for music and total silence. We see those who must have the lucky pen or a specific space set up to look a certain way. There are those who write dictating to a cell phone while standing on a bus or walking down the street, and I even know of one writer who said he tacked his home mortgage above his typewriter for inspiration when he did not feel like writing. “Oooh, look inspiration,” he said as he mimed rapid typing.

My own routine is pretty simple. I make sure I write every day and I take steps to make sure I hit some really easy targets when things try to kill what I view as the most important two things a writer can have on his side, a habit and momentum.

Reinforcement

Habits remind us to get to work and our momentum brings us back. Sure I shore my writing sessions up with some things to reinforce the habit and ensure my momentum stays up. For instance I do like to get in a writing frame of mind when writing. For me that is free write three morning pages and to read from Steven Pressfield’s books to remind myself what a professional minded writer needs to think like. Aside from that I am fairly fluid with what I am doing. I can get my work done with a laptop or a Bic Crystal pen and loose leaf paper in a hotel room, library or anywhere else if I had to.

Sure I have a space, a corner in the dining room facing the wall. I use a desk pad too, but mainly because I hate writing on a hard table like surface. If I did not have it I would just use some more paper under what I am writing on. I also have my preferences for tools. All this is nice reinforcement. I think we all need that, but in the end for me two things matter. Habit and momentum. Aside from that there are some steps to have in place to get these points in play.

Decide to start writing and what to write.

The point here is to make a clear commitment to getting words down on paper and know what you are going to write. This can be as specific a plan as you need it to be, though I would avoid long lists and complexity. A minimalist approach that gets drafts done is probably best. You should also avoid trying completely winging it with zero end game in mind. The clearer you see where you want to wind up the better you will be able to anticipate your needs and make a working plan that works for you.

Start writing with the questions.

What type of writing are you doing? Is it literature or a blog or copywriting for clients? How long is it? A book, a blog, a ten thousand word white paper? How much time do I need for a completed post or chapter or piece? What am I writing about…aka the topic/theme I am working with? What requirements do I need to keep in mind? You might not know exactly what you need when you start, but getting stuff down on paper is a great focus tool. The clearer we can make our thinking, the better and easier the work will go.

Know your interest level.

If you are not interested in what you are writing about, it is going to show up in the work. Even in non-fiction a lack of interest will lead to problems ranging from a lack of quality research to failure to answer the reader’s questions or taking a prospective reader’s point of view into account. Even on those pieces you don’t like, your writing will be better if you try to find some element of the subject interesting so you can focus on it.

When you star writing just to finish something you are supposed to write without any interest will likely take you back to those wonderful high school days where assignments were the worst thing on earth. Taking a little time to find some interest will shorten the process.

Which writer are you?

There are two main ways to start writing. You will either have something to say or something to document. Both ways work.

Few writers start out with something to say. Most of us kind of fall into what we want to talk about as we write about other things. There is nothing wrong with documenting instead of creating. It’s how many of the great writers of all time learned what they wanted to talk about, after they had finished their own journeys of exploration and learning.

Tolstoy did not write will after he had traveled and served in the military. Orwell first lived as a tamp in London and Paris before forming his views on communism in the Spanish Civil War.

So what if you are still starting?

You have no convictions to guide your words. What then? Give Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice a try. Document, don’t create.

When you have nothing to write about, you can write about learning what you want to write about. Document your process. Start writing about where and who you are now. The biggest hang up for a lot of writers is that they think they know nothing, so they never write on anything.

Writing is all about setting out on a journey you have not traveled. When you start writing from having walked the journey, you write from what you know. When you document, then you are writing from discovering as you go along. Find new things that are important to you and talk about them. Both tracks work. Pick one.

Now keep going.

Shoot for a word count and set a minimum daily goal. No wussing out. Write every day, even if it is tiny, and have a minimum standard, even if it is even smaller. A daily habit ensures progress like nothing else. So, build that habit. I have found that shooting for around 700 to 1000 words with a five word minimum fallback position to ensure I have something done every day to be a very effective habit for me. This simple habit has allowed me to become more consistent and productive than at any time since I first started writing in school.

You have started writing.

There you go. That’s the plan to start writing. Repeat the habit again tomorrow. Learn a few more things to improve your work as you go along. You are writing.

Honestly. Give my article Honesty- What does that have to do with writing? a chance.

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Unlimited Willpower the Alternative Theory

Willpower Theory

The theory of unlimited willpower has brought a new look to what we understand of willpower. For over three decades psychology has labored under the theory that our will power is limited. That is how it has seemed to work under the long standing theory. Your ego starts each day with a full tank of fuel. All day long we run about making one choice after another. Each choice uses up a little more of the fuel, commonly referred to as ego depletion. Our goal is to maximize our reserves for more important choices, so we use strategies like planed breaks and simplifying our decision making process to ensure we get the maximum value from the day’s reserves. Over time we can also build more tank space so we can get further too.

