Category: Writing

A little while ago, I wrote an article, 3 Habits Of A Freshman Writer, where I touched on the importance of having a proper system to file your work and research.

No writing book or article I ever read mentioned organizing your writing and notes, yet it is one of the most important habits for new writers.

I have spent months trying to find quotes/ notes/ stories that I scribbled somewhere and didn’t file them properly. Not only it a wasted time, but my writing is poorer for the lack of all that reference material that could have made it more impactful.

This week, Austin Kleon touched on Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you have in his blog. He, too, has no system to file his work.

“I have no index for the notebooks (unless you count my logbook), and no way, really, of knowing what’s in them, a condition worsened by my terrible memory, and the fact that one of the reasons I like keeping a diary, as Henry Jones, Sr., said, is because I don’t have to remember what’s in it. I plan on starting an index in the coming weeks and updating it for each new notebook.” — Austin Kleon.

He wrote this more than ten years ago and didn’t follow through. Today when he is working on his fourth book, he is kicking himself for not doing what he knew he should do but didn’t.

---

Your system should consist of three things.

• Ease and robustness. If the system is tedious or time-consuming, you will not do it. Now and then, you will slack, and things will fall out. You will need a system for both digital and paper-based documents. It should apply to everything. Even the writing that seems trivial at the moment will sound beautiful when read months or years later.
• Retrievability. The system needs to be supported by a powerful search engine so that when you need anything, you know where to look for it and how to retrieve it with minimum effort.
• Portability. This is to capture any idea you get at any time of the day. It should travel with you everywhere, even in the bathroom (especially in the bathroom to capture the ideas you will get in the shower).

“A good idea is not of any use if you can’t find it.”
 — Logan Heftel

Some Unusual System to Organize Your Work

I am fascinated by the filing systems of other writers, and Austin Kleon’s article prompted me to share my system with you.

Although not foolproof, some of the ways I am using to organize my work are working well.

Highlighter

Julia Carmen, the writer of The Artist’s Way, suggested a handy and method to picking up the grain from the chaff.

Those of you who haven’t heard of Julia Carmen, she is the one who suggested that the writers should start their day with writing Morning Pages.

Morning Pages are three pages (approximately 750 words) stream of consciousness, writing about anything and everything that crosses your mind. Usually, morning pages are gibberish, things meant for your eyes only, but now and then, they will have some nuggets that you want to save.

The best way is to do that, according to Julia Carmen, is to pick a highlighter and color the bits you want to save. You can then type them up in Evernote or whatever notes software you are using. Keep each idea/story separate and give them an appropriate heading.

Now when you need it, all you need to do is a simple keyword search.

Email

Email is an unglorified and somewhat underused way of storing your work.

I usually email myself whatever research I did on the project I am working on. I keep it in a separate folder. Most email software has a pretty powerful keyword search, and since my email is always open, my research is literally at my fingertips.

Blogs

My blog has become my repository. I can retrieve any story or a quote that I have used in an article and published on my blog. All I need is a keyword.

File Explorer

I have thousands of articles, research snippets, and pdf that reside on my computer under appropriate files. Although criticized mercilessly, File Explorer is the oldest filing system in the digital world and is quite intuitive. It has a decent search facility, and I have usually been able to find the document as long as I have given it a good title.

Evernote

I am relatively new to Evernote and use only the free version. Yet, I am suitably impressed with it. The search is swift, and it can even recognize text in images as well. So if I take an image of a page from a book and save it in Evernote, it will read it as if it is reading a text document.

Index for Medium Articles

Recently I started indexing my Medium articles. I created a Main Index that lists all the categories I write under. Each category is a separate post and lists the article I have written so far. I update them twice a month. It is working like magic. Now I can access any of my articles with a couple of clicks.

Your Takeaway

It’s very easy to write every day and collect a lot of material through research, but it’s not easy to keep track of it all.

You have to develop a system so that you can access whatever you need with minimum effort.

You either create your own system or follow someone else that works for you.

— — — — — — — — — 

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

Not so long ago, I was reading an article on Barbara Cartland. It was a feature article going through the life story of the novelist who had written more than 700 romance novels during seven decades, making her undisputed queen of a genre.

I still remember a photo the article included. Dressed in a pink gown on a pink bed, ninety-two years old was dictating her next novel to her assistant.

I went, “Wow! This is what I want to do in my old age. Write stories.”

