You’d think
aligned writing goals and priorities would be a given for a professional
writer, but that ain’t necessarily so.
[Hand up] I’m one
who struggles with the alignment, and you may be, too. Even though I know
accomplishing writing goals is integrally tied to priorities I set for writing,
it’s more difficult to do than to say.
Okay, so I know
morning is my best writing time. I know I need to stay off social media/e-mail
until I get my writing done. But . . . What if one of my children sent me an e-mail?
What if my publisher is doing an impromptu interview with a fellow author? Do I
want to miss those? Uh, no.
But will the world
end if I do miss them? Uh, no.
Jeff Goins says
that’s one of the problems. We are trying to align goals and priorities, when,
in reality, we need to align habits and priorities. Habits are what gets the
job done, not lofty goals you post on a list in your workstation.
Jeff Goins, whose e-mail list I subscribe to, says you need to set habits, not goals to accomplish what you want. Goals are too easily put
off, delayed, excused. But by selecting the right habits, the goals will fall
into place.
However, we all know from trying to break a bad habit or
trying to implement a new regime that habit-forming behaviors are as difficult
to create as it is to break old destructive habits. It can take 30-60 days to
break a habit. It also takes about 60 days to form a new habit. So, you’re
right. This is hard stuff to do. You have to ask yourself, how much do you want
the habit gone or the habit developed.
On Terry Gross’ NPR program, Fresh Air, her guest, Charles
Duhigg, shared how habits form and how to break them. He says habit formation
is a three-part loop process.
In the first part, there’s a trigger cueing the behavior to
begin. Then the habit starts, the behavior, and finally, there’s the reward for
doing something your brain likes and wants you to repeat.
The best way to begin a new habit, Duhigg says, is to start
on vacation or someplace not your usual venue so that the cueing trigger for
the old behavior isn’t there. He also says that understanding the structure of
habitual behaviors is a major key to changing them.
You will need strategies, new cueing systems, you use
consistently to form the new habit while breaking the old. Here are a few
suggestions:
1)
Set a timer. Tell yourself you will only do the
new behavior for twenty minutes. Then at the end, of the time, evaluate whether
to keep going or whether to stop . . . until the next time you set the timer
for twenty minutes.
2)
Don’t access the Internet when you turn on the
computer. Because it’s a habit to turn on the computer and click on Firefox, it
happens almost before I know it. One way is to leave the computer on in sleep
mode with the writing you were working on left on the desktop. You turn on the
computer and what faces you is your project, not your e-mail.
3)
Make a “sticky” cue. The term, sticky, came into
use to describe things that you remember more easily based on the book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Chip Heath and Dan Heath). The notion is that you create an
image or a mantra to help you attach the cue to the new behavior. For example,
you might say to yourself at the start of your writing day, “Professional
writers work first and play later.” Or, “Professional writers produce xx pages/words
each day.” By envisioning your ultimate goal, being a professional writer, you
made your cue for the writing behavior “sticky.”
Another way to make a sticky cue is to visualize
yourself writing and completing pages when you first sit down to write. Take a
minute or so and “see” yourself writing and being successful. Build the image,
and it will come!
4)
Control your environment to limit distractions.
If the Internet is not on, if you open your computer to your work-in-progress,
if you keep a list of your new writing habits on a piece of paper in front of
you, you’ll be more successful.
5)
When the new habit breaks down, sometimes called
the “What the hell” Effect, step back and examine just when you decided not to
follow through on your new habit. What was that
cue trigger? Then press the rewind button. Go back to right before you decided
not to use the new habit and try again. Examining the breakdown should give you
a strategy for a new trigger cue.
Use the If. . . then strategy. If you want to start on a new story because you’re tired of working
on your old one, tell yourself, you only have to work on the old one ten
minutes then set the timer.
Intervene. Break through the breakdown.
Facebook: Making
and breaking writing habits is as hard as making New Year’s Resolutions. Use
these five strategies to be a more productive writer in 2018. http://bit.ly/2CD5p8v
Twitter: 5 ways
to build #sticky #writing habits that last http://bit.ly/2CD5p8v
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