Practice Starting!

For years I've been writing that I have no trouble writing. The hard part for me is sitting down to write. Once I sit down, the words come. Like right now.

This morning I realized (finally) that the solution to this problem was simple: I needed to practice sitting down. So I did. After my morning pages, I got up, went to the kitchen. I took a breath, and then headed back to my writing room, sat down, and wrote.

Then I got up and did it all over again.

Each time I did it, I did it a little differently, and each time I learned something.

The major lesson "learned" is something that I've known for a while: that if you want to get good at something, then you have to practice. I'm not good at sitting down to write, so I need to practice it.

More generally, I'm not good at starting. Once I start I can generally (not always) keep going, but starting is the hard part. So, the remedy is clear. I need to practice starting.

I'm also not great at finishing, but that's for another day. Right now my "deliberate practice" is starting.

To do that, I need to try to "deliberately start" whatever I do. I can practice starting lots of times, each day.

Who knows, I might even get good at it!

Hard to Make, Easy to Break

Good habits are hard to make, easy to break. I should know. I’m back in recovery again after having built, and then broken some really good habits. If I examine them, maybe I will learn something and be able to keep things going the next time.

And this post is further proof of how hard it can be to repair a broken habit. I started writing it on 7/26. The stuff that’s highlighted like this was written on 8/11 when I finally got the goddamn thing off my desk. But in the course of it I think I learned something. I hope I did.

So with that in mind, let’s proceed first to the data then the examination.

What Happened

In May I decided I was going to write. I was going to do it regularly and diligently. I started writing, and as I  wrote I found good tools and configured them so my writing was easier and smoother. And I made a resolution: if I opened a web page with something useful, I would not close the page unless I’d written about it. I worked diligently on my other writing projects. And the results showed it.

	TWR	RSILT	WPFW	BWAS*	Other	Total
May	5	10	2	0	0	17
June	8	35	6	0	0	49
July	13	2	4	3	0	22
Total	26	47	12	3	0	88

This does not include daily pages, which are a well established habit for me, and it does not include my first ever stage play, started in June and finished in July.

And this does not count August which has been pretty much been a washout up to now.

To read the stats: my blogfest in May started near the end of the month, so those first 17 posts have to be extrapolated to the whole month. June was a rockin’ month. I was in a pretty steady state, with continuing improvements. And in July the roof caved in. Why? And what can I learn?

What happened in July?

The obvious and wrong answer was my computer problems. I feel like I have been fighting it all month. But that’s not true. It crashed the weekend I went down to Boston: that was July 10th. It’s only been two weeks that I’ve been fighting it. It just seems like forever.

Then I thought it might be Evernote. Once I started using Evernote I just clipped interesting web pages instead of blogging about them. Turns out this is half the story. I blogged about Evernote on July 6th. My Evernote notebooks show that I started clipping on July 3rd – and I started clipping articles about Social Media. Ahh!

So another answer: At the start of July Mira and I decided to work on a blog. That sent me into another round of process improvements—including Evernote. I let Evernote be a proxy for blogging what I learned about. Then the computer crashed. And things got worse from there.

And the last answer: I just lost momentum, and did not know how to gain it back. And here’s the proof. I started this particular post on 7/26 (or before—that’s the date of the last draft before I picked it up on 8/11)

Now what do I do?

Well, this is a first step [I wrote in my original draft]. I’m writing stuff in the blog. But it’s not enough. I’ve gotten out of some really good habits, and into some bad ones. Just getting myself to write this post was a real struggle. I kept wandering off, surfing web pages and NOT WRITING!

So the answer to this seems to be: put the discipline back into your life.

Really?

That was my remedy on 7/26. “Put discipline back in your life.” And where did it get me? Nowhere. Why? Because “Put discipline back in your life” is a slogan. It’s not a behavior.

And worse, I’ve got bad Beliefs. “I’ve lost control.” “I don’t know what to do.” “I can’t handle it.” All that old shit.

Well, I can handle it. And here’s how I’m going to do it.

My Daily Pages is a fully established, very reliable habit. When I started doing the Pages it was partly with the idea of making it a keystone or foundation (depending on your metaphor) for other good habits.

I got myself into the writing habit and when I lost it I did not have a reflexive way to recover. So I was unstable

What will stabilize me? My answer is good, tight management. I need to managed, or coached until the habit is set, and to intercede if I slip.

Right now I need management at a very granular level. A day is too long a time. The right level of granularity is: a Pomodoro  at a time.

So here’s the current plan.

I will build on Pages. I will start each day with Pages, rather than doing them “some time during the day.” I will follow the Pages with Daily Planning. I will figure out some things that I am going to do—or at least attempt that day. Then start to work on the plan a Pomodoro at a time. Each time, write some notes. Coach yourself on a continuing basis.