The average life expectancy in Australia is 83 years. By the time I am going to reach my eighties, it will be 93 years. We all need to plan how we will occupy ourselves for three decades after we retire from paid workforce.

You can only do a limited number of things in your eighties — you can watch TV, walk your poodle, do crossword puzzles, read books. Or you can tell stories.

I am choosing to tell stories. 

Now, you can tell stories from your life (which most old people do and they are dead right boring), or you can fictionalize them (which gets the message across in an interesting way).

Fiction is more effective than non-fiction. Here is why.

---

Non-fiction is straightforward. 

It helps the reader solve a problem, accomplish a task, or help them learn something new. Its message is clear, concise, and direct. It also has a short shelf life.

Fiction, on the other hand, is eternal. Fairy tales are centuries old. I bet you still remember the fairy tales you heard when you were a child. Religions use stories too. Parables do what scriptures can’t.

Humans have unsatiable hunger for stories. Even as adults, we crave stories as much as we did when we were children.

“Nonfiction reveals the lies, but only metaphor can reveal the truth.” — Ms Forna

Non-fiction appeals to our logic, but fiction touches our hearts.

---

Stories are how we communicate. 

Ever since language has been invented, we have been weaving our hopes, messages, reflections, and insights into stories.

When we read stories, we get to know the characters’ inner lives, which makes us reflect on our own lives. We get drawn into their world. Their troubles become ours. We share their laughter and their tears and walk with them as they muddle along in their journeys.

That is the magic of stories. They help us improve our ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions. They equip us to negotiate complex social relationships in the real world with greater skill.

“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being…I just think that fiction that isn’t exploring what it means to be human today isn’t good art.” — David Foster Wallace

---

Fiction helps us connect to our humanity.

Research shows that reading fiction makes us more empathetic. Psychologists at the New School for Social Research, New York, say that reading literary fiction makes us better people.

Fiction is essential to the survival of the human race because it helps us to slip into “the other’s” skin. It builds tolerance because it gives us an opportunity to see the world from different perspectives. It is a shining beacon of hope in an increasingly intolerant world.

Fiction also has the power to instill a sense of wonder in us. Stories can take us to magical places. They jolt us awake when we slip into the rut of the mundane. They liberate us by giving free rein to our imagination. This is not to discount fiction as an escape hatch from reality. — Vineetha Mokkil 

A good story gives us a better understanding of ourselves, others, and our society by drawing us into the world created by the writer.

I don’t think there is a better way for a writer to serve humanity than to write fiction.

---

I have started publishing short stories.

Writing fiction is much harder than writing non-fiction for the obvious reason. You need to imagine a lot — the characters, the plot, the structure, the dialogue, the emotions. But that makes fiction more attractive to me. I love the challenge of it. The ability to create a story that feels true. As if the characters are real people and live next door to you. 

I also think fiction writing is the ultimate form of storytelling. Even though (according to Georges Polti) there are only 36 plots, every story even with the same plot is different and original in its own right. 

Although the ultimate goal for every fiction writer is to write a full-length novel, short stories are an excellent point to start. I have started writing and publishing short stories so that by the time I reach my eighties I have learned the craft.

I have already published two — The Flight, and Aunt Olivia. Have a read and let me know what you think.

I intend to post one every week.

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

You have cleared your desk, you have finished all your chores, you have turned your mobile phone on silent, and you have disconnected from the internet.

For the next hour, you are now going to write the article you have been planning to write all day.

You open the document and POOF!

Your mind has gone blank.

The articles that you drafted a few days earlier, you try to take them further, but nothing comes to mind.

It is as if your mind doesn’t want to focus on the writing at hand. It wants to do everything else but write.

Writing is elusive. Some days you are so good and other days you can’t seem to get even a few words out doesn’t matter how hard you try.

---

At times like these, you do the biggest time-wasting activity.

You open the browser and start looking for ideas.

You need something to get you started. A little clue. A little hint. A tiny idea will be enough. You promise yourself that you will read for just a few minutes, and then stop.

But it never happens that way.

You start reading one article, then another, and before you know it, the hour that you had dedicated to writing had flown past, and you haven’t written a single word.

It happens to me every time.

---

This is what Steven Pressfield Called “Resistance.”

Before reading Steven Pressfield’s classic book The War of Art, I thought the fault was just with me. I was the only one with a restless mind that can’t concentrate on the task at hand and want to do everything but what it should be doing.

I learned pretty soon, that there are certain activities that elicit resistance and writing is one of them.

