Writing without distraction
This blog won't start itself.
Documentation. That thing you never wake up in the morning excited to do, but that you’ve inevitably spent more time on than you would like to admit.
It’s especially true if you work for a globally-distributed organization where sitting across a table from someone in real time isn’t always an option. Even though writing is a big part of the job for anyone in a leadership role, it’s still really hard to find the motivation to do it. The truth is that nobody likes to write. People like to have written, but writing itself is a slog and it sucks.
Here’s the key takeaway: Writing creative content ultimately comes down to an epic battle between sheer willpower and the universe of things that conspire to distract you.
Where am I writing this right now? I just drove down from where I live in Paso Robles to visit LA for a few days, and am at a cafe waiting to go for dinner with a friend. Over the years I’ve learned that I need ambient noise to write, so if you’re reading this, you can thank the peaceful weekday vibes at Bricks and Scones on Larchmont for getting me started on this journey.1
Back in 2011, I had a short eight weeks to write a doctoral thesis from near scratch. Getting started was really hard, keeping the momentum going to get it done by the deadline was hard, and I needed a few weeks recovery after the defense to recuperate before starting my new job as a research scientist. I wouldn’t repeat that period of my life for anything, but the lessons I learned while writing my dissertation stuck with me throughout my research career and subsequent migration to the tech industry and management. And now I’m sharing them with you!
Time to reflect
Think about a time when you were able to crank out content. It could be a written document, a set of slides, a long email, etc. Where were you? What time of day was it? Were you alone, or were you with other people? Where was the pressure coming from to write? How did you get started? Did you write linearly, or out of order? What medium did you use to write?
Try going through those questions again but for a time when you weren’t as successful at creating content.
Upon reflecting, here are some things to consider:
Find the right environment
Pay attention to the ambiance, time of day, and even noise level where you find yourself most creative. For me, I’m most productive in the late afternoon into the evening.
Before you plan to write, identify as many “addressable” distractions as you can, and time-box them into a different time of the day than when you plan to write. For example, I make sure I’ve eaten, taken care of mundane tasks like folding the laundry, and done everything I’ve needed to do for the day in the morning, so that when I sit down at my laptop after lunch I no longer have any excuses to not write.
Be Mindful
For the distractions that you can’t address ahead of time, such as mind-wandering or checking social media, be intentional about recognizing them so that you can acknowledge it when it happens and snap out of it. This is a good exercise in mindfulness.
Sometimes going to a place without wifi is a good thing when you really need a distraction-free zone. I wasn’t able to get started on my dissertation until I went to the fancy too-good-for-wifi coffee and jazz lounge in Amherst with a notepad and a pen. A glass of wine also helped that evening.
Pro tip: use Google Doc’s “offline work mode” for the times when you don’t want wifi or are not able to get it.2
Even then, I still find it nearly impossible to sit down to write without doing some kind of ritual first to get into the zone and rid myself of any last mental distractions. Getting a mug of black tea as a signal it’s time to start seems to work best for me.
Get started
An object at rest likes to stay at rest. A blank document likes to stay a blank document. Getting started with a blank page will always take much more effort than starting with something you have already written. If you have any shred of content that you can borrow from your past self, it will make things easier; maybe an email or message that you sent someone, or even jotting down some quick points from a live conversation you just had.
If you really have to start from scratch, there are some tricks you can try to throw things out of your mind and onto “paper”. For example, if I need to write a document, I don’t start by writing paragraphs. Instead, I usually start with random bullet points, often in incomplete sentences. Any idea that pops into my head gets written down, without editing. I try to save time for editing later in the process, because sometimes editing itself becomes a distraction.
Pace yourself and maintain focus
Discover the minimum amount of time you need in order to get settled and into your groove, and the maximum amount of time you can steadily keep writing without burning yourself out. If you’ve ever done any running, it’s like a Couch to 5k program. Maybe start with a managable 10min to get settled and 20min of writing time. Over time, you can make the “settle down” time shorter and the writing time longer. Since I’ve been doing some writing lately but also want to account for the fact that this is my first post with this style of content, I allowed about 10min to settle with a coffee and muffin from the cafe, and about an hour and a half to write. When I really got going on my thesis, I would have about 1-2 min of settle time with black tea and 2-3 hours of writing. Then I would take a small break, get back at it again for 2-3 hours, break, etc, for up to 10 hours a day.
As I mentioned before, editing can be a distraction when you are in the initial stages of your content, but once you get going, it can also help you keep focus on the work. If I get stuck and can’t think of any new points to write down, I keep my focus on the writing by moving on to reread what I’ve written and tweak it a little. Since it takes less effort to edit content I already have, it gives me some spare mental bandwidth in my subconscious to keep thinking about what else to add.
Sometimes I abruptly get up and take a walk around my office, or go outside, just to think. I haven’t tried the official pomodoro technique myself, but it looks something like that.
Sometimes I don’t have my laptop handy, so if I’m in deadline-driven writing mode, it helps to have a piece of scrap paper and a pen at all times. One time while waiting for a dinner with a prospective employer during thesis crunch time, all I had in my purse was a retail store receipt. I still successfully used it to start the chapter on how I chose my Bayesian prior.
Just ship it
Give yourself a couple days off to edit, if you can. Fresh eyes can help see the overall flow of the document, as though you were a different person reading it for the first time.
If there is a section or something that doesn’t seem like it’s coming together, throw it on the cutting room floor and move on.Trying to write too many things at once? See if you have more than one theme. Keep one and cut/paste anything following a different theme into a separate “kitchen scraps” document. That separate document can be a good source of material for the next time you need to start with a blank document.
Nothing is ever going to be perfect, so don’t aim for perfection. If it’s 80% “good enough”, you’re done. Speaking of, time for me to wrap up this post!
I’m curious what methods you’ve come across that have helped you write. Let me know!
In the 1h45m that I sat here before meeting a friend for dinner, I managed to write almost two pages of content from nothing. That’s a pretty solid clip for my first time writing in a while, so the cafe thing still works!
As far as I know “offline mode” for Google Docs only works in Chrome (ahem, sorry Firefox).
Awesome
Well done!