4 Lessons From Atomic Habits for Creating a Daily Writing Habit
From Engineer to Writer — Daily Writing Habits Inspired by Atomic Habits
Writing daily can transform you into a force of nature.
When you write clearly and share valuable ideas publicly and consistently, people take notice. Writing helps you achieve more and catalyzes your thoughts, teaching you new insights and making sense of what you already know. The process enhances your communication skills and exponentially builds your knowledge.
To fully reap the benefits of writing, it must be done daily.
As a trained engineer, I found writing daily challenging until I read James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits.” The book provided tactics and techniques that helped me establish a daily writing habit.
Here are the lessons from “Atomic Habits” that have been instrumental in my journey:
Reduce Environmental Friction
“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits.
To establish a consistent writing habit, create an environment that supports and encourages your practice. James Clear emphasizes making habits obvious as the first law of habit change.
Here are practical steps to make it obvious:
- Designated Writing Space: Set up a specific place for writing, free from distractions. The writing space could be a corner in your home office, office space or a quiet spot in your local library.
- Organized Materials: Keep your writing materials, such as laptops, notebooks, and pens, organized in a clutter-free environment to minimize distractions.
- Visual Cues: Place a sticky note on your laptop to remind you to write for one hour daily.
- Habit Tracker: Use the “Seinfeld Don’t Break the Chain” method. The method is a productivity technique where you mark off each day you complete a specific task on a calendar, creating an unbroken chain of X’s to motivate you to maintain your streak visually. I mark off each day I write on a sticky note with the days of the week, which is on my desk environment.
- Preparation: Plan what you want to write in advance. If you’re journaling, use template prompts. For articles, have your ideas ready. You can use idea generation templates like the one I discussed in my article How to Use the 2-Year Test and 10% Edge Framework to Unlock Unlimited Writing Ideas.
Reduce Emotional Friction
In his book, James Clear emphasizes the importance of making habits easy as the third law of habit change.
James Clear introduced the 2-minute rule to help with any hard habit. Practice 2 minutes of writing every day. Practice and master the art of showing up daily and writing for two minutes. Don’t focus on the outcome of 10,000 or even 1,000 words; focus on showing up daily and making it a habit.
Suppose you have self-limiting beliefs that lead to procrastination and imposter syndrome. The 2-minute rule would help remove the inertia of starting by making it as easy as possible.
The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can’t learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize. As you master the art of showing up, the first two minutes simply become a ritual at the beginning of a larger routine. — Atomic Habit by James Clear.
The American writer Ernest Hemingway implemented the 2-minute rule. He comments on overcoming resistance in A Moveable Feast.
“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.
Writing a true sentence takes less than 2 minutes.
If you are still struggling with the 2-minute rule when writing or it feels like you are being forced, you have to stop after 2 minutes.
Commitment Devices
Also, part of making a habit easy is to make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. You need to make bad habits that prevent you from writing difficult by creating commitment devices.
As James Clear said in the book, a commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behaviour, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones.
I use two commitment devices: Focusmate and Freedom.
Focusmate is a virtual co-working platform that pairs you with an accountability buddy worldwide in a 25-minute, 50-minute, or 75-minute video call during which you’ll each work on your tasks. With Focusmate, I commit to my accountability buddy to write for 50 minutes, and after 50 minutes, they hold me accountable for achieving my goals. Using Focusmate is a real game-changer.
Freedom (Website blocking apps): The internet is full of distractions and time-wasting activities. Fortunately, some applications can block specific websites when you dedicate time to study. My favourite is Freedom. With Freedom, you can block access to all social media websites and Netflix. For example, I can only access Facebook or Instagram daily from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. You can block access to all social media websites during writing time.
Have a Reliable Accountability Partner
James Clear emphasizes the importance of having an accountability partner to make a bad habit unsatisfying as the fourth law of habit change.
You are less likely to repeat the bad habit of not writing if you schedule weekly meetings with an accountability partner to report whether you kept your daily writing habit.
You can meet your accountability partner at work, free online workshops (I met four partners this way), or even at home with your family.
Remember the Theme
“Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there. This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.” -Atomic Habit by James Clear.
The following habits would keep you on your quest to write daily:
- Reduce Environmental Friction
- Reduce Emotional Friction
- Use Commitment Devices
- Have an Accountability Buddy
The system above would speed up your daily writing habits.
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