“Resistance” is a repelling force, that is generated from inside and it doesn’t discriminate. Even the experienced writers, artists, athletes, poets, singers, and spiritual masters constantly battle with it. It is an “evil force” that is there to prevent anyone who wants to do any good with their lives.

Resistance will do anything to achieve its goal — which is to stop you from achieving yours.

It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that is what it takes to deceive you. — Steven Pressfield.

The more important is your goal, the more resistance you will feel.

---

I tried everything to beat ‘Resistance.’

1. I freed myself of all the distractions. I even disconnected Wi-Fi so that I don’t fall into the trap of getting ideas from the internet. Soon I discovered the distractions are not just external, they could be internal too.
2. I set a time and place to write. It worked for a few days and then the same thing happened. The boredom of routine set in and my mind would want to do something exciting rather than write the article.
3. I started stopping in mid-sentence as Stephen King suggests, so that I could pick up it the next day and finish the article. But my mind couldn’t pick up the threads and finish the tapestry. It wanted to check the fridge and see what treat it can have.
4. I outlined so that I knew where the article was going. But on those fateful days, I couldn’t write even a few paragraphs to fill each point. No stories will come to mind — personal or general. Quotes that are usually on the tip of my tongue would elude me. I couldn’t come up with convincing arguments about the points I was making.
5. I started doing meditation before writing. Rather than having a calming effect, it started giving me panic attacks. I would feel that I was wasting the only free time I have for writing.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. — Steven Pressfield

But in my case, I was sitting down to write and doing everything I knew to write, and still, wasn’t able to write.

---

I felt like an imposter.

All of the previous writing meant nothing if I couldn’t write every day. A writer should be able to write on demand.

If at this stage someone had given me a contract for a book I would have declined.

Who was I kidding?

I would never be able to write professionally.

I will never become a prolific writer.

The Imposter in me was working overtime. He is waiting for me to call it quits and go back to shopping online. It doesn’t even want to know that I need to earn money before I go spending.

---

You will know what I mean if you have watched the movie ‘The Word.’

In the movie, Rory Jansen (played by Bradly Cooper), a struggling writer, finds a handwritten manuscript in an old briefcase he bought from an antique shop. The manuscript is so well written that Rory starts typing it on his computer, word for word.

He wants to feel the words pass through his fingers.

He wants to know how does it feel to type well-written words.

Rory Jansen submits that manuscript to an agent. His novel gets published and becomes a huge success.https://neeramahajan.com/media/f8961eac5f4192795c18743f78014e33

Don’t worry I am not taking on the path of plagiarism. 

Even before watching that movie, I figured out if I pick up a book, a good book, and start typing a few paragraphs from it, I get in the rhythm of typing, which somehow awakens the narrator in me.

The words would start flowing effortlessly.

It was my little secret, and I was so ashamed of it.

I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was doing.

But imagine my surprise when my writing teacher, a well-known editor with three decades of experience in the industry, prescribed the same exercise in a recent novel-writing workshop.

---

There is a science behind it.

When you are typing looking at a text, it focuses your mind on just one activity. You are not thinking about what to cook for dinner and whether to take out clothes from the line because it might start raining soon.

When you are reading the text line by line, something in the text triggers a thought or brings out memory, and before you know it, your own story appears before you.

This is when you should stop copying and start typing the story you just got reminded of.

Our brain wanders off at the slightest of provocation. You are putting this “wandering” ability to use.

Let’s do a little experiment.

Read the following paragraph. It is from a book called The Memory Code, which I opened randomly and started typing.

A mother of a five-year-old told me this story: Her son had been wanting to learn to ride his bike without his training wheels, but whenever she took them off, he would give up after a couple of minutes. She finally asked him, “What do you think will happen if you fall off the bike?” He immediately answered (while wearing his helmet), “I’ll die.”

Does it remind you of your own bike riding story?

Or any of your unfounded fears. There it is. Start writing your story.

It reminded me of my three heart-felt-wishes when I was in primary school.

For years I wanted nothing more but those three things, and one of them was learning to ride a bike. All my friends knew how to ride a bike. We were soon going to high school, and they were all getting new bikes, except me.

Memories that followed have given me material for a full-fledged article that I will write — Three Wishes Of A Thirteen-Years Old (One that will never come true.)

Summary

There you go. You have one of my deepest secrets that I was so ashamed to share.

