Category: Self-Discipline

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

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Mastery It’s Not What You Think

Mastery is often thought of as a place or level we get to. It’s a little different really.

Working on mastery

A while ago I was working through another BTL (Built to Lead, Chet Scott) article. I love Scott’s stuff. He makes you think. In my case often by evoking a kind of denial or anger when he hits the mark too close to one of my own thoughts. This time he was talking of mastery. What touched me off was his comment that “The enemy of mastery is thinking you know it already.”

Part of me woke up. I took Scott’s meaning as just talking about avoidance and was partly wrong. That part of my mind raising the commotion did not stop with understanding. It protested instead. “Does not such a mindset also harm? Does this line of thinking not harm confidence? Do we not say “I’ve got this” when we start out on a new journey?”

I did agree that when we are learning repition is essential. I learned long ago in karate that we humans need to over practice far beyond the phase where we think we know things. Many masters are known to practice in this manner.

Following the masters’ thoughts

My initial rejections were followed by some new thoughts. Steven Pressfield said he dealt with a criticism of his work by his editor. Shawn Coyne had returned Pressfield’s manuscript with ten needed edits. He had an instant flutter of frustration. There was noting he could agree with. I could see the parallels I had here.

Adjust to mastery time

Instead of just attacking the critique, Pressfield chose to allow himself time to adjust and see the possibilities. Over a few weeks he found some of the changes made sense and he could deal with them. As he progressed over several more weeks he whittled down his arguments against the changes. His emotions died down and his mind wrapped itself about the issues from his more clear frame of reference.

Pressfield has mastered the professional mindset allowing him to deal with things from a less emotional state. Taking more time allows his mind work through the data set. I decided to let my mind work through the data set that with Scott’s line of thought by going with Pressfield’s approach to let it sit a bit before I did my BTL writing on the article.

Results

By the time I sat down I could, like Pressfield, already see how the change up thinking worked in learning situations. I had already come to the agreement that there is no going over old stuff without something new coming out of it. All new stuff is the result of old stuff. You cannot have the new without a solid and regular repeated exposure to the old.

It occurred to me that I had run into this before. I had talked to my youngest daughter about learning new things and the secret to kata found through kaizen, never ending practice. I had told her, “When you learn something new from another person, you learn something that was found in somebody else’s mind. When you learn something knew from your own mind and the connections you made with old material, you create something new that you can give the world.”

New thought

That memory brought up a new thought. ‘Are you a giver or a taker?’

When we learn, we are the takers. We look for the thoughts and ideas of others. When we move into a more giving mode of mind, we look deeper into the material to find new connections that we can give to the world.

Mastery is process

Taking a break allowed me a new take on concepts I already possessed. Mastery is not an end of a process. It is the process. We kill that process when we think about the material we are looking at in the wrong way. Scott could not be more right than “The enemy of mastery is thinking you know it already.”

Scott’s mastery solution

To combat this enemy mindset Scott reminded me in a new way that we should never tell ourselves, or anyone else for that matter, “I know that, I didn’t really learn anything new, or give me something new.” In its stead Scott offered a great mantra:

“I’ve a lot to learn, I’ve found the melody line, and now I am after a thousand nuances and then a thousand more.”

This is the heart of mastery. You don’t learn new things. You learn the details of what you thought you knew.

Mastery lesson

In life, whether that is on a dojo floor or at the keyboard late in the afternoon struggling to get through another article on time, we never stop learning. Most of that learning will be influenced by what we have already learned. The deep learning all comes from what we have already learned. There is always something new to learn in old stuff we think we already know. We find it in the nuances.

Mastery is a deliberate practice in the mundane where we strive to learn what we did not learn before. The only path to mastery is through the grind down the well trod path of what we already know. Looking for those nuances is where we find the joy of our practice.

Gain mastery

Writers of all levels can optimize our own learning on the path to mastery. Here are a few suggestions to add to your path.

Your job.

Not all jobs are writing based, but when choosing work you should look at possibilities beyond the financial ones when possible to open yourself to more learning that will improve your writing skills. Consider such options as a low paying startup job, unpaid internships, and opportunities to follow a mentor.

