Should you Write Every Day?

For the longest time I really bought into the idea that you need to write every day a for a minimum of 30 minutes in order to be a successful academic. This is popular advice, especially amongst academics, because it is true that consistent and steady work produces great output and can help avoid slumps or gaps in your work, and helps prevent falling out of the habit of writing and avoiding hard things.

Writing can be a hard thing, especially when you don’t do it regularly. All of the arguments for writing every day made sense to me: if I committed to writing every day, I would make great incremental progress and I wouldn’t be able to avoid the "hard" tasks in my work, and ultimately I’d be successful, too.

But the truth of the matter is the writing every day is not what works for everyone, and this is OK too. The catch is: when you expect yourself to write every day, and you fail to meet this goal, feelings of guilt, shame, and failure are likely to be present.

When we hear the message over and over again that we need to write every day in order to be successful and we internalize this message, then the days that we don’t write we are setting ourselves up to feel like a failure.

There were days when meetings, class, and office hours kept me so busy, and it would have been great to get a few minutes of writing in before it all started, but this wasn’t always possible. Importantly, failure to write on those days brought about negative self-judgment. When I couldn’t get that writing in, I would feel guilty and anxious because I thought I was doing it wrong.

Personally, I have found that I need periods of rest in order for ideas to germinate. I need to let my brain reset, and sometimes I just need to break from writing. And some days I am focused on the other aspects of my job— teaching and service— and trying to pull my brain back into writing was an internal battle that was costing me my energy.

In the “you must write every day” model these breaks always felt terrible because they felt like I was avoiding the simplest task that I needed to do to be successful. The truth is, I need rest and to have a little space in my brain in order to be successful.

Recognizing that the current mainstream advice about writing wasn’t the best for me was very helpful, because I realized that there is not a one-size-fits-all model for being successful in writing and in academic work. Some people thrive when they write every single day, but this doesn’t make them better people than those who don’t write every day. This idea was a tough one for me to manage at first, because deep down I really believed that “good” academics DID write every day.

It felt like a moral failing to not keep up work habits that I had idealized without considering if those habits were always working for me.

More importantly, I recognized that the negative feelings that came up when I failed to meet these expectations were the thing I needed to avoid in order to find flow in my writing.

I have found that different seasons bring different work habits, and that this is OK! As long as I’m moving my projects forward on a timeline and in the manner that works for me, I am meeting the goals of my job.

It has been exceptionally hard to put down the anxiety and the guilt that came along with not writing every day. These feelings ran even deeper than I initially realized, in part because advice like “you need to write every day” seems so practical and doable, and I subject myself to harsh criticism from my inner narrator when I don’t keep up this work practice. But breaking up with anxiety and guilt about not writing every day has been critical for coming back from being burned out.

In recovering from burnout, I needed a break from research and writing. Even more though, I need to change my practice of feeling anxiety and guilt for not working every day. This was much more difficult to do, because these messages are implicit and are often embedded at the unconscious level, so I was not always immediately aware of their presence, even when taking planned time off.

I’m here to say that it is OK to not write every day, and this does not mean you’re not a good academic. It also does not mean your projects won’t move forward! It may be more helpful to evaluate your personal situation, acknowledge guilt and anxiety and other emotions tied to work, before pressing on so that you don’t end up burning out. You need to rest and clear a little space for your thoughts and ideas, and trust you’ll write when you’re ready.

Writing every day when you’re also suffering from burnout feels like pushing a rock up the hill. You can be tough with yourself and make yourself do it, over and over again, But this is not the only way.

What I recommend doing instead of writing everyday:

One alternative is to track your minutes of focused work each (work)day instead of writing time specifically. This works better for me because I tend to do some sort of focused work every day, but some days this is in the other areas of my job, like teaching and service. This work takes focus and attention and energy too, and I often am hard pressed to keep going once I’ve exhausted myself regardless of whether the focused work was on teaching or research.

