My Time-Based Challenge to Write Every Day
By: Darryl Brooks
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Writing, Time, Creativity

Do you write every day? Do you want to?

Let me ask you this. When do you write?

When you have time? When ‘more important’ things are done and out of the day? At night after everyone has gone to bed and the house is quiet?

How is that working out for you?

I know that’s a lot of questions, but we’re almost there. I only have a couple more.

What things do you do every day? When do you do them?

Do this exercise for me. Make a list of things you do every day, and when you do them. Mine might have looked like this at one time.

6 am Go to the gym

8 am Practice Guitar

2 pm Go for a walk.

Yours will vary in times and content, but I’ll bet it’s the same in one key element.

The things you do every day, the things you are committed to doing every day, you do at a precise time. Every day. That’s what a schedule is. That’s how a schedule works. That’s how habits are built, enforced, and become daily rituals.

Do you go to the gym or go for a run or walk every day? Did you ever try to fit that in whenever it was convenient? That didn’t work, did it? I know it didn’t work for me. When I was working, I would try to go in the morning before work. If I slept late or had an early commitment, I would go during lunch. When that didn’t work out, I would plan to go after work.

That never happened.

But once I schedule that time every day, it got done every day. At 6, I got to the gym. By 7:30, I was at work.

Now, I’m retired. No commitments. The day is mine to do as I please. So, I can just do things whenever I feel like it, right?

Not if I want to do it every day. Because sooner rather than later, seven or eight at night would roll around, and I would think, “Oh, I forgot to do that thing.”

Do you ever forget to eat lunch? I know I don’t. Besides getting hungry, it’s a part of the day. At 11:30, I eat lunch. I’ve eaten lunch at 11:30 as long as I can remember.

Retired or not, my day still follows a schedule. I have things I have challenged myself to do every day. So they are done at a particular time, mostly early. Because the day can still get away from you even if you don’t work.

So, my days look like this, seven days a week.

5–6 am Read

6–7 am Marketing

7–8 am Practice Guitar

8–9 am Write

9–10 am Walk

After that comes everything else. Like lunch. But also all the things I don’t have to do every day or things that vary from day to day. But well before lunchtime, I have finished my daily commitments, my daily challenge.

What about days I don’t feel like writing?

That’s the beauty of this time-based challenge every day. From eight until nine, I’ve committed to writing. So, I may as well write. I’ve written elsewhere how I cultivate ideas, so that’s rarely a problem. And time isn’t a problem because that’s what this hour is for. I’m not going to do anything else until nine. So, feel like it or not, I have an hour devoted to writing. And so, it gets done. I wouldn’t know what else to do with that hour.

And it feels good to head out the door for my walk, knowing that it is done.

But I have a job, I can’t devote five hours of my morning to this stuff. Probably not, but one thing I discovered in all my years of working. We have the time to do what we want to do. People work eight to ten hours a day and sleep seven or eight. That leaves at least eight hours for everything else. Of course, you have other things you have to do, things you are committed to. But if you really want to do something every day, you will find the time for it. Guaranteed.

And to make it work, it needs to be the same time every day.

If I were still working and wanted to get all that done, my schedule would obviously shift. I would probably do my workout and write before work, whatever time I needed to get up to do that. Reading might get done during lunch or the last thing in the day. I would practice guitar as soon as I got home from work.

The point is, if you want to commit to writing every day, then make it a challenge. Give it the same importance you give any other daily task, such as working out or going for a walk. Put it on your calendar and your to-do list. It’s not optional if you have time or feel like it. It’s a daily ritual, a challenge. Maybe it can’t be an hour. Perhaps you do it at lunch while munching on a sandwich. But there is one thing I know, writers write. And they find the time to write., They commit to it.

Now, if you will excuse me, it’s time for my walk.

Oh darn, it’s raining. And you know what that means?

I get wet. I’m still going to walk.