I just wanted to stop trying! It’s actually frustrating trying to get a thing right only to get tired just a few days into it. Plus, I hated routines that make life boring! Have you felt that way before too? Being a creative doesn’t even make that better!

But here I am, telling you how to form a routine as a writer. Should I tell you the truth? What I am going to tell you will look like another of those dumb advice until you sit down and ask yourself why morning routine isn’t working for you.

By the way, I am writing this post at night, it’s precisely 8:03pm, after a very stressful day, outside my normal routine, to be sure how fast I can go without writing in the morning. And the truth? I am doing perfectly well. That’s because a morning routine is no morning routine if it isn’t helping you build yourself up.

So, let me give you this heads-up, some routines will never work for you if you don’t understand how you or your brain operates.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

It is good to get pumped up after reading a book or an article but have you noticed the energy dissipates after a while? It isn’t because you weren’t motivated or want that success enough, it is just that there’s a missing link that you aren’t getting yet.

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF ATOMIC HABITS

I struggled with keeping a morning routine in my first few years as a writer until I came across James Clear’s book titled, Atomic Habits. From his book, I learnt to fix my new routine right after my morning prayers because I know I can’t do without it and I didn’t try to change at once, I took it a step at a time, making small improvements on a daily basis.

“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude”.

– Colin Powell

After my morning prayer daily, I would pick up my notepad and start writing for just fifteen minutes and stop anywhere my alarm sounds. This sends a message to my brain that I am not cheating on it.

James Clear said in an article that we don’t build new habits in the hope that our lives will become fully automated, repetitive, and robotic. We do it because habits are a tool for helping us do the things that make us come alive more frequently and more consistently. Habits are a method for accomplishing the things that provide meaning and purpose to our lives.

Let’s talk about how you can fix your morning routine using atomic habits.

1. 1% EVERY DAY

As much as you want to make that big difference, it is important you understand that our brains and body don’t operate like that. Instead of you forcing yourself to write 1000 words every morning, how about you write 100 or even 50 daily? When you accumulate this, it becomes bigger. It might not look like you are making any progress initially but it will eventually work.

Do you know why your morning routine hasn’t gone past 5 days? You are trying to drastically change something that has been part of you for a long time. Decide to write just a few sentences daily and before you know it, you have written more than enough. Patience is the bedrock for mastery.

A man that writes for 15 minutes daily is better that one that tries to maintain 5 hours only to stop after a week. Writing automatically becomes a part of you, like brushing. Habits, as explained by James Clear, are the compound interest of self-improvement.

2) USE THE HABIT LOOP

According to James Clear, there are four loops associated with our habit formation. Cue, Craving, Response and Reward. Our brain is always in search of cues and we in turn look for how to satisfy the craving. In the search for how to satisfy it, we get our response and that response becomes the reward always.

Let’s take for example, you are writing a blog post (cue), you get overwhelmed and started looking for how to overcome the feeling (craving), as a result, you started watching a movie (response).Your brain picks that and associate being overwhelmed when writing a blog post to watching movies. Every time you feel overwhelmed from writing a blog post, your automatic response is to watch movies and that becomes your reward.

When you want to form a habit, you have to put these four in action. These four form what James Clear called the law of good habit formation.

• Cue – Make it obvious
• Craving – Make it attractive
• Response – Make it easy
• Reward – Make it satisfying

Hence, whenever you want to form a habit, you need to ask yourself how you can make it obvious, satisfying, easy and attractive. Whatever goal you form must have a system that fits perfectly into your life and daily activity because the more automatic an action becomes the more it ingrains into our system.

Let’s say you want to ensure you write 500 words in a day. To apply these laws, the first thing you can do is to fix it into something you do daily, it could be eating, sitting in a particular place, etc. If you can’t do without using the commute, you can fix your writing into it and give it a reward system.

For example, I will write a 500 word article on the bus on my way to work after grabbing some doughnuts.

This same law is used to break bad habits.

• Cue – Make it invisible
• Craving – Make it unattractive
• Make it difficult
• Make it unsatisfying

3) IMPLEMENTATION OF INTENTION

Implementation of intention works by linking a new habit to an already standing habit. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” Be specific about what you want and how you want to achieve it. Tie your desired behaviour into what you already do daily.

According to James Clear, when it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behaviour to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day (like brushing your teeth) and then stack your new behaviour on top. Automatically, you associate brushing teeth with writing.

To round this off, I will say, it is possible to form a routine if you are aware of what you want and you do not want. Also, make the habit fun to follow daily until it becomes a part of you. All you need to understand is how and where to fix these tiny habits.

Are you ready to get published? Get instant pricing now.