Under this theory, a day of heavy decisions makes writing that book or running that blog a seriously challenging choice when faced with the ease of pizza and a movie.

New Theory Unlimited Willpower

A study at Beijing Normal University, China has challenged that line of thought. The researchers found that we might have an infinite amount of willpower. The first step is to find out why we feel depleted after a lot of choices. That answer could give us a better understanding of how to access that infinite source.

Definition of Ego Depletion is Over Simplistic

What the study results tells us is that ego depletion theory needs a tweak. The researchers found that the weakened ego effect was not as strong as has been believed when they tried to replicate the original results with participants in four studies using a standard depletion procedure. In the test the participants completed a random depletion procedure then repeat the task a second time. No evidence of significant depletion effects were found in any of the studies. The null results indicate that depletion may have a much weaker effect than previous studies led us to believe.

Previous Studies

Previous studies have been centered on the participants’ self-control. The first part was to deplete the ego then measure the loss in the second round.

New Research Shows Unlimited Willpower

The newer research argues that the first task is the reason we shift from a need to control ourselves to a need to gratify a want. This is a change of our motivational mindset.

The new process model supports ego depletion but argues there is more going on that just the hypothesis of “Doing A takes all the energy you need to do B.” That explanation is too simplified. The possibility is that the ego has a larger stamina than previous research suggests. If that theory holds, then we come to the questions of how does will power work and what can we really control?

Retrain What We See

The thinking is that if willpower really works like a muscle, then the type of work nor our feelings, enjoy or hate it, does not matter. You should not be more tired from a grueling four hour gym workout than dancing all night long.

Cut Choice

Many people using the muscle based depletion argument have cut down their choices so that they can conserve their will power. Theoretically, the fewer choices they make daily creates less of a drain on our willpower reserves. Many people from Steve Jobs in his black turtlenecks to Mark Zuckerberg are famous for their limited wardrobes. Here’s a good argument in that line of thought. “An Argument For Wearing The Same Clothes Every Day”.

Minimizing your choices is a great argument and does seem to work, but some research says that even if you feel depleted after you finish a given task, your self-control will stay high if you re-frame the work as being fun.

Unlimited Willpower Turns Work to Fun

In 2011 Juliano Laran and Chris Janiszewski (Work or Fun? How Task Construal and Completion Influence Regulatory Behavior ) tested the minimalism theory. They gave participants the tedious task of choosing between similar products like two similar computers with just a few differences, like RAM or CPU speed. The real difference was how they framed the choice as fun or not. Those in the fun group had one additional sentence in the instructions: “The first study is a fun study involving hypothetical choices in several product categories.” This extra sentence made a difference that allowed the participants to persist longer than the second group in evaluating the products. Restoring Ego Depletion

Break Point

One’s attitude is the break point for whether you feel “depleted” or not. A belief that your willpower is unlimited seems to become a self-fulfilling prophesy based on the scientific evidence.

Willpower is an Emotion

I think it is worth the work to develop an unlimited willpower mindset. It starts with how you see your willpower. People who see their willpower as an emotion also find it easier to believe that they have unlimited willpower. They might be on the right track too since there is science based evidence to support their beliefs.

Belief and Science

Researchers have looked at how our beliefs affect our willpower. Those studies show that people who believe they have unlimited will power do seem to outperform their limited willpower believing counterparts.

Sugar Free

For the unlimited willpower believer a sugar rush is not even an option. In one study on Willpower Sugar and Self-control researchers tested the effects of sugar on self-control. Over three experiments people were given a sugary or a non-sugary drink when being tested. The limited willpower believers saw an improvement when given a sugary drink versus a non-sugary drink. The unlimited believers maintained a high level of self-control regardless of the drink they had.

Bounce Back Effect

A study out of the University of Zurich Katharina Bernecker shows that unlimited believers bounce back after a hard day with higher productivity goals, but their counterparts are still exhausted from the previous day’s work and are generally unproductive. The study also shows that the believers also follow up on those goals which results in making them far more effective than the limited theory-believers.

Sustained Learning

The believers continue to learn and improve in sustained work beyond where the limited theorists feel “depleted”. A Stanford study took participants through eight biased questionnaires to place them in one of the two belief sets. After modeling their beliefs the researchers gave each group a series of eight books to study over a period of time. For the first half of the test they results were similar, but the limited group lagged in the second half while the unlimited group continued to learn at the previous rate. The study showed that beliefs about willpower can be modified by input over the short term. What theory we believe can increase performance over a long and difficult task.

