30-Day Writing Challenge: My Plan To Keeping Consistency
This is Day #2 of my 30-day writing challenge. Catch up here.
Writing isn’t a big challenge for me. But keeping consistency is.
I started writing on Medium for a few reasons:
- Exercise my creativity and critical thinking;
- Expand my writing portfolio;
- And build an audience.
The one rule that would help me reach each of these goals? Keeping consistent.
I mean, that’s the major challenge for most long-term goals, isn’t it? Developing a new skill, losing weight, working on a side hustle… You won’t achieve much progress if you deep-focus sporadically; you’ll need to break down your efforts into daily activities.
And that’s why I failed my first attempt to build a solid Medium profile.
For Day #2 of my 30-day writing challenge, I’ll share my current approach to keeping consistency. But before digging into that, let me first share…
Why I Failed To Keep Consistent In The First Place
With the exception of my first article, which focused on my personal life and required no research, the topics I picked to write about needed a lot of research.
While I was excited to write about the topics I selected, I found myself procrastinating because I knew it would take a lot of time and effort upfront.
When you are building a habit, you don’t want to go all-in right at the beginning of your journey. If you put too much energy into your first few attempts, you’ll create the false assumption that every other event will be just as tiering and time-consuming as the first few, increasing the likelihood of quitting.
It’s like when you decide to exercise. You won’t go from couch potato to 5K in one week. Instead, you’ll want to start with maybe running 1K, then build up your way into running 2K, 3K, and 4K… until you’re eventually prepared for a 5 K.
When I revamped my Medium account to start publishing new content, I designed a content calendar on Notion that estimated one new ~1500-word article per week about topics surrounding business, tech, marketing, and so on. My thoughts were: “Hey if I can knock out 1500-word articles in a couple of days for my employer, one week will be more than enough to work on an article for myself”.
I thought that keeping myself organized (hence the Notion board) would help me quickly meet my writing targets.
Wrong! Why?
Because if you’re anything like me, committing to yourself is way more complicated than committing to someone else.
My advice: if you already work with content writing, don’t consider your experience with your clients or employer when starting your own project.
Truth be told, investing your time and energy into your future with no immediate or mid-term reword doesn’t drive the same motivation as working for a paycheck. So, instead of pushing this comprehension aside and insisting on a tactic that, let’s face it, will only get you so far, leverage this knowledge and work on a more realistic, long-term strategy.
That said…
This Is How I Plan to Keep Consistency In My 30-Day Writing Challenge:
#1 Using The “Bare-Minimum Rule”:
During the pandemic, I went a few long months without exercising at all. When our building’s gym re-opened, I decided it was time to get back on track.
Only there were days I didn’t have the least energy working out.
For days like these, I established the “Bare-Minimum Rule”: if I didn’t feel like working out, I would at least do a 20-minute walk. At the time, that was the bare minimum of effort I was willing to put in when I felt like I had no energy at all.
That’s what I’m doing to my writing, too.
I know there will be days when I get super excited and write 1000–1500 words in no time.
But I also know there will be days when I don’t feel like writing at all. For these days, I’ve decided that no article is too short to publish. If I hit 300 words and feel like all’s been said, then heck, I’ll push it live with 300 words.
#2 Writing No-Research Topics
If you already work as a content writer, then you know that research takes a huge amount of time. Sometimes even more than the writing itself.
That’s why I’ve decided that, during my 30-day writing challenge, I won’t commit to topics that require a lot of research.
Instead, I’ll share my experiences, thoughts, and contemplations. It’s way easier going with the flow when your only resource is your imagination (to me, at least).
#3 Setting Up Daily Calendar Invites
Yesterday evening, I started planning what today would look like, and I nearly forgot about spending some time writing. After all, this new habit is just being introduced to my routine.
So, I picked up my phone and set daily invites on my Google Calendar named “Writing Challenge.” After all, dedicating a specific time to a new habit makes it easier to adhere to.
I found this more effective than the Notion content calendar I initially built when I first started writing on Medium — although I haven’t completely discarded the idea of also introducing the Notion board to assist with my organization. Let’s see.
Final Thoughts
I started today’s writing challenge with a completely different perspective than on my previous attempts. Instead of thinking, “Ugh, I have to work on that article I promised myself I would,” I thought, “I’ll just quickly wrap up my strategies for the 30-day writing challenge, and then I’ll get to the rest of my day.”
These strategies have completely changed my perspective on this exercise, especially the number one rule: When you commit to the bare minimum, you’re most likely to maintain consistency.
And heck, maybe you’ll end up like me and writing a 978-word article, which is the current size of this piece.
See you tomorrow!
