Summary

The author emphasizes the importance of consistency in writing to maintain ease and quality, drawing parallels between writing habits and physical exercise routines.

Abstract

The article discusses the challenges of maintaining writing proficiency, likening it to the need for regular physical workouts. The author, a former journalist, reflects on personal experiences of struggling to write after breaks, akin to the difficulty of returning to the gym after time off. They highlight the significance of daily or near-daily practice in transforming a challenging task into a comfortable routine, much like how consistent gym-goers feel discomfort when they miss workouts. The author admits to recent lapses in both writing and gym attendance due to travel, illustrating the struggle to regain momentum. Referencing "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy, the article underscores the concept of accumulating small daily wins to achieve significant success, warning against complacency that can lead to loss of progress. The author concludes with a commitment to resume their writing and gym habits, acknowledging the ease of maintaining a habit once it's established.

Opinions

Writing consistently is crucial for maintaining proficiency and ease, similar to regular physical exercise.
Taking extended breaks from writing can significantly hinder performance, requiring time to return to baseline productivity.
The benefits of consistent habits, such as writing or working out, reinforce behavior and make the activity more desirable.
The difficulty of restarting a good habit is acknowledged, but the author believes that a solid week of consistent effort can restore a flow state.
"The Compound Effect" is praised

Writing can feel hard — this is how to make it easy

In my past professional life, I was a journalist who wrote on deadline every day for more than a decade.

You’d think writing would become easy — and it did — but there was a catch.

Even though I was at the top of my game and being pushed every day to produce on tight timelines, pumping out quality content at that pace required one thing above all else: consistency.

Good habits beget great results

I once came back from a lengthy vacation to find that my brain just wasn’t clicking when I was trying to write.

Because the beat I covered was very seasonally based, I would go hard and pick up a ton of overtime working nights and weekends from the early fall to the late spring and then take most of the summer off.

When I’d get back, it would take me at least a couple of weeks to feel like I was getting back to my baseline performance.

I once mentioned this to a colleague who did the same work I did and he was like, “YES, it takes so much more effort when I get back from any time away.”

If you’re a writer on this platform or anywhere else who is struggling to get words down on the page, I think it’s helpful to look at writing like going to the gym.

Your brain workout

If you go to the gym every day or every second day, the task transforms from something uncomfortable that you don’t want to do to something that makes you uncomfortable if you don’t do it.

All the health benefits and higher energy that come from that habit reinforce your behaviour and it becomes easy to get to the gym. You actually want to be there.

Now say you’re in my situation at this very moment.

Over the past month I’ve being doing a ton of travel.

I went to visit my dad for almost a week, which required a plane trip, and I’ve gone to two hockey tournaments in the car. If you have kids in competitive sports, you know how all-consuming a tournament or competition weekend can be.

As a result, I’ve gotten off-track with both my gym trips and my writing.

How off-track? In September and October, I was in the gym probably five times a week on average. Since then? Two maybe?

How about writing?

In September, my output was epic. I published more than 50 articles.

In October, my production slid to just under 30 posts in total. Still good enough to make writing feel easy.

In November, it was closer to 20 and writing was starting to feel like a bit of a slog.

How many have I written in December? This is the first. Yikes!

As you may have guessed, this piece is part brain warmup and part reminder to myself about why you need to be consistent with any good habit.

The longer you get away from your good habit, the harder it feels to get started again.

You may understand intellectually that it would only take a handful of sessions at the gym or a solid week of consistent writing to get back to a flow state with the habit, but it’s just so to start.

I touched on this recently in a piece called “this hidden gem is the only self-help book you actually need”.

That book is called The Compound Effect, written by Darren Hardy.

It’s one of my favourites because it contains the real secret to big-time success: picking up tiny wins every day until they compound into massive gains.

The Compound Effect

Hardy paints a crisp picture of this concept at work.

He asks the reader to think about getting water from a well using a hand pump: It takes a lot of pumping at first just to get a few drops of water, but eventually the liquid starts gushing out with a lot less effort required on your part.

Another example is when you would go on a merry-go-round at the park as a kid.

When the playground equipment was stationary, it took a lot of pushing with your leg to get it going. But once it got going, it got going.

It started being carried by its own momentum and you’d only need a little kick here and there to keep it going.

The trick is not getting overconfident and taking your foot off the gas so long that things start feeling heavy and tough again to start.

Note to self

Whether it’s writing, creating videos, practicing drawing, going to the gym — whatever — it’s worth making the time to keep up your good habits no matter how many excuses you come up with (like my “I traveled a lot” whining).

Today, I will write this article and, tonight, I will get to the gym.

And I’ll try to keep in mind that once the merry-go-round is spinning again, it’s a lot easier to give it a kick here and there than to get it going from standing again.

Friends, thank you so much for reading this piece all the way to the end. If you found it useful, please don’t hesitate to give it a clap or two so others can find it!

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