Unlimited Willpower Sees the Belief Change

Much of the reason for the difference is that when you believe you have unlimited resources your reactions and plan of attack changes. Procrastination is less and preparations are more efficient. With unlimited willpower the subject is apt to see problem solving as more as a motivational challenge/experience, not an exhausting one. Better preparation likely aids how smooth a project moves which also makes it easier to maintain positive momentum.

What Does Unlimited Willpower Mean for Writers?

Writers can take a few lessons from this. It’s clear that an unlimited willpower mindset can improve our productivity and that we can make that happen by reimagining our willpower as an emotion.

When we see our willpower as an emotion, we are far less likely to treat it as though it will deplete over time with use. No one would expect to see an emotion such as love reduced with more people coming into our lives such as when child is born. The added child does not decrease the love we have for other family members. No one is going to spend time being unhappy to save happiness for an event later that night. The trouble is that at the end of the day we can still feel drained even with an unlimited supply of will power.

So what makes us feel drained?

Michael Inzlicht at the University of Toronto thinks that the loss of control happens when there is a conflict between goals. Your emotions settle the matter of which one wins. It’s not that you cannot resist the temptation, which is a short term goal, of desert. The breakdown is because your goal of a beach body this summer is less emotionally compelling than the desert platter.

Projects We Like

It is possible to have unlimited willpower by spending more time on projects we like or put more focus on the aspects of the work we like to keep our motivation high. We could even walk away from those goals that hold no emotional motivation for us and feel good about it. There is no reason to run five miles a day when you are not really up for it.

In the Marines I found this to be totally true. I used to hate running, but it was not till I got running regularly with my unit that I ever felt an emotional connection to running. Once I had that connection, doing training runs on my own became far easier to do.

Perfect World

If everything were perfect, we could just fill our lives with things we find motivating. That’s a hard thing in a world where even our ideal work comes with unpleasant work aspects. As writers we all tend to like to write, but we might have problems with editing or research. Research in How do people adhere to goals when willpower is low? The profits (and pitfalls) of strong habits indicates that our habits are our way out in those times that willpower and emotional fortitude are low. Habits lock us in when we lack that emotional tie.

Habits

Creating a new habit to deal with such onerous tasks to take advantage of a regular emotional upswing in our day is a useful way to use autopilot in an advantageous way.

Putting Unlimited Willpower to Work

Researchers know that prioritizing our goals over impulses is key to winning the battle with temptation. What we do in our free time builds our motivation for later. Here are a few suggestions.

One of the things that helps us increase our willpower is how fit our bodies are. Physical exercise has shown clearly to improve mental function and willpower. A long term consistent program is the key for optimal benefits. This is likely because the habit of doing the workout even when you are tired or when the weather is not nice allows you to become more comfortable with discomfort and inconvenience. A sporadic workout has been shown to have both positive and negative effects on willpower, depends on factors like workout intensity. In both cases though moving the body and working out is a great tool for developing willpower.

Meditation and other mindfulness activities improve our willpower. In How Mindfulness Enhances Self-Control and How Mindfulness And Productivity Go Hand In Hand we find that there is a positive link between regular mindfulness and meditation practices and improved willpower. When we learn to observe our thoughts and emotions without judging them it becomes easier to see temptation when it strikes. Seeing temptation in the moment allows us to use our willpower and self-control to control it.

Subtle Reminders

You can use a subtle physical reminder to symbolically remind you of your infinite power. This can range from a poster over your desk to a medallion you use to meditate on. Eric Miller’s team found using subtle cues for unlimited willpower can create an access point to the unlimited mindset.

Conversations

You can also watch who you talk to as you develop your own unlimited mindset. Much of the research shows that creating too varied and conflicting cues in our thinking can have a negative effect on our ability to keep our motivation high. Avoiding conversations about feeling drained while we are working to shift our mental perspective can make it faster and easier to redefine our willpower expectations.

Consider

What is your inspiration to work on large goals? What attitude do you approach your day with? How do these affect your productivity? What do you think helps to rethink willpower?

Try out a great read Honesty- What does that have to do with writing?

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Compassion for Others and Yourself

Compassion for others is not something the average writer thinks about much. We are pretty much too wrapped up in our own heads with our writing and our inner critic. As writers our harshest and most destructive critic is the voice in our own heads. We are harsh to the point of total self destruction. That self-sabotage literally kills our ability to write, produce and thrive as writers. That is why learning to be compassionate with ourselves and others is such an important tool for a writer.

Our inner critic will stop our foul work (Its thoughts to be sure.) before we can inflict it upon the unsuspecting world. It will save us from ourselves by beating us up over our failures of the past. We should have a finished book by now. The last effort was terrible. The current work should be buried with a steak through its heart or burned before one of those rotten editors out there can publish it.

