Experiment: Writing for 15 Minutes Every Day

The Set Up

We all know the drill. If you want to bea writer, you have to write. There’s no other way to get better. “Practice makes perfect” and all that. Nevertheless, it’s so difficult to actually find the time to write. You’ve tried before. Writing an hour everyday, or joining a writing sprint event, like NaNoWriMo. But no matter how hard you try, you know it’s soon going to fall by the wayside. It just is. I’ve been there. So as I was reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, when he mentioned goal setting, I was all ready to say, “I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”  However, he took a different approach. With this method, you set a goal for yourself where you want to be in a year, 3 years, and 5 years, depending on how much you have everything planned. For example: in 3 years, I want to have something to submit to publishers 3 years from now, in 2021. Now that I have a goal, I can aim for that goal. Of course I can also fail to reach that goal, and Peterson admits that that’s terrifying. If you don’t set goals, you can’t fail, but you also can’t meet them or put positively: if you set goals, you could fail, but you could meet them.

But How Do I Get There?

Now that I have a goal, I need to progress towards it in every way I can a little bit every day. Therefore, I have to write. People who like to create things know that this also can be terrifying. “What if the thing in reality isn’t what’s in my head? Then I’ve also failed.” But I’m going to do it. It never existing is worse than it existing imperfectly. Plus I can edit it. However, I’ve learned in the past that setting myself the goal of an hour everyday just builds up till I’m not doing it. So I’m going to set a goal so small that I feel insulted that I have to start with it. 15 minutes. That’s all I’m going to do. I’m also going to try to limit it to that. To not over step my lazy-side’s good graces and push for more. I’ll see if I can keep it up for 3 weeks, even after my summer job starts up. I’ve technically already done 2 days, but it was the first two days. They were easy. I managed not to over do it. Now I’ve just got to get the rest of them

Afterwards

            Alright it’s been a week. I’ve been writing for 15 minutes per day (missing only 2 days) for two weeks. That’s still only an 86% success rate. However, I wrote 2929 words more than I would have, had I not been writing. Moreover, it’s actually gotten easier. I think about writing more. I don’t just think about it at the end of the day when I’m about to go to bed. Instead I think about it throughout the day and it limits how much random youtube videos I’m watching just because I am bored. I’m not going to increase the amount of time I’m writing yet, because I still haven’t had a week without missing a day. But I feel fairly confident that I’ve been able to keep this up even though my job has started.

Overcoming Obstacles

One day I only had about 4 hours to myself between my shifts and when I had to eat and get ready for bed, but I still wrote for 15 minutes. Technically I could have written more, as I definitely still had time, but since it was only for 15 minutes it didn’t seem as intimidating even to my tired brain. Plus, 15 minutes goes by quickly. It leaves me with more to say. This helps with writers block and with over extending myself. I don’t dread writing for 15 minutes, even when, as I’m writing this I’ve been awake for over 14 hours, since today I had to wake up early for my job over the summer. Also, while you may not believe me, I didn’t wait until the last minute to write today, even though I’ve been awake for so many hours. Another thing that helps is that I don’t make myself make up any time that I missed. This may sound counter-productive writing more often. Shouldn’t I make up what I missed? However, the idea is that I write every day and if I make myself make up that time, then I’m more likely to let it pile up and put it off. Plus, there are days I go over the 15 minutes anyways, but I make sure not to push myself too much. I make sure I stop when I still have more to say and not after I’ve written all there is in my brain this way I don’t drain myself.

The Future

Eventually, the plan is that I’ll up my writing to 20 minutes per day and keep adding 5 minutes on. But when I start student teaching (link to previous post), I’ll probably have to cut back down to 15 minutes to start off with. Nevertheless, Dr. Peterson was right it seems, if I set modest enough goals for myself it is easier to keep them. Hopefully this won’t be like last time I started (another new habit), but I’ll actually stick with it.

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Image Credit: “Keyboard typing.png” from "Typing example.ogv" video by NotFromUtrecht