Self-Discipline Archives

Long Hiatus Restart Writing Practice

A long hiatus and now to restart the writing practice. You are all refreshed and ready to go. Yet when you sit down at the desk nothing. Blank pages as far as the eye can see. What went wrong?

Nothing really you are back at work. Now the natural resistance and critic in your head have also gone back to work also. You need some strategies to help you over come these two stepping stones. Let’s take off from where we left off in talking about getting our writing practice going .

Long Hiatus Restart Morning Routine

Start with your foundation. Get your morning routine going again. Depending on how long a hiatus you took, will depend on what you have to adjust or if you can just fall back into the work. If it has been a while, start back at a low level to build the habit. I like to use Tiny Habits in these cases. Starting with a very low bar for a week primes me to want more, while it sets the basic foundation I need to advance. After that week is over, I usually scale up rather quickly to a higher level.

You can also use your new habit building time as an opportunity to change things up and try a new approach. For instance you could make a new habit you have never had the time to try, like Jack Dorsey’s scheduling his work in blocks of time arranged throughout the week.

A writer’s habit might work out like this:

Monday Rough Drafts

Tuesday Freelancing (Pay Bills)

Wednesday Edit

Thursday Blog/social media

Friday Catch up loose ends

Saturday Rereading the week’s work

Sunday Short Stories

Yes, I did fill every day. Who ever heard of a Steven Pressfield (Do The Work) student who would go a day without some work done.

The point here is to give yourself some time to grow, learn something new and see what comes from it. No writer grows without some changes.

Long Hiatus Rust

What if your long hiatus is rusty beyond a simple restart of your old writing practice? How a bout a warm up then? Try a go at NaNoWriMo. It’s a great place to build your basic skills while you develop your mindset and habits all in one, and there are no real outside pressures or stress with the added bonus of a manuscript at the end.

The point here is to let your self adjust to the new demands you are putting on your body and mind. Just like running a marathon, a runner that has taken time away from training does not just run run the Boston Marathon. They first take the time to get themselves back into running form. The same can be said for us writers. We have to be in writing shape. That means slow down. Relax. Laugh a bit at the changes you find. Let yourself become the writer you are now, not the writer you once were. Your work and your body will thank you.

Retrain your brain

When you take off, so does your mind. Writing is really just a series of habits to we use to catch our thoughts and put them on paper. After a while the process is smooth enough that we hardly notice that we are doing any of them. Like typing, grammar, spelling, editing, proof reading, etc…. Even the most skilled typist will come back to the board with a reduced rate. Most teachers will take the time to dust off their skills before they step into a class.

The first step then is to retrain your brain’s mind set with a little brush up on basic skills like sentence structures, style, etc… It’s entirely possible you will be reteaching yourself how to write a book from page one to The End. Bloggers can find themselves looking up SEO answers. There is a lot to get a handle on in the world of writing. Take the time to let the gaps fill in.

Remember to avoid the shortcuts though. Keep your work professional. Cleanup your work before sending it off to your agent or hit publish on your blog. Reread those drafts from yesterday when you’re habit says you should. Do not just leave them to later. It’s the little details that mark the professional minded writer from the hack.

Never be afraid to learn something new. Always ask questions, especially to your brothers and sisters of the keyboard. Relearn the best practices. No matter where you look there is always some thing new to learn. Be like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi “Run and find out.” Be a good mongoose.

My take

The main thing for the writer returning from a long hiatus is that restarting their writing practice is doable. Just set your plan, relax, sit and start back work.

Mastery It’s Not What You Think

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Beginner Mind Surrenders Expertise Becomes Mastery

Beginner mind surrenders expertise. How could I have missed that insight in martial arts films since I was a Kung Fu junkie as a kid? All too often we forget that even masters in other arts will join a new art. If they are true masters they will approach it as a beginner. If not they fall back, like every one else, on what they know. Of course when they catch this, they cut that out. Then watch them go.

Mastery

The mastery lesson is the point of every martial arts flick. It was there all the time. The master is portrayed as a bumbling or weak man. He makes a lot of errors and then out of nowhere we see him perform a series of skills at a high level with complete control.

Where did the skill come from?

It was the hidden iceberg that has been developing in the water the entire time. We only see that peak after so much work has already gone into making the ice.

I found myself thinking about this when I was working through today’s Nurturing Your Writing Calm practice. The thought was so powerful that I had to make a note for later to go further into this.

George Leonard spoke of this mindset when he talked of two kinds of masters in ‘Mastery’. Years ago Lenard had given an eight week certification program to two experienced black belts in other styles.

