An Online Writing Experiment To Try And Develop A Daily
Writing Habit
My passion, ever since I was a little kid, has
been writing. When I was little, I liked to write scary fiction stories
where the teacher ends up being a monster. Or my parents get abducted
by aliens.
Today, I tend to focus more on non-fiction writing that involves
helping people. Online writing where I basically tell what I know or
what I believe and hope that someone out there finds it
useful.
When you build websites, the secret as you may already know, is
delivering top notch content. You truly can never have enough quality
content on your website. However, creating this content can sometimes
be
difficult. There are some days where you simply aren't in the mood for
writing. Some days you check your email the moment you get on your
computer, and then 1-2 hours of time wasting later, you notice that you
didn't get anything productive done.
In this experiment, I'm
hoping to change all of that. I'm hoping that I can get up each and
every day
and effortlessly get started writing.
While this is an experiment to try to get myself to write more, it's
also an experiment in getting myself up and being productive much
faster than what I have been in the past.
The Goal And Prediction
For this writing experiment, I'm hoping I can get a lot of the pages
I've been meaning to write completed. Lately, my to-do list has been
piling up, and the items that I'm getting done seems to be less and
less.
I don't have a specific goal as to how many pages I want to get done,
but I hope I can get at least 10 pages finished. One article every two
days doesn't sound too terribly difficult. If I can get at least that
many finished, I would be pretty pleased from a productivity standpoint.
I also hope that after 21 days that it become second nature to me when
I get to my computer to immediately start writing. Right now, I have
the
little person on my shoulder
telling me to check my email or to check out sports scores and other
time wasters.
I truly want this to be a lifelong habit for me to get up and start
being productive. And I think I'll be able to do that. Now that I have
this habit forming experiment in place.
How The Experiment Is Conducted
OK, this is the big thing about this experiment. I'm trying a few
little tricks that I learned from the book
The
Power Of Less
. In the book,
the author mentions 9 rules to follow when forming a habit. Now, you
can probably already guess a majority of these 9 rules. Things like...
1. Do your habit every day.
2. Record your progress.
3. Keep a positive attitude.
But there are two
really
interesting ideas in the author's "nine rules" list
that I have never truly considered before.
The first is to start small by committing to just 10 minutes a day.
What I am going to do in this experiment is only make the commitment to
write for 10 minutes. In the past when I've thought about doing this
experiment, I wanted to make it a goal to write an hour a day. Because
that's how long I really wanted to write each day.
But what happened when I was planning on that being my goal was that I
would never get started! Fear of failure started to creep in. Thoughts
in my head like, "Well what if you get busy on the weekend and you
don't have time to write for an hour that day!"
So by having an hour a day as my goal, I never ended up trying the
experiment. But 10 minutes a day is a little more reasonable!
Of course, I'm hoping that I end up writing for more than just 10
minutes each day. But for this experiment, I am promising myself that I
will not be upset with what I get done as long as I commit fully to
writing for at least 10 minutes.
The next rule that I found interesting from the book is to find a
trigger to start your habit. Something that you do every day already
that will ignite you and let you know that it's time to get started.
Waking up, brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, and taking a shower
are a few examples.
For this experiment, I am going to use
eating breakfast as
my trigger. My morning routine is going to go something like this...
1. Wake up
2. Do a
set
of push ups
3. Do 20-30 minutes of reading.
4. Eat breakfast
5. Start writing
I'm the type of person that can't live without breakfast. My stomach
will growl relentlessly until it gets fed. So I know for sure that my
trigger will happen for me every day. All I need to do is make sure
that after I finish breakfast, I immediately go to my computer and get
started writing.
For just 10 minutes is all that is required. And if I end up writing
longer (which I intend to do) then it is considered as a bonus. After
my 21-day trial, perhaps I can increase this to 20 or 30 minutes a day.
But that's not what is important right now. What's important is that I
form the habit and do it consistently
So that's the experiment in a nutshell. I look forward to this being a
habit that will last me a very long time.
*Updates*
Onling Writing Week One Update - Jan. 19, 2009 - Jan. 26, 2009
Onling Writing Week Two Update - Jan. 27, 2009 - Feb. 02, 2009
Onling Writing Week Three Update - Feb. 03, 2009 - Feb. 09, 2009
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