Just because you have to hold a full time job in another non writing field does not mean many of these opportunities are not still on the table. Some of them can be done on a limited bases such as evenings, weekends or even for two weeks of vacation. You can also look into online work as well. The point is to find a way to add to your mastery practice. You will not find one if you do not open yourself up to try.

Those you know.

Jim Rohn is famous for saying, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” He is right. We might not be the average of our five closest friends and acquaintances, but those around us do shape our attitudes and habits. Choosing some people who share your desire to become better writers to hang with is a wise investment in your path to mastery of this wondrous craft. Look for people you can learn from. Get comfortable with the idea that you are not the smartest in your circle. Being dumb allows you to ask the dumb questions you might otherwise avoid and suffer from the lost opportunity to fill in a gap.

Attitude adjustment chamber.

Pride and ego are a tag team bent on destroying your education. When we are learning we need to ask stupid questions and even accept looking foolish for one really good reason. We don’t really know something. Not asking stupid questions holds us back and is the most foolish reason for failure ever, especially when the answer is right there for the asking and the only cost is the posibility of looking foolish or feeling stupid. On should never feel ashamed for saying, “I still don’t get it” for the third time. Writing mastery demands that we get it. There is no deadline or award for getting it in record time. We just need to get it. Cultivate an attitude that is fearless before negative feedback and failure.

The mastery wrap up

The writer’s path to mastery is the same as mastery of any field. Once we have learned what to do, we grind through our lessons ten thousand times finding the nuances till we find nothing more to learn. So far no one has proved Hemingway wrong, we work in an endeavor that has no master, but one in which all aspire to being one in. Welcome to the path.

Want to read more on the writer’s path? Try this article: Writing with Self-Confidence

Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash

Kipling’s Writing Lessons in IF


Kipling’s writing lessons in If are a treasure trove for the writer willing to put them into practice. When I think of maturity and growing up I find myself thinking about Rudyard Kipling’s poem to his son “If”. I first ran across the poem somewhere back in my child hood. Not sure where I first ran into it. Though, I remember it was referenced and read in class in high school and middle school.

Kipling’s Writing Lessons on Two Importers

Even outside of school I found the poem in some of the most unexpected places from lines on buildings and parks. A friend once pointed out that they quoted from the poem over the player’s Center Court entrance.


“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”

Society

I have found many writers have used ‘If’ in their books and articles. Some of our pop culture is based on this poem from music classics like Bread’s If (https://youtu.be/qGfVOdTiUEc) to TV shows like Boardwalk Empire’s used it as the theme for the Season Three Episode 11 Two Importers.

College

I have had a college roommate put If up on his wall so he could read it daily to remind himself of the standard he needed to make for himself. It became a kind of mantra for him as he dealt with the struggles of getting through college and getting on with life after the Army.

For most of that time I did little with If other than agree this was the general course a young man like myself should follow, then promptly moved on to other things.

Kipling’s Writing Lessons and the Writer

It was not till I sat down to really look at what a professional writer was that I found that Kipling’s writing lessons were much more than a surface level oration for a child. Even more, I found it was relevant to me as a writer with every beat.

Kipling’s lessons on personal integrity, behavior and growth reach deep into the craft of writing. While the poem serves quite well for a personal philosophy and ethos, it also gives a writer a blueprint to follow for their development as a writer.

Kipling’s Lessons

A writer must dream and think, but we really cannot just dream or think. We must do our work. There are pages to be written, edited, rewritten and published. Then the manuscripts and articles must be promoted and the research for the next tale done.


Every book, article, and work launched is an invitation to success or disaster. The writer must see them only for the feedback and the lessons instead of some stamp on their character or a vote of popularity.


Every time a writer publishes, we gamble with all our emotional and financial winnings of life in one pitch of the dice. The mature writer will take the loss silently, at least as far as others might hear, and return to the keyboard with a feeling of having been spent to try another book or article.


A writer must learn to let no critic hurt you, even the one inside.

Act When You Fall

If packs lessons in every line. There is even a lesson of what to do when the world has crashed down on you.


“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, …”

No truer words for a writer who has just had a failure. Write something fast. Don’t look down or look back. Write. The power of a writer is that even when there is nothing to be done, we can do something. We can act. We can write.