It is, in fact, a writing exercise suggested by writing teachers.

Give it a go and see whether it works for you too.

Photo by Radu Florin on Unsplash

The United States Navy SEALs go through some of the most intense and rigorous training you can think of. The dropout rate in basic training is pretty high. Over the years, the Navy found that those who succeed are not the ones who can focus on the big picture, but the ones who can micro-focus. 

While crawling through mud with barbed wire fences over you, and there’s a thunderstorm, and it’s raining like cats and dogs, recruits who have the ability to micro-focus, that moving one arm and then the other are the ones who survive the boot camp.

Micro-focusing can be applied to writing as well. If you are stuck in a murky middle of your book, focusing on writing one sentence at a time and then following it with another one can help you power through. 

So many things become really easy when explained with an analogy or some law or concept. This kind of analogy, or a model that can help change a mindset, is called a mental model. 

A mental model is just a concept that can be used to explain things. They can be a framework, or worldview that you can wear on your head like a hat that can help interpret the world and understand the relationship between things.

Mental Models Are The Tools of Thinkers and Successful People.

Mental models have been around for a long time. They are widely used in economics. Supply and demand is a mental model that helps understand how the economy works. Game theory describes how relationships and trust work. Entropy explains how disorder and decay work.

Some call them “apps for the mind.” We use many in day-to-day decision making, problem-solving, and truth-seeking. Here are some familiar ones:

Murphy’s Law — “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Pareto’s Principle — “For many outcomes roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes.” 

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) — “A pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.”

Butterfly Effect — “The concept that small causes can have large effects.”

Parkinson’s Law — “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

Murphy’s Law — “Anything that can go wrong, will.” 

Hofstadter’s Law, “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Eisenhower’s decision matrix — “what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Imposter Syndrome — “High-achieving individuals, marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a ‘fraud.’”

Deliberate Practice — “How expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practice than with merely performing a skill a large number of times.”

Mental models are thinking and decision-making tools. They cut through the fluff and help reach largely correct decisions (there are no absolutes, another mental model). 

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, says, “80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly‑wise person.”

“I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person’s brain because it understands the most fundamental models: ones that will do most work per unit.” “If you get into the mental habit of relating what you’re reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.” 

— Charlie Munger

There are tens of thousands of mental models, and every discipline has its own set.

Here are my ten mental models for writing.

1. There Is Nothing New Under The Sun Model

When I was new to writing, I used to get very frustrated with my work. I wanted to be original. I wanted my stories to be new and fresh. I wanted my voice to be unique. I wanted my prose to sing. But then I learned aiming for originality was, in fact, inhibiting my creativity. 

Nothing is original. Every emotion has been explored before; every story has been written before. Even the Bible records that.

What has been will be again,
 what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

— Ecclesiastes 1:9

The Sooner you free yourself from the pressure of creating something original, the sooner you will be able to create.

All ideas come from other ideas. Experienced writers get inspiration from other people’s writing, real-life events, or applying ideas from one field to another (from animals to humans, humans to aliens, science to psychology, and so on).

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. but since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”— Anfre Gide

There is nothing new under the sun, is a great mental model for new writers. Stop trying to create something out of nothing. Take influences from anywhere you can — other writers, old works, nature, real life, science, animals, or other art forms. Your particular pick of influences will make your work unique.

2. A Beginner vs. Imposter Model

When I started writing articles on “writing,” I felt like an imposter. Who am I to advise on writing when I haven’t published any work? The same happened when I wrote self-help articles or wrote about psychology or human behavior or recent trends. I had no formal qualifications in any of the subjects. I felt like a fraud—a typical case of imposter syndrome.

But then I looked at the definition of an imposter. 

“A person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain.”

My fears were unfounded. I was not pretending to be someone else for fraudulent gains. Neither was I pretending to be an expert. I was a beginner, writing from my own experiences. Explaining things when I was learning them. That doesn’t make me an imposter. 

An imposter is a conman; personal gain through deceit is his aim. A beginner is a learner; learning through teaching is her aim. 

Knowing the difference between the two freed me and made my writing bold and truthful.

Next time you feel like an imposter, think whether you are fraudulently trying to be someone you are not or a beginner trying to learn through teaching.

If later, write fearlessly.

3. Resistance Is A Writer’s Number One Enemy Model

The credit for this Mental Model goes to Steven Pressfield. He identified that resistance and not the lack-of-skills or self-doubt that stops writers in their tracks. He wrote about it at length in his book The War of Art.

