“Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects

The author doesn't seem to understand the difference between motivation and discipline. He has been successful into tricking himself into a frequent state of writing motivation. He's very lucky to have done so.

For the rest of us, who aren't so lucky, discipline will have to do. Writing every day (or every two days, or every week, etc) isn't a about finishing a project or being the best you can be. It's about making writing a permanent fixture in your life. The same goes for any other skill.

People imagine the quality gap between things created in bursts of highly motivated inspiration and things created through slow, at times plodding, hard work is high. It isn't. If it were, there would be markedly fewer books, games, movies, etc. out there. By and large, if you're good at something, you'll still be good at it even if you don't want to be doing it. You might not be as amazing at it, but you will still have the skill. That's what practice is for.

I did the "write every day" thing to finish a book [1] and it worked like a charm for me.

Sure, it was hard to find time every day. Sometimes I got up early. Sometimes I stayed up late. Sometimes I squeezed it in on a flight. But I pulled it off. I had enough flexibility within a day to find a little slice of time.

As far I can, the author advocates the exact same strategy, they just use a week as their unit instead of a day. I don't see how it's that different otherwise.

Personally, for me, I think a week is almost too long of a cadence. I've been exercising lately and I stick to a weekly schedule with that and I find myself tending to slack until the very end of the week and then cramming it in. A week is long enough that I don't get really get in the groove and feel like it's a continuous habit.

But, of course, everyone runs at a different rhythm. Find the one that works for you.

[1]: http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

I think either the me or the author misunderstand the advice. Writing everyday (or for me, painting/drawing) isn't really about finishing the novel, blog, painting, etc. that you have as an actual goal.

The daily writing or painting or [insert thingy here] is more about practice and getting momentum and letting ideas grow. If you want to write, being creative while writing about your day or your dreams gets the mind going and gives lots of practice on how to describe things and paying attention to details so that when you are working on your novel or blog, your brain slips into the mode much easier. It all helps. I do this with painting and drawing, and my "effortful" works are better for them.

This is another one of those articles where some person explains why their interpretation of some aphorism failed to work for them. The problem, of course, is that they are interpreting the advice differently than intended and they are generalizing their personal experience and understanding of their own motivations. People are not all the same. Some of this advice I agree with, but some of the strategies that the author claims have given him success have failed for me.

For example:

the problem is not your productivity, it’s instead that your mind is not yet sold that you know how to succeed with your general goal of becoming a writer.

Convincing my mind that I know how to succeed is not a problem I have. I'm very arrogant and I believe there is nothing I cannot do if I set my mind to it and have adequate time. My problem is that my mind prefers short term satisfaction via diversion rather than the long term reward of hard work. So for me his advice if absolutely backwards. If allow myself to be flexible with when I write/work then I'll never get anything done, because, hey, I can always cram later and get it done. For me, setting up a habit, "Write/do X every day," is good advice. I just need to force myself through the first 10 minutes and then from there I'll get lots done.

Btw, the kernel of truth he is missing from the "write everyday" advice is like others have mentioned: regular practice makes you better. The goal isn't to make forward progress on your one big project everyday, it is to get some form of practice in every day. Write something every day.

What stands out to me is that the author has correctly identified a problem, but provides an unsupported solution that has failed for a lot of people.

I'm going to push Duhigg's Power of Habit here as a somewhat more rigorous treatment of these ideas. Duhigg, I think, would agree that "write every day" is an awful plan. His solution, though, would not be "write when you feel like it". Rather, it would be to establish a clear, reliable trigger for when to sit down and write.

"Every day" is the sort of standard that leaves you staring at a blank page at midnight, debating whether to just go to bed. "In the quiet stretch after dinner and dishes", by contrast, gives you a clear cue to do your task. It also averts the problem of falling of the bandwagon - if you go out to dinner, or work late and skip the meal, you never got your cue and don't have to record a 'failure' of your system.

It's certainly the case that never-fail systems are fragile and unproductive; until the habit is ingrained they tend to collapse altogether at the first interruption. But the solution isn't to abandon scheduling, it's to learn what good, proactive scheduling looks like.

I skimmed, so maybe I missed it, but I feel like this author doesn't understand the "write every day" advice.

You write everyday to become a better writer, not necessarily to finish a project. So spend an hour or so writing and editing every day for a few months. You'll learn your style, which mistakes you make, when you're in the best mood to write, and so on.

Being a person who spends far too much time online, I easily write an hour everyday. And I usually go back and edit myself. Once a week or so, I'll go into a long explanation. I think this is the kind of writing King is talking about. (I should probably do this daily instead of weekly.)

While I'm used to short and medium format writing -- up to 5-10K words or so -- I find that true long format writing is an entirely different animal. Shorter work feels more creative. Longer work feels more like a project. Not only am I not going to be done even if I pound out 10,000 words tomorrow, I might not even be very much closer to done than before I started.

This article seems to address these feelings. For that it looks like a good read. But write every day. Read every day. Just don't participate in a project death march with your writing. Instead write and read on topics you are passionate about. Then pick up the project work.

Well, the advice to "write every day" is usually accompanied by other advice as well.