Each master had a different approach to learning.

The first master Lenard gave us was Russell. In Leonard’s words Russell “From the moment Russell stepped on the training mat, he revealed that he was a trained martial artist.” He was full of his old karate practice habits, so learning his new art of Aikido was impeded because he did not let himself make mistakes. In short Lenard had a problem with his beginner mind surrendering his expertise.

Mistakes become mastery

Mistakes are the process we must all go through with the new. We only learn when we make mistakes. A good habit is only limited to a specific set of circumstances. When we move into a new situation, we have to let go of our trusted habits to get to a new level of understanding based on that new set of parameters. The old situations will not apply till we fully understand the new. That starts with the same baby steps we took to gain the first set of habits in the first place.

Expertise steps off the path

Russell’s problem was, “…finding it hard to let go of his expertise, and because of this failing to get the most out of his aikido training.” It was only after he had fallen behind the students without prior training that he surrendered his experience and competence so that he could move along the mastery path.

Tony’s Beginner Mind Surrenders Expertise

Tony’s approach did not indicate any previous experience as a fourth degree karate black belt and owner of two karate schools. His interactions were respectful to the teachers and sincerely humble while remaining aware of everything about him. The only clues to his back ground lay in just his presence and the way he sat, stood and walked. He had no karate warm-ups for class and made no effort to step away from a beginner’s mind. He allowed himself to make the obvious mistakes to learn from them from the perspective of aikido instead of karate. That is to say he let the art teach him how to interact from it’s perspective instead of his own. He surrendered his previous habits for a new and better perspective to improve himself.

The Only time Tony allowed himself to display his full competence was when he was asked to show the class one of his forms. The demonstration took the breath away for a moment for most of the students and teachers present. His grace, power and skill was faster than a human eye could take in fully as he launched multiple attacks with incredible Kia. At the end he bowed and just humbly returned to his seat at the edge of the mat, again the same beginner focused student he had been before.

Mastery as the way

The way of the master of any art from karate to writing to marriage is, “…to cultivate the mind and heart of the beginning at every stage along the way. For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.”

Writers have to take this to heart.

Constant learning is how writers work. Every new assignment. Each new book. Any work we begin is a new territory with its own rules that we must learn and craft our habits to meet their requirements.

Sure we do take our old tried and true habits with us, and for much of it we do profit. Though, we must still remain aware of the environment and the shifts we find. That is where a beginner’s approach that allows us to ignore the time tested rules we follow to fall to the way side for a brief time so that we can achieve our ends at a new level.

Professional mind learns for mastery

None other than Steven Pressfield is on record for this in his book ‘The Authentic Swing — Notes From the Writing of a First Novel’. For anyone looking for a writer’s perspective on the beginner’s mind for a writer in a new field, this is it.

Pressfield points out that just jumping in and swimming for the far shore is more of an “armature way” of writing a book than the planned process he learned as a madman and screenwriter. In those disciplines he learned to plan out the elements of the work and ask the right questions to cover the big structure bases. “What’s the theme? What is this story about?” He also looked for the elements. “Who’s the protagonist and what element of the theme does he represent? Who’s the villain? How do they clash? What are the crisis, climax and conclusion? The biggest one too…where do you focus the camera (perspective)?

For his first novel though, he let his instincts guide him.
A writer needs to listen to his instincts, Which often shows up when we need to learn something. Pressfield abandoned well honed and proven habits for his first published novel The Legend of Bagger Vance”. “I am not going to work that way on this book. I don’t know why. I am going to wing it. I am going to start on Page One and let her rip.” That is what a writer’s beginner’s mind looks like.

Every writer has his own take on mastery. Here is What I learned most from Isaac Asimov and Michael Crichton on getting words done.

Mastery is when the beginner mind surrenders expertise

No matter how much experience a writer may gain, every time we approach something new we are better off if we follow Pressfield to let the material dictate which habits stay and what new ones we need to learn. Remember that to learn the new your beginner’s mind needs to surrender the expertise you have built to grow.

Mastery It’s Not What You Think

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Writing Restart Practice after a Long Hiatus

How to restart your writing practice when you have neglected it for moths or even decades.

Restarting a writing practice is always a practice of remembering that you did not quit just yesterday. You have spent some time and lost some ground. Like the athlete or martial artist returning to a gym , swimming pool, or training floor under the same circumstances, you are going to have to remember to slow down, adjust, and ease back into your practice. Everyone is different and there are lots of things to try. Use what works for you and forget the rest entirely, or add them in as you go. It’s up to you. You are the one trying to relearn how to juggle a dozen things.

