Caution: Overdependence on Your Writing Habit Reduces Your Flexibility to Feel Creative
A writing productivity trap you unconsciously create as a new writer
I’ve built the habit of waking up at around or before 6:00 AM every day since 2012.
It’s when I feel most centered because:
- My mood is neutral. The day just started, and I have no idea how it’s going to turn out.
- I can think more clearly because there’s no distraction — everyone else is sleeping.
- My brain is overflowing with thoughts and ideas waiting to be noted.
I call it my “power hour” — the perfect time to write.
That has always been the case until we had our 2nd child…
My son hijacked my power hour
Sleep deprivation is almost impossible to avoid when you become a parent.
Plus, both of our children have unpredictable wake-up times. One needs to be cuddled to go back to bed while the other needs milk. The distractions are too difficult to avoid. But as a father, I allow any children-related distractions because I love my kids more than I love writing.
The problem is, when I’m sleep-deprived, my creativity dips!
“Once you become a parent, you lose another 109 collective sleep-hours per child in the first year they are alive!”
— Andrew Bustamante, The CIA Mental Edge Daily Routine
As a result, I almost always end up with a “garbage” draft!
Over-dependence on something that works limits flexibility
When I publish an article online, I do it for the readers — not for myself (that’s what a journal is for).
To respect my reader’s time, I need to make sure I’m sharing something that’s interesting to them. That means, avoid sharing thoughts and ideas that I haven’t spent time thinking about. If I don’t quite understand how the article will help my readers, then I resist writing about it.
In other words, I avoid writing without clarity.
But that clarity only shows up during my power hour.
And because I’m not in control of my power hour, finding clarity feels impossible. And when I’m not clear about what I’m writing, garbage output follows. It’s an inefficient use of my very limited writing time.
The thought of temporarily giving up writing because I wasn’t sure what other options I had.
But before that happened, this challenge revealed something I did not expect: my power hour became a major writing crutch!
Any time is a good time to write
I used to think the following thoughts:
“Sleep deprivation cannot be avoided. Waking up early gives me headaches. But I can only think clearly in the morning. Sure I can take a nap, but my brain is not working well in the afternoon. It’s pointless to write in the afternoon if I’m gonna end up with garbage anyway?”
But that’s just me, being dogmatic about it.
This lined up with Alex Hormozi’s YouTube video titled, “Why daily routines make you poor & fragile [trigger warning]”.
I relied so much on my power hour that it prevented me from thinking about the possibility that I can be creative at will. That means, letting go of old writing rituals that no longer serve me. The truth is, nothing is stopping me from learning how to get “in the zone” at any time of the day.
If this was a job, I’d be forced to get stuff done or else, I’m gonna get fired.
“You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six months later, a year later, you’ll look back at them and you can’t remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you just wrote because they had to be written next.”
― Neil Gaiman
If I was to reframe this whole thing, here’s what my kids are trying to teach me: be creative at will.
Restructure your writing habits according to your current lifestyle
Life is constantly changing.
My kids are going to grow up. Whatever I’m complaining about now (sleep deprivation and lack of control over my schedule) is going to disappear. And if I keep writing despite all these challenges, I’m going to become a better writer to the point where I can write whenever I get a chance.
I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it’s writing time, I write.
― Jodi Picoult
Being a parent felt like a hindrance to my journey to become a full-time creator, but it’s actually something that would make me more efficient.
All I’m saying is that you need to avoid being dogmatic about habits (that used to serve you well) and welcome flexibility.
