It’s buried in the middle of the plan, but actually it’s probably the most important step.
Why? Because the habit is starting writing — that’s the entire habit you’re trying to form this month. Accountability helps, and doing some pre-writing helps, and reminders help … but what you’re really trying to do is start writing each day.
Why is starting writing more important than writing for a certain amount of time (say, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes)? Because it doesn’t matter how long you want to write, if you don’t start. Once you form the habit of starting writing, then you can increase the length. But in the beginning, you’re just trying to form the simple habit of: trigger-starting. That’s all.
So how do we do that?
It goes like this:
- Your trigger happens. This might be waking up, having coffee, doing yoga, whatever. Set your trigger. When it happens, be very conscious of doing the next step.
- You remember to do the habit. Once this becomes a real habit, you won’t need to remember. But in the beginning, you have to remember to do it. So set up reminders in any way you can.
- Start writing. You’ll feel some resistance at first, but do everything you can to start. Make this your complete focus. It doesn’t matter how long you write, how much you write, how well you write, what the output is. Just start writing.
Of course, the 3rd step can be a challenge for many people, so let’s look at ways to overcome this challenge.
Tips on Getting Started
If you find it difficult to even start, here are some things that work for me:
- Close your browser & all other programs. Anything you don’t need to actually write. I just use a simple text editor — don’t obsess over the perfect text editor. Just open whatever you’re used to, or the simplest text editor already on your computer (Notepad or Wordpad on Windows, if I recall correctly, or TextEdit on the Mac).
- Turn off all notifications. Notifications on your computer and phone can be a distraction. Close them down, before your trigger happens if possible. Like the night before.
- Just a few words. You don’t need to write the entire thesis paper, or chapter, or blog post, or even journal entry. Just focus on writing a few words. Often once you get those few words down, you can keep rolling.
- Think of those few words ahead of time. This is the pre-writing that’s talked about in the plan — think about what you want to write beforehand, and even think of what the first few words will be (you can change them later), just so you have something to start writing when your trigger happens.
- Notice your resistance points. Sometimes you resist starting because it seems hard, or because you’re afraid of the result of the writing (looking dumb when you publish, etc.). Notice the things that cause your resistance, and then let them go. It’s not hard to start writing (it’s only hard to write a lot, or write well, but you’re not trying to do those things). And you don’t need to publish this — you’re just starting to write, so whatever happens after that you can worry about later. So let go of those objections, and just start.
- Think of who you’re doing this for. If you’re writing to help someone, think of them when you start, and you’ll be pulled toward the writing.
Just start — that’s all you have to do to be successful today. You don’t have to write for a full 5-10 minutes. Just start. Once you get started, you’ll probably want to do more, but that’s not a requirement.