Don't write everyday

I found the Academic Writing Ampified podcast a while ago. It’s by an academic lady who is mostly focusing on empowering women, giving them voice, and generally help them out with the overally masculine environment of academia. Yet, so points that she raises are general and everyone can learn from them. So, here we are. I guess I’ll write this gist of some episodes here time to time.

# There’s this idea of “write everyday” (not to get better at writing, rather to get things done¹. Nevertheless, her points are valid also for those who want to write, just to improve their writing, and don’t feel an academic pressure). She claims that the idea has flaws because:

1. What if you can’t for whatever reason? You feel guilt.
2. What you might be doning by that? Forcing yourself to do the writing sometimes in the least efficient time, causing the more fraustration.
3. Insisting on it, specially if the number 2 applies, is actually bad because it conditions you to do dedicate wrong time to one of the most important time.

The solution is not not being persistent and consistant, but identifying the more effective times. Here’s how it goes:

She suggest to mark a calendar week by 4 colors to highlight the quality and the extent of focus for writing. Colors indicate somethings like “awesome super writing time”, “Okish time”, “more easily distracted than focused”, “impossible to work”. Such marking excercise will start to show the efficiency pattern during the day and across week days. Note that because of several other responsibilities (like teaching, meeting, etc.), the times doesn’t have to be the same for every day.

Once the times are identified, one has to make the habbit (so conditioning - number 3) to book these times for stromy writing. If not possible, the second best times (we don’t want to make “hey I really don’t have any time to do the actual writing” kind of excuses). And make sure to try to free up the best possible times for yourself. Even if you have teaching obligations, try to change it.