Compassion for others the easy way

If we could just blow that critic off, we would all be much better off when sitting down to write. The trouble is this voice rules the show because it is our mental compass of good and bad. We need it and use it for everything. That’s a problem when we are trying to create since the entire point of creation requires experimentation. When you experiment, you get a lot of wrong answers to find the right answers with the possibility of being wrong. You can ask Thomas Edison about his 10,000 wrong answers for a working light bulb. Aside from blind luck, there is no shortcut here.

Another problem with the voice and our writing.

We do have a good use for our critic. It’s our editor for when we fix our rough draft. It tends to do a good job there, as long as we know when to just tell it to shut up and when to call the work done. If we don’t limit it, we will never get started or will edit our work forever. This is probably the biggest reason for having another person read and edit our work.

Once past the final edit even, the voice can strike with vicious attacks to prevent us from shipping off the final manuscript to the publisher or printers.

The critic aims to help

From our inner voice’s view, it is protecting us from evil. It prevents us from feeling this pain we fear so.

At the same moment, this part of us sees the same kind of suffering in others and knows to give them better and wiser critiques of their efforts than we do ourselves. No one would ever say the same kinds of vile comments to others we use on ourselves. It’s human nature to try to be kind, at least kinder than we are to our selves.

We would never look at another person’s work and ask questions like “Well, now how droll is that? This is totally rubbish? Maybe you should just give up?” We try to be constructive with our criticism. We don’t speak to others like that. Why ourselves?

I’ll be blunt.

It’s not alright to speak to ourselves like that. The solution is becoming self aware of what we say to ourselves and then catch the slips. Change the narrative. Think how you would phrase your remarks about the same work to someone else. Then show that same compassion to yourself.

“This is not as good as it can be. That’s OK. This is still a rough draft. It’s not supposed to be perfect yet. I give you permission to really mess this up. Throw lots of spaghetti at the wall. We can clean it up and see what sticks later.”

The key here is to know how to treat another writer, or other struggling artist, is your road map to treating yourself better and finishing your work.

So why compassion for others?

We need compassion for others for many reasons, but as writers, I think we can use how we treat others to start to learn how to really treat ourselves. When we start working to improve how we react more compassionately with others, we find how to be more compassionate to ourselves. We heal ourselves by healing others.

We need to have compassion for others as we write because we can be very demanding and even harsh with our work. Have you ever just complained aloud about how loud someone was being while you were trying to write? How about holding off getting to your pages because other people would bother you, which you of course let out of the bag as a means to get them to leave you alone?

Sure we need to guard our work time, but compassion for others will keep you from ruining your relationships to do it. That understanding of others also means you will be better able to understand yourself. The stuff works the same way the other way round as well. We learn to treat others better by treating ourselves better.

The compassionate way we go about things.

Are we being respectful as we make our demands? Are we polite? Do we really need to become a Shakespearean actor to explain our angst?

How we act is key to being compassionate. We cannot act like we are the center of the universe, or that the target in question be it someone else or ourselves is of little value.

When we talk about compassion and being compassionate we are really talking about understanding the persons involved and convincing them to help us.

Stalling the start

“Drink deep the gathering gloom. Watch lights fade from every room….” I wonder if the Moody Blues were talking to me when I am falling deep into procrastination mode. It certainly fits the mode we get into when we are avoiding our work at all costs.

It is when we are deep in this default behavior that we need self-compassion the most. I have been fortunate to learn a few tricks to motivate a little forward momentum.

Fierce compassion for you

Kristin Neff, Ph.D. argues in Why Women Need Fierce Self-Compassion for us to practice fierce self-compassion. She has three core components for self-compassion. One is a yin and yan based. Neff says, “Yin self-compassion is a loving, connected presence that we can tap into to replace self-judgment with self-acceptance. Yang self-compassion shows up as fierce, empowered truth that allows us to actively cope with life’s challenges.”

Familiar?

Have you ever slid into judgement mode because of decreasing productivity without giving yourself some breathing space to ask yourself why you are procrastinating? Asking yourself questions us to get to the root of the obstacle.

Why was I tempted to write little or totally skip today?

How did my body feel because of it?

Did I journal about why I could not focus on my project?

Those are just a few places to start pulling back the curtain for a clearer view of our mental, emotional, and physical standing. We want to find what is preventing us from writing progress. Writing out, looking at then sitting with those answers is a radical act.

Change the work

I have also found that writing something else is quite helpful. There are some options here. Write about what you are grateful for, a positive reflection, some new ideas, possible future goals, etc… write anything positive and preferably aimed to break through the block.