Read a book to restart your writing practice

To write you need to fuel the process with what you have read. Reading is the basis point for a writer. It is also likely a key player in the murder of your process the last time. Skipping your reading is like passing up gas stations on the highway. The production loss is subtle warning light that is often ignored. If you are not careful, you are going to find yourself out of gas. When your out of words read gas, you are out of things to type. Your practice is suddenly dead right before your eyes. So start there. Read something. Anything will work, as long as you might write about it. Here’s a great starter list for most writers to fill their tanks on. So how do you do that?

Glad you asked. That means your writing practice restart starts with a reading practice habit restart first. I suggest you find a time, like say half an hour or so to start, you that works for you like the evenings before bed. Just make sure you do not put it in where you will be writing later.

A Witting Practice Restart Needs Fuel

Reading fuels the life of legendary writers. Steven King is well know for his production work. The man cracks out a book in just three months. How does he do this? He reads. Not just a little either. King laments the the fact that he has so little time that he can only read about 80 books a year, one and a half a week. That is a one two habit combo that has rocked the book world since Carrie was published in 1974.

Most of the rest of us can only stand on the side to applaud and gawk. Our lives are filled with movies, projects, hobbies, family, friends and the list goes on. Leave us not mention the need to work outside of writing to keep the lights on, eat and other little life details like that. Our writing practice restart just hangs there like those unused dance shoes we bought for learning the tango.

Steven King Keeps His Writing Fuel in Hand

The key is to remember that to be a writer is to be disciplined. You have to work to make writing work. When your inner critic starts up about this, remind him that Steven King once said, ‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ So read. Develop the habit and stop whining.

King also passes along a tip to adjust to reading more. ” Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.”

Realx as You Develop Give your Writing Practice Restart Time to Grow

Don’t over think your process. It’s real easy to compare yourself to other more advanced writers, such as indie arthor Helen Scheuerer, or worse the glory of your own past. The fact is Helen Scheurer took years to get where she is and started where you are. You need to as we used to say in the Marines when out on a hump, just put your head down and march. As for your past, well by now it is likely that that glorious view you have has had a big dab of Vaseline on the lens for a long time. You can not live the present in the past anyway, so don’t. Sit down and type. Forget trying to measure up. Just enjoy where you are now. You will not be there forever, so try to enjoy the view you have now.

Another issue that pops up is guilt. Guilt is natural and normal. It’s the conscience’s way of telling us we have missed a step, such as hurt someone. In this case though it might be hitting us for not getting our work done or all the wasted time we have lost.

Fortunately we can deal with guilt most effectively by dealing with it directly instead of putting things off. The strategy is simple. Make amends and start changing your habits.

For example you can compensate for your wasted time binge watching Netflix over the weekend by breaking down the project times you would have normally used to smaller chunks over the coming week to make amends to your writing restart practice.

Revisit Your Past Writing

You, more specifically your past work, is an excellent place to warm back into writing. Look at what you have done a bit to see where you have been and what you have still unfinished. This is a great way to gain some perspective on where you are now and gain some momentum. It also does a great job killing those memories of how great you were way back when. Less glory seeking from the past. More work now. As Steven Pressfield is famous for saying, “Do the work.”

Restarting your writing process is also a haven for writer’s block. So a trip into the past can give you some ideas you might be able to use now. Many a writer has looked back through their stacks to find an unfinished manuscript then stuck it back into the forge to find they have a fine story at the end.

The main reason your old works failed and they are a gem now is simple. You have changed since them. You have perspective, experience, and sharper eyes for story and plot lines (even if you have not kept up with your writing skills) from all the stories and writing you have been exposed to in the time you first penned that book. Remember reading is the fuel for writing. That fuel has been looking for a book or article to go into. You have a lot of it on hand. Use that to to restart your writing practice.

Getting Your Writing Practice Restarted

Once you have some momentum from a good foundation, the rest is just time and keeping on the path to mastery. That is all for now.

Tomorrow, we will do Part 2 of Writing Restart Practice after a Long Hiatus.

Mastery It’s Not What You Think

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How to Finish Part 3

How to finish is about becoming aware of your story’s flow is just the beginning. Now you need a few more tweaks to polish your process habits.

Schedule your writing habit.

I find that developing a daily habit is better for me than scheduling my time. I do recommend having ‘office hours’ in the day, but I choose to focus more on the habit of getting the work done instead of adhering to a set time schedule how to finish. If allotting your day on a time schedule works for you, go for it. For me it’s all about building a habit and time is not quite as relevant.

