How I Used Habit Building to Overcome My Fear of Writing
By: Shanna Loga
Tags: Writing, Habit Building, Personal Development, Self Improvement, Habits

How I Used Habit Building to Overcome My Fear of Writing

My story and strategies for starting and maintaining a daily writing habit

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

Why is everyone fascinated by habits? Since Charle Duhigg’s The Power of Habit came out in 2012, the topic of habits has spawned multiple bestselling books, habit coaches, habit workshops, and a national habit conference. Even self-help gurus like Mark Manson and Rachel Hollis have jumped on the bandwagon and added habit hacking to their repertoires.

Based on my personal experience, I believe people are so excited about habits because they can change your life.

For over a decade I was paralyzed by self-doubt. Although I’ve wanted to be a writer since middle school and tried journalism and screenwriting in college, I had always felt I wasn’t good enough. I was terrified of trying to become a writer, failing, and realizing I had no other talents to offer the world. Other than writing in a journal a few times a year, I did not write a single word for myself for 15 years.

I did not write a single word for myself for 15 years.

When severe postpartum depression took me out of the workforce a year ago, I sought therapy for the first time in my life. With therapy, I learned to face my demons and emerged with a new lease on life. Determined to lead a better life for myself and my family, I devoured self-help literature.

After reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits, writing suddenly seemed possible. I could take baby steps and work my way into doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing. I became a student of habit formation and used what I learned to finally achieve my dream of becoming a writer.

What I learned

Habits are our repeated, subconscious behaviors. It is estimated that 45% of our behaviors fall into this category, meaning that we do nearly half of the activities in our lives without really thinking about them. It makes sense that we don’t want to waste our mental capacity considering each step we need to take to brush our teeth every morning, for example. Our brains are wired for efficiency in this way.

Habits are important

Unfortunately, their wiredness makes habits especially hard to break. It’s why even the most motivated of us fail to change them. My husband and I have developed a habit over the past couple of months of watching Netflix and stress-eating tortilla chips before going to bed. Needless to say, the “Quarantine 15” got us, even though we’re generally healthy eaters and are highly motivated to stay healthy.

Our unconscious behavior is at the root of many of our vices and experts like B.J. Fogg and James Clear shed light on the power that habits have over our daily lives. They each have developed strategies for creating new, more beneficial habits, which, in turn, can lead to big, positive life changes.

Habit formation strategies are backed by science

The strategies that Clear and Fogg propose are based on scientific research. Fogg is a psychologist at Stanford University who has honed his understanding of habits and strategies for habit formation through his research of over 40,000 people at the Stanford Behavior Design Lab, which he founded. Clear’s work is also thoroughly researched and he cites dozens of peer-reviewed papers as evidence.

Habits work through a habit loop

Duhigg, Fogg, and Clear each describe the components of a habit loop a bit differently. However, since it’s Clear’s Atomic Habits that motivated me to apply the knowledge of habit formation to my own life, I’ll be sticking with his framework.

He breaks the habit loop down into four parts: cue, craving, response, reward.

Courtesy of James Clear at jamesclear.com

A cue triggers a craving, which triggers a response, which provides a reward that satisfies the craving and becomes associated with the cue.

Take, for example, me and my husband’s tortilla chip eating habit. The cue is sitting down to watch Netflix, the craving is for something to munch on, the response is to grab a bag of chips to take with us, the reward is eating the delicious chips.

This is a very simplified explanation of his model, but hopefully, you’ll get the gist of it as I apply it to developing my writing habit.

How I decided to tackle my greatest fear

Rather than focus on small improvements to areas of my life that were going okay, I decided to shirk conventional wisdom and tackle my biggest fear — writing. Again, when I say writing, I’m not referring to writing for work (emails, memos, literature reviews, etc.). I’m talking about writing with a capital W — my personal writing.

For so long I preferred to keep my dream of writing just that — a dream. The idea of writing seemed completely overwhelming (What do I even write? Stories? Essays? Poems?). However, there’s nothing that makes you want to get your act together more than becoming a parent. How could I tell my daughter to bravely follow her dreams when I had been avoiding mine for years? With Atomic Habits in hand, I decided to try my hand at creating a writing habit for myself.

How I created a writing habit

I used Jame Clear’s habit-building guide to go from writing nothing at the beginning of April to writing 1,500 words a day by July. I realize 1,500 words is modest to some, yet considering where I started and the competing demands I have in my life, I’m proud to have reached this goal.

1. Start with an incredibly small habit.

This is the first step in the habit-building process. In B.J. Fogg’s book, for instance, he talks about how he started flossing regularly by flossing one tooth each day. That’s right, one tooth. The experts recommend choosing an activity that’s incredibly small for a reason — it’s so you’ll actually do it.

I wanted to start writing in the evenings, so I thought about how I could work a small, new habit into my existing routine. Each evening after dinner, my husband watches my daughter for about an hour so I can have some “me” time. “Me” time usually involved me opening up my laptop and watching Netflix. I decided to capitalize on this moment. Instead of sitting on the couch and flipping open my laptop to Netflix, I decided I would sit at my desk in my office, open my laptop, and open a Google doc. That’s it. I didn’t pressure myself to write anything. I just wanted to start building the habit of sitting down to write.