Ellis cautions that to make changes it’s necessary to approach the problem both cognitively and behaviorally, and to reward the right result and penalize the wrong one. So: if no pages, I will take a cold shower. I hate cold showers. I have a strong incentive to avoid them. I will avoid them.

Will it work? Time will tell. Pages work. Building on Pages just might work.

I’ve got a new blog (Oh no! Not another!!!) Yes. It’s a personal one. To give myself that feedback and create a sense of history. It’s a personal blog. I may or may not make it public later on. We’ll see.

Today, under this new regime, I’ve done my pages, made my plan and made two posts in the personal blog.  I’ve completed two Pomodoros of varying sizes.

This one will make three of each.

We’ll see what happens.

Anyone can be anything

What do you want to be when you grow up? That's what grown-ups ask kids all the time. It's the wrong question. Being is easy, especially for kids. A kid can be a cowboy, a firefighter, a soldier, all in the space of a few minutes.

Being is not only easy for kids. It's dead easy for adults too. Watch this: I'm a writer. Now I'm an actor. Now I'm a fireman. Now I'm back to being a writer. I can be anything that I want to be. But once I'm being something can I do anything effective? That's a greater challenge.

When I'm being a writer I can write--or not write. If I write, I'm being what you might call a productive writer, or a practicing writer. If I don't write, then I'm being a blocked writer, or a lazy writer, or an aspiring writer. Whether I write or don't write, once I decide I'm a writer, I'm still a writer.

Want to be a writer who writes? Easy: sit down, pick up a piece of paper and a pen and write anything at all--say the word 'dog.' Wow! You're not only a writer but you are writing. Not very much, and not very good, but it's a start. So doing is almost as easy as being.

Doing something well is where it starts to get hard: it takes practice, practice, practice. And not just practice: it takes constant review, criticism, self improvement, maybe coaching and education--what Malcom Gladwell in his book "Outliers" calls "deliberate practice." If your objective is ambitious it may take Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice. And even that may not be enough if you don't start with a certain level of talent or capability. 10,000 hours of practice would never have gotten me to the NBA. I just don't have the physical skills. But I do believe the skills to write.

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. It took a long time to realize that 'being a writer' was an easy and unsatisfying goal; writing effectively and fluidly was more like it. I've done that more than a few times and I discovered that wasn't what I wanted either. What I now want (and I believe I always really wanted but could not articulate) was to have a body of writing that I wrote and that satisfied me.

And that's what I'm working on (among other things): being what I need to be and doing what I need to do in order to have what I want to have: that body of work.

Right now I want something less than a body of work. I want to have one more finished post. To do that I'm being a writer (easy); I'm writing this blog post (a little harder); I'm rewriting and editing it so that I'm satisfied (much harder); and by the time you see it, it will have reached the state of "good enough for now" and I will have posted it.

Then on to the next post, and the next, and the next. And if I do this (and other practices of writing) enough, I I'll get to my long term goal--maybe.

So I'm writing a lot. I've got five blogs going; I've just finished my first play; I've got some other writing projects in mind. My plan is to produce a few posts a week on each of the blogs. If I keep that up--or even amp it up beyond that--I might reach my long-term goal. Or I might die trying, which is not so bad, either.

The right question is to ask kids--and yourself is not "what do you want to be?" It's what do you want to accomplish--to have? Then figure out what you need to do to get that. Then figure out what you need to be to do that. Then be that; do that; and maybe you'll have that.

At least you'll have fun.

Related articles

• How will you close in on your 10,000 hours today? (lisarivero.com)
• The 10,000 Hour Rule (bellwort.wordpress.com)
• What Malcolm Sees (lisarivero.com)

ABC+D=?

My continued investigation into addiction has led me to Albert Ellis, one of the originators of cognitive/behavioral therapy. His particular therapy brand is called REBT, for Rational Emotional Behavioral Therapy.

Like most cognitive approaches, Ellis’s focuses on the links between perception, belief and behavior, and works to change the behavior by changing belief. ABC+D is an acronym describing his method.

The goal of REBT is helping people reach their goals more effectively—or at all. So REBT starts with defining goals. Then judge your actions this way: “Did that get me closer to my goal?” If so, then that action is good. If not, then bad. Regardless of the Consequence, you can use the ABC+D model to analyze what happened, and find better ways to reach the goal.

So let’s define terms.

A = Activating Event. An Activating Event is something noteworthy in pursuit of a goal. The event might block or delay reaching the goal. It might be a distraction. It might be a success.

B = Belief. A belief is something that you hold to be true. Activating Events do not result in behavior; according to Ellis’ model the event is interpreted, and action is prescribed according to beliefs. Change the belief, you change behavior.

C = Consequences. These are the results of some Activating Event. I might be a change in what you have been doing—or it might be no change.

All, right, this is nice and theoretical. Let’s take an example to see how it’s applied. Since I’m writing this post, and since I often have trouble finishing what I write (or do), I’ll use this as an example. My goal is to finish this blog post. Along the way there might be Activating Events that result in negative Consequence (I give up).

Of course sometimes the Consequence is that I succeed. We’ll look at that another time. It’s more useful (right now) to consider failure modes.

How do I fail? Often I I sit down to write then I find myself searching for something on the Web. Or I might find myself down in the kitchen looking in the refrigerator for something to eat. Whatever the case, I am not writing, so I am not reaching my goal. Something is getting in the way.

In this analysis we have one part of ABC—the Consequence. We have C, but we don’t have A and B. Now it’s time for detective some detective work. What’s the Activating Event? And what’s the Belief?

For me, a common Activating Event is this: I stop writing for a moment. Perhaps I review what I’ve read, and I decide I don’t like it. It might be missing something. It might be not well thought out. I might think that the argument is weak and has to be presented differently. Perhaps I don’t know what I might do next. The Activating Event is some disruption in my writing flow.

Fine. We have some examples of Activating Events. What Beliefs do I have that lead me to the undesirable Consequences? Doing a bit of introspection about writing failures, I dredge up these beliefs:

• I don’t know what to do next. This is a handy all-purpose Belief that leads me to “step back and think about things” or “take a break and see what comes to me.” These require some subordinate Beliefs:
  • I have no way to figure out what to do next. If I did, then I’d be doing it.
  • If I take a break, what to do next might come to me.
  • I need to do some more research. Then I’ll know.
• This post isn’t going to be good—or good enough, so it’s a waste of time to work on it. I should work on something else.
• I really should be working on something that’s more important.
• I should be enjoying this—and I’m not.

Most of these beliefs lead to my undesired Consequence. One belief leads to a good Consequence. “I should be working on something more important” could lead me to work the more important project. It’s the others that are problems.

So now I’ve got a bad Consequence, an Activating Event, and a few representative Beliefs. That leads us to Ellis’s D step: Disputing.

Disputing is central to most forms of cognitive therapy. Activating events will happen—although sometimes we can do things to prevent them. For example if a person has a problem overeating and seeing a refrigerator full of favorite foods is a common Activating Event that leads to a binge—the probability of that Consequence can be lowered by leaving the refrigerator empty or filling it with foods that don’t lead to temptation. No Activating Event, no Consequence.

But most Activating Events can’t be prevented. Sometimes my writing flows and it’s all I can do to type as fast as I think. But sometimes I stop I might step back and wonder “How is this going?” That event might not be preventable. Or I just stop. There are no words coming to me. Here the leverage point is Belief. So let’s look at these Beliefs. But before we do this, let’s clarify my goal.

When I’m writing my goal is not to write something great, or necessarily even good. It’s just to write. My fundamental Belief is that if I practice enough, study my practice, and make adjustments, eventually I’ll get good.

With that in mind I can Dispute the Belief “I have no way to figure out what to do next,” by saying: “Yes, you do. You can just write whatever comes to mind. Eventually you’ll find something that makes sense. Or not. But at least you’ll be writing, which is the goal.”

Or I can Dispute “I’ll take a break and see what comes to mind,” by reminding myself: “If you take a break you’re likely to quit. Better to stay in your chair and keep going.”

Or I can Dispute “I really should be enjoying this, but I’m not,” with “It would be nice if you were enjoying this, but the writing process is not always enjoyable. What is enjoyable is finishing what you’ve started. So even though you are not enjoying this, keep going,”

Or I can Dispute “This post isn’t going to be good, or good enough,” with: your goal is to get a first draft done. Once you finish the draft you can criticize it and make it better.”

Or after enough frustration I get the belief Belief: “This is getting nowhere. I’m never going to be good writer.”

I can also Dispute it. “You may not ever be a good writer, but that’s not the goal. It’s to write at whatever level of quality you can achieve, and by practice get better. “

Examining, Disputing and changing these Beliefs might lead to a different Consequence: finishing the goddamn post. And if you are reading it, then indeed it has. As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve stopped from time to time and briefly reflected on what I’m doing. Some, but not all, of these troubling Beliefs have arisen. And I’ve Disputed them.

The result: as of this draft I’ve more than 1,260 words written. I haven’t gone off chasing the new. I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve written—and even more pleased that I’ve written.

Now I’ll answer the question that titled the article:

ABC+D = this post.

And more generally:

ABC+D = goals reached more often.

Related articles

• Rational Emotive Therapy Approach to Counseling (rumorsofglory.net): In this post, the author extends the ABCD acronym all the way to F.
• One Strong Belief: A Blog Post (sanjaysabarwal.com)

Technorati Tags: Ellis,Cognitive Therapy,CBT,REBT,Writing

Writing and Editing

Back in the day, when I first starting writing various stupid things to My Friend Jonny, I concluded that I was not a very good writer--but I was a good editor.

A really good writer can sit down and just bang out great stuff. Anthony Troloppe qualifies. He wrote 47 novels, all in longhand, much of it (if I remember my Troloppe) while on the train to his day job. He'd finish one novel and start the next one the next day. Isaac Asimov is the gold standard for writerly productivity. There's debate about how many books he wrote--even he lost track; the number is now considered well above 400, and may be greater than 500. Of course he had an advantage over Troloppe: the typewriter had been invented. No telling what Asimov would have done with a word processor. It might have been in the thousands. And if the Internet had been invented it might have gone up even further--or dropped to zero as he surfed his way to idiocy.

I don't have Troloppe's that talent, much less Asimov's. For one thing, I have trouble finishing what I start. For another I've found that most of what I write isn't very good; but almost everything has some good ideas in it. So I keep the good ideas, and rewrite the rest, and gradually something emerges that I'm happy with. "Writing is rewriting," someone has said. For me, "writing is editing." I know what's good and not good. I throw out the not-good, keep the good, and assign my writer-self to do a next draft. Then I repeat the process until my editor-self is satisfied. Over time, my writer-self has gotten better--or perhaps my editor-self has grown more tolerant. Or both.

In any case, the "Formula for Creativity" for me has been this:

1. Create a lot.
2. Throw away the crappy stuff. (There may be a lot of it)
   
3. Keep the good stuff. (There will always be at least some)
   
4. Create some more.
5. Stop when it's good enough.
   

The problem is that I haven't wanted it to be that way. Here's the process I want:

1. Create something perfect the first time.
2. Tell the editor to shut-the-fuck-up.
   
3. Stop, because perfect is more than good enough.
   

Since I haven't been able to get what I've wanted, I've responded in a very effective way: by going on strike. The process has been:

1. If you can't create something perfect the first time, don't create anything at all.
2. That way, all of what you create is perfect.
3. The editor has been shut up.
   
4. Whoopie doo.
   

Clearly this is not a good strategy. So it's about to change as follows:

1. Write this essay, without too much editing.
2. Read through it once and fix what is obviously wrong.
   
3. Move along. Move along.
   

So in less than 30 seconds, I'll hit the publish button and we're on the new process.

Brenda Euland and William Blake

I'm rereading Brenda Euland's wonderful book "If you want to write." Her book is not just about writing, but about all acts of creation.

Chapter 1 is titled: "Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to stay." She goes on to proove it and to give examples of people who reached their potential as creators. I'm reading her recounting of William Blake, and that sent me off on a research project to find out more (Damn that Internet! It makes it too easy).

Quotes from Euland about Blake: [Blake's] free and abundant use of his creative power made him one of the happiest men who ever lived. He wrote copious and endless poetry (without the slightest concern that it would ever be published)

Blake said that most of us mix up God and Satan. We see God as "mere prudence."

The only way we can grow and know if something is good or bad is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in a cradle than nurse unacted desires."

The Reason that "shrivels the ardor and freedom and the passionate enthusiasm that wells up in us" is Satan. It limits our creativity and denies God, for "nothing is pleasing to God except the creation of beautiful and exalted things."

"Writing, the creative effort, the use of imagination, should come first: at least some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it."

"I want to ensure you with all earnestness that no writing is a waste of time--no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. I know that."

Euland helps inspire me to silence the Critic(s) of my writing--all of them internal. Why write WPFW? Who will read it? That's just become a non-question. I write it because "no writing is a waste of time." I will grow from the writing. Similarly, I draw inspiration from my other sources of advice.

What I learned about being a writer

It took me long time to learn this.

It’s simple.

Sadly, I keep forgetting it.

1. There's no such thing as becoming a writer. There’s only being a writer and not being a writer. In a given moment you either are a writer or you are not.
2. Being a writer is easy. All you have to do is sit down to write. Not sit down and write. Just sit down to write. You don't have to write anything. That's called “doing writing.” And that’s different from being a writer.

Now if you do this one thing (sit down to write) often enough you will write.

And if you write enough you might even get good.

And if you get good or you get lucky, and if you want to, you might even get published. Or you can self-publish in a Blog.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that if you want to write, you’ve got to first be a writer. And if you want to be a writer you just have to sit. Just sit.

Sometimes sitting down is the hardest thing you (I) can do. Stupid, but sometimes it is.

And sometimes, like today, you (I) sit down and you (I) get an idea, and the words just flow off the ends of your (my) fingers and appear on the screen and you are (I am) writing.

If you’re being a writer, there’s nothing better than seeing those words appear.