Either way you need to control your calendar so that you get work done. For me I set down due dates on a calendar and I also make annotations for completing a day’s given projects as I go through the day. That way I don’t miss what is coming up or due on one hand. On the other hand I can get reinforcement for habit runs.

Start your how to finish habit

Now it’s time to figure out what habits to build. Start with some basic questions: What habit do you want? When do you want to write?

Get specific as possible. Days and times are a must here.How long will you write? Do you have fall back times? What production levels will you use? Days done, pages, words, chapters by the week, etc… Find what you can reasonably produce.

Take the time to look at what works for you to build the habit and keep it. Hint: a good habit that sticks is better than over ambitious effort that burns out. Learning how to habit is learning how to finish.

Be sure to cover the entire publication process from draft to final edit and publication. As Seth Godin points out, you must ship it to finish it. Do not wus out when you reach publication time. You need a time line for all of this. Timelines keep us on track, work more efficiently and coordinate those steps where others come, like an editor, beta reader edits, book and cover design, your release and marketing plans, etc… into the process to help us finish.
Even if you self publish and do everything through Gumroads and or Amazon, you still need to put these people into your game plan.

Stay realistic

How to finish starts when setting up your schedule. Take time and stay realistic with your goals and timelines. Look at what your commitments are like right now. You might not be in a position to get a book written in 45 days because you don’t have enough time per day and this is your first rodeo.

That does not mean you cannot write the book but be ready to change thing up as you progress. If you can only work half the hours of an ideal deadline, well then move the deadline. If the daily word count is too low or the work takes you longer per day, then change your work out line, work schedule or due dates.
In the end writing is a big time lesson in humility. Take heed and learn from the harder lessons. Change things and make new goals as needed. That will help you make your targets while you build confidence and skill. Both of which will improve each other so that in the future you will run more smoothly and become more productive.

Being honest with yourself in the process when things are not working, figuring out things in a logical manner and setting realistic goals that you can achieve is the recipe for shipping, building a library of published works and staying motivated. Even if you find ways to write faster, you still need to set reasonable goals. Unrealistic and unchanged goals will only demoralize you and leave with zero books.

How to finish comes with accountability

One thing all writers should consider is having a critique partner/group. Getting together with fellow writers to go over the week’s work for everyone in the group is a great way to ensure you get your work done and get some early feedback to end problems before they become problems. It’s also a good way to get ideas for how to deal with your process issues, find fixes for setbacks and stay on track.

Start a blog

Talking about your upcoming work is a great way to build a writing platform to market your book. The conversation also will give you a need to meet, specifically public expectations for a finished work, on time. Deadlines you can not move are your friend and the key for how to finish your work. We all need motivation and deadlines are a great one to build that habit.

Setup a reminder

A physical outline or mood board hung where you can see it where you write or a profile sketch on your phone’s background is a great reminder.

The trick for accountability is to remind ourselves about our project every day. That keeps the mind working on solutions.

Get out of the belly of the beast

No first draft is perfect. The secret sauce is to get the first draft done fast. That only happens when we write instead of edit. We act first then reflect. As Steven Pressfield says, “Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork. Believe me he is. … Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Don’t think.”

Skip the burnout

You know that feeling that your writing is trash? You think nothing you write is important, no one cares about your subject, or you are stuck in writer’s block. That is an illusionary trap, sometimes referred to as writer’s rut. Many writers walk away from projects because of this rut.

Never stop writing cure.

True the current work in progress may be draining your joy way like giant leach, but it has nothing to do with you or your writing. It is the project itself. You are just stuck. That’s all and there is a solution. Switch what you are writing on, but do not stop writing.

Try a different kind of work like a poem, a blog post or a short story. Even a side gig working for another writer’s blog is a good change up. The critical step is to set a time to return to the book. You want time for the mind to figure things out but not so much that you cannot get back into the work. Take a breather but set a specific time to get back in the saddle.

Asimov was famous for switching projects when he got stuck. That’s why he had so many typewriters. Each one was a separate project in process.

The Answer for How to Finish is Within

The answer we are looking for is that we are finished with a work when it rings true with our human soul. That’ is why it’s part of the mastery path.

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Writers Finish and Ship How to Know Part 1

All writers finish and ship. You got this. Everything is ready. Now it is time to ship. Are you certain? When did you Finnish the writing? When is that? Tricky questions for all creatives from the artistic side’s writers, artists and performers to the pragmatic side’s architects, engineers and business builders.