Kipling Life

Kipling’s own life is a hero’s journey of pain that gives us a clear vision of what our own trials may one day yield in our work. His life was more tragedy than gift. In child hood he was denied him parental love and attention, sent by his parents to a faster mother who beat him. Kipling even failed in school where they tried to instill character traits that he was not suited for. He even found great pain in adulthood with the loss of two of his children.

Yet out of all of that pain and misery he gave us a clear definition of what an adult should aspire to. For the writer becoming an adult is to say that we are turning more professional in our effort to write.

Kipling Set Standard

Kipling himself seems to have lived to the very standard he set for his son in the poem. In his life he was successful as a poet in his early years and gained quite a sound popularity that was able to withstand the later critics who attacked his work as superficial without any deep meaning.

The Work

For Kipling the work itself was the point. Because of this more humble take on both himself and his work, he turned down several honors that included Poet Laureate, Order of Merit and even a knighthood. Out of all of them it was only the Nobel Prize for Literature that Kipling accepted in 1907. The results of his work reach far further than mere egotistically driven self-acclaim.

We still read Kipling’s works today. From his works springs a form of immortality that only a dedicated writer is capable of achieving. After over one hundred years, we are still enriched as we bask in his work. The Jungle Book, Kim, and Just So Stories that enrich us all. Of them all it is If that enriches the writer most.

Kipling’s Writing Lessons for Writers

To the writer just reading through his poem is a complete list of the mind, skills, and strengths a writer need to do battle with one’s own ego. There is not one line that every writer should not commit to memory and habit in their pursuit of the craft.

In the lines we find not just the advice to improve ourselves, but also to practice daily those skills that motivate, encourage… much of it comprised of mantras to use in those times the world comes crashing in and our egos rend our spirit to shreds.

Clairity

If is one of those crystal clear lines of thought that if we head and learn from its guidance, we cannot help but become better people as well as better writers. That is the mark of a true master on the path.

‘If’

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

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Persistent Patient Practice  


 
Persistent patient practice? Is it that makes a great writer or artist? It can’t be that simple…or hard. Let’s visit the question again. Why is anyone great really? What talent do they possess that so many never seem to have?
 
Many people think there is some secret they are missing. Some say there is a talent that is bestowed on just a chosen few. The conspiratorialists will tell you there is some fix set against the masses. Some guy behind him will tell you he has a hack or short cut that will fix things for you to beat that conspiracy.
 
None of that is true. You can talk to a million people and few of them will hit even close to what it will take to be a successful writer or any other creative endeavor for that matter. Even if they spout something close to the truth, they will not really know how to use it.

So is it really persistent patient practice?

The truth is you have to practice and get your stuff out there. Practice and production are two separate ends bound by a process. You will need all three to actually make any career or skill shine.

How long will it take?

That depends on the factors you start with. Everyone has pieces for the solution, but we don’t all have all the same pieces. You might have more skill than I do in some area. I might have more experience in another. The difference between people is why it’s so hard to do exactly what someone else has done to succeed right off the bat. In fact unless you are just very lucky, you will not have enough of the exact combination of factors that lead to their success.

Don’t let anyone fool you even with the best of connections and plenty of money to back them, every writer still has to work through all the key work to get any where. You cannot buy your way into heaven. Since Gutenberg invented the press there have been thousands of vanity publishing businesses that come real close to making the claim that anyone can write an instant best seller.

A Writer Born

The truth is fledgling writers are going to have to write a lot and keep on writing over a long period of undetermined time to get enough skill, develop their mindset, allow enough to people see their stuff, receive enough of the right feedback to make the right improvements they need, and for the stars to align just right to become an overnight success. Persistent patient practice pays off every time.

Same Song Another Verse

Persistent patient practice not new really. Every profession has the same curve. Fireman to Writer we all must put in our dues. There is no other way. That is the real skill. You have to put in the work.

Where to Start

So what skill does a writer need to pay those dues? The big three that come to my mind are persistence, patience and practice. Those three skills are the start.

Persistence

I start with persistence. There are lots of terms describe this attribute from dogged determination to resilience to tenacity to even, my favorite term plain old stubborn.
 
All of those way of thinking are really about one thing. We are answering one question: When do I quit? We answer that with our mindset. Will we discipline ourselves to endure our challenge? Will we keep moving forward one step at a time with a definite plan in mind instead of just freaking out or being reactive?