I also followed Clear’s recommendations for each step in the habit loop:

Cue: Make it obvious. Craving: Make it attractive. Response: Make it easy. Reward: Make it satisfying.

In my case, the cue was opening up my laptop (obvious), which also satisfied my craving to look at a screen (attractive). My response was opening up a Google doc (easy), which gave me the reward of feeling accomplished for completing my goal (satisfying).

2. Increase your habit in very small ways.

It only took a few days of me sitting down to a blank Google doc for me to start wanting to write something in it. I decided as an initial goal that I would write 100 words about anything. My words didn’t have to make sense. They didn’t have to be good. I could have typed “the” 100 times and it still would have counted. I also promised myself that I wouldn’t go back and re-read what I had written. I was worried that by doing so, I would become too self-critical and abandon the habit.

I also printed out a paper monthly calendar and hung it on my wall next to my desk. For each day I completed my 100 words, I would mark an “x” on the calendar. I love checklists, so the act of writing an “x” for accomplishing my task felt like a bigger, more satisfying reward.

If you’re thinking 100 words is a lot to start with, consider that the last two paragraphs you’ve just read are about 100 words.

I stuck with writing 100 words a day through April. Each day, I found myself writing about more interesting things. I reflected on my experience during the coronavirus pandemic. I wrote about my childhood memories. Slowly, my nonsensical jibberish started to look like writing. But, I didn’t try to shape it in any way. I merely kept the same running Google doc open on my laptop and wrote in it at the same spot around the same time each day.

In May, I decided to push myself to 300 words a day. I used the same strategy as before (e.g., writing at the same time and in the same place and making an “x” on my calendar). I noticed that the words started flowing more naturally. They started to sound more coherent. I began writing about the same topic for several days in a row. By the end of May, I was itching to turn some of what I had written into something more substantial.

3. As you build up, break your habit into chunks.

In June, I gave myself the option of completing my 300 words at any point during the day. Although I primarily wrote at night, and still do, it helped me stick to my habit when I knew I might have a tough evening ahead of me. If my daughter was sick and needed more time to wind down before bed, I might not have the chance to write during the evening. So, I gave myself the flexibility to write during the day too. If something came to me, I’d pop open the Google doc on my phone and type a bit in there. In this way, I could “chunk” my 300 words over the entire day.

In June, I stuck with the 300 words a day challenge but decided that rather than accepting freeform writing, I’d start writing fully-formed essays. By that time, my writing habit was so well-established that the idea of writing essays no longer felt intimidating. 300 words grew to 1,500 words by July as my comfort with writing naturally increased.

I also allowed myself to go back and re-read what I had written over the months. By that time, writing felt like a solid, daily practice. I was surprised to find some gems. In fact, nearly all the articles I wrote for Medium and other publications in June and July stemmed from that initial Google doc.

4. When you slip up, get back on track quickly.

There were a few days here and there that I fell off of the wagon in order to attend to my daughter’s needs. What helped me get back on track was looking at my calendar. Filling the monthly calendar with an “x” for each day of the week gave me such pride. When a saw gaps in the rows, it was a clear indication that I needed to get back to my habit. I tried to look at my success not on the day-to-day level, but from the monthly perspective. If my month was mostly “x’s”, I counted it as a success. As Clear recommends, I strove for overall consistency, not perfection. This relieved any shame or stress from the process; I could mess up every now and then and it would still count as progress.

5. Be patient. Stick to a pace you can sustain.

It took me nearly three months to build a daily writing habit. What made the process successful for me is that I stayed with my small habits long enough for them to feel easy. Had I started off setting a goal of writing 500 words a day, I know I would not have succeeded. Had I jumped right into trying to write articles after initially just opening my laptop in the evenings, I would have set myself up for failure. As Leo Babauta from Zen Habits says, “Make it so easy you can’t say no.”

Tips from my experience

It can’t be overstated — start stupid small. I believe going too big too soon is why I failed in the past to create a sustainable writing habit.

Carefully examine your daily habits and routines for opportunities for change and improvement. I spent time reflecting on my day-to-day activities to determine the optimum time to fit in my writing habit.

Create the conditions for a habit to stick. Clear calls these habit triggers. If possible, do your new habit after the same activity, at the same time, in the same location, when you’re likely to be in a good mood, and when people in your life are likely to support you.

Prepare to slip up and be kind to yourself. There are going to be days where you won’t be able to complete your habit. Don’t waste energy beating yourself up. Get back to your habit as soon as you can. If necessary, reevaluate your habit to see if something needs to be adjusted to account for future slip-ups.

Habits take time to take hold. Don’t rush the process. To keep yourself motivated, pick a reward that works for you.

Conclusion

The brilliance of habit formation strategies is that they don’t require incredible willpower, dedication, or time. By starting small, mind-numbingly small, you can incrementally work up to the habit you’re trying to build. It does require a knowledge of how habits work and a close understanding of your own behavior in order to implement these strategies. Hopefully, the information I’ve outlined here and the resources I’ve provided below will help set you up for success. If a sleep-deprived, emotionally-exhausted mom can do it, you can too.

Resources