Being finished can be easy or hard, it depends on the variables. For our talk here I will stick to writing, but the base concepts are universal for all creative types.

Theory says that a writer is done when they can ship. Practice often stalls shipping. Shipping has several options and depends a great deal on the writer. When we ship happens a lot for writers in the process and can be when we send the work to an editor, publish the article on line or deliver that white paper to a client. Writers ship at several stages, some are harder to get past and are toally different for most writers.

For the most part to ship is the point where we can no longer make changes to our draft. We go live. For many writers this is where we get cold feet. We feel that inner critic just hammering away at us. It is not always easy to know the answer to the question in the back of 0ur head. When is this work ever really going to be done?

Do I have to finish to ship?

A lot of people make the mistake of bouncing between the belief that their stuff is crap and over editing or thinking that every line they put down on paper is golden and waste time trying to make the work work. Neither is hardly the case. They are both stalls to ship.

Every writer needs to know when to let go. Our job is to filter through our raw material to find the pure ideas we are aiming at. Sometimes that means we have to know to let go of the clinkers.

What’s a clinker?

When we used coal fired stoves people often found one or two pieces that did not burn in every load. The nonburnable pieces were called clinkers. They were often the result of either low quality fuel or not burning the fuel right. The common answer back then was mostly just to shovel them out and start over with a fresh load.

Writing works much the same way. When we form clinkers we have to know to shovel things out and start over. We have to know when to let go.

Did you go all Picasso or George Lucas or Sir Author Conan Doyle?

If it were easy to know when a creative work is done masters like Picasso, Lukas and Doyle would have had a far easier time of it. Knowing when we are done is as much a sense from our guts as it is a plan spelled out in great detail on paper.
Picasso was showing his newest collection to his friend and Paris art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler when his voice fell silent. In that moment Picasso could see his work had not really reached his vision. Picasso knew his work was not done. He seized a palette knife and shredded each one in turn.

All the time Picasso destroyed months of work his friend kept trying to stay his hand. “Arrête Pablo. Arrête.” Nothing could stop him. In that moment Picasso took himself back to square one. Sometimes you have to know the work is not ready.

Our early success can prevent finishing and shipping also

George Lucas found his work incomplete for decades. Fans raved about this along with him, but it was a case of misunderstanding of what the work scale was. Fans loved the story and demanded the remaining unfilmed six films he had used to craft his back story, story line and characters.

There is little doubt that Lucas could have finished all the films sooner if he had not piddled around fine tuning the original three through several incarnations. The question real question was should he tell the story for the audience or for himself?

Lucas’ vision only wanted to tell the story of the first three films, chapter four to chapter six. Lucas focused on perfecting the vision for the first films instead of finishing the rest of the films and shipping them to his audience. He spent years remaking the films after they had been in the theaters for various versions as the technology allowed him to expand our view of his original vision.

Lucas’s Answer

As Lucas said in an interview on his 2004 updated version of the first film from 1977,

“The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. … I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be.

I’m the one who has to take responsibility for it. I’m the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they’re going to throw rocks at me, they’re going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.”

Fans and Lucas aside, the industry is far better off tech wise because of all that time Lucas spent to advance the tech he needed tell his story. The main thing is that in the end it is the writer who says the works done. Though eventually Lucas did bow to the public desires. He made the first of the remaining six films and he set the stage for the reast of the films to be made from his notes and guidelines.

Doyle Changed his Mind

Sir Author Conan Doyle was not consumed by perfecting a vision of his work. He was tired of writing about Sherlock Holmes, so he killed Holmes to get free of the story. The ire of the public over the untimely end of the story, including bricks through his publisher’s window, forced Doyle to bring Holmes back. It was much later that he could quietly quit the tale.

For Doyle the return of Sherlock Holmes ensured immortality for the Holms story, but very few of us today know of his Lost World that has been used for many Jurassic type worlds since including works like Jurassic Park.

So who knows when best to end the story the author or the audience?

Many would like to see ourselves as Picasso with the steel nerves to raze our work to the ground. I am certain some do have Picasso’s direction, but most of us either fritter our time with clinkers or just yield to demands of the audience to decide when we are done. In the end it is the writer who must decide to let go or press on. We have to listen to Picasso and Lucas. Writers are done when we say. We say when to finish and ship.

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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

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.

Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash

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.

Photo by shraga kopstein on Unsplash

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?

Photo by Weston MacKinnon on Unsplash