Why You Should Start Your Writing Sprints With the Same Routine
By: Janz Is Writing
Tags: Productivity, Flow, Habits, Morning Routines, Writing Tips

Why You Should Start Your Writing Sprints With the Same Routine

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

“In order to get that feeling of flow, a writer needs to get in the zone and stay in the zone. Once you start, you have to keep going.” — Tracy Chevalier, in Swallowed by a Whale: How to Survive the Writing Life

The ‘zone’ means that you write with 100% concentration. You are on peak performance. Hours might go by and you haven’t even noticed. You’re fully immersed in your topic and write with maximum focus. Writing becomes effortless.

Unfortunately, daily writing often feels like the opposite.

You get up in the morning, read your emails, check social media — and by the time you should start writing, your mind has already gone in a million different directions.

If you’ve ever felt like that, you need to establish writing triggers — cues — to tell your brain that it’s writing time.

Psychologist Wendy Wood at the University of Southern California shows that repeated cues are the best way to support habits. “If you set up your world to be constant, recurring, and unwavering, then cues can be the jet fuel to make your new habits take off with stupendous speed,” Wood writes in her book Good Habits, Bad Habits.

By using the same triggers before each writing sprint, you will provide a stable context to get into the writing flow. Your brain will filter out any obstacles and distractions because you’ve created an environment that supports maximum focus.

I’ve talked to many creative and academic writers, and here’s a list of cues that are mentioned again and again — related to what you can see, hear, smell, feel, and touch :

time cue : your phone beeps with a special alarm (or maybe your favourite song!) to signal that it’s time to write

: your phone beeps with a special alarm (or maybe your favourite song!) to signal that it’s time to write food cue : you make coffee or tea and take a deep sniff of your steaming cup while you sit down at your desk

: you make coffee or tea and take a deep sniff of your steaming cup while you sit down at your desk touch cue : you put on your favourite writers’ cardigan and feel the soft fabric against your skin while you open your laptop

: you put on your favourite writers’ cardigan and feel the soft fabric against your skin while you open your laptop audio cue : you play your ‘writing playlist’ while cleaning up your desk, then you start typing

: you play your ‘writing playlist’ while cleaning up your desk, then you start typing calm cue : you take three deep breaths after you’ve sat down at your desk

: you take three deep breaths after you’ve sat down at your desk visualisation cue: you close your eyes and visualise printing out your written pages at the end of the day

If any of these appeal to you, try them!

Or, use them as an inspiration to make a list of possible writing cues that work for you. Find a small action that you enjoy. Something you already do, but now you will connect it to writing.

Once you have a list of ideas, pick one or two actions to start with. Commit to doing them before each writing sprint for at least a week, better two. This is going to be your brain training: you’re actively engaging in habit formation.

If that works well for you, take it to the next level and create stacked cues — up to five actions that follow each other in the same order until the last action is writing.

The stacking idea is based on habit formation research, as James Clear shows in his book Atomic Habits. He recommends gluing a few steps together to strengthen a new habit.

Here are my own stacked writing cues as an example:

Drink cue : After I make my decaf latte, I will go to my desk and open my laptop.

: After I make my decaf latte, I will go to my desk and open my laptop. Meditation cue : After I have opened my laptop, I use it to play a guided meditation (e.g. this one by Headspace takes one minute)

: After I have opened my laptop, I use it to play a guided meditation (e.g. this one by Headspace takes one minute) Micro goal cue: After I meditated, I take a post-it and write down three physical micro-steps that lead me into my writing project. One of these micro steps is usually ‘open X word document.’

My list of stacked cues takes me about ten minutes in the morning, and then I’m in the writing flow. When I write in the evenings, I replace the decaf latte with a herbal tea and put on a youtube playlist that keeps me awake instead of meditating.

Start with a few stacked writing cues, to begin with, then build it up. Put the list on your fridge, bathroom mirror, or above your desk until the steps become almost automatic.

By the way, there’s nothing wrong with you if you have trouble getting started with your writing cues. It will take some time. I sometimes forget them, especially when I have deadline pressure and no problems getting started. Once the deadline has passed, I usually start procrastinating… and then I return to my writing cues to get back on track.

You want to get to the point where you can rely on writing cues to get in the flow, deadline or not.