Re:“Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology o...
by Bartweiss on Monday July 11, 2016 @10:06AM
(#12071088)
What stands out to me is that the author has correctly identified a problem, but provides an unsupported solution that has failed for a lot of people.
I'm going to push Duhigg's Power of Habit here as a somewhat more rigorous treatment of these ideas. Duhigg, I think, would agree that "write every day" is an awful plan. His solution, though, would not be "write when you feel like it". Rather, it would be to establish a clear, reliable trigger for when to sit down and write.
"Every day" is the sort of standard that leaves you staring at a blank page at midnight, debating whether to just go to bed. "In the quiet stretch after dinner and dishes", by contrast, gives you a clear cue to do your task. It also averts the problem of falling of the bandwagon - if you go out to dinner, or work late and skip the meal, you never got your cue and don't have to record a 'failure' of your system.
It's certainly the case that never-fail systems are fragile and unproductive; until the habit is ingrained they tend to collapse altogether at the first interruption. But the solution isn't to abandon scheduling, it's to learn what good, proactive scheduling looks like.
I'm going to push Duhigg's Power of Habit here as a somewhat more rigorous treatment of these ideas. Duhigg, I think, would agree that "write every day" is an awful plan. His solution, though, would not be "write when you feel like it". Rather, it would be to establish a clear, reliable trigger for when to sit down and write.
"Every day" is the sort of standard that leaves you staring at a blank page at midnight, debating whether to just go to bed. "In the quiet stretch after dinner and dishes", by contrast, gives you a clear cue to do your task. It also averts the problem of falling of the bandwagon - if you go out to dinner, or work late and skip the meal, you never got your cue and don't have to record a 'failure' of your system.
It's certainly the case that never-fail systems are fragile and unproductive; until the habit is ingrained they tend to collapse altogether at the first interruption. But the solution isn't to abandon scheduling, it's to learn what good, proactive scheduling looks like.