How I Make Time to Write Every Day
Finding your sacred hour could be the missing piece of your daily writing puzzle.
You don’t find time to write.
In order to start a daily writing habit or any habit, you have to make time for it.
After failing to develop my own writing habit for a short time, I recently came across the Ship 30 for 30 program. I was surprised when the first lesson wasn’t an obvious plug-and-play template that you can send any idea into the writer’s stratosphere.
Instead, I was excited to find that it is a concept-based approach to develop skills and habits that can be applied to a writing process rather than a cheap trick to game the system.
You already know I’m not a fan of that.
Finding your sacred hour.
The program outlines the process of determining which time of day, every day, when you will be the most productive, and can also be the least responsive to external stimulus.
As a father of four, devoted husband, full-time worker, and martial arts practitioner, I had a hard time finding a time each and every day where these two values consistently overlap.
I think I knew this was a hurdle going into the lesson but didn’t know how to overcome it on my own.
The answer is so obvious in hindsight.
You don’t find the time at all.
You make the time. This message is worth repeating.
The exercise has you take a much more aggressive approach to the situation. You open your calendar and schedule your sacred hour each day.
The most important part follows with greater intensity.
You protect and defend your calendar appointment to write. Nothing will come between you and your sacred hour. Each day begins, and you already know what you’re going to do.
- You will sit down to write.
- You will detach from the external world.
- You will think, draft, polish, and publish.
You will do these three steps every day in accordance with your sacred hour.
People are easily distracted.
By creating a task list to carry out each day at a particular time, you remove the guesswork from the equation.
You take the potential for human error off the table, and just check the boxes off your list.
Nothing will come between you and your daily writing habit if you fight tooth and nail to defend this time.
A bonus mental health boost will come from keeping these small commitments to yourself and your process.
Reinvest this new confidence in your craft, and watch yourself grow at an exponential rate.
It turns out that my sacred hour is between 10 and 11 am.
After the kids are off to school but before I leave for work.
I do my best work on an empty stomach, so earlier in the day is when I’m at my sharpest. With a clear head and an empty house, I have committed to publishing something at this time each day.
When is your sacred hour and to what ends have you had to defend it?