Patience

Out of persistence we develop our patience. Bruce lee said that “Patience is concentrated strength.” He meant that to be patient was to actively work for a given destination.

True patience has little to do with taking things and moving on. That’s toughness. It is a useful attribute but in reality it is quite passive. Patience is engages the obstacles and breaks them down like water on a stone. Water is very patient.

Patience requires us to make a plan to act from if we want to create something great. As Dr. Alex Lickerman said in Psychology Today, patience is essential. ” It defends us against foolish, impulsive behavior, gives us time to consider our options carefully, plan appropriately, and execute effectively.”
 
With patience we create the self-confidence to win, come to recognize the goal is not crucial to be happy, as well as build the determination to take the next small step forward in our practice.

Practice

Our practice is the path itself. It is getting up at five am to pound out our pages. We make different choices with a practice. Instead of watching TV, we choose to sit down in the evening to go over our drafts. We choose to do some research at lunch or use our break times to learn how to use keywords better. A practice is the active application of both persistence and patience combined into a practice.

The Takeaway

The writer’s path is found in just three words. Persistent Patient Practice. From that point is where your path is found.

Going Slow Makes Mastery

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Finish Your Long Project In 11 Steps

Finish your long project and clear it out of the way. This is not one of those big leap things you can not do over night. It takes a commitment over a longer period of time so today I am looking at what we can do to get our longer term projects blog, larger 10k white paper or novel done over an ongoing basis.

The Long Term Game Plan for Finished Projects

Just 11 simple steps are all you need to get finish the project without going nuts.

1. Make your project a new habit.

Working from a habit perspective means you need to work regularly on the project. In general this is a daily thing, but you can also work from a five work day plan or a work around like three days a week. Working from a habit perspective allows us to work in manageable chunks and make progress to our goal or deadline without the stress of trying to pack too much work into too few hours of the day.

2. Setup your work space.

Give yourself the added help of a single space where you do your work. Do not spread your work around so that it can be done anywhere. When we try to fit our work in just anywhere we often windup getting the work done nowhere because we are constantly fighting distractions. Working at one place allows us to minimize distractions. We can remove or hide reminders of other projects, your 9 to 5 job and limit immediate access all the time of our kids and pets. Setting limits, especially for kids and pets will still allow them to run in just to ask a question or give you a hug but still allow you to get those words down with some focus and flow.

3. Tell others about your time and space.

This is for both accountability and distraction reasons. Tell people what your project’s requirements, hours and deadlines are. Bring them in as team members who are there to help you keep your hours consistent and free of distractions when working. Everyone who might be a distraction then becomes your helper instead of your source of frustration. Our team members also provide us with motivation to write and get done on time. Trust me. A kid asking you if you should be writing is an excellent reminder that can not only help you with your habit but also give your child an excellent roll modle to copy in their own lives.

4. Don’t be available.

Read that tag again. It is your new mantra if you just can not say no. You want all your friends, spouse, kids, neighbors, the people in the office, anyone who might interrupt you that in this time period you are not there for them. You will not be saying yes to anything. The answer for anything outside of broken bones or profuse bleeding is a big fat NO! Only 911 call type emergencies will qualify for an interruption. This means when they walk up you don’t talk to them. You focus. That focus is a finished project. It is a bit on you if you are a yes type personality, but that is what it will take to get the respect your time and space need when you have a big project.

5. Write rough first.

Don’t cheat by staring at a blank page. Put words down. Every minute counts and so does every word, whether you think it is right or not. Cleanup is for later. You need words to work with first. Get that idea down. Cover the page.
Make an agreement with yourself that your time on your work is for just writing. Don’t use it for anything else. You can treat your edit and rewrite times the same way too, but that’s for later. First you need that draft.

6. Get over yourself. Finish that Project.

Your perfectionist ego is going to kill you. You want a perfect draft but that is never going to happen. So get the words down. Forget perfect. Promise yourself it can be perfect after your final edit…when ever that is. For now let yourself be messy and imperfect.

For the pantsers out there, present yourself with a problem and write your way out of it. If you are a plotter type, you have your outline. Either way, you need something to focus your mind on when you sit down. Professional writers do not sit down to wait for inspiration. They sit down to write. With our without a map, they have a destination in mind.

