Lou: Hi, this is episode 50 of Write While True. Write While True is an infinite loop, and that’s because we think of writing as an infinite game, a game we’re playing for fun and to get better at it, like a game of catch. So in each episode, we’ll tell you something we learned about writing, and then we’ll throw you the ball with a writing challenge or a prompt.
I’m Lou Franco.
Brian: And I’m Brian Hall. And today we’re talking again about habits. In the last episode, we both set out some intentions to change our writing habits and establish a daily practice. Let’s check in on that. Lou, how did it go for you?
Lou: Not great, Brian. I did the habit none times.
Brian: Okay, not great. Remind us what you were going to do and tell us what happened.
Lou: Yeah. So the idea was to eventually end up with some blog posts. And we thought that if we, you know, got back into, if I got back into doing morning pages, that that would grow into eventually a habit of finding things to talk about.
I talked about doing a prompted morning page with where you start with one time at work, I, and then keep writing for 20 minutes, you know, with a stream of consciousness writing. And that hopefully after that, you’d be able to take some of it and move it into a blog post. Anyway, I didn’t even do the morning pages. So I certainly didn’t come up with blog posts. I do have lots of excuses and reasons. I recently moved. I had a lot of work this past week. But I think I could have done better. How about you, Brian?
Brian: Similar answer. I mostly didn’t do it. Or I guess I’m a little torn about how to assess. So it’s been maybe what, 10 days, a little over a week, since we set the intention. And I did a few times. So my intention was pretty similar. In the morning, when I take the first sip of coffee, I will open up the plain text file where I do writing for things like blog posts and whatnot. I’m not sure if that’s what I said, but that’s where I landed. That was the intention I set.
I did it a few times. And so on the one hand, between that day and today, I’ve actually drafted or at least outlined seven or eight very short blog posts out of maybe four or five sessions of doing this act.
Lou: So that’s pretty great, Brian. I’d be happy. I’d be happy if that’s what happened.
Brian: Yeah. And so this is where I’m torn. If I’m measuring my success in establishing the daily habit, I absolutely did not. And what I found happened was on some days, I wake up first in the household and I brew coffee and I sit down at my laptop, take a sip of coffee and do the thing. And I did that
four or five times.
On the other days, my wife and I woke up at about the same time. And what I realized is when that happens, I don’t really want to go off on my own and type into the laptop. I want to hang out with her and see how she’s doing, hear about her plans for the day.
So my design of the habit has, I guess we could call it that flaw. So some execution and some output, if I’m measuring just on output, pretty good. But I can’t say I really established a habit that has stuck reliably and figuring out what to do about that.
Lou: Sure. For me, the putting the habit during coffee and breakfast time was just that I should have realized that that was never going to work for me. I’m not usually in a mood to be working or writing or anything while I’m having coffee and eating breakfast. I’m usually more, a little bit more of a, uh, a mode of being intentional about what I’m eating and also, you know, preparation. And if I do anything during it, it’s, it’s a more passive thing, like listening to music or a podcast or something, not all, not trying to do another, uh, active brain thing.
Brian: Uh, so, so wrong trigger.
Lou: Yeah. Wrong trigger for sure. And then all the way, you know, one of the things we talked about was keeping the, the commitment extremely small. And I probably
should have, my, my problem was that the thing I would do the morning pages into, which is an e-tablet, was not at my breakfast table. So it’s on, it’s on my desk.
So it’s just not going to be, it’s just not going to be a good place to do it. So I have to
think about that a better trigger, a better activity that’s well within my ability to do.
And then the other thing that I should have talked about a little bit more last, last time is you kind of want to stick this, you’re putting a very tiny activity that isn’t, I mean, it’s not really the end goal, but it is, you’re going to be okay with having done it. You want to do it in a, in a time and place where you have some space for it to grow into that, the, the eventual habit you want. And so I, I need to stick it some, I need to stick it somewhere where I’m in the mode and place and time where I can do 20 minutes of, of writing. Otherwise it’s not gonna.
if I do it at a time when I’m more busy or, you know, don’t have time for, to do the 20 minutes, then it won’t, then it won’t get beyond the initial activity of like just getting out my my journal, which isn’t really the goal. Um, so that that’s where I am. I need to think about it.
Brian: It sounds like you need to marry the, the trigger and the action a bit more closely or so they fit together. And so the action is simpler to take. I want to check in the other component you mentioned was motivation. Do you still find that you’re motivated to do morning pages on a daily basis?
Lou: Yeah, not, not really. So that’s another, that’s another kind of problem. So I, I do,
I should even think about whether even it’s, if it’s the right thing to be wanting to build my habit around.
Uh, so that, that, that, that is, I have questions about everything. So motivation being low is kind, I I’m going to just say it’s not a problem. If it’s something you want to eventually do, maybe you don’t have the motivation to do it now, but like, if it’s something that you do want, and I do want more writing, you know, it serves you.
So the motivation being low in that case, that’s what the action is supposed to solve,
keeping it small so that it’s well within your motivation. If you, if you really don’t want to do the thing and you just, I, I, you know, in my fantasy life, I wish I like, you know,
there are things like that where you like, you think, Oh, I should want to do this.
