One month ago, I started a thirty day trial of intense writing to jumpstart my blog. I set a goal of writing one reasonably good article each day for one month (I actually had only 28 days because of February). Today is the final day of the trial, and what I am writing now will be article number twenty.

At first, you might think that I failed because I produced only twenty articles instead of thirty. I don’t see it that way. On the surface, it’s true that I failed to reach my stated goal. I knew from the outset that thirty articles in thirty days would be a stretch, but my real intention was to create and feel the pressure to produce, and to write more than I thought I could.

Before the blogging trial, I had published only five articles in five months. It’s not for lack of ideas — I’ve got plenty of them — but just a lack of discipline in the field of writing combined with utter perfectionism that kept me from writing on a regular basis. Now that I’ve had the experience of trying to come up with something meaningful each day for an entire month, I’ve found that the lack of discipline and perfectionism are much easier for me to handle.

Twenty articles is nineteen more than I thought I could write, and some of them aren’t that bad either (there’s my perfectionism again!) So I am pleased with the results of the trial. I got two thirds of the way toward my goal, but more importantly, I forced myself to grow every day. I’d say that learning to overcome my self-made blocks to creativity and learning to produce good work was more important than sheer quantity of output. In the end, it’s not the number of articles I strove for that was so important, but what striving for them made me learn.

Blocked Writers

I learned how to defeat writer’s block, which I no longer believe in. I used to believe that you can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. I was so wrong. Creativity really is just like a faucet. For me, it turned on every day when I looked a blank page and realized that I’ve got to write something. Last-minute panic is a terrific motivator, but you need not lead a life of procrastination in order to be a prolific creator. The creativity born of last-minute panic is purely a psychological trick you play on yourself, and you can learn to turn it on when you want it to be on. I don’t know about you, but I would prefer a life of leisurely creation to one of continual, stressed out frenzy.

Many creators just don’t believe that they can ever do good work without that motivating fear forcing them to produce. It is amazing how panic can motivate — maybe you’ve had complex school assignments that you ignored for weeks, but always seemed to finish at the eleventh hour. I know I’m not the only one. I was a lazy bastard in school. (Partly, it was because I did not accept the legitimacy of the government forcing me into a prison of their choice each day — but I’ll save that for another article.)

I did learn the nature of that psychological trick. It’s similar to a phenomena I observe during my morning hockey practice.

My coach will place some cones on the ice. We’re supposed to skate around them making the tightest turns possible. Usually, someone ends up making wide turns, though he is capable of much tighter ones. My coach loves it when this happens. He’ll stand next to one of the cones, holding his stick out in front of him, horizontally. He’s standing so close to the cone that it looks as though even the best skater attempting to go around it would have no choice but to collide with his stick. Then he’ll tell the guy to do it again. Amazingly, but predictably, the skater always makes tighter turns.

The skater did not need the coach standing there holding his stick out in front of him to make tighter turns; he could have made those turns on empty ice all along. The threat of a collision is a real motivator to do better, just as the threat of missing a deadline is a great motivator to finish your work. But why live in such a stressed out condition, always doing things at the eleventh hour? If you can make tight turns whether the coach is there or not, then you can turn on your creativity when it’s convenient for you, rather than waiting for the motivation of last minute panic.

Once I realized this, overcoming writer’s block was a cinch. Typically, I would just stop daydreaming and simply force myself to write junk. As time went on, the words came more easily, and they were better. It’s just an inertial problem. Changing your state from non-movement to movement, or vice versa, is harder than persisting in the state you’re in. I would just plow through the first fifteen minutes of bad writing, get some momentum going, and the words would come. Writer’s block is totally imaginary. It has more to do with a lack of work ethic than with a lack of inspiration (I never lacked inspiration during my trial; in fact, I developed well over one hundred good ideas for new articles.)

Perfectionism

Writer’s block is easy enough to overcome — it takes willpower — but perfectionism is another beast. This is another explanation why, months ago, I started a blog and then proceeded to write a whopping five articles in five months.

I have incredibly high standards. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been emotionally and intellectually affected by some of the world’s best writing. I say that I am fortunate because I am not insensitive to what makes great writing great. While I may not have the skills to achieve greatness (yet), I pay attention to and care about quality. Many people are completely unaware of the difference between great writing (or any kind of art) and mediocre junk. They focus on other things in life, I suppose, which is okay for them. But I consider myself lucky to have such high standards.

And yet, it’s sobering to realize that reaching a high level of mastery requires years of struggling at lower levels. Not unlike how I started playing hockey with dreams of being fast and amazingly skilled, but had to endure a long period of constantly falling, losing the puck, and screwing up. I still screw up, only less often.

I allowed my desire for perfection to keep me from completing work that would have been pretty decent. The solution to perfectionism is not to stop desiring the perfect, but to accept that reaching it is a long journey. Once I gave myself permission to do the best I could within a certain time limit (one post each day for a month), the perfectionism just floated away. I am now more interested in making continual progress over a period of time, rather than expecting instant perfection.

Case in point: I wrote an article called 5 Reasons You’re Not Earning More. I’m happy with the results, but I know that if I had more time, I could have doubled or tripled the reasons. I also could have explored each reason in greater depth. If I had taken the old path of waiting until it was perfect, I would have never finished the article. Instead, I gave myself a reasonable limit and did what I could within it. That doesn’t mean I’m satisfied — it just means that in addition to writing great articles, I also need to regularly produce things to build my web site. It’s a process.

About the articles

As I mentioned, I’m proud of my output. I stand by every word I wrote. Even so, I’m not satisfied. Now that the pressure to post is off, I can write about issues in greater detail, taking a longer time to develop my thoughts. As long as I keep up the discipline of producing, that is.

My goal is to write outstanding articles about personal growth and ideas that make people think. My favorite one so far is Who Does Your Thinking? If I had the chance to read any article to every person in the world, that would be the one. I wrote short articles and longer ones, tried to be funny, and even released some growth oriented software just for fun.

The Future

Now that my trial is over, I can write at a more relaxed pace. I intend to post to this blog often, although, as usual, quality trumps quantity for me. Making several short posts each day just isn’t my style (If you’re wondering why I posted so many articles on March 2, it’s because I was holding them until they were perfect… I know, I know…) Now I’ll see how long I can keep it up.

Related posts:

1. Blogging Trial
2. Oblique Strategies
3. List Your Options
4. 5 Reasons You're Not Earning More