Something like: even if it is just a little bit before bed, or a little bit here or there.

The author seems to think it needs to be a lot, but I think part of the idea is:

1. You can write just a little bit, and that is okay.

2. Once you get started, you tend to keep going.

3. Finding the space, setting up the computer, getting your fingers on the keyboard and starting to type is a large barrier so once you overcome that you keep going.

4. There is built in gamification in terms of how many days you can go without breaking the chain. In that context, even typing in one line on your mobile can count.

5. Your unconscious will work on the idea if you are aware of it, even if you aren't actively working.

I'm not saying all of these are true (though I believe in the first 4 at least), I'm saying that the advice is usually part of a whole workflow and view of the writing process.

"To leverage the psychology of your brain, you need to instead choose clear goals that you clearly know how to accomplish, and then approach scheduling with flexibility."

What if the goals are unclear or you don't know how to accomplish them? If the clear plan is to make goals clear, then you might as well put that on the schedule and work on it for the allotted amount of time. Hence "write every day".

Chekhov tied himself to the chair as an act of self-discipline and wrote at least one page a day. This seems to have worked well for him.

Disclaimer: I'm a work-in-progress like everyone else. What's written below may seem obvious to most folks here, but it still is a daily battle for me, and will likely be for the rest of my life.

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Quote: "Here’s what happens when you resolve to write every day: you soon slip up."

Quote: "the brain does not necessarily distinguish between your .. abstract goal, to write a novel, and the accompanying specific plan, to write every day"

Quote: "When the specific plan fails, the resulting lack of motivation infects the general goal as well"

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I'd rather address this behavior of the brain, instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Strategically, it makes more sense to simply shrug off every failed day, and trying to write again the next day, as if nothing happened. Don't even bother to reflect on it (in order to learn) - you've already absorbed some lessons subconsciously. Keep the for..loop light.

Even if you've failed for the past 1000 days, why not attempt to write today?

Even if you fail to write today, why not try to write again tomorrow? Taking these failures as a personal judgment ("Oh I'm a procrastinator", "Oh I'm always going to keep procrastinating and failing, what's the point?") is the real problem. Life is chaotic, stuff happens. Managing that emotional response, and simply coming back in every day and trying seems optimal. A bit like a mostly-dumb but relentless bull.

What do you have to lose? The worst case is you'll fail at the goal, but the default state of any goal is failure - only by working at it do you reduce the odds of it failing. So just going back in each day and trying, and not taking failed days as personal judgments seems optimal. We tend to forgive others, but not ourselves. If a close friend of yours was failing each day but really wanted to accomplish the goal, what would you advise them?

I have to disagree. It's like this person doesn't know about nanorimo. I'm certain many successful writing projects would never have been finished without the advice to write everyday.

I spent four years writing and drawing a graphic novel. My method was not so much "work every day" as "work most days"; my official schedule was "aim for two pages a week, don't fret if life gets in the way".

Most days, I got in an hour or two on it. Some days I spent more. Some days I spent less. Sometimes I'd stop for a week or two due to things like "needing to recharge after selling at a comic convention". But it was a constant part of my life. When I took a break, I'd start missing it after a few days, and be glad to get back to it.

I'd trained myself to feel rewarded whenever I finished a page. This broke down at the end of the book, when I had to draw a few pages that had an order of magnitude more panels on them. A death in the family around this time also knocked me out of this comfortably productive rut. I'm finally getting around to finishing off that project by doing a kickstarter to print the last part of it, and really looking forwards to getting to work on my next books. Because I miss those habits of just getting pages drawn.

I think that a crucial part of getting big projects done is finding some way to keep feeling like you've Done Something on a regular basis - you may not have finished the whole thing, but you've finished a definable segment of it. It's also really important to forgive yourself for unproductive days. Because shit happens, and sometimes dealing with it takes up all your energy; beating yourself up for not working yesterday instead of shrugging, accepting that you're one day's work behind now, and getting back to it, just wastes more energy.

I'm always amazed by how many people universalize instead of saying "this particular motivational phrase / piece of advice didn't work for me"

Write every day is great advice. It works because you have to be sitting in the chair if you want to have any output. You don't build an app by waiting for the inspiration to strike, you instead show up the office five days per week, six to eight hours per day, and build stuff.

As for slip-ups, uh, well, it happens. If you're so rigid that missing a day of writing screws up your entire plan and you give up on your book project then maybe you're not really that into the idea of writing. See: skipping a day at the gym, having a sick day at work.

I'm all for reducing cognitive overhead and using clever productivity hacks but at some point it's just necessary to do the fucking work.

Actually it can be great:

http://lifehacker.com/5886128/how-seinfelds-productivity-sec...

its funny, but in his book "Deep work", the author points that many successful writers schedule deep work to make it easy to execute. Plus in daily rituals by mason curry, I see almost all of successful writers use some sort of schedule to write or create everyday. I myself have tried his weekly approach and as many of the comments mentioned above, I kept pushing it of till the weekends. I think the point is valid and each person is on a different level, but "write every day" ISNT NECESSARILY A BAD ADVICE....