I honestly, I wouldn’t even try to solve those problems. It’s okay to not want to do stuff and just be okay with it. And, or not, if it doesn’t serve you and like, don’t, you know don’t serve this fantasy world where, where you, you change something fundamental about yourself.
I’m not trying to do that. So since I think it’s something I need to be doing and I’ll just have to find the motivation in some other way and it’s, it’s okay. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll try to do it. I’ll try to power through it.
Brian: So we’re debugging these habits that didn’t quite run as expected. And so you are going to spend some time thinking about what’s the appropriate trigger and make sure it’s happening where the action is easy to take. And we’ll wait for an update on where that goes. I want to try to make a, a pointed decision
here about my own. I see a couple of options and I actually wanted to get your opinion.
One thing I could do is just say, eh, good enough. And so I’m putting an asterisk on the intention. And I’m saying, when I take my first cup of coffee, if no one else is awake, then I will open my laptop and open the text file that has my blog post outlines in it. And that has been working and might be sufficient. It’s not a daily habit. It’s conditional. The other thing I might do is I might decide on the days when my wife and I wake up at the same time and I don’t want to go right first thing, I’ll have a cup of tea with her and wait to have that first sip of coffee and therefore keep the habit attached to that particular beverage. What do you think? What, how would you think about choosing one of these paths?
Lou: I mean, I’m in a mode of try it. Yeah. Like, so I don’t, I don’t know is what I’m saying. I don’t think of what actually happened to you in the past week as a bad outcome. So I do. So I think if this improves it and makes you feel better about it, then great. And I would, I, um, I wouldn’t, I, I, if it turns out that your wife wakes up with you almost every day and therefore you never do the habit, then, then that would be a problem. So you have this kind of, you have this little bit of fix if then logic that, that fixes it.
So I definitely would try it. And I, yeah, I think, uh, if, if you’re sustaining it, I mean,
I don’t know, like you’re probably only doing this weekdays. I don’t know. Like if you end up three, four days a week with some of amount of writing, I feel like that call that good.
Brian: Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, thanks. I’m inclined to be gentle with myself on this one. And yeah, we’ll, we’ll exactly, we’ll watch the output. We’ll check back in on this eventually. And if I have not written anything in weeks, then I’ll get a little more invasive with my interventions.
But yeah, I think I’ll just keep most days, usually depending when I take my first sip of coffee, I’ll open the laptop and open the text file. And as long as the words are coming out, I’ll call that sufficient. Sorry. Can you sort of summarize for us what it looks like? What’s the process for debugging your habit? Unfortunately, once you set the grand intention to change your life in this way, you will probably have to make some tweaks. How do you approach what to tweak?
Lou: Yeah. So if you know, let’s, let’s more say if things are not even happening at the level you want them to happen, you’re looking at essentially three things, motivation, ability, and the prompt.
And again, I’m going to say your motivations, your motivation. I, I, I don’t know that I would try to work on trying to fix that. If you literally at zero, I would think about whether this is even the right, the right thing to do a few, but if, so let’s assume you have some sort of motivation, the ability part is supposed to fix the low motivation part. So, so you’re supposed to make the thing that you’re doing so trivially simple that any amount of motivation, uh, you can accomplish it with whatever motivation
you have that give, given that for me, I really just need to get it to, I have my e-tablet,
I’ll keep it at my desk, like practically right by my keyboard. So I have to see it.
And I’m just going to say, when I go to my desk, when I go to my desk, which is going to happen. And usually I do want to do writing type things in, in the morning and, you know, then open up the morning pages journal in my e-tablet to the next blank page.
And that’s hopefully going to be small enough. And I think the third thing I’m trying to fix there is the prompt I’m trying to do something that happens at the right time and that there’s space to do it. I am going to want to be doing some kind of real writing. Let’s call it the morning pages, the stream of consciousness, unused unpublished writing. I’m going to want to be doing writing meant to publish in the morning.
So, um, and so it, whether it’s a newsletter item, a blog post or something. So this will get me, I’ll do the 20 minutes and then I’ll hopefully be in a mode of writing.
Often there’s a writer’s accountability group meeting more in the morning. So like, I might be getting, I might even get myself all the way to that. And I think that’ll work better.
And so I’m going to try it. I’m in this spirit of trying. So what I would say as the thing to do is, you know, look, look at the three pieces. And again, I’m going to more say, look at the two pieces, your ability to do the thing, even with low motivation, to make it small as possible and to put that prompt somewhere where you can actually, you know, like that has time and space for you to do the thing.
Brian: And maybe trying and failing is the only way to figure out that you need a different prompt.
Lou: Yes.
Brian: So here we are figuring it out. Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah.
Lou: And then you, you also have the, you’re trying to improve on something like you, you know, you, I think, like I said, you’ve been doing, doing the habit better, uh, or, or to a degree, you know, you could still, you know, you’re still finding ways to tweak it, uh, as well. Also looking at those.
Brian: Yeah. Great.
Lou: Okay. Well, that’s the thing to try. Diagnose if you’re, if you’re having trouble with a habit, or if you’re wanting to improve how you’re doing it, diagnose it, look at the ability, look at the, uh, where the prompt is and, uh, get to it.
This has been right while true, uh, podcast where we love infinite loops as long as they’re fun. Bye Brian.
Brian: See you later, Lou.