Week 2 of Writers' Book Club: Atomic Habits

"The First Law: Make It Obvious"

Inspiration always strikes on Sundays. That’s true for me, anyway, and here’s why: I never allow myself to write on Sundays. My brain knows this, so of course the one day I always want to write is on Sundays. If you ever see me on a Sunday, I’m spacey and glitter-eyed, and that’s because my mind is swimming in ideas, blissed out on the fact that I don’t have to muster up the discipline to write a single word.

Then on Monday—utter procrastination. The hardest day of the week to write. All my ideas go into hiding. All my creative energy hibernates. Because I know that on Mondays, I have to actually sit down and find a way to skillfully build my story scenes.

Welcome to the second week of our Writers’ Book Club. The idea underlying Chapters 4-7 of Atomic Habits is that we can’t rely on willpower to improve our writing habits. If we do, every day will be my version of a Monday, a day of procrastination. Instead, we’ll have to create cues that prompt good habits. And before that, we’ll have to figure out which habits we’re already engaging in.

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Several months ago, I started using a strategy called “time boxing” in the hopes it would help me to be more productive. (Harvard actually did a study that determined this strategy was the most useful way to increase productivity.) In the evenings, I would box off time on a daily calendar for each activity I needed to do the next day. But then I noticed a problem: everything took longer to do than I had boxed off time for. Where was all my time going??

I decided to reverse the method. Instead of planning ahead, I just let my day progress and I wrote down everything I did as I did it. I realized that a lot of my time went into impulsive activities like scrolling social media or re-checking my email for the millionth time. My time-boxed schedule wasn’t actually reflecting how I was spending my time.

To bring more awareness to our habits, James Clear recommends creating a list of all the things we do in a day and then writing a + next to each habit that produces a positive outcome, a = next to each habit that creates a neutral outcome, and a - next to each habit that creates a negative outcome. Have you tried this yet?

For me, this practice brings to mind my strategy for solving mysteries. I love trying to solve mystery novels before I reach the end! But I’ve noticed that it isn’t enough to take in clues as I read; I have to say the clues aloud or write them down to get my brain to start solving them. Something about “pointing and calling” (as it’s called in Atomic Habits) helps our brains process information. I’m hoping the same will be true for my writing habits: my brain will know I need to improve those habits once I call them out.

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A popular novelist has said that she wrote her first published novel on Wednesdays. That was the only day of the week she had time to devote to writing, and even then, she had only a couple of hours each Wednesday. But Wednesdays add up, and she finished that novel and got it published.

Years ago, I tried writing out my weekly writing schedule and taping it to my bedroom door (the room I wrote in). Everyone knew when not to bother me, and I knew when everyone expected me to write. Just knowing that helped me stick to my writing schedule and finish my novel.

I like how simply James Clear lays out the process of “implementation intention.” He gives readers a sentence to fill in: “I will (habit) at (time) in (location).” He claims “hundreds of studies have shown that implementation intentions are effective for sticking to our goals.” Have you thought about which hours of the week you plan to devote to writing, reading, or studying craft?

Another advantage of making a clear plan to implement habits is that it helps you establish boundaries for those people in your life who aren’t able to understand why you can’t just “drive me somewhere” or “babysit my child” or “take on more hours at work” (all things that have been asked of me because I’m “home anyway”). If I don’t plan to write on Wednesday at 8:00 (or whatever), then I’ll feel compelled to give that time instead to someone who doesn’t realize that a novel doesn’t get written unless I… you know… write it.

I’ve seen implementation intention work for me in the past. It has created the long-lasting habit of writing almost every weekday. It’s given me clarity on when to say no to things that will take away my writing time. But I still need help getting started on writing each day, which is why I’m interested in the idea of “habit stacking.”

Like many writers, I have my writing ritual. Almost every morning before I write, I play Seahaven Towers, a particularly challenging solitaire card game. Organizing a deck of cards is exactly like writing a novel (“Should this bit go here? Should this bit or the other come first?”), and my brain feels ready for deep focus after I play solitaire. Sometimes, I don’t even get around to playing the game—just having the tab open makes me feel ready to write. Next week, we’ll talk more about this strategy of bundling an action we want to do (playing solitaire) with an action we need to do (writing). Meanwhile, it’s helpful to think about how to create cues like this that tell us it’s time to write (or research, or read, or work on craft).

Chapter 5 of Atomic Habits includes a method created by BJ Fogg called “habit stacking,” in which you “tie your desired behavior to something you do each day.” Here’s the formula: “After I (current habit), I will (new habit).” Each evening, after I brush my teeth, I’ll read a chapter of a novel. Each morning, after I empty the dishwasher, I’ll do one twenty-minute writing exercise. The idea is that by adding your new habit into your current routine, the new habit will become second nature.

I’m trying to decide which habit I should stack with the beginning of my writing day, right before I play Seahaven Towers. I’m also deciding whether to use this same method to make more time to read novels. There are few activities I love more than reading, but I often find myself gravitating to “quick” or “productive” activities instead, as if reading is inconvenient or indulgent instead of essential—both for enjoying life and for sharpening my taste and skills as a writer.

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How are you thinking of redesigning your writing space? Chapter 6 of Atomic Habits illustrates that we can form better habits by designing environments that “cue” us to perform those habits. Will putting your laptop in a more obvious place make you more likely to sit down and write? Will leaving notebooks in different rooms of the house make you more likely to jot down ideas?

Inversely, we can remove cues that lead to bad habits. I’ve noticed that when I write, I have a tendency to reach for my phone every fifteen minutes or so, as a way of creating a mental break or getting a bit of mental stimulation. Years ago I deleted most of my social media accounts and disabled push notifications for the two I still use (which is why it’s terrible to try to hold a conversation with me in my DM’s!). But now I’ve disabled email notifications too. I also put my phone into Do Not Disturb mode while I write so that I can’t get calls or texts. Which means I’ve started to forget about my phone altogether while I’m writing.

I’ve thought about the ways habit-stacking and cueing might align with my identity as a writer, which I detailed in Week 1 of this series. A dedicated writer focuses on the meaningful work at hand instead of on meaningless distractions (which isn’t to say that intentional breaks aren’t needed!). An honest writer crafts stories that resonate with her instead of trying to compete with successes that other writers post on social media. I want my writing environment to help me focus on what really matters to me.

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Based Chapters 4-7 of Atomic Habits, here are some questions I’m asking myself, and ones you can also ask yourself:

• Which habits—good, bad, and neutral—do I currently perform each day?

• Which hours of the week do I want to devote to certain writing habits?

• What current habits will I stack with the new habits I want to implement?

• How will I redesign my environment to cue good writing habits and remove cues for bad habits?

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Parker Peevyhouse is the author of Strange Exit and The Echo Room (Tor Teen), which have been called “compulsively readable” and "thrilling" in starred reviews, and Where Futures End (Penguin), which was named a Best Book by the New York Public Library, the Chicago Public Library, and Bank Street.

Find Parker’s writing resources, including her popular digital workbook courses, on her website.