Advice that works

31 Mar

Writing habits of some writers:

“Early in the morning. A good writing day starts at 4 AM. By 11 AM the rest of the world is fully awake and so the day goes downhill from there.”

Daniel Gilbert

“Usually, by the time my kids get off to school and I get the dogs walked, I finally sit down at my desk around 9:00. I try to check my email, take care of business-related things, and then turn it off by 10:30—I have to turn off my email to get any writing done.”

Juli Berwald

“When it comes to writing, my production function is to write every day. Sundays, absolutely. Christmas, too. Whatever. A few days a year I am tied up in meetings all day and that is a kind of torture. Write even when you have nothing to say, because that is every day.”

Tyler Cowen

“I don’t write everyday. Probably 1-2 times per week.”

Benjamin Hardy

“I’ve taught myself to write anywhere. Sometimes I find myself juggling two things at a time and I can’t be too precious with a routine. I wrote Name of the Devil sitting on a bed in a rented out room in Hollywood while I was working on a television series for A&E. My latest book, Murder Theory, was written while I was in production for a shark documentary and doing rebreather training in Catalina. I’ve written in casinos, waiting in line at Disneyland, basically wherever I have to.”

Andrew Mayne

Should we wake up at 4 am and be done by 11 am as Dan Gilbert does or should we get started at 10:30 am like Juli, near the time Dan is getting done for the day? Should we write every day like Tyler or should we do it once or twice a week like Benjamin? Or like Andrew, should we just work on teaching ourselves to “write anywhere”?

There is a certain tautological aspect to good advice. It is advice that works for you. Do what works for you. But don’t assume that you have been given advice that is right for you or that it is the only piece of advice on that topic. Advice givers rarely point out that the complete set of reasonable things that could work for you is often pretty large and contradictory and that the evidence behind the advice they are giving you is no more than anecdotal evidence with a dash of motivated reasoning.

None of this to say that you should not try hard to follow advice that you think is good. But once you see the larger point, you won’t fret as much when you can’t follow a piece of advice or when the advice doesn’t work for you. As long as you keep trying to get to where you want to be (and of course, even the merit of some wished for end states is debatable), it is ok to abandon some paths, safe in the knowledge that there are generally more paths to get there.