I also suggest keeping an eye on what will get you tenure (or a job, or a postdoc), so that you can consciously evaluate where that focused attention is best spent! For me, I needed to make sure that enough of my focused work was on research and was steady so that my research pipeline never ran dry. But allowing myself to focus on other parts of my job without feeling anxiety has been key for remembering how to find balance and how to enjoy the work.

Last, if you’re currently feeling burned out, I recommend taking a break from writing and investigating the emotions that arise when you take time off. I suspect that for a lot of academics, taking time off is often not restful or restorative when guilt and anxiety cast a shadow over this time. In addition, shifting towards working with your own patterns of focused work and energy, and agreeing (or saying no) to projects that work on your timeline will also help. This is a longer process to shift, as many current projects, deadlines, and commitments will need to be wrapped up before truly making this shift, but it’s worth the attention and consideration, as this can impact levels of burnout and quality of life in the long run.

If Only I Were _______, I'd be Happy.

I remember when I first came across the article “If only I were thin like her I’d be happy like her” (best article title, IMO). I found this contingent thinking applied to so many aspects of my life.  If only I had tenure, I’d feel secure. If only I had a prestigious job, I’d feel validated and respected. If only I had my shit together, I’d feel like I had good work/life balance. If only I could do more, I’d feel like I had it all. But these are false equivalencies, and they leave us feeling worse, rather than motivated, in the long run. 

So much of what we do (or don’t do) is driven by how we want to feel. We are often chasing a feeling-- of comfort, security, love, acceptance, validation, accomplishment, inclusion, happiness.

Critically, we tell ourselves that we can’t have —and don’t deserve— that feeling until we accomplish our goal. 

 We tend to fear and avoid the things that threaten these goals. In many cases, rejection is the thing we think is standing in our way (both socially and academically). Our brains evolved to favor these feelings, and to encourage us to seek them because these are the things we believe, on a conscious or unconscious level, will ensure our survival.

But.

We tend to hold ourselves hostage while we are waiting for these good things to arrive. I can’t let myself relax, I need to worry about how much work I got done. I can’t feel accomplished, I am not running a big research lab at an R1. I can’t feel good about my small accomplishments, because [some other person I compare myself to] has more. I can’t let myself enjoy a dessert, I need to hold myself accountable and don’t deserve this unless I’ve exercised. Let me be clear: this type of thinking, while common, is not usually helpful to us. It reinforces negative messages about who we need to be or what we need to do in order to be worthy of success, gratitude, security, happiness. 

We allow ourselves to perpetually stay on the hook with the guilt, or shame, or criticism, or fear, because we are afraid of what might happen if we loosen up that tight grip of mental control. We are afraid that we will be lazy, and won’t get our work done. We’re afraid we’ll gain weight, that we will be unproductive. We are afraid we will lose our status or our job, or we won’t get promoted. We tell ourselves that we can’t slow down or we might fail, we might lose our edge, we might stop striving. We might not reach our potential and we will never be happy.

There’s another way to handle this.

Give yourself permission to feel the good feeling first, before you accomplish whatever the “thing” is. This will feel foreign and uncomfortable at first. And, it is easier to do this when you allow yourself to feel less tied to the outcome. But you can also feel less tied to an outcome when you stop believing that feeling good or deciding that you’re ok/successful does not depend on the outcome.

Rather, figuring out how to transform the process of reaching that outcome is the key. Transform it by letting yourself feel good now, before you accomplish all the things. Recognize and acknowledge all of the things you HAVE already accomplished.  

Once you start feeling good first, the work and accomplishments will flow in a way that feels much easier and more enjoyable than when you were striving really hard for those things. We want these things to feel a certain way; if we can feel that way now, what’s the downside? Here’s my suggestion: do an experiment where you let yourself feel good first. If this doesn’t work, you can go right back to the contingent thinking of I need to do/be ____ in order to feel ____.