Those of us who have a passion for writing know resistance very well. It stands between who we are and what we want to be and doesn’t let us cross the line. The more passionate we are for our vocation, the more forceful is the resistance to prevent us from pursuing it.

Writing is not hard; it is sitting down to write is hard. And what keeps us from sitting down is resistance. 

“Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify, seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form if that’s what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” — Steven Pressfield

Every new writer thinks they are the only ones feeling resistance. But resistance doesn’t discriminate. 

Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen, he took his inheritance and moved to Vienna to paint. No one has ever seen his paintings. Resistance beat him. Someone said, “It was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”

Knowing that resistance is the enemy waiting to defeat you is a good Mental model to have. Build up your strategy to defeat it. 

I have learned that if I persist for twenty minutes, resistance goes away. It doesn’t like to be ignored. 

4. Everything You Desire Is On The Other Side Of The Fear Model

The big thing with wiring is that it is all about mindset. The thing that screws your mind is fear. And if you can learn to get a handle on your fear, you can get a handle on your writing career.

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear. “ — Jack Canfield

If you can tame that critical voice, as Dean Wesley Smith likes to say, then you can pretty much control your own destiny, and you can become prolific. 

You can do just about anything you want to do if you can silence that voice in your head. Fears of self-doubt are the big one. 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
 — Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”)

I think of fear as a river of fire, and I need to cross it every day. Not like the Indian monk walking on hot coals but like the fireman walking through the inferno. Once I have that image in mind, it changes the mindset. It gives me a handle to my fear. You need a handle too, your fear because it doesn’t go away. You will have to fight it every single day.

“Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.” — Steven Pressfield

5. Trickster vs Martyr Model

I am forever grateful to Elizabeth Gilbert for this Mental Model. In her book The Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert says that as creatives, we have a choice. 

We can be either a martyr and vow to be committed, dedicated, serious, grim, always-on-the-go, strive-for-excellence, and fit-more-in-a-day-to-achieve-more-type. Or we can be tricksters and play games and have fun with our work.

Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid.

Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.

I was approaching my writing with Martyr’s energy. I was going to become a writer even if it killed me. I was setting harder goals and then beating myself for not achieving them. Self-doubt was my chaperone. He protected me from other people’s ridicule but sneered at my efforts. The very activity which used to give me so much pleasure became an ordeal.

Martyr says: “I will sacrifice everything to fight this unwinnable war, even if it means being crushed to death under a wheel of torment.”

Trickster says: “Okay, you enjoy that! As for me, I’ll be over here in this corner, running a successful little black market operation on the side of your unwinnable war.”

Things started changing when I became joyful. I started forgiving myself for making mistakes and missing deadlines (my own). Rather than feelings small by other people’s work, I started complimenting them. I began experimenting (like the publishing of Medium) and see what happens.

Martyr says: “Life is pain.”

Trickster says: “Life is interesting.”

Martyr says: “The system is rigged against all that is good and sacred.”
Trickster says: “There is no system. Everything is good, and nothing is sacred.

Martyr says: “Nobody will ever understand me.”
Trickster says: “Pick a card, any card.”

Martyr says: “The world can never be solved.”
Trickster says: “Perhaps not…but it can be gamed.”

Martyr says: “Through my torment, the truth shall be revealed.”
Trickster says: “I didn’t come here to suffer, pal.”

Martyr says: “Death before dishonor!”
Trickster says: “Let’s make a deal.”

Martyr always ends up dead in a heap of broken glory, while Trickster trots off to enjoy another day.

Martyr = Sir Thomas More
Trickster = Bugs Bunny

When feeling under pressure, ask yourself which energy you are using – martyr or trickster? What can give you better results? Would you be rather Sir Thomas More and be hanged or Bugs Bunny and have fun?

6. Shitty First Draft Model

And once you have the trickster’s mindset you can understand what Anne Lamott tries to drill into new writers through her book Bird by Bird.

Shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few time to get all the cricks out and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. This is just a fantasy of the uninitiated. — Anne Lamott

For years I hated all those whose prose comes out as natural and fluid, all those with English as their mother-tongue and those who write as if they are taking dictation directly from God. 

For me, writing is torture: broken sentences, unformed ideas, limited vocabulary, and terrible spellings. (One would think why I the hell I want to become a writer, but I do. I really, really do.) The only way I can write anything is by receiving whichever way it comes.

