Weight Training Your Writing
Dumbbells to digits — Fitness tips that helped me build a better writing habit
For new writers, the hardest thing about writing seems to be getting started on…well writing. That blank page becomes your nemesis and procrastinating becomes a full-on Olympic sport as you leap to do just about anything else that isn’t putting words onto a page. Laundry. Emails. Dissociating. Name it — it's a priority to writing.
That’s me. I am a PRO-crastinator. My favorite explanation of the cause of procrastination of all time has been detailed out beautifully by Tim Urban author of the blog “Wait But Why”.
Additionally, another possible cause is the “gifted kid burnout” situation where you never developed the skillset to work tiny bits over time — usually also going hand in hand with childhood trauma. Super fun.
The point though is that chronic procrastination is something deeply embedded into your mental process that affects you at your core. The advice I see so often is “just write”. Yes, we procrastinators understand the concept “is to put fingers to writing tool and to then produce words from the brain”. We look to various tricks like “Morning Pages” and ask for routine clues from others.
For me at least, nothing seemed to work. The advice seemed to fall so close to “just do it”. But that is the problem. Doing it. Which in itself is abelist and fails to acknowledge people suffering from depression or chronic illness. From there self-sabotaging thoughts emerge like “well if everyone else can do it why can’t I?” and “is there something wrong with me? I want to write but can’t seem to do it consistently”. The comparisons along with the society’s toxic productivity hype culture just dig the individual into a deeper hole.
The language surrounding improving writing habits is extremely similar to those seeking to improve their exercise habits as well. I struggled to create a consistent exercise routine for years — seesawing from spite-fueled monthly spasms of workouts and intense dieting to long deserts of any physical movement aside from commuting to and from work. I googled non-stop for workouts and fitness influencers hoping to find the magic answer to why I couldn’t stick to anything.
My mental state was the main factor as I’d continuously seek external answers to solve an internal problem. Finally, after deciding to prioritize my mental health over my physical, I found a simple exercise routine that I’ve proudly kept for months. In doing so, I found that my trial and error to form a healthy exercise routine taught me concepts that could be applied to forming any healthy habit — such as writing.
The two main concepts I found that worked for me to start building a routine:
- Lifting until failure
- Having a low barrier to entry
1. Lifting Until Failure
In weight-training, there is a concept called “lifting until failure”. In order to build the muscle, you lift a heavy enough weight until you can’t anymore. Beginners should choose the lightest weight possible, in my case it was two measly 3-pound dumbbells. I was a web developer for years and never left the desk, leaving me with muscles akin to the consistency of tofu.
I found that when I first started working out my muscles were so weak I could barely hold proper form without shaking and going off balance. Gradually, even with mistakes in form and movement, my muscles gained strength and form became less of an issue.
Writing is also like building a muscle. If you haven’t done it before, or in a while, it is weak and needs repetition and time to improve. Maybe you can’t do an hour writing session straight, but you can do ten minutes. Your first words might resemble a new born foal with its choppy words and oddly contructed sentences. But just like in weight training, it takes time to build that strength. Over time you’ll find yourself being able to write more and in writing more you will also write better.
To apply the “lift until failure concept” to writing you would chose a mark to start writing at. This could be at the 10-minute mark, 10-hour mark or whatever mark you choose. Once you hit that mark you push just a little bit more, maybe one or two more minutes, and then immediately stop. If it is too much of a struggle to finish or you are burnt out before reaching that time, you can reassess and change your goals. Inititally you can just time yourself after you start writing and see when you got burnt out. After a couple of “rounds” you’ll see where your mark falls.
The important thing is to remove guilt and shame from the equation. When you workout it’s not for ego or comparisons to anyone else’s progress, it’s for yourself and your own journey.
2. Having a Low Barrier to Entry
I also found that just working out for a short period of time was not enough to get me to build a habit of working out. Even if the workout was only 10 minutes long I couldn’t stick to it and say to myself “Okay! Every day you are going to do this exercise for 10 minutes”. My brain rejected routine and this is because the barrier to entry needs to be reduced low enough to build a routine in the first place.
For me, the barrier to entry had to be ground level in order to get me to get started. The workout needed to begin with a standing warm-up with very easy movements. Luckily for me, after years I found workouts that did this for me.
When it came to writing, working directly on my phone worked best for me. I was able to write as soon as I felt the inspiration hit meand the smaller screen made the “blank page anxiety” go away. Occasionally, I found I could manage a laptop screen (like this article right here).
The barrier to entry might be different for you. Ask yourself, “what is the easiest way for me to get started writing?” Maybe like me it’s on your phone since it’s already in your hands. Maybe it’s using a prompt or having music playing. Whatever is the easiest way to get started and being before you then “lift until failure”.
Prioritizing Your Mental Health
It’s important to note that while these two concepts have helped me build both a workout and writing routine, I would not have been able start building in the first place if I had not spent a long time taking care of my mental health. The root of why you procrastinate is usually some underlying issue that needs to be addressed. Campbell Walker, creator of Struthless Youtube Channel, has some very good insights on procrastination and mentions how the myth of procrastination is that it is laziness when really it is a symptom of a wider issue. (His 70% rule is also extremely helpful).
Therapy sessions and practicing the tools I was given through therapy, allowed me to get to the state to begin building healthy habits.
Do you need to wait to start writing until you’ve gotten X amount of therapy sessions? No, of course not. However, if you find that it is still a struggle to write, it might be worth it to take a step back and reassess how you are approaching the routine and your overall mental health as well.
While reading about how to improve writing does not replace the actual habit building of writing itself, I do hope these tidbits helped you as they did for me. And if nothing else, I hope this shows that we can apply concepts we learn from one world to another.
