3 Things I Stopped Doing in Order to Write Every Day
It’s a tough decision but well worth it
Do you want to write every day? If you want to write every single day, you need to give up something. You can’t do more if your plate is already full.
You have a limited amount of time each and every day. You can’t magically create an extra hour or two so you can write.
This means you need to give up something in your schedule. Once you do that, you’ll have the time to write.
No one has an extra hour every day to write. They have to give up something in order to make that happen.
I’m not going to lie, I want to be a top writer on Medium. For me to do that, I had to change my current routine.
In late spring, I made a goal with myself to write every day. At first, I thought I would try this out for a week.
The next thing you know, I haven’t missed a day in three and a half months. Sometimes I may write two articles a day.
I’ll share with you the three things I gave up so I could write every day. You may have other routines you need to change in your life. Maybe my ideas will give you some ideas.
Stopped watching movies
I am your father.
Darth Vader from The Empire Strikes Back
I’m a big movie fan so I started to watch movies. When the coronavirus hit, watching videos at home was the next best thing.
In a previous article, I mentioned how I used to work at a video store when I was in high school. In between customers and doing homework, I’d watched videos on their big-screen TV.
I have enjoyed movies for quite a while.
Since I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, I have thousands of movies to pick from.
After a few days watching movies, I thought I needed to be more productive. I spent two hours watching a James Bond movie I had previously seen. That’s when I said, why don’t I use this time to write?
Stopped surfing Facebook
Don’t discount yourself, no matter what you’re doing. Everyone has a unique perspective that they can bring to the world.
Mark Zuckerberg
Earlier this year, I was always on Facebook. Either I was commenting on someone’s post or I was thinking about what was I going to write next on my page.
You can spend hours on Facebook or another social media channel and get nothing done.
Now I may scroll on Facebook for a few minutes to see what my friends are up to. For the most part, I use Facebook to connect with other writers.
Some people don’t like the Medium Facebook groups, but I actually like it. I have connected with a lot of people as we read each other’s articles and leave comments occasionally.
This helps me as a writer and also get to know other writers. For instance, I know Connie Song is known for her beautiful poems. I would say about 95% of what she writes is a poem.
I know Aimée Gramblin lives in Oklahoma and will be married for 18 years this year. I remembered that since I’ll reach 20 years of marriage in December.
These connections are much better than scrolling through Facebook and see people complain about COVID-19 or trashing a political party.
There are much better things you can do with your time.
Stopped making YouTube videos
The YouTube video maker gets more out of making the video than you get out of watching it.
Seth Godin
You probably don’t know this, but I spent a little over a year making YouTube videos. I learned quite a lot, meet other people with similar interests, but it wasn’t fun anymore.
I also didn’t like that if you had good information, that’s not what sells. You have to be very good at creating videos. I did okay but wasn’t very good which in the end hurt my views. I have over 1600 subscribers when a year ago I only had two. Even that wasn’t enough for me to get 4000 hours of watch time in a year from my subscribers.
When I stopped making videos, that freed up a lot of time so I could focus on writing. I probably averaged 10 to 12 hours a week on YouTube creating, editing my videos, and responding to comments.
I may go back and create a video but still debating that.
Trading in the time I spent on these three areas gave me a lot of more time to work on writing. You only have 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You have to use your time effectively. It is too easy to waste your time when you could be writing instead.
- Can you cut out watching TV or movies?
- Can you wake up an hour earlier so you can write?
- What do you plan to give up so you can write more?
Tom Handy is a top Finance, Investment, and Bitcoin writer on Medium, and the father of two kids. He retired from the Army and sits on several non-profit boards. You can find him on Twitter @tomhandy1.