The best advice I have seen on this is to write what the next step is for your work when you finish with a given step. This trick can be used for both your overall flow process as you move from idea creation, to draft to edit to rewrite to publish or it can be used in a given piece of work such as a scene or chapter in a book or the next article you have to write for your blog or client. However you choose to use it, write down your next step just after you get done with what you are doing. It’s that little review is a great way for your brain to cue up what needs to be worked on when you come back to the desk.

7. Focus.

Whatever project you are working on from blog posts to a book, keep your work flowing by keeping it the main focus of your work. That could be a novel you want to get done or it could be a build up on your blog or it could be getting more copy writing clients. Whatever you are working on, that is your main focus. Keep it mentally locked when you are working on it. Finishing your projects will not be all that hard then.

8. Write for a habit not just to Finish The Project

I have seen some argue for building writing habits by writing something. What you write does not matter. I agree that you can create a lock for yourself to write that way, but there are several bigger problems that come from that kind practice. The largest being that while you will get in the habit of writing in and of itself, you will also avoid the main project you really want to write on. The result will be you do not have the real results you want (say a book draft done) about six months down the road because you do not have the exact habits for the exact result you want. Your habits will be too generalized.

Solution is simple. If you want a book in a year, that is the focus of your practice time. In practice we create the exact kind of discipline we need to fit the results we want. We want to be a novelist, blogger or copywriter not a letter writer to great aunt Gertrude.

9. Trust your natural work flow Luke.

One of the more subtle habit traps is using another person’s word or page count. You already have a basic word count you can already do. For now that’s all you need. Over time the your words will increase as your skills improve, not to mention the muscles in your fingers get stronger. For now learn how much you can do in whatever reasonable time period and word count you can get done. Not only will it help make you more consistent, it will also give you an idea how much time you will need to realistically complete this project and the next one.

10. Take a break. Finishing your projects need one too.

Don’t try to type for hours on end. You will burn out on every level doing that and your project will grind to a halt. The best way is to take breaks about every thirty minutes or once an hour to rev up your physical and mental juices. Just five minutes every half hour away from the work is all it takes. Yes, that means take ten if you have got a good 50 minutes plus in.

Use those breaks to release some cortisol and move the blood about. Five minutes is time enough to pace a bit or do some burpees or a few yoga poses. You can also get a coffee refill and grab a snack. Anything is useful as long as it takes your mind off the work and lets you release some of the pressure.
 
In general the longer the work day you have, the more important it becomes for you to take breaks. There’s a reason in the public sector breaks have been fought for and won by unions. They work. Without a break any kind of work for hours at a go will grind you down. Your errors will increase. For a writer this will mean far more bad ideas than what we really want and a lot more time spent in edit and rewrite mode. Save yourself some frustration and take the breaks to finish your project. You will come back to the work with a new energy, better ideas and things will work out.

11. You need fun in the sun.

Schedule some fun time away from writing too. Whatever you find fun, do it. The work is a kind of reward, but you need some other kinds of fun too. Life is a balance. Take a hike. Play with the kids. Share some time with the spouse. Heck grab some popcorn and watch a movie. Some say all work and no play makes you dull, but for a writer dull really mean ugly manuscripts.

Parting shot

Self-discipline is not just about controlling your-self or getting your writing done. It is also about how your life is lived as a whole. Follow the steps, adapt them to meet your needs and live your life on the writer’s path. All you have to do is start.


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Writer’s Self-discipline Pays-After Work Done You Step Forward

Writer’s self-discipline pays. Everything you will do in life has some form of feedback that comes with it. Most of the time we can see that feedback when we collect a paycheck, see our book reach number one on Amazon or someone praises our work in a review. But there is also a biological feedback that we feel when the day’s work at the keyboard is over. We are not the same people who sat down to figure out what was in our heads. Now we know that answer and we have kind of a feeling of ‘YESSS!’ in our souls.

Self-discipline is the key to getting to that feeling. That feeling for the writer is the instant gratification we have sought.

How do we develop self-discipline? In that question is the basis of it all. Self-discipline is something that can be learned and developed.

There are some guidelines to get started.


You have to have a goal.


