Marginal Gains and Writing, Part II
Incrementally Increasing the Component Part
Welcome to Thursday, a suboptimal day of the week to be the thirteenth day of the month. We haven’t had a Friday the Thirteenth since May and May is not really a spooky enough time to appreciate it. Don’t worry: Next year, 2023, there will be two Fridays the Thirteenth, one in January (cold and dreary) and one in October (prime spooky season real estate). This is an omen of good things to come in 2023.
In Tuesday’s Part I of this two-parter on marginal gains, I wrote about James Clear’s Atomic Habits, which audiobook I’ve been listening to, and his premise that tiny changes compounding over time are more achievable, sustainable, and powerful than one big change all at once. Earlier this week I talked about the power of compounding marginal gains in your writing by making tiny increases to your writing time or your word count targets over the course of a year to build your writing habit up from a molehill to a mountain. If you already have a mountain—if you already devote a lot of time to writing or you already churn out more words than you know what to do with—then you may find today’s Part II more relevant.
Other than the principle of small gains compounding over time into tremendous changes in output, results, or behavior, the other premise of Atomic Habits has to do with optimizing one thing through many tiny increases. With compounding, we examined the results of making the same incremental increase many times: For instance, increasing your word count target by 1 percent each writing session to compound the gain over time (500 words the first day, 505 the second, and so on, you’re writing 1339 words on day 100).
This technique is different, and has three steps:
Break whatever it is you’re trying to improve down to its smallest component parts.
Look for tiny optimizations of each component part: Can you find a way to make each component 1 percent better? Two percent better?
Roll those numerous, tiny gains up together to see a huge improvement.
If you review the excerpt from Atomic Habits on James Clear’s website, he shares examples of how this was applied to bicycling. Improve the bike seats a little. Improve the tire traction a little. Improve the aerodynamics of the racing uniforms a little. The British cycling team’s coach at the time, Dave Brailsford, systematically disassembled everything to do with bicycling, found tiny improvements to implement to each component part, and then rolled everything back up into a winning cycling team.
I’ve been thinking about how you can do that with writing: What are the component parts of writing that one can examine individually and improve? What are the challenges of or obstacles to writing, that one can ameliorate or circumvent? And when we’re looking at the component parts of writing to make “improvements,” what kind of improvements are we talking, here? Are we trying to improve the quantity of writing, or the quality of writing, or both?
First I’ll answer the last question—because that one actually has an answer. We can look at how to improve quantity and quality but, if you must choose one or the other, I recommend quantity because quantity breeds quality.
I’ve spent some time on this mental exercise over the last week, considering what the component parts of writing might be and how to break “writing” down into manageable pieces. The conclusion I have come to is: This will be different for every writer. Every writer has their own unique goals, processes, plans, and challenges. There won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. That said, one of my favorite things to do is taxonomize, break things down into classifications, categories, and hierarchies. So I went ahead and gave it a try. Hopefully there will be something in here to resonate with everyone.
When I’m breaking something down I start with the biggest divisions and work my way down to smaller and more granular parts. There are always multiple ways to classify the parts of a whole. In this case, I opted to start with two big buckets: Things that are “Inside the Writer” (for instance, the writer’s vocabulary) and things that are “Outside the Writer” (for instance, the tools a writer uses to write).
Outside the Writer
I’m not going to break this whole thing down into an elaborate hierarchy of subheadings, although I could, because Substack allows for up to six levels of heading, which is an absolutely absurd number of heading levels. Here is a nonfiction writing tip: If you need more than four levels of heading, it’s time to rethink your organization scheme.
Okay, let’s talk about those components of writing that are outside your own brain. As I mentioned above, there are the tools you use for writing. There is also your writing environment and, along that same line of thought, your writing time.
Tools
Welp, I broke it down into an elaborate hierarchy of subheadings after all. Anyway. Take inventory of your writing tools—all of them. Some writers prefer longhand writing with pen and paper, others with a computer. If you like writing longhand, are you scratching away with a suboptimal pen? With whatever pen was lying around? A big reason I don’t write longhand most of the time is because many pens are uncomfortable for me to hold and use for a long period of time. Is your pen comfortable? Have you tried a variety of pens to find the most comfortable one? Are you using a paper that offers the best balance of heft (no ink shadow showing on the opposite side of the paper) and portability (thin enough that your notebook or journal is unwieldy to carry)?
If you’re using a computer: How is it? Does it take fifteen minutes to boot up? Does it crash on you, wasting valuable writing time while you restart? Have you explored a variety of writing suites to find the one that works best for you? Does your writing suite allow you to access your work across all your devices and, if not, would that feature improve your writing productivity? Do you have the latest version of your preferred writing suite? Have you enabled cloud saving to ensure you never lose work?
Are you trying to use the same tool for every job? That is, are you using your word processing suite for everything—not just drafting? Consider whether better tools exist for outlining, note keeping and organization, mind mapping, and writing productivity.
How’s your keyboard? Does it have keys that stick? A broken kickstand that makes it wobble? A giant crater in the middle of S, D, and X where you dropped a cigarette on it twenty years ago and melted the keys?
This isn’t the post where I tell you to replace your tools—just asking that you consider them and whether they’re already optimal or whether they could be improved even 1 tiny percent.
