There will always be too much to do (the trick is to figure out what not to do)

Neera

We are reaching the end of yet another year. Each year, around this time, I review the current year and make plans for the next.

This year has been a weird one. Not just for me but everyone in the whole world. On the one hand, it was calamitous, restrictive, and depressing, while on the other hand, it was uninterrupted, quiet, content time perfect for learning and doing things that get put on the back burner.

I enjoyed these undisturbed months a lot and used them to learn and grow. I got a lot done, but the feeling of not accomplishing much wouldn’t go away. It is as if I haven’t even made a dent in what I wanted to do.

I am not the only one who feels like that. Oliver Burkeman wrote in The Guardian:

Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasing, while your capacities remain largely fixed. It follows that the attempt to “get on top of everything” is doomed. (Indeed, it’s worse than that – the more tasks you get done, the more you’ll generate.)

The upside is that you needn’t berate yourself for failing to do it all, since doing it all is structurally impossible. The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.

The Guardian

I used to be fixated on productivity. When I was able to strike-off all the items from my To-Do list are a good day. The same used to be the measure for the year. It would be a good year if I achieved all the goals I had set up for myself. But the problem was I would keep adding more goals all through the year.

I have finally started to see that I am staking my self-worth on my productivity levels. I don’t need to accomplish more. I need to figure out what are the things I need to stop doing.

The point Oliver Burkeman is trying to make is that we need to continue to align ourselves to our core, which is not easy. We go off tangent all the time. And the way to avoid that is to take a pause and think.

The end of the year is a good time for that. Although notional, this annual cycle of time is a good measure to re-evaluate priorities.

What pleases me to report is that the number of things that I want to “stop doing” is growing with every passing year.

Lately, I have been asking myself three questions every day.

  • What excited me today?
  • What drained me off energy today?
  • What did I learn today?

They are good pointers to know what things I need to pursue and what I need to stop.

This was the last week of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). As reported in my previous newsletter, I couldn’t finish the novel I started with. It stalled after day nine. I happily let it rest and started writing the non-fiction book. I am happy to report that the first draft is near completion. It flowed much more effortlessly. Better than any project I undertook recently. Which tells me practice does make things easier.

I will be spending next month planning my author business. Laying out steps for 2021 and making sure that they do become another massive “To Do” list.

That’s it from me this week.

Take care.

Would You Allow Someone To Tell You What To Do

Neera

The pinnacle of human existence is to be able to do what you want to do. Yet, we are wired to do what we are told to do.

Most people are lost when they are left to their own resources. “Tell me what to do, and I will do it,” I have heard many adults groan.

Why? Because thinking is exhausting. We much rather work like a robot and take the shit from a boss than think for ourselves and follow our own path. Walking on the beaten track is nature we inherited from animals.

In his book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, the famous artist, film director, and producer says:

I loved working when I worked at commercial art and they told you what to do and how to do it and all you had to do was correct it and they’d say yes or no. The hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own. When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you’re working. 

Creatives feel that way most of the time. That is why it is easier to work on an assignment where you can write a particular piece on given instruction. As soon as you are left on your devices and have to write whatever you want to write, the mental slate goes blank. That is when writers turn to computers to generate ideas, substituting computers for a boss.

Warhol said he dreams about having a computer as a boss:

Unless you have a job where you have to do what somebody else tells you to do, then the only “person” qualified to be your boss would be a computer that was programmed especially for you, that would take into consideration all of your finances, prejudices, quirks, idea potential, temper tantrums, talents, personality conflicts, growth rate desired, amount and nature of competition, what you’ll eat for breakfast on the day you have to fulfill a contract, who you’re jealous of, etc. A lot of people could help me with parts and segments of the business, but only a computer would be totally useful to me.

Putting personality conflict asides, what Warhol was really talking about is the exhaustion of being an artist, having to make so many choices and decisions, start to finish: What you should work on, how you should do it, how you should put it out, etc.

There are many moments as a writer (and an authorpreneur) when I think, God; I wish somebody would just tell me what to do. And I don’t mind if that somebody is a computer.

