Week Four – Day Five
Create an Academic Writing Habit
Habits are powerful. They are the semi-automatic forces that shape our life. The one habit you want to master, as an academic, is the writing habit. A writing habit at the heart of your day will allow you to get the most important work done. Habits get done without much conscious control. We don’t make much of a conscious decision to brush our teeth or check the news every day. We just do it. If we can ‘just do’ our academic writing daily, and can manage to avoid wrestling with all manner of psychological questions and obstacles before we even start, we may already be halfway there.
We need to not think about whether or not we are going to write at all. (If we do we may never get started.)
We need to not think about taking breaks or when to stop. (If we do, we may procrastinate or try to sneak out of writing, whenever writing is challenging. And that may well be most days of our academic life.)
We need to not think about whether we are doing a good job. (It probably doesn’t feel like it.)
We need to not think about any of it: not the starting, not the stopping, not the keeping going, and not whether we are getting somewhere.
If we do, distractions loom. And nothing much gets done.
What we need is to make writing a habit.
How to create habits
Prof. Ann Graybiel is one of the pioneers in researching the neural architecture of habits, and studies how the brain converts a new behaviour into a routine. She and her team discovered why habits are such strong determinants of behaviour. She calls it ‘chunking’: neuronal activity drops while performing the habit, with increased brain activity only at the beginning and end of the habit. It is as if the entire habit, whatever sub-parts it consists of, has become one single low-effort activity. This pattern of brain activity is completely different from non-habitual behaviour in which neuronal activity is high through-out. It takes effort and will, whereas habits do not. Habits are semi-automatic. Once you have habits in place they will want to assert themselves. Your brain craves to perform them. Which is why it is so difficult to break a habit, once established, no matter your good intentions.
Imagine the advantage of having a writing routine in place, one where you almost automatically find yourself with your document ready, arguments ready, at your laptop, writing that next paragraph, every single day. What if the ‘getting this far’ part could be effortless, so you can pour all our energy into work? I like the idea!
Graybiel advises there are four parts to building deliberate habits: context, reinforcement, consistency and hard work (in the beginning).
Context provides the cue. An example: she advises people who, say, want to take up jogging as part of their morning routine to put out the shoes and the gear the night before so they see them first thing in the morning. It’s a cue for the brain to perform the new habit, especially important when you are learning the new behaviour. (For me personally, the cue for writing was the 10:00 start time, which was non-negotiable. Clock strikes 10:00 means internet switches off, writing brain switches on.)
Reinforcement provides the reward. This may be an immediate reward (such as a small break after writing, or how much better you feel after a short jog, something that says well done) or a delayed reward (such reminding yourself of the body of work you will create if you stick with your habit). Positive reinforcement can also involve acknowledging progress made (even if it’s tiny. Every tiny step counts).
Consistency is a sine qua non. If you want the routine to stick, to become a low-effort habit, the brain needs to experience it over and over again, until chunking occurs. Seen that old habits never quite disappear— they remain lurking under the surface— it is imperative to practice, practice, practice, with no exceptions, until the behaviour has become effortless. If you allow for exceptions in the early stages, the process will be that much more frustrating, and you’ll perhaps not reach the habit stage.
Which brings us to hard work in the beginning. Building habits is effortful. Habits and routines can’t be eradicated from your neuronal memory, but they can be replaced. It is the difficult part. Stick with it. Keep going. You can do it. It will pay off. It gets easier. Much easier.
The PhD is the best time during which to establish a writing routine. When I talk to more senior academics they have one thing in common: lack of time. It tends to lead them to prioritise other, more urgent, work such as teaching, over writing, which leads to tremendous stress over not getting much writing (and publishing…) done. The most prolific academics I know have made a writing routine a part of their daily life. Writing is an activity that always gets done, even if there is only one hour or so to dedicate to it. The time is now for getting into the routine of writing no matter what else is going on.
References
A. Graybiel and K. Smith (2014) Good habits, bad habits: researchers are pinpointing the brain circuits that can help us form good habits, and break bad ones. Scientific American, Volume 310, Issue 6
Assignment
Create a writing habit. Let’s take some time to look at your current habits. Right now, you have cues and rewards you respond to, whether consciously or not. Let’s see how you could make them more deliberate, more in line with your goals. What do your mornings and days look like? What are the cues you are responding to? What are the habits you have in place? How could you replace them with habits you desire?