Writing is one of the few tools that can reliably change how you think. It forces you to commit to a line of thought and to turn half-formed ideas into something you can examine.
People who write regularly don’t just produce more and better work, they understand themselves and their work more clearly.
Regular writing also makes you better at explaining things, whether that’s in emails, presentations, or conversations. You develop an instinct for what works and what doesn’t when communicating complex ideas.
Plus, you create a record of your thinking that becomes valuable over time – patterns emerge, forgotten insights resurface, and you can see how your perspective has evolved.
But most people never get that leverage, because they treat writing as something that requires the right mood, the right idea, or the right moment.
If you want to write more, you need to design a writing practice that works with your actual life, not the idealized version where you have three uninterrupted hours and perfect clarity. Here are five principles to implement:
1. Decide what writing is doing for you. It might help you think through problems, build ideas in public, teach, or clarify what you actually believe. When you know what writing is supposed to do for you, you can stop judging each session by how good it feels and start judging it by whether it did its job.
2. Lower the bar until it’s impossible to avoid. Most writing habits fail because the minimum is too high. Instead, design a tiny experiment: “I will [action] for [duration].” Commit to a protocol that feels almost too easy: five sentences daily, one short piece weekly, 15 minutes on weekend mornings. This removes the daily negotiation about whether today is the right day.
3. Put writing on the calendar, not on the to-do list. When writing lives on a to-do list, it competes with all your other “someday” tasks. When it lives on your calendar, it becomes a rendez-vous with yourself and a ritual worth protecting. You just need to show up and write until the end of the calendar block.
4. Remember that first drafts are for thinking. Do the thinking before you optimize. First drafts are where you figure out what you think. You’re choosing what matters, what connects, and what you actually believe. That work can’t be outsourced. Use AI tools for research and refinement only after you’ve wrestled with the ideas on the page so you can call these ideas yours.
5. Close the loop every time. After you finish a piece, write one sentence about what you learned and one sentence about what you’ll change next time. This metacognitive practice can even be part of your weekly review and will help you iterate and improve your writing over time.
When you focus on consistency over quality, writing transforms from a thing you should do into a tool you actually use. You’re not trying to write beautifully under perfect conditions anymore. You’re just trying to write regularly under normal conditions.
Tiny Experiment of the Week
Ready to put these ideas into practice? Try this week’s tiny experiment to build a writing habit:
I will [write for 5 minutes every day] for [5 days].
This trains your brain to notice opportunities for creative thinking and makes generating topics easier when it’s time to write longer pieces. Keep a notebook or notes app handy so you can capture ideas in real time. Want to dig deeper? Get your copy of Tiny Experiments.