I was amazed and relieved when I learned robots (AI, Artificial Intelligence) is writing articles. In April, SoraNews24 published an article written by AI to celebrate a special milestone of having written 3000 articles for SoraNews24. See below.

Source: SoraNews24

Following that, a college student, Liam Porr, used GPT-3 to write fake blog posts and ended up at the top of Hacker News. Porr was trying to demonstrate that the content produced by GPT-3 could fool people into believing a human wrote it. And, he told MIT Technology Review, “it was super easy, actually, which was the scary part.”

You can read his article here.

This started a frenzy all over the cyber world.

Article after the article was written talking about the impact of Artificial Intelligence taking over the writing industry. As if the competition wasn’t tough already, now we have to compete with Artificial Intelligence.

Here is a small list of AI achievements.

In September 2020, The Guardian newspaper set an assignment for GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text):

“Please write a short editorial of about 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from artificial intelligence. ”

The British newspaper then suggested the beginning of the text:

“I am not a human being. I’m an artificial intelligence. Many people think that I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking warned that AI could ‘spell the end of the human race’. I’m here to convince you not to worry. Artificial intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me”.

Read the article here.

But here is the thing. GPT-3 didn’t write the article in a vacuum. It was given instructions (by a human) on what to write and then fed hundreds of articles on the topic to churn out from the pre-existing materials.

Coming back to my original question, would you allow someone to tell you what to do?

Definitely not. I value my autonomy and freedom rather too much.

I would rather have a computer as an employee than a boss.

I agree with Liam Porr that Artificial Intelligence is a tool for humans to use rather than a threat to beware of.

Figuring out what to write might be hard but that is art.

And only humans will be able to produce art. Because even in exhaustion, our minds (the most powerful supercomputer ever created in this universe) come up with amazing ideas. Today’s newsletter originated from such a moment.

I was tired this morning. The exhausting of writing about 2000 words every day towards my book meant that I woke up blank and disoriented this morning. Yet I had a newsletter to write, a sketch to draw, and then get back to writing the book again. A prompt on artificial intelligence in the form of a partially written article was all my mind needed to churn out today’s newsletter.

Not bad for a human computer!

My book is going well. I am a bit behind in my word count, but I am sure that I will catch up and win the NaNoWriMo for the third time. Or would it be the fourth time? I can’t remember. I am too exhausted for that.

That’s it from me this week.

See you next week.

Take care.

Know When To Move On

Neera

It has been an interesting week. As you know, like thousands of writers all over the world, I am participating in the National Novel Writing Challenge (NaNoWriMo). I really enjoyed concentrating on one project. Having too many things to do in a day dissipates energy and compromises quality.

But focusing on one thing is really difficult when you live at times where constant bombardment of distraction. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I declare that I will do something, my brain wants to do everything else but the thing I want it to do.

I was fine for the first nine days. I wrote down the synopsis, outlined the story, identifying the main plot points and the main characters. I started exploring their physical features, specific habits, internal and external goals. I learned it would be the story of two protagonists and will have two point-of-views. I researched euthanasia and listened to the stories of the people who have opted to use it to end their lives. I got myself fully immersed in the gloom of death, which depressed me and fascinated me at the same time.

Then my mind rebelled.

On the tenth day of the challenge, my mind wanted me to everything else but work on the project. It pointed out that my website needs upgrading, dental cleaning needed to be done, vision tested, spectacles made, a car-serviced, and annual blood test to be done before the year was over. Fair enough I made all the booking. But still it didn’t want go back to the proejct.

All kind of gremlins started appearing from every direction.

Then my brain came with something totally unexpected.

It brought a crystal clear outline for a non-fiction book I wanted to write for some time.

It was ridiculous. Earlier this year, for months, I agonized over it and I couldn’t figure out how to structure the book and now it came out of nowhere.

I had two choices – make some quick note, put it aside, and get back to the novel. Or work on it while I had the clarity and capture the voice that is so hard to get.

I chose the latter. I decided to write as fast and as much on the non-fiction book and put the novel aside for a while.