No one ever does anything just by throwing something at the wall with the hope of it sticking. You have to aim for something. Set your goal and make it big to start. Then you pare that overall goal down to smaller steps so that you can get there.

I recently read of a writer who had written an article every week for over 15 years. He said that his goal had never been to write over 700 articles but instead just to write that week’s article every week. This is how to look at your goals. Break them down to a manageable amount and then focus on getting that done in the set time. Do not spend your time obsessing about the end game.

You have a deadline for the goal…maybe. Small steps definitely


Some long term goals cannot be scheduled like a bus. However, your small steps, such as achieving your word count today or your weekly production quota can. The longer goal might defy the creation of a dead line such as becoming a world class writer on an article a week, but the goal to have this week’s article written or this week’s chapter re-written can and should have a deadline. You need to keep this. When the timer goes off or the publication time for the article rolls around, you need to hit the button and call it a day.

Visualize your goal, but do it like athletes do.



Most advice I have seen is to look at your goal, which is great. However, the breakdown I have seen is that then you are left with the question of Now what do you do? You are off on Some Day Isle is what you wind up doing, hopelessly trapped in the future. You have to reel it in and get down to the work today. That means you should practice visualizing the work itself.

In a study some years ago they took kids on a basketball team and had them break into three groups. The first threw free throws for practice every day. The second did nothing. The third sat down and only visualized throwing perfect shots every day. The results were along the lines of what you would expect for the first two groups. The first improved. The second did not. The third however did the unexpected at the time. They improved almost as much as the first group. This is the reason so many athletes work not only with the end game goals but also the process too.

Practice your habit first. Habits make discipline


Habits are the first step you take every time. They happen often without your even knowing it. Many disciplined people make it a practice to focus on their habits instead of the practice to ensure the practice happens. Done long enough the habits become a discipline in and of themselves which in turn reinforces the discipline of the practice. As Sensei Sammons used to tell us, “The hardest part of karate is just showing up.” The key habit for everything, not just writing, is showing up.

For a writer the practice is writing for a given time every day. To practice showing up you need a habit. For some that is a prayer or recital of something that focuses the mind, others use a mind dump before writing. I have seen some habits include writing a short amount of time like two to five minutes, putting down one or two sentences, or, one of my favorites is writing down just five words to get started. I like that last one since I have often found myself writing just one four word sentence when I was struggling to get started, but that extra word always forced me to get two sentences, often more, down. Had I been using my old standby of just one sentence, I would never have gotten past it on those four word days.

That last point brings me to another point.


Always try new ideas, no matter how crazy they seem. The point of sitting down is to get more words on the page. To do that you have to be ready to kick start things in different ways from time to time. Building a variety of tactics and strategies to improve your habits always pays off in ways you did not expect.

Keep consistency in mind.



Working on a single habit every day, like getting at least five words down is enough to move you forward. Everyone runs into things that will take us away from the desk. Most of those times it is nothing less than our own brain trying to avoid the hard things. Consistency is hard. However not publishing is even harder.

We lose things like money, self-esteem, confidence, etc… Nothing is built over night. Not Rome. Nor your ideal body. Not even your mind. Most definitely your body of written works is not either. The key to achieving our largest goals is consistent application of small habits that reinforce larger habits that are key to getting there. For karate the habit of training two hours a day three times a week was based off my showing up habit. The result was five years later when I had my black belt in Goju –Ryu karate.

Accept discomfort and get comfortable with it.


Anytime we want to make a change we are going to be uncomfortable. We are working outside of our comfort zone. Humans seem hardwired to run from uncomfortable things. We allow ourselves all kinds of distractions to help us avoid getting things done. Fill your evenings with movies, games or scrolling around on social media? Why not? How about positive things like cleaning out the car or paying bills to avoid getting those words down. Sounds reasonable to me. Many a writer would rather deal with screaming children or argue with their spouse than do their work at times.

Why is that? It’s simple. Because writing is painful at times. We have to sit there fighting with the blank space before us. Our only weapon is what little faith we have that inside us we have something to fill it. Our greatest fear in those moments…? We fear our addled minds have nothing to put there. Nothing at all. In this we lie to ourselves on this. We have a box in our minds.

Believe there is always something in the box.


