Habits are like salt, an essential ingredient to enhance the taste of life. As said by many, it takes 21 days to form a habit. We are ‘Writing’ from kindergarten and still find it challenging to make a writing habit and be more productive.
What might be the reason? Is it procrastination? Lack of motivation? Unwillingness to write? Of course, these are the hurdles you need to cross and win the race of becoming a good writer. One of the most beautiful ways to express yourself is to write.
To develop a good writing habit, it is very important that you be passionate, committed, and consistent. Without passion, commitment, and consistency, the achievement of anything is near impossible.
Now let’s have a detailed overview of some of the important tips that can be helpful for you to develop a writing habit and be more productive in your writing assignment or projects.
What is the 50/30/20 Rule and How it is Beneficial?
How to Become a Content Writer? Step By Step Guide
13 Tips For Daily Writing Habit
A writing habit is something you do every day, even when you don’t feel like doing it. As an aspiring writer, writing daily for a productive approach is necessary. Here are a few tips on developing a writing habit.
1- Little Drops of Water Make the Mighty Ocean
You should believe that taking baby steps can change anything. You don’t have to climb Mount Everest on your first hike. Similarly, start to write a few words daily, then move towards a more significant chunk.
To develop a writing habit, you should start from small and later step by step you should increase it. This is to bring consistency to your routine. You can also begin by maintaining a journal to start.
In starting, you can write one or two paragraphs or three. And first, make a writing habit of a few paragraphs. And later, you should add some more paragraphs.
2- Create a Routine for Writing Habit
Routine is a way to discipline a person and be more focused. It helps you stay focused on your goals. Avoid procrastination and allot an hour or two for writing daily. Even you can start by writing for 15 or 30 minutes a day.
As studies suggest, following a regular schedule enables you to develop a habit that eventually contributes to your productivity.
Similarly, set a particular time frame for writing. You can start in the morning when your mind is fresh, focused, and filled with creative juices or any time of the day that suits you best
3- Set Realistic Goals for Yourself
You can monitor your progress by setting some goals. It can be writing a page daily or a short story every alternate day, anything that keeps you engaging and excites you to maintain a writing habit. But you need to be consistent with your timeline.
Laziness is an antagonist in your story, don’t let it win by the end of the day. Play your part as the protagonist by writing, and don’t forget to pat yourself on your back when you achieve these goals.
4- Practice Makes a Man Perfect
To master and make a writing habit, you must practice it daily. The only thing that will make you a pro in writing is ‘practice.’ Once you start writing every day, there will be a development in your writing skills.
Your grammatical errors will be reduced, and your vocabulary will improve. This will make you fall in love with the process. Write till you feel your words are making an impact.
5- Create a Writing Ritual
Just like you warm up your body before the workout, do some freestyle writing before you jump on the context. Map down an outline for your actual text. This saves your time and gives a clear perspective.
Increase your productivity by writing down a whole sentence instead of a bullet point. This helps you write more effectively by avoiding procrastination and writer’s block.
For content, you can also visit various sites, magazines, books, newspapers, and social media platforms. Follow famous writers to understand how they started writing and read numerous stories to get inspiration.
6- Choose the Right Place
There is always that one place where your creativity flows like tap water. It can be a corner in your house, a desk at your office, a table in a coffee shop while sipping some hot coffee, or anywhere you can just sit for hours and write without interruption. Choosing the right place to develop a writing habit is very much important.
A good writing environment creates a productive zone and gives you better ideas to work. Create an environment that helps you to develop a writing habit and supports your productivity. You can clean up your desk, lit some candles, or even a little flower to make you feel fresh and inspired to write.
7- Distractions Should not be Entertained
Focus is the key to your consistency. This is easy to achieve but just remove all distractions hampering your productivity. Remove unwanted material and just keep what you need for the project. For example, if you are writing in an online word document, close all the tabs you don’t require now.
This will reduce distractions and keep you focused on the document. Keep your mobile phone aside, the biggest distraction while you write. The world will not stop if you don’t scroll for a few hours.
Instead, you will create something that provides value in numerous ways to everyone. Apart from all these things, keep self-control and decide what is essential at the moment.
8- Multitasking – To Do or Not?
When it comes to brainy tasks, you must concentrate on one thing at a time. Doing multiple items simultaneously takes up your energy, leaving you exhausted. When you focus on one thing, in this case, writing, you will produce good results.
You can prioritize things and make it easier to perform all the tasks individually. To increase your efficiency, bifurcate your duties into different departments and work on them accordingly. This will keep you organized and enhance your performance.
9- Read More to Write More
Every time you read something, it replenishes your knowledge. Reading is the elixir for writing. Once you start reading, ideas will spark the way for you to write. As said by Steven Spielberg, “Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.”
It is not necessary to just read books. You can read articles, short stories, newspapers, or a blog, just like this. If you are still not convinced, here are a few added advantages of reading.
- It helps with your critical thinking.
- It expands your vocabulary.
- It tells you what has already been written.
- It inspires you with new ideas.
- It helps you in writing better.
Reading is one of the best productive habits one can develop. Enhance your creativity by reading every day. A few months ago I read a Book by Priya Kumar who said that reading is very important for a writer.
10- Research is the Key to Persistence
Before you start hitting the paper with your strong words, research for facts and ideas for your topic, research can be done anywhere, on the internet, in person, in a library, or whatever floats your boat. This gives you a proper understanding of the subject.
You know precisely what you want to write rather than being a clean slate. It also alerts you on what has been noted earlier and what needs to come to light, so you can focus on providing a novel approach to the topic. Research makes you curious about learning many things and leaves you with thousands of creative ideas to write.
11- Find an Accountability Constant
It is human nature always to hold someone accountable for your tasks. Similarly, having someone responsible for your writing will help you develop a habit of writing daily. You’ll feel more inclined to stick to your goals if you have someone to hold you accountable.
A writing group is one of the most effective ways to reach this goal because it builds a tie between you, the person you want to become, and other people currently in the same position. When you are in an environment surrounded by like-minded people, you feel motivated to work and achieve your goals.
12- Be Rigid and Set a Deadline for Your Task
Creative people are the biggest procrastinators. Yes, it is true, you always tend to push the work ahead for some reason. This just piles up the job and makes you resent not working on time. Instead of feeling overwhelmed with work later, set a deadline to complete the task on time.
After all, prevention is always better than cure. Here, set a deadline for yourself by writing a page or two in a day and not piling it up for tomorrow. This helps you develop a habit of working on time and producing good results.
13- Feedbacks are Always Important
As said by Ken Blanchard, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” Feedback is a powerful system. It helps people understand their progress, strength, weaknesses, etc. Having someone in your field give you proper feedback on your work is essential.
Ask a colleague or a confidant to review your work and provide honest feedback. Analyze what they say and put it into action. Such feedback guides you toward improving your craft.
You can return the favor by similarly helping them. So many tips and so much to do. It is now time to take some action. Ask yourself how to utilize these tips to become more productive and write amazingly.
Conclusion
Imagine your voice as a writer is being heard by millions of people tomorrow just because you took one step towards achieving your goals, i.e., to start developing a habit of writing daily. Developing a habit is not easy; it takes effort, hard work, and consistency.
Be consistent with your goals, and don’t let any hurdle stop you. Productivity is the essence of success. Remember, all these tips will work if only you decide to take things seriously or everything is in vain. Now spread your words like confetti for the world to read.
How to Build Loyal Customers For Your Business?