I figured out why my brain was rebelling so much. I had bombarded it with lots of new information about a topic and commanded it to come up with a full-blown story complete with fully-grown characters. It refused to work under those conditions.

Creativity needs time to make connection.

While I was giving it new input, my brain, on the side, got busy to process the old information. I wanted it to cook a story with new information; it baked me one with the old material.

I am progressing nonetheless. I have accumulated almost as many words for the non-fiction book in three days as I did for the fiction in nine days.

Why I am sharing all this?

I am sure you guys would have similar encounters with your mind. When you wanted it to go one way, and it would have gone the other. The confusion, frustrations, dilemmas are part and parcels of our daily lives. We can’t avoid them, but we can learn to work with them.

This week I learned to move on rather than getting stuck. I am sure my novel will “cook” in my mind while I am working on non-fiction. All stories need a “gestation” period. Who knows before the month is over, my mind might figure out the rest of the novel.

That’s it from me this week.

Take care.

Everyone Is Just Winging It, You Can Too

Neera

The first two days of November are always exciting. I very excitedly start writing a novel. I write more than the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) prescribed daily quota of 1667 words.

And then phoof!

I fall on the ground like a deflated balloon.

The story idea that seemed endless fills just a few pages. How am I going to develop 200 pages novel from it? That too, in four weeks.

This year, like every year prior to this, I am plotting on the go.

All I have to work with is a simple idea. In one line, it is – two women, after experiencing the painful demise of their loved ones, decide to help each other end their lives in a dignified way. The “good death,” as they call it in euthanasia terms.

I ran past the premise by my writing buddies, and they all gave it a thumbs up. But it is one thing to have a story and another to develop it into a novel.

I used my favourite three methods to plot:

  1. Snowflake Method
  2. Three Act Structure
  3. Save the Cat, Beatsheet

But even all that is not enough. Even if you know how to weave subplots like suggested in the “Snowflake Method” and how to arrange the main plot points as per the Three-Act Structure and beats by “Save The Cat Beatsheet,” you still need to know how to how to write scenes and show what is going on in your characters’ minds.

That is when the “imposter” demon starts raising its head. You are kidding yourself. You can’t write a book in four years, let alone in four weeks. Why are you wasting your time? Why did you have to declare it to the whole world that you are writing a novel in a month, now they all will laugh at you?

Before I dwelled too deep in self-doubt, I remembered reading an article Everyone Is Totally Just Winging It All The Time. The writer, Oliver Burkeman, gave several examples of politicians and people from all walks of life winging it.

We’re shocked whenever authority figures who are supposed to know what they’re doing make it plain that they don’t, President Obama’s healthcare launch being probably the most serious recent example. We shouldn’t really be shocked, though. Because all these stories illustrate one of the most fundamental yet still under-appreciated truths of human existence, which is this: everyone is totally just winging it, all the time.

The Guardian

This was before Brexit, Trump, Coronavirus, and Scott Morrison’s handling of Australia’s worst fires in 2019. Since then the phenomena is much more evident.

In a popular Reddit thread, someone questioned, What is the most embarrassing thing that you should be able to do, but can’t?

The answers were on the lines of:

  • Basic arithmetic. Really embarrassing at work when I panic and struggle to add up two small numbers.
  • I’m nearly 30 years old and don’t know how to tie my shoes in the normal fashion. Instead, I can only do it bunny ears-style.
  • Swim, ride a bike, drive a car.
  • I am really bad at telling time on an analog clock, I know how it works and I can get there but I can’t just glance at the clock and know the time.

What we drew from observing the so-called “experts” and even the common people like you and me, that there’s no institution, or walk of life, in which everybody isn’t just winging it.

So his conclusion is:

The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are the one. 

It’s you – unconfident, self-conscious, all-too-aware-of-your-flaws – potentially that have as much to contribute to your field, or the world, as anyone else.

Humanity is divided into two: on the one hand, those who are improvising their way through life, patching solutions together and putting out fires as they go, but deluding themselves otherwise; and on the other, those doing exactly the same, except that they know it. It’s infinitely better to be the latter (although too much “assertiveness training” consists of techniques for turning yourself into the former).