Compassionate Positive journaling

You can even reframe the procrastination from a positive angle. Take a moment to remember how many times you have worked past your inner critic and his arsenal of fear, self-doubt, worry and so on.

Mantras

Use a mantra. Some of the ones I like “I just need to hit my minimum for the day.” “Crappy is better than nothing.” “I can edit crappy. Nothing means I got nothing.”

Compassion Sets a Low Bar

I use mantras in conjunction with a low bar for the minimum. Sometimes it is just get a few words written, to be precise Five. Yes, five words and if I cannot keep going, I can call it a day. I am done. I have beaten the block and can come back to tomorrow for the win. Setting the vastly shorter minimum fall back standards allows me to pull out when things are just not clicking with a win.

Time

Other times I work with a minimum of time. I like to kick it for at least five minutes. If after five minutes nothing is flying on to the page or I am not in a good flow, I can call it time for a break. I often couple this one with the Pomodoro method for productivity.

I set the timer for 25 minutes. When the time goes off, as long as I have some words on the page, I can quit. I like to keep this stuff flexible so I can use what works. Most of the time I type for 25 minutes, and take a small break. Then I can come back and get another 25 in.

Creating smart habits is key to being kind to ourselves. No one is Superman, but we are pretty great when we give ourselves the compassion we need to perform our best.

Tune up with morning pages

Clearing my mental decks before I set out on the day seems to help prime myself before I get sucked into the negative thinking trap. Even on days when I am stalling a lot, I get words down. Words down is always a win. When really stuck another tool I use is to just mind dump.

It’s similar to the other two tools, but in this case you pull up a blank page and let fly with everything you are thinking about the work or thinking in general. Five minutes of this can give your brain a small break. It can also allow you to vent your evil voice’s spleen. Once written the words lose their power over you. Just knowledge your negative thoughts is magic that allows you tp see the work better.

Three steps to compassion for yourself in the rough draft:

1. Compassion allows messes.

Be messy. You are experimenting. Don’t try to figure out what the end product is. Let the process tell you. Sure you will bounce. That’s good. You might find something you had not considered.

2. Compassion stays open to the possible.

Sure the final draft will need some tough calls. This is the time of the muse. You need to listen more than plot. This holds true if you are pantser or plotter. A good idea is always a good idea, even if you have a plan. Replacing a good idea with a better one is a win.

3. Compassion loves the mess.

Love your work. It does not matter if you don’t really like it or that it’s incomplete or that it lacks polish. Loving the work allows you to enjoy the work. When we enjoy the work, we write better.

My take on compassion

Writers grow with a little compassion as we master the writer’s path. Give some and get some.

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Focus…First Ask What’s My Target


Focus is one of life’s mental mastery lessons that are all around us. It’s amazing how often the lessons from one thing spills over into everything else. I have seen the lessons repeated in karate, sword, archery, driving, and even the incredible passion of some that is golf. Is it any wonder that adherents of these skills and arts cannot help but draw life lessons from them that apply to so many other totally different fields and skills?

Same lesson from so many fields?

I have my own theory. We are all drawn to different interests by our choices or circumstances we have wandered into. The reason we wind up learning the same lesson is that we all possess a universal tool. Our minds and how it works is always the same. This is the reason so many masters have long held little difference between skills. Many masters do not see a change of skill as a change of mind. A Zen proverb says

“Shooting with an arrow and dancing, decorating with flowers and singing, drinking tea and fighting – it is all the same.”

The masters around the world have been on to something for a long time. We do not really master a given skill, rather we work deep into a skill to master ourselves. We do that by controlling the fears that plague our mind and prevents us from entering in to a natural flow. It is about how we approach our mental game. That mental game is focus.

What’s my target?

I was following along with another Chet Scott article today. He advised to begin each task by asking yourself “What’s my target?” to shift your mental game into gear. His article directed me to the classic on getting the golf mindset Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game – Dr. Gio Valiante.

I am always interested in any book that gives me a new perspective on how the mind works. Dr. Valinate a genius of the golf head game. Fortunately for everyone, the head game for writing is very much the same one that hunts down those who play golf.

So what is the head game for a golfer?

The golfer both average and pro fights the same critic when he adresses the ball that you and I face on the blank paper. That incessant voice that is filled with an infinite deluge of remarks and questions that drive us away from staying in the moment as we do our work, killing any chance of a natural flow. Killing our game. Destroying our focus.

Golf’s mind game…focus

Both minds are filled with fear based remarks, memories and questions. We are thinking about the wrong things. The solution master golfers use is to eliminate those questions in favor of a handful they continually repeat to draw them from their ego based mind to a mastery mindset.

Pro golfer Davis Love III changes his mindset from ego based concerns by focusing with the question “What is my target?”