Patricia Ryan taught improvisation at Stanford for years. Her most famous lesson was the invisible box. Ryan would have her students stand before her and pick up an invisible box with a lid. They were told to hold the box a moment then open the lid. She would ask them what was inside. The answers were varied from bracelets or scarves to rare or ancient items. The key thing to remember is that there was always something in the box. The students always found an answer when they opened the box.

Writer’s block is a myth. There is always something in the mist. It’s our job as writers to believe it is there and it will be, even if it is just five words today. Tomorrow it will be more. Eventually we will meet our deadline and move on to the next work.

Congratulate or forgive your-self as needed.


The goal is to get your work done, then move on to repeat the process with the next work. You start tomorrow. You win regardless of whether the work is a triumph or a failure. Wins are like laurel wreaths. They feel great in the moment, but they mean nothing outside that moment. A failure only means you have something new to learn and now you know what does not work. Try again. Both are little more than distractions if dwelt upon. They cannot really help or hurt you by themselves. Dwell on them and they become a very potent force that will bring all your efforts to a complete stop.

SEALS Know the Way


The SEAL teams are full of some of the most successful people on the planet when it comes to discipline. One of the many stories I have heard over the years is how they over come failures and successes.

At no time do SEALs allow their emotions of anger, fear, guilt or frustration to build up. Those emotions only drag us under. In the teams, the correct response is simply to accept, forgive, then create a new attack plan and act on it . In the SEAL view point they failed because they were adequate. Adequate is not really a win. It means you need to grow. Success is dealt with in a similar manner. Accept and release then go back into training.



At the end of the day, the pay off for writers is that we get to launch ourselves into this fantastic life that is writing where many less daring souls dare not enter. It takes guts just to be able to say for all who might hear, “I am a writer.”

After discipline comes commitment. Writing Commitment over Writing Goal: The journey over the arrival

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Discipline Starts Habits like Sitting Down to Write. Move Your Project Forward

Discipline Starts Habits. Habits start your new article, a new chapter or any new project. Starting can be hard at times. While it is mostly comes down to a matter of habit that will get you into the chair, sometimes you need a few tricks to get working when you are still building the new habit or things have gotten in the way. Here are some of the tricks I have used to make my writing habit take root.

Setup

Set your computer to pull up your Notepad, One Note, Scribner, Word, Google docs, your blog’s word press page or whatever other program you use to write on startup. That simple hack helps your discipline start the habit with very little effort.
 
This seems like a simple idea but it is powerful, if you use it to start working first thing. The best part of this trick is that it makes starting a no brainier every time you turn on your machine. This one step change eliminates distractions like your email account, social media, or any other online distraction you can think of.
 
While I was first building a daily writing habit, I found it the only way to kill off other distraction for my time at the start of my work day.

Write

Plan a time to write every day. This is more for the long term, but writing should be a long term thing. Treat it like it is. Plan for it like any other long term thing in your life like say going to your job. The mind trick is to remember that writing is more of an endurance race than a quarter mile sprint. Learning what how the pros approach their practice is not a bad idea either. You might learn something.

Mindset activates discipline starts habits

Change your mindset. If you are letting your work go undone it is likely you have a mix of feelings over it. They can range from fear to frustration. Not one of those feelings is going to help you get words on the page. That’s not their job. They are here to stop you. You have to sit down to stop them in their tracks.
 
That means how you view writing is using the wrong mental habit set. Ask yourself a few questions about your process. How do you see your writing? Is it a side job? Do you see it as part time? Is it something that can be moved around or avoided just because you choose to? In short, do you see it as important?
 
Chances are you like to think of it as important, in fact so very important. The problem is you don’t really treat it like it is important. Don’t worry. You are not off the island. It just means you have to jump into our little old attitude adjustment chamber.

Attitude Adjustment Chamber

You need to treat your writing as you would your job. Nothing gets your pants in the chair like a job does. If you don’t show up, you pay for that. If you show up, you get paid for that. Writing works the same way.
 
Hold the phone. I can hear the rationalizations already. “But, I am a newb. I don’t make any money writing. It’s not like I will have to tell my mom have no money because you did not show up to write.”

I got news for you. You cannot eat with those rationalization checks either.
Plus you also get paid by the work itself. When we work we set up a positive biofeedback loop, much like what an athlete does for training. After a session in the pool, the swimmer feels like a different person than the one who jumped in for laps an hour ago.
 
