J.D. Moyer

science fiction author, beatmaker, against fascism

Category: Metaprogramming Page 17 of 30

Writing Habits and Start-Stop Ritual (boost efficiency by 50%)

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On May 16

In Fiction Writing, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming, Writing

My favorite psychoactive substance.

My favorite psychoactive substance.

Recently I came across this article by Phil Jourdan on writing habits and efficiency. It’s a great read. Phil was researching the subject of writing efficiency, routine, and habits. He found lots of bland, unspecific advice like “write every day,” but very little detailed practical advice. So he wrote his own guide, which includes tips on exercise, caffeine intake, digestion vs. concentration, and eliminating distractions.

One thing that Phil discusses is how it’s important to have a writing ritual; a set of steps, performed in the same order, that bookends your writing sessions.

For the last two weeks I’ve taken Phil’s advice on both counts; I’ve been keeping a detailed writing log (start time, stop time, word count, exercise before writing session, food/caffeine before writing session), and I’ve been performing a writing ritual (or sequence, if you prefer).

Here’s my own writing ritual/sequence:

  • check schedule, plan day, attend to any urgent distractions that would otherwise be distracting
  • put cellphone and cordless phone inside house (I work outside in a separate office), turn off wireless connection
  • get hot black coffee and cold water
  • mental preparation (brief meditation, prayer [I’m an atheist but I pray anyway — here’s why], request for inspiration and focus)
  • open documents, briefly review and edit previous day’s work
  • write until quota is exceeded, stopping only to pace, exercise, or use bathroom, politely decline to be interrupted for non-emergency reasons
  • briefly outline ideas for next day’s session
  • close and backup documents, retrieve phones, turn on internet
  • brief prayer of thanks

So far I’ve been pleased with the results. I’ve exceeded my quota (which is only 600 words — here’s why) on average by 50% except for one day when I had to rush out the door to an appointment. Even though my quota was low, before I started using these techniques I was having trouble hitting it. At the moment I’m about 30K words into the project (after two months of outlining/research and 10 weeks of actual writing). Since I’ve been tracking word counts and time worked, I’ve been averaging 865 words per session, with an average session length of 1.5 hours.

My main problem was internet “research” leading to internet distraction. For me it’s better to just leave the internet off, and fill in any missing facts later.

If you write, do you use a writing ritual? Do you keep a log? What do you find to be effective?

The Learning Tax (pay it, instead of working around your ignorance and weaknesses)

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On May 10

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming, Problem Solving

Learning the Hebrew alphabet, one of my current study areas

Learning the Hebrew alphabet, one of my current study areas

For about a decade, for most of my thirties, I lost touch with active learning.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t learn anything for those ten years. I learned passively, reading nonfiction and news. I had hundreds of fascinating conversations. I worked, and learned by doing (LBD), acquiring new skills by throwing myself into unfamiliar activities (screenplay and novel writing, DJing) and learning on the fly.

Still, my approach to acquiring new skills and knowledge was haphazard. The few times I did dedicate time and resources to active learning yielded large dividends (for example my “DJ bootcamp” experience), but this was the exception, not the rule.

For the most part, I ignored:

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Subjective Benefits of Meditation, and a Rant Against Gurus

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On April 2

In Culture Rants/Shares, Mental Health, Metaprogramming

I usually meditate a few minutes a day, on most days. I’ve been doing this, on and off, since I was fifteen. Here’s a list of the benefits I notice from meditation:

  • lower pulse rate
  • feel more relaxed/body feels more “open” (lower blood pressure/blood vessel dilation?)
  • emotions seem less overwhelming and intense, with the option to disengage identity from emotion
  • worries seem more distant and less urgent
  • internal monologue dissipates, less “mental chatter”
  • remember to do things that need doing
  • think of more things to do, more ideas
  • immediate action path is clearer (what to do next)
  • emotional conundrums clarify (“oh — that’s what’s going on”)
  • libido increase (parasympathetic nervous system activation?)

Meditation is usually associated with the “spiritual” side of consciousness, and to some extent that matches my experience, at least in terms of increased emotional awareness and reduced reactivity, and “quiet mind”/enhanced attention.

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Why Money Is Bad For Art

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On March 2

In Creative Work/Career, Culture Rants/Shares, Metaprogramming

How do you measure the value of your time?

How do you measure the value of your time?

As usual, I’ve been juggling things I need to do, things I want to do, and things I end up doing that are neither, and feeling like there isn’t enough time for all of it.

You might think that the “answer” to this “problem” would be to increase my efficiency (maybe using the Pareto principle, or David Allen’s GTD system). Or, I could reduce the number of commitments and activities in my life. I’m a dad, husband, database developer, blogger, music producer, label runner, event promoter, radio show host, and aspiring novelist — mostly by choice. Nobody is making me pack my dance card that full.

An alternate solution — one that occurred to me after reading Elizabeth Dunn’s essay “Why We Feel Pressed For Time” — is to instead consider and evaluate the conditions and assumptions that lead me to feel pressed for time in the first place.

One of these conditions in affluence.

Dunn hypothesizes that we feel pressed for time because of our high hourly rates (and/or high salaries). People who don’t make as much money feel less pressed for time, because they actually don’t perceive their time as “precious” like high earners do. They’re a bit more casual in the way they spend their time, and they don’t worry about “wasting it” so much.

In Western culture, the more affluent you are, the busier you get. This is a self-imposed psychological trap. Quoting Dunn, “simply perceiving oneself as affluent might be sufficient to generate feelings of time pressure.” (Dunn cites research by DeVoe and Pfeffer that backs up this claim — it’s worth reading her essay).

So why is this bad for art, as my title asserts?

Art takes time. Time where you walk in circles, explore blind alleys, and spend entire mornings working hard only to throw your results into a literal or digital wastebasket.

In my own experience, making art only feels productive about one session in three. In fact you are usually making progress (exploring blind alleys counts), but it doesn’t feel like it.

This feeling was easier to tolerate when I was young and broke. My time didn’t feel as valuable. What else would I be doing? Delivering pizzas? In college, when my part time work earned me about $12/hour at most, I would often spend six to ten hour stretches studying synthesizer manuals and plugging MIDI notes into the sequencer on my MacPlus computer. Now, as a professional freelance consultant and business owner, I find it much harder to dedicate large chunks of time to meandering creative work.

The way to escape this trap is to define my purpose in life explicitly. My chosen life purpose centers around creating artistic works, and I remind myself of this daily. It’s always “worth it” to pursue my life’s work, even if my efforts don’t lead to any kind of obvious gains (piles of gold coins, fancy cheese and wine, the respect and admiration of my peers, and beautiful women wanting me).

If you don’t define your life purpose, mainstream cultural values will seep in and define “value” for you. In today’s environment that means money. Valuing your time only in terms of money will paralyze you as an artist.

How To Complete Difficult Tasks

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On December 19

In Metaprogramming, Problem Solving

What’s the secret to completing difficult tasks? If we can learn how to consistently overcome challenging obstacles, we can reduce our reliance on others, feel more capable and powerful, and take on bigger and more rewarding projects. If we give up too soon, we sell ourselves short, abort promising career directions, and become too reliant on other people’s expertise.

I think there is a secret to consistently getting the hard stuff done. But first a story …

We’d been having some trouble with our telephone and internet service. Dropped calls in the middle of important conference calls, internet outages in the middle of gigantic uploads, calls getting dropped after one ring, and so on. Incredibly frustrating, and bad for business.

After seven different support calls and one site visit from sonic.net (all fruitless), and one site visit from Bay Alarm (sonic.net thought the problem was related to our alarm system), I realized the best remaining option was the fix it myself.

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