When you first thought about writing a book, you might have imagined yourself sitting at a laptop in a cabin in the woods, sunlight slanting in the window. You’d be typing furiously, pouring our your ideas during long golden days of productivity, honing your sentences by evening in front of a log fire, focused, creative and disciplined.
If that’s working out for you, I’m happy for you (no, really) and you should probably stop reading now.
Sadly most of us are trying to fit our writing into already over-full work days and around demanding families. We’re fighting an overwhelming desire to check Facebook every 3 minutes. And when we vowed to get up an hour earlier to write great thoughts in the pre-dawn, the snooze button won on Day 2.
It’s OK. It doesn’t make you a failure, it just means that if writing this book is important to you, you have to get creative about tricking yourself into doing it. In this week’s Extraordinary Business Book Club episode, writing productivity expert Rebecca Evans from WriteTrack explained how it works.
Here are four of the sneaky secrets to success she shared:
Know yourself
You might like to think that you’re the kind of person who sets a goal and then single-mindedly does whatever’s necessary to achieve it, but the chances are you’re not. There aren’t many of those in the world (and if it makes you feel better, they tend to be quite dull at parties). Rebecca recommends taking Gretchen Rubin’s ‘Four Tendencies’ quiz, to find out whether you’re an Upholder, an Obliger, a Questioner or a Rebel: the strategies you use to trick yourself into achieving anything will vary depending on which type you are. If you’re an Obliger like me – and there are many of us – joining a writing community or making yourself publicly accountable is a good way of tricking yourself into making progress. Now you HAVE to write, right?
Break it down
Writing a book is a big, scary goal, and we tend to run away from those. The trick is to disguise it as something not big and scary at all. A very, very small goal, for example: ‘If you want to start writing just say to yourself, “I’m just going to pick up my notepad and I’m just going to write down my title and two words.” Then you do that one day and then the next day you think, “I’m just going to spend another minute doing this.”’ And before you know it, you’ve established a writing habit. If you wrote fewer than 90 words a day, you could have a 30,000-word book in just one year.
Use the force
Your life is already full of habits. You don’t need to use willpower to brush your teeth: you probably don’t even really think about it. Bathroom jobs (as they’re known in this house) are embedded into your morning and evening routines. So use the incredibly strong power of the habits you already have, and make it work for the new writing habit you’re trying to create. If you always make a coffee after you’ve dropped the kids at school, introduce a notebook and take 5 minutes to write or plan your writing while you drink it.
Bribe yourself
If you’ve ever trained a dog, you’ll know that obedience is powered by rewards. We’re not so different. Rewarding yourself with a biscuit every time you achieve a micro-goal isn’t a great idea, health-wise, but the principle is sound. ‘”If I finish this two hundred words I’m going to spend five minutes on Facebook.” Whatever you think your reward is. It could just be a really nice cup of coffee.’ Rebecca does sound a note of caution here: ‘What’s really important is having very small rewards for small progress. It’s not like, “I’ve done 250 words. I’m going to have a bottle of champagne.” You’ll never get your book finished at that rate.’ (Though, as we agreed, you could have a lot of fun trying.)
So go ahead, trick yourself into writing productively. The end justifies the means. And if you DO opt for the ‘bottle-of-champagne-to-reward-myself-every-250-words’ option, and you need some help, just let me know.