This pay is big. Motivates you to do more and get better. Releases tension from the biofeed back loop. Builds pride in your work. Pays the dues that mark you as a member paid in full. It also cuts the dread and misery out of your life while giving you a runner’s high without breaking a sweat.
 
Every day you finish your work, you join a not so secret fraternity that gives you the same kind of privileges usually left for Marines’ esprit de corps, the martial artist’s inner calm while walking the marital way, or the mother with the new born in her arms.

Pay in Pages

Above all you are left with one more very important paycheck. Another day’s pages down and closer to a finished and published project that may one day mark you as immortal.

No work means more than just no cash today. It also means you will never publish, so your financial world will not change because of your writing. It means the pay you do get from the positive biofeedback you get from the work itself does not show up either. Say good bye to the motivation you need to change the first pay problem while you get to feel miserable in so many other ways too.
 
We get paid by the work itself. Word for word. Pound for pound.verything you put in comes back to you in full. Even if no one else on the planet knows it, you get paid. Do the work. (Thank you Steven Pressfield for that little mantra gem.)

In Advance

Plan ahead. A writing cue stops the stall. Half the time we sit down and do not write. We suffer before the blank page staring back at us. The dang thing is defiant, even aggressive so it seems at time. You look and look. Nothing comes to mind.
 
One of the more professional tricks is to know now in advance what you are going to write on. This is nothing new. News papers have paid City editors for decades to come up with article ideas and plan for when and where to use them so the reporters do not have to do the hard work.
 
Many professional writers have used planning tools like the writing machine, the beat sheet, the foolscap method, and so on to crack out longer works like white papers, novels, plays, movie scripts and non- fiction books. Having a cue for what you are going to write helps end those questions of what to write. You have the clothes line done. Now sit and do the work of filling in the gaps.

Practice First

Practice the habit before you try to take it seriously. This seems to be a lesson many people never take seriously. In fact they discount it so much that they often never do it, yet it is a vital step in the process.         
 
Every serious professional out there has spent time practicing their work. In the Marines we practiced those habits we would need in combat or to support that effort. On the dojo floor I practiced the skills I would need to walk the path of a Karnataka and swords man. Practice of skills is important, but you need to focus on the habit of those skills to make them automatic.
 
No Karatika or Marine would advise anyone to step into a fight without first having practiced enough to make the skills an automatic habit. The same advice is true in writing.
 
I have not always followed that advice for my own writing path. I spent years…couple of decades really, ignoring this key habit. It literally sat there before my eyes till I started to actually work on my habits directly. Then it hit me like a Seattle flying fish down at Pikes Street Market. How could I have missed this?

Be Resillient

The one thing that all humans are is resilient. We adapt and over come. Trust that inate ablity. You still might stall out because you are not ready to write the piece. You will only be ready when the work is done. So do exactly what our ancestors did to become top dog on this planet, adapt. You get ready by doing the work. Do the work. Look at the results. Adapt. Repeat.

Write Crapy

One of the hang ups I have seen in myself from time to time is that I want the work to be perfect. That’s not a bad thing, but no one, I mean no one writes perfect on the first go.
 
Even the stories around greats like Jack London prove this. London cracked out his immortal tale ‘Call of the Wild’ while stuck in Alaska over a few weeks. The manuscript was so perfect his editors could not really edit anything.
 
The fact remains that the editors saw the final copy London shipped to them, after he had fixed things. The first drat stuff stunk in places, was lost in others and was nothing short of a cry for help far more often than not. So what? It was a rough draft. It was supposed to stink.
 
Your first draft will too. Crack it out knowing it will be bad anyway. In fact give yourself permission to write as crappy as you can. You can and will re-write it later. It will get better. Your first step though is you to have the puzzle you are trying to figure out laid out with the sides all in place.

Parting Thoughts

Try a few of these. If they don’t work for you, don’t worry. They might not be the habits for you. There are plenty more. Just look for the habits that are blocking your way or just not there at all. Ask yourself what you need. Use that self-understanding to find the habits that will work for you. You just have to keep the one key habit of them all…be Resilient if you want to be self-disciplined. Be disciplined if you want to start your habit.

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