Ok…the experiment I wrote about last week…yeah, it failed. Miserably. Got almost no writing done, and I wasn’t able to get up early hardly ever.
However, I’m going to try it again. Part of the problem was that I always ended up staying up late, past 1am, even when I intended to get up early, and that just killed me. Also, whenever I did get up early, I always allowed myself to get distracted by other important things, such as email, homework, etc. The predictable result? No productivity.
There were other problems too, however. It’s the middle of the semester, so the weeks are starting to race by like so much rushing water. I’m not the only one who feels like the last week was sucked out of my life without my realizing it. Also, before I started the week, I lost a lot of writing momentum by missing a few of my daily wordcount goals. I would write 2,000 to 3,000 words one day, the next day, nothing. Lost momentum can be really crippling.
When you write late at night, you tend to go through this routine of distracting yourself, checking your email, playing a game here and there, chatting with friends, etc, before you finally settle down to start writing. This is my current routine. I need to get to the point where I’m able to sit down, open the document, and get started. Or, if I can’t get to that point, I at least want to minimize the distraction time.
So, this week, I’m trying it again. I’ll try to get up early, 6am if I can, and get in at least a half hour of writing each day. We’ll see how it goes.