Master questions

He is not alone. Mater golfers have just four questions they use throughout the game as a kind of rolling mantra to keep their mind focused on the work before them.

What is my target?
What is the best way to play this hole?
How do I want to hit this shot?
What sort of shot does this hole require?

These work well for golfers. Our mind responds visually to what we ask it and stays focused on hitting the target. That process eliminates the fear they face performing in front of a crowd.

The writer’s focus

The same thinking is going on in a writer’s head. The trouble for us is we don’t really know our target. After all the study and strategizing is done we finally create a plan. Then what happens? We BOMB. Bomb BIG.


What’s wrong? Where did we go wrong? We have our studies done and have a formed plan. The strategy is perfect. No step missed, yet…

We tripped up on the play itself because our lack of a focus was from our inner dialog’s failure to address the work before us. When we are not present, we are not in the flow. No flow means you no go… or rather you go, but not into the work.

Our mind was awash in various voices in our heads. You are back in the past with your planning and failures and successes or you are in the future with your hopes and dreams and idea endings. Our head is awash with questions on our mortality and that last critical review. We hear our teacher from years gone by announcing our D- in on the English exam with the words “See me after class.”

Clarity

Almost none of our thoughts are about our target. In fact if that voice is there, it’s weak and lost in the massive chorus of thoughts and ideas dancing about in our heads. We lack clarity. There is no focus.

It is hard to see things clearly when all you look at are the obstacles. Yes there is a time for that, but that was two steps back when we were planning. Now we must to use a Steven Pressfield concept, swing our swing. We must act without thinking about mechanics or other distractions to focus.

How do we get that vision?

We can start our work with a simple mantra “What’s my target?”

There is no endeavor in the entirety of humanity that does not at some point require complete focus of our minds. In fact our minds are totally built for this concept. We tend to only think of one thing at a time. We are good at it. Really good at working with just one thing, the problem is we are so good we can dance a million ideas through the CPUs of our minds at speeds that even the greatest quantum computer would have trouble rivaling.

The greatest advantage a quantum computer has over a human is that it lacks imagination. It can only work with the information it is given. It has automatic focus because it knows what the target is and is not distracted by unessential things. When the day comes that the computer has an imagination and with it an inner critic riding on its shoulder chattering away is the day that advantage will end.

Any kind of multi-tasking only makes the issue worse. Focus requires we not try to hit a handful of targets with just one arrow. It’s just not realistic. More often than not we will just aim in the general direction we think is right. Often this is a lesson in futility when we miss the actual target that will move us forward.

Game Plan

The game plan comes down to just one simple mantra. “What’s my target?” When you know what end result you want to hit, you will no longer be in a Hail Mary pass and pray kind of process. You will actually know where you want to hit. When you lose your arrow, you will know only know your target. It should even surprise you, much the same as the Kyudo archers when they sense the release of the perfect shot. You might even ask yourself, “Where did that come from?” That is how perfect your focus can become.

My focus target

Clarity and focus comes not from random work but the evaluation of aimed effort. We get that when we shift to the work away from the ego. “What’s my target?

Try this great article Mastery It’s Not What You Think

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Humility

Humility is one of those concepts in life that are good for us to achieve and many desire, but it is also one of those desires that even those we tend to see as humble have not done enough of to master.

Writers grapple with staying humble every day we sit down. It springs up in other areas as well. We lack humility in the emotions like the fear we face when we work to produce and publish our thoughts.

So, why is humility so important for a writer?

The simplified answer is that a lack of humility prevents us from writing. The ego centered mind has problerms getting the words out for the thought bouncing around in hour heads. Humility is one of the great assets writers develop over time to consistently get us in our chairs and cracking out verbiage.

Later, the same humility allows us to rend our creations through the editing process till the final work is ready to see daylight. This same humility allows us to let go of the work after a point so we can ship it. We publish or deliver to the client the final work. Then humility comes once more when we get the payoff and feedback from our work. We can now evaluate and understand what to do to get better.

Once our work is finsihed humility shows up one more time to put us back before the blank page to start the process anew. This process eventually defines us as professional writers. We are not defined by money or accolades but rather defined by our love of the work and our devotion to see the work done every day. We show up. Do the work. As Steven Pressfield would say, we are pros.

That is a lot of work for so simple of a virtue.

How we get humility and improve the noble trait

First the good news. You already have humility. The bad news is unless you are working on par with the likes of Steven King, Steven Pressfield, or millions of far less famous but still very professional writers out there, you need to get in the gym and develop some humble muscle.

Even better news. Not only can the humble muscle be developed and far more than you might think yours can, it can be done a million ways. Your hard part is choosing something to work with and then get to work.

Just a couple of humble ideas:

Look to improve yourself.