But when I learned this is why with Anne Lamott too and with scores of other writers too, I stopped complaining and got to work.

If you operate from that assumption, that all you are creating in the first instance is a shitty draft, it changes how you approach your writing. 

That is why I consider shitty first draft as a Mental Model. It changed my mindset forever.

7. A Day Is All You Have Got Model

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard.

When I was young, I used to think I have all the time in the world. I can do it tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. As I get old, the days are shrinking; months are getting shorter; years pass much more quickly than before.

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”

 — Seneca

 “Get hold of your days and you will have a hold of your lives,” commanded Seneca. 

When I started realizing that today is all I have got, whatever I can get done in a day is what I can hope for, my mindset changed. I made daily schedules and set myself routines that I could follow without thinking. I still have good days and bad days. Some days are a complete write-off, but that doesn’t matter. 

As Annie Dillard writes, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.” I don’t have to figure out what to do; next, my routine tells me that. And I don’t miss deadlines because my schedule takes care of them.

When you apply the Mental Model of A Day Is All You Have Got, you begin to appreciate that every day counts. And even if you add a few drops each day, the bucket will get filled very soon. 

(I have a leaking tap in my laundry, it fills up a bucket every second day which I use to water the pot plants.)

“In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most extravagant.” — Seneca

8. We Are All Amateurs.

“That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” — Charlie Chaplin

We all crave to be counted as professionals. We feel ashamed to be called amateurs. Yet an amateur is someone who pursues her work with the spirit of love. 

Austin Kleon points out in his book Show Your Work that Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public. They are in love, so they don’t hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid.

“On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” — Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus.

Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing. Ameture might lack formal training, but they’re all lifelong learners, and they make a point of learning in the open so that others can learn from their failures and successes.

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.” — Zen monk Shunryu

Since I adopted, we are all amateurs model fear of failure lost its power. I am no longer turning red whenever I find mistakes in my work; neither I feel dishearted by its quality. I know I am moving from mediocrity to good.

9. Choose Creativity Over Competition.

All my life I was raised to compete. It is the survival of the fittest, our generation learned from Charles Darwin. 

The only way to lead a better life is to be the best student, get the best job, be the best employee, win promotions, marry an ambitious person, accumulate wealth, own the biggest house, drive an expensive car, and have holidays at exotic places. Nowhere there was room to slow down, to take it easy, to get in touch with the creative soul in yourself and you will have to compete for anything. 

Wallace D. Wattles imparted with the knowledge more than a hundred years ago:

“[A] man must pass from the competitive to the creative mindset to achieve whatever he wants to achieve; otherwise, he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive.” 

I made a decision to lead a creative life. I quit my job and started nurturing my creative side. I started a blog and learned to draw. I determined the purpose of my life and wrote down my life philosophies. I wrote down the philosophy behind my creativity too.

Choosing creativity over competition helped me listen to the tiny voice inside me which wanted me to create. To make something that will make me happy. As it used to when I was a child. It didn’t care whether it was any good, sellable, or will make any difference in anyone’s life. It wants me to create something which will make a difference to me. Something that will make me happy. 

Listen to that voice because if you don’t, it will die. And with it, a big chunk of you will die too.

10. Never, Never, Never Give Up — stick around

Ah! the good old Mr. Chrurchill. He wrote the history so that “history is kind to him,” and he taught us how to be our best in our darkest hour. But the mental model he gave us will keep him alive in our minds forever. Because we are at times where “giving up” is too easy and “sticking to it” is rare.

When the going gets tough, we fight a battle with us every single day. And when I hear Mr. Churchill thundering voice saying, “Never, never, never give up.” I get filled with new enthusiasm to keep going.

Summary

To summarise here are my ten mental models for writing. 

1. There is nothing new under the sun.
2. Beginner vs. imposter.
3. Resistance is the writer’s number one enemy. 
4. Everything You Desire Is On The Other Side Of The Fear Model
5. Trickster vs Martyr Model
6. Shitty first draft model.
7. A day is all you have got.
8. We are all amateurs.
9. Choose creativity over the competition.
10. Never, never, never give up.

Next Step

You probably would have heard of more and perhaps have your own favorite ones. 

You can either become a collector of mental models or focus on acquiring a deep understanding of a few and use them to help change your mindset.

I would leave you with a little story.

Richard Feynman liked to tell this story about something his father taught him: “You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird.” 

Photo by Robert Keane on Unsplash