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WWN17: Habitus
James Carran
August 14, 2024
This week my parents are up helping out.
Which should mean that I have eight uninterrupted hours to write.
Should.
Big emphasis on that should.
That should is shouldering the sentence with a shudder.
(Ain’t English great? And confusing.)
On Monday they made it up by four in the afternoon.
On Tuesday they got here just before noon, then I made lunch, then I got two hours spare before it was time to start on dinner.
And today they turned up after noon, had issues with insurance (long story) and finally took the kids at one in the afternoon.
Given I have a call at four and in those three hours still have to write this newsletter, go shopping and cook…
…ain’t much happening today either.
This is all by way of introduction to two things.
One is that regular Carran’s Cabin Crewmembers will recognise some of the material here.
The reason being that this issue of the Write Way Newsletter is based on an email I sent to them a month ago. I’ve been saving it for a disastrous day like today, because when I wrote it I realised it deserved developing out some more into a fully fledged newsletter.
That takes less time than writing from scratch, obviously. Ideal.
And second, the topic of today’s Write Way Newsletter is:
Habits.
Which is completely appropriate because good habits are the difference between careening from one disastrous day to another, and knuckling down to get the work done bit by bit over the long haul.
Lately, I’ve been slowly working through Rick Rubin's excellent book "The Creative Act: A Way of Being" and his chapter on habits was inspirational for this.
It’s fantastic, and I highly recommend you go read the book yourself. If I could, I’d quote the whole thing there.
But instead, I’m going to quote a quote he quoted.
A quotable quote quoted many times before.
Quotidian, I know.
(Ain’t English great? And confusing.)
But here is that quote, from basketball coach John Wooden.
Take a moment to read it:
I think it's the little things that really count. The first thing I would show our players at our first meeting was how to take a little extra time putting on their shoes and socks properly.
The most important part of your equipment is your shoes and socks. You play on a hard floor. So you must have shoes that fit right. And you must not permit your socks to have wrinkles around the little toe--where you generally get blisters--or around the heels.
It took just a few minutes, but I did show my players how I wanted them to do it. Hold up the sock, work it around the little toe area and the heel area so that there are no wrinkles. Smooth it out good. Then hold the sock up while you put the shoe on. And the shoe must be spread apart--not just pulled on the top laces.
You tighten it up snugly by each eyelet. Then you tie it. And then you double-tie it so it won't come undone--because I don't want shoes coming untied during practice, or during the game. I don't want that to happen.
I'm sure that once I started teaching that many years ago, it did cut down on blisters. It definitely helped. But that's just a little detail that coaches must take advantage of, because it's the little details that make the big things come about.
Rubin riffs on this quote for a chapter.
I’m going to riff on it for a newsletter.
His point and mine?
It's the little details of performance that matter. The little details that set you up for success. The stuff that most people overlook.
There's a popular book called "don't sweat the small stuff (and it's all small stuff)" or something like that. I refuse to google it.
I'm sure it's an excellent book. I'm sure it's quite right in its domain. Worrying about silly things is pointless.
But in another sense...
Please do sweat the small stuff, because none of it is small stuff.
I'm no fan of the over-optimising guru bullshido that gets practiced online, but the truth is that your daily habits matter.
The more disciplined you are with your daily habits…
…the more free you can be creatively.
I think people get that in the context of sport, right? It makes sense that sorting your socks matters when you're playing basketball.
But writing?
Surely writing is not exactly the same as a high-performance sport?
Dear writer, it is exactly the same.
My friend Thomas J. Bevan likes to say that writing is a performance art - and he's right.
Every time you write, you sit down to perform. And all the details matter.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Is your desk at the right height?
Have you eaten the right food?
Did you sleep well last night?
Did you go for a walk?
Have you been thinking through your gameplan?
Have you been reading good material?
What's your environment like?
Is it right for the project you're doing?
How is your posture?
How is the light?
What sounds can you hear?
Do those help or hinder concentration and creativity?
What was your warmup like?
Did you take time to think through your approach?
Are you rested and well?
All these questions matter more than you think.
To be honest, they often matter more than “do you have any good ideas to write about?” or “what’s the best way to phrase this?” or “what’s the best audience building strategy?” and all the other rubbish that wannabe writers think they’re going to be worrying about when they start.
When I first sent this out to the Carran’s Cabin list, I'd planned to start a big project that day.
But the night before, my wife interrupted me with some triviality as I was settling into sleep, my insomnia kicked in, I never got to sleep until one am, and I woke up feeling ill and exhausted.
So my performance was down bad and I knew I wouldn’t be be doing any super-creative work that day, just churning through admin.
These things matter more than non-creative people realise.
Which is part of the problem when you rely on other people to help out and free up time - they figure it doesn’t much matter if they turn up a couple hours late, phone you in the middle of the day, interrupt your sleep, walk in while you’re brainstorming, or leave the house in a state more commonly associated with a natural disaster.
They don’t care, because they don’t have to care!
Back when I was an accountant it didn’t much matter if I had a bad routine because the difference in performance was pretty negligible. The rote work still got done. I still got paid.
But the write work is different. Rely on rote and you’ll never have wrote because it requires the right rites, right?
(Ain’t English great? And confusing.)
The point is that creativity requires you to get those details right. And no, not just for the big sprints like the projects I wanted to do this week and won’t get done, or for the one-offs like the time I sent this to my daily list.
It’s true for the little sessions too!
Because the truth is that if my daily habits were dialed in - and I was making progress each day - then the fact that the time I set aside for “big sprints” was being ruined wouldn’t kill my creative momentum, just slow it down.
Which is why I’m a big fan of the power of productive plodding.
Yeah, I still have to work on that one more.
But daily plodding or big project sprint, whatever it is, the point is this:
If you want to be creative, the small stuff needs sweated, routines and rituals need set. What those look like will vary, everyone's routines and rituals are different.
But they all matter.
They all create the stable base from which we can build great art. As Rubin writes:
Discipline and freedom seem like opposites. In reality, they are partners. Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time. Managing your schedule and daily habits well is a necessary component to free up the practical and creative capacity to create great art.
That's the great genius of a coach like John Wooden. He understood that by helping his players install habits of discipline in the locker room, he could free them up to create great basketball on the court.
Free of blisters. Distractions. Discomfort.
Free to focus.
Free to create and play.
We could all do with a little more focus on the disciplined details of habits so that we can clear more mental space to play and create.
Maybe you can sit down one day this week and brainstorm one habit you could fix that would help clear your mind for creativity.
Maybe it's as simple as ten minutes tidying up the night before so your workspace is clear and focused.
Maybe it's going for a ten minute walk each morning.
Maybe it's blocking distracting apps on your phone, or listening to fewer audiobooks so you have more time to think.
I can't tell you what it is, not en masse like this. But take some time to think about it.
Have you sorted your socks today?
And until next week, may your pipe be a pleasant habit and your writing not be a pipe dream,
Yours,
James Carran, Craftsman Writer
fin
Today’s Craftsman’s corner is a little advice on the biggest habit struggle I’ve had and how to fix it. For active subscribers only:
If you’re not an active subscriber then this particular bonus has vanished like mist in the morning sunlight and shall never be seen again.
But there’s still time to sign up before the next one, which you can do right here:
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Tap the link below. No obligation, but we already have fifty people on the waitlist, so if you’re not on it there’s no guarantee you ever hear about it again.
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