Working to improve yourself drives out the idea that you are already perfect. As a writer you know you don’t have it all down yet. So get humble and take classes, read books. Learn what you can on your own and with a study partner. Look for things you can use to improve your weaknesses as well as things you did not know you did not know. Make a game out of it. What new nueance can you find in that book you have read last year? Remeber M0rtimer J. Addler advised that to read deeper you needed to read things multiple times, especially when we want to read beyod entertainment for information or for a deeper understanding of that information.

What do you get from the work then?

You find that you can improve. What is more important is that you become firmly entrenched in the philosophy that you can improve. You might one day be as immortal as Scot Adams, JRR Tolkien, or Hemingway, but even those at the peak of fame know the truth of the path to that peak. There is still more mountain to climb for everyone. The more nuances we find within our work the better is can be made. That is where the path leads. The Japanese have a word for this process. They call it Kaizen, never ending improvement. That’s life, the path, writing and everything. Who wants a status quo? That leads to death and decay. Life is growth. To grow you must find what can be improved.

As John Matthew Fox said in an article,

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less.”

I could not say that better.

Praise others.

Praising others gives you the chance to take the view off yourself to see all the worthy aspects of others. When we take the time to praise another for somehting our mind shifts from our own ego driven interests to look at another. For that moment we become selfless.

Let the sunshine in.

Stop hiding your work in a closet. Get it out so sothers can read it. Go to classes and competitions or submit your work to journals, magazines and websites. Even putting something before a writers’ group is good for building your humble muscle.

When other people read and give us feedback our work we gain perspective on our work. We also learn what else is out there and how is applies to our work. When you look at your piece next to others, you can see where you line up and where you need some work more clearly.

Have you missed the mark, maybe bettered it? Get that manuscript submitted and you will know. What will you will find? You are not perfect, but you will also find that others are not either. Your skills are likely far better than you might have thought or worse than you thought. Neither being worse or better matters. Both depend on the feedback or lack of it you have received till now. Now you are playing the game in real time. Now you can see where things sit. So there is no need to stress about being perfect, rather you can now start to work at moving toward perfect.

Avoid the status quo, go with the flow.

As writers we are blessed with a fluid mind full of fantastic ideas. The problem is it is also has a rather loud negative side. We often find ourselves a wash in insecurities and doubt. The self-sabotage is everywhere. This often seems to be alleviated by delusions of grandeur (aka Greatest writer ever!) when we find some nugget of praise come our way. Swimming through this fluid flow is the task we set before ourselves when we first sat down to pen our ideas. It’s a roller coaster ride from on high to down low.

Our only recourse is to learn, as Kipling said

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same”

IF – Rudyard Kipling.

When it comes to writing summed up in a poem, Kipling’s If is about as good as it gets. In one short list you have 20 keys to the writer’s world. If, of course you have the wit and wisdom to mine it for all it’s worth.

My take on humility

Humility, like all good habits, comes down to first being aware of yourself. Then reminding yourself how to respond as the situations arise. In time the goal of having the virtue become a habit that only grows stronger as you continue to practice it. With enough practice it becomes part of your personal discipline.

From humble to cleaning in one stroke… De-cluttering More Than My Desk Saved My Writing

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Improve Your Willpower

Improve your willpower to get the “No” that gets you away from Facebook, just letting the auto play take you to another Netflix episode or any other indulgence that prevents us from adding words and pages to our work. Everyone wants more willpower. No one thinks they have enough of it.

Improving your willpower can drive us away from life’s temptations so that we get our goals done. The only trouble with it is that it can be exhausted from over work much like a fatigued muscle. Like a muscle it can also be strengthened with some work or depleted from constant over use of self denial.

Research tells us that we have more willpower when working on our own goals, but sacrifices made for someone else tends to drain us. Almost everything else is all about resource management. Here are some hacks to improve your willpower.

1. Limit how much you take on at one time

Set small achievable goals that you can focus your willpower on. Instead of looking at the entire project of writing a larger project like a blog focus on one small habit such as writing every day to build a base of articles for the first few months. This serves you well since the search engines really don’t notice blogs for the first four or so months, taking off unneeded stress as you develop your work habits.

2. Take a positive break.

Research has shown that a good mood slows down ego depletion. When you take a break try to spend it with something that will reinvigorate your mind, like time with your pet or watching a funny TV show. Keep it short though. You don’t want a distraction instead of a mental break. Use a timer. Set it for five or ten minutes. Keep the time short. Both the pet and the TV will be there for the next break.

3. Plan in advance.

Plan your work week at the start of your week. Using a weekly staff meeting for yourself will help you set your goals for the week and plan your work. Schedule those elements you might be inclined to avoid instead of trying to squeeze them in here or there at the end of your days. You can also use a prepday to prep some of the work ahead of time, like make outlines and plan research sources. Make and keep office hours to stay on top of your work.