Environment
Writing environment overlaps with tools a bit. For instance, is your desk chair a tool or is it part of the environment? If your writing environment physically comfortable? Is your setup ergonomic? Do you experience back pain from sitting in your chair too long or wrist pain after a long writing session? If you run through this computer workstation ergonomics self-assessment checklist, can you find any items for improvement? Does your writing environment have all the tools you need for writing within easy reach (reference books, scratch paper, Chapstick, several more Chapsticks, even more Chapsticks, et cetera)?
Is your writing environment mentally and emotionally comfortable? Is it tidy, or if it’s untidy does that distract, stress, or otherwise bother you? Is the writing environment distraction-free, at least as much as is possible in your home (considering other people or animals may live there)? Is it quiet? If not can you use headphones to listen to music or background noise? This eight-hour YouTube video of brown noise is my personal favorite, as I find any music very distracting.
Is your writing environment the same place as your home office, and if so, does that affect your productivity? At the end of an eight-hour workday, are you tired of sitting in that same chair? Also: Have you ever tried a change of writing environment to see how that affects your writing? For instance, if you typically write in your home office, have you considered writing out in your back yard one day? Or at a coffee shop?
Time
Do you have as much time as you need for writing and, if not, is there a way you can get (even a little bit) more? Is your writing time distraction-free to the extent possible in your household? Are you writing at the best time of day for you? If you have more creative energy at a certain time of day (morning, afternoon, evening), is it possible for you to rearrange your reschedule to make time for writing during that energetic time? Does your writing time begin at a time when your mind is unlikely to be clear? That is, do you sit down to write immediately after your hectic workday ends? Does your writing time end ahead of a busy or stressful time of day that might send stressful thoughts intruding on your time? That is, do you write first thing in the morning right before you have to get everyone up, dressed, fed, and out the door? If so, do you find part of your writing time is taken over by thoughts of how you’re going to do all those things?
Inside the Writer
Motivation and the Get-Up-And-Go
When you sit down to write, how long does it take you to get started? Do you have a pre-writing ritual? If you do, examine its purpose and usefulness to you—make sure you’re not procrastinating the start of your writing session. Do you lose writing time figuring out what you want to work on when you sit down? (The curse of having multiple projects going at once.) You can try my Round Robin technique if that’s an issue. I also find it’s helpful for me to pregame my writing session by devoting a little time earlier in the day to decide what I’ll work on later. That way I can get my brain wheels turning and working on it before I sit down to write.
Is the start of your writing session delayed by figuring out where you left off? If so, are there ways you could remind yourself where you’re starting before the writing session begins? Do you spend the first part of your writing session editing what you wrote last time? If so, is that working well for you? (A real question—this is a valid method as long as it doesn’t impede your draft.)
Finally: Do you stop in the right place? What makes you stop writing, what ends your writing session? Do you run out of time? Run out of motivation? Come to the end of your thoughts and have nothing further to write right then? If so, have you tried stopping your writing session just a little bit earlier, when you still have a bit of time, motivation, and more writing left in you? Your mileage may vary but I always find a writing session starts up quicker when I left the last session with more to say.
Focus and Mindfulness
When you sit down to write or work on writing-adjacent tasks like outlining or editing, what’s your propensity to get distracted? If you get distracted, what is it that distracts you? Your phone (you can buy a timed lockbox for your phone)? Is it social media? Online shopping? (There are apps that can help.) Do your eyes stray out of your word processing window and land on other desktop icons like your email inbox? (Put your word processor in fullscreen mode!)
If focus, generally, is the problem (as it is for many people, whether we have ADHD, like me, or not), I have good news! Focus is a skill you can build just like any other. Figure out how long you can reasonably focus without your mind wandering or getting distracted (five minutes? Ten minutes?) and do Pomodoros of that length with short breaks for your brain in between—and then focus longer as you get good at it.
Mindfulness is the state of being aware of what you’re doing and as far as I can tell it helps with any pursuit I’ve tried. If you’re not sure how to build mindfulness, check out Redirection Insurrection on how to catch your brain when it starts doing the things you don’t want it to do and direct it back at the thing you want it to do.
Improving focus and mindfulness will pay huge returns with writing but also with pretty much anything else.
Process
If you’re a pantser, is that working for you? Be honest: Do you get 15,000 words in and find yourself unsure where to go? If you’re a planner, is that working for you? Be honest: Do you spend so much time planning that you never get around to starting your draft? Whatever your writing process is, where in that process are you:
Losing time?
Getting stuck?
Getting frustrated?
Losing focus and getting distracted?
If there’s a part of your writing process that isn’t working well for you, or even a part of the process you just don’t like, that part is the moment when you’re most likely to stall—to get frustrated and walk away, to lose interest and get distracted by the internet, to get stuck and go back to the outline or work on something else to procrastinate a bit. If you can identify what part of the process that is, you can look for ways to get past it. Can you reward yourself for doing it by scheduling a more enjoyable writing activity right after? Can you eliminate it altogether?
You may have noticed I didn’t offer solutions to most of the items I asked you to examine above. In part, this was for space reasons—this is already a too-long article. In larger part, this was because the solutions and improvements you come up with will be unique to your situation and process. All I wanted to do with this article was start you down the path of thinking about all the little component pieces of writing and how you can unroll them, tune them up a tiny bit here and there as needed, and then roll everything back up for big writing gains.
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