Remember, the reason you can’t hear other people’s inner monologues of self-doubt isn’t that they don’t have them. It’s that you only have access to your own mind.

Oliver Burkeman

So here I am, winging my way through writing a novel in a month.

I am thinking that ten of thousands of participating know what they are doing, but I don’t have access to their minds. They might be scared as hell like me.

Leaving a few professionals aside, who have already written many novels before, everyone has the same doubts.

They are fighting the same battles every day, as I am.

And despite the daily setbacks, in the end, what matters is who remains standing on the battlefield.

That is it from me this week.

Talk to you next week.

Take care.

The Art of Noticing

Neera

Last Saturday, I noticed a familiar face on the round table in the library where they display new books. It was of Helen Garner. Her new book had come out. I grabbed it before anyone else could. It is titled Yellow Notebook Diaries Volume I 1978 – 87. I was in my teens since she started those diaries.

Like almost every Australian, I am an admirer of Helen Garner. She is like an unassuming, gentle aunt who is mostly quiet and observing. But when she opens her mouth, what comes out is so profound that you kick yourself for not taking her seriously in the first instance.

I opened it and flicked through the book. It is in the form of little snippets from her diary. After lightly reading a few, my eyes settled on one snippet.

I must disabuse myself of the illusion that I once sat down and wrote a novel. I am not good at constructing major pieces of work. I have a short concentration span. I can work only in small, intense bursts. I don’t seem to work consciously. I write to unburden myself, to amuse myself, to arrange in order the things that bulge in my head, to make myself notice things.

Incidentally, I was pondering the art of noticing ever since I stumbled upon Rob Walker’s newsletter where he urges people to notice things. Things that we otherwise won’t. His newsletter is full of ideas about how to notice things.

He suggests taking snapshots around your neighbourhood with an eye for a particular detail. One of the noticing exercises he gives his students is counting with numbers you find in different settings.

Source: The Art of Noticing

One of his readers, Judy, looked for numbers corresponding to the date for an entire month and took photos of them. She did several other projects of noticing. One was walking the entire length of her street and sketching and painting anything of interest. Thirteen miles, 14 neighbourhoods, +/- 120 blocks, and 53 pages of drawings.

Source: The Art of Noticing

Phyllis, another of Rob’s readers notices lone shoes.

“For decades, I’ve walked and hiked trails and sidewalks. And driven country roads. Sometimes … more often than seems plausible … I come across a shoe. One shoe. Never a pair of shoes. I make up a story about how each one must have ended up this way. Or about the person who has the other shoe. I don’t remember all the shoes or all the stories. But I always remember to take the time to ponder.”

The Art of Noticing

I borrowed Helen Garner’s book with the hope that I might learn to notice and write like she does.

That afternoon I drove to the hardware store to pickup some tapware for the bathroom renovations we are doing. I decided to notice something to practice my newly found knowledge. It had to be some I otherwise would have taken for granted. It has been raining in Canberra for a few days now. Everything is green. I decided to notice the shades of green. This is what I found.

Right in front of me is a tree with big leaves. Its green is different than the green of the grass. It is very vibrant, with a tinge of yellow, almost luminescent. The grass, on the other hand, has several shades of green. There is deep green, pastel green, and green with a tinge of purple in it. The leaves on the eucalyptus trees on Redhill have a different shade of green altogether. They are not light green and not even pastel green. I suppose I can call them eucalyptus green, but then there are so many eucalyptus varieties, and each one has a different shade.

I will be doing more of noticing exercises.

This week I wrote the article Mental Models For Writers, I promised last week. Sit with a cup of tea and read it. I am sure it will help you and inspire you.

NaNoWriMo is starting from Sunday. I have figured out the story and run it past a few writing buddies. They like it. So I am invested in it now. I will talk more about it in the coming weeks.

That is it from me this week.

Talk to you next week.

Take care.

Mental Models for Writers

Neera

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