A subset idea here is to use “If then” thinking to be ready for the unexpected. Have a response ready for those situations you know you might run into that allows you to quickly get back to your work. For instance say you are doing some research on line. You know you are going to run into ads as you go through the internet articles. It is possible that you will run across an ad that triggers an impulse buy. Rather than get distracted, just save the link for later. Setting a plan in place for those situations you know you might be distracted or act on impulse takes out the need to make a decision, reduces your stress and keeps you focused on your work where it should be.

4. Remove temptation.

Clear anything from your desk and computer that does not involve the project you are working on. Do not turn on the television till after your work is done. Turn off your phone. Remove anything that you know will distract you from working during your office hours to use less and improve you willpower.

5. Give yourself rewards for making the milestones.

Celebrate those little wins in such a way that they do not set you back. Go for a walk when you finish your word count. Watch a favorite show with the spouse and some popcorn when you publish ten blogs without a miss. Spend some time with family or friends because you finished Act Two of your manuscript. Get a good massage for finishing the first draft. What ever you choose to do, choose a reward that encourges you while not going overboard on some way that sneeks back on you as a punishment in some other way.

6. Get a support group.

Join a writer’s group. Form a group of writers to read each others’ manuscripts. Talk about your outline with your spouse. Ask people you trust to help you stay on track with your goals. Everyone needs emotional support to get through the tough times. Having a support infrastructure aids us when things go wrong and gives us someplace to celebrate the wins.

7. Get a bit more sleep.

Getting enough sleep is essential for both good mood and mental performance. Being in a better state of mind and happy decreases ego depletion. Remember you do not want a spend a lot of effort to create new sleep habit, just make a small shift to take some of the edge off of any sleep deprivation you may have. The goal is to be more rested, not jet lagged.

8. Do as Mark Twain would have done.

Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” This is more than a great philosophy. It is one of the best known project management techniques ever conceived. When we use the idea to tackle the hardest part of our day first we cut down our ego depletion and reduce the amount of willpower we need for the remainder of the project. Prioritization of the more important and formidable work when you have your full willpower prevents you from stalling out later in the day when all the day’s work has massively reduced your resiliency.

9. Stay away from bad habit exposure.


An Australian study, indicates that when we limit being around people doing a bad habit we want to avoid, it makes it easier to avoid doing it ourselves. In the study they found when people reducimg their unhealthy snacks were more successful when they saw fewer of their friends eating. It’s one of those right before our eyes findings. Everyone knows it is far easier to avoid doing things we do not see. The revers is also true. If temptation is right before you the urge to partake is far greater.

The Writer’s Take

So for a writer, removing and limiting others’ behaviors while we are working is essential. I can tell you it’s very easy to have a strong desire to watch TV when the kids are watching a program in the back ground. That’s one reason I face the wall instead of the room to work. It does not cut down everything but it does make things easier on the willpower.

Keeping my willpower strong is one of the reasons I try to cocoon myself when I write. I found a great strategy for this from Chris Fox’s 5000 Words per Hour.

Create a mental tortoise enclosure. Set up a time you are going to work with both a start and finish time. Pick a place to work where you will not be disturbed. Ensure that everyone from kids and pets to family and friends of the need for privacy during that time. You want to mentally define exactly your work space. If you need them Bose has some great noise cancelling headphones, but standard head phones with nature sounds works well too. Then write out a contract with yourself. “I will write at my desk every day from 6AM to 8AM.” There is a powerful psychological effect when we write things down. Things become real subconsciously. Just mentally thinking about a plan does not work as well.

There is an app to improve your willpower

Automate some of your tasks instead of exhausting your willpower. Here are a few great apps for writers:

Waste less time on line: The internet is famous for stealing our time. It is all too easy to lose track of time and lose hours of unaccounted for time. RescueTime to the rescue. This app tracks your behavior and lets you see exactly where your time went and allows you to make informed changes to cut out waste.

More productive: Apple’s Self Control and Wodows based Cold Trukey lets writers blacklist distracting websites so you stay focused on your work. Freedom works on  Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and Chrome to block all distractions from both web and apps simultaneously. This means you can be blocked on your computer and your phone at the same time.

Reduce stress: worry junkies can try a meditation app like Headspace to find some daily calm.

General habits: Tracking all habits is essential. Strides (Apple) or Productive  tracks various habits to keep us all on track.

The improve your willpower end game

Keeping our willpower in fighting trim requires a little work, but with some due diligence don’t have to fear not having enough. We can avoid the fatiguing traps, build our reserves and recover as needed. The only question is to find out what works for you. These are some of the things I have found.

Compassion for Others and Yourself


Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash