We’ve saved the best – or at least the most important – for last. Like 95% of aspiring authors the #1 reason I’ve failed to get published is lack of discipline, and for any of the practice techniques we’ve talked about to work we need to start by fixing that problem.
You may have heard of the ‘Ten Thousand Hour,’ rule. Ironically, it’s based on a misinterpretation of some of the research Anders Ericsson performed while discovering deliberate practice. The rule supposedly says that to become an expert in any field, you need to invest at least ten thousand hours of practice.
This turns out to not be entirely accurate (the truth is both more and less daunting, check out page 109 of Peak for more details), but it does help put the challenge in perspective. If you invested an hour of practice a day, every day, you’d complete your ten thousand hours in a bit more than 27 years.
Oof.
The ten thousand hour rule has significant flaws, so don’t get discouraged. But it’s clear that the path to becoming a great writer isn’t one we’re finishing in a few months, or even a few years. So how do we build the willpower to keep working day after day after day until we reach our goal?
For help, I’m turning to two men: retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, and our good friend Dr. Anders Ericsson.
Jocko Willink:
Jocko Willink is a former Navy SEAL officer turned writer, podcaster, and leadership trainer. He’s published an entire book in discipline – titled Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual – and nearly every page has something useful to say about maintaining willpower. I’m sure I’ll come back to his work in future posts, but for now I’m going to focus on the point that resonated with me the most:
Discipline leads to more discipline.
The thought is this: the more you practice discipline, even in little things, the better prepared you are to maintain it when it counts.
Borrowing one of Jocko’s examples: imagine that you woke up early in the morning and went right to the gym. Then you ate a healthy breakfast, packed a good lunch, and went to work. A little before lunchtime one of your co-workers brings around a box of donuts for the team.
Do you take the donut?
Jocko argues, and I agree, that you probably won’t. Just like how an object in motion tends to remain in motion, a person practicing discipline in all areas is much more likely to maintain it when it’s challenged. For us, that means sitting down to write even when we don’t feel like it.
Now imagine the inverse of Jocko’s scenario. Instead of getting up early, you woke up late. You didn’t get any exercise and stopped by Starbucks for breakfast. When the donuts come around, isn’t it easy to feel like just having just one won’t do much harm?
Then later that evening, if you’re tired and don’t really feel up to writing, you might think that skipping your practice time isn’t that big of a deal. After all, you can always catch up tomorrow. Right?
NO. WRONG ANSWER.
Discipline is a choice. We choose to eat the donut or we don’t, and we choose to sit down and write or we don’t. The first step is choosing that writing is important to us and we’re going to make it happen. Every day. Whether we feel like it or not. Even if we’re just going through the motions, we choose to write.
After that we take on other factors that affect our decision, the things that make it easier or harder to make the right choice. I want to make sure I’m making the right decisions about my practice, so instead of just trying to get disciplined about writing, I’m bringing discipline to my entire day. That way when I’m tempted to skip a practice session or stop a bit early, the discipline and good habits I’ve been forging will be there to keep me on the right path.
And one last point: there will absolutely be times that I fail. If I miss a practice session I won’t berate myself forever, but I’ll recognize that, for that day, I let my dream down. If I want to become a successful writer, every day I don’t practice is a day that I screwed up.
The details of what I’m planning are at the end of this post, but before I lay them out let’s hear from Dr. Ericsson.
Dr. Anders Ericsson:
As a part of his research, Dr. Ericsson asked how students maintain the motivation to keep practicing, often for several hours every day, for the decades it takes to master a complicated skill. He discusses his findings on page 165 of Peak, but these were my key takeaways.
First, no one loves practicing. It’s easy to think that a student who sits down and practices the violin for three hours a day must simply love playing the violin, but Dr. Ericsson found that even students who devote large amounts of time to their craft would usually much rather be off with friends or enjoying some other form of entertainment. The successful performers are universally the ones who found ways to keep practicing even when they didn’t enjoy it.
Second, there is no evidence that willpower is an innate characteristic. No one is born with a genetic gift for willpower or discipline, and everyone who develops these traits has to work for it. Barring some major medical condition, there’s no reason that any of us cannot learn to practice.
Third, and in line with Jocko, the people who maintained their practice regimen long term had to redesign their lives and build new habits to support their practice goals. This goes way beyond just scheduling a time to practice. The best students built their day around their practice and had a good sense of the time they spent on different tasks, even (or perhaps especially) their leisure time. This let them make sure they always had the time needed for practice.
Fourth, the students minimized the factors that get in the way of practicing. Smartphone: off. Imgur: closed. Workspace: neat, organized and ready to go. This applies in a broader context as well. For example, being tired makes it much harder to practice, so simply getting enough sleep was an important first step.
Fifth and finally, the students maximized the factors that encourage practice. This is a bit more vague because it varies from person to person, but Dr. Ericsson mentions how many students surrounded themselves with like-minded and motivated people, and eventually took great pride in their skill as their performance improved. Especially early on, reminders of why they were practicing were critical to keep them moving forward.
The Plan:
Now that we’ve collected all that advice, what’s the plan? This list will certainly change over time, but to start my goals are:
- Get out of bed early. First alarm is set for 5:45 AM, with the goal of out of bed by 6:00. 6:30 at the absolute latest. This will require that I get to bed at a reasonable hour. I know that for a lot of people 5:45 AM isn’t a terribly impressive wake-up time, but it’s much earlier than I used to get up and it gives me the time I need for what I have planned in the morning.
- Exercise. At least a half-hour before work, and probably more as I get back into shape. I’ll also be going to jiujutsu class at least once a week. Health makes it easier to focus, the morning exercise will wake me up, and it’s a great area to build up discipline.
- Good decisions, by which I mean eating better, de-cluttering my desk, keeping my apartment clean, and so on. This may seem petty, or at least unrelated creative writing, but I firmly believe that these little disciplines are critical for making sure I maintain my practice goals. Speaking of which . . .
- Practice, for at least an hour a day. I work from 9 AM to 5:30 PM and the cafeteria is nice and quiet, so my goal is to arrive at work at least an hour early and get in my practice time. On weekends or if the cafe isn’t available, I’ll be at my desk at home. An hour is the bare minimum, so if I have any free time (such as when eating lunch) I’ll be looking to pump that rookie number up.
- The practice log. Part motivation and part timekeeper, I’ll keep a public log of the times I exercise, practice, write blog posts. and so on. This will make it easy to tell if I’m slipping and prod me with a bit of embarrassment if I start slacking off.
If I can meet these goals I should be well on my way towards creating the discipline I need to keep practicing.
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And with that, we’ve covered the basics of deliberate practice and how I’ll apply it to my writing. The next post will lay out my starting point, and after that we’re off to the races. Let’s get to it.