Week 2: The Generator Process

When I travel to new places my energy level is always quite high. When I wake up in a different city, I want my day to start as soon as possible. I am pulled out of bed by all the exciting things that I want to do. This energy is not specific to activities in that place. I have more energy to work out, write or read. When I am at home, sometimes I have that same energy, but it can be hard to recreate. There is not the same sense of urgency or excitement. While I wish I could always achieve that same energy at home, it might be a little bit unrealistic.

Our surroundings and stimuli have such an impact on our mental state. The difference in energy when I am traveling is only one example of this. Even really small changes can cause quite the difference. After I buy a new pair of running shoes, I am more likely to go on a run. When I have a nice kitchen and tools I am more motivated to cook. The environment that we are in can make all the difference in terms of what we do.

This impact of our environment on behavior extends to all parts of our experience. It directly impacts the thoughts we have and what actions we take. This is why some people say you are the sum of the people you surround yourself with. This is why writing can actually force you to have different thoughts than if you are in a conversation. Using a tool like Roam which forces the usage of bullet points can actually change what you create. It is important to make intentional decisions about what our environment looks like and what tools we use because of how large their impact can be.

Part of me is scared when I notice how much my thoughts and actions are determined by the external. Another part of me wants to use this to help accomplish certain tasks. I am scared because I want to be resilient to external factors. Even if I have bad tools, I want to still accomplish difficult tasks. I do not want to be so dependent on having the exact correct situation. Working to be more resilient is important. I also recognize the impact my environment can have. Making conscience choices about my environment feels especially important when I am trying to do something hard.

I not only want to improve my writing, but to understand how to regularly do something that I find hard. The type of writing that I am trying to do in this project is quite labor intensive for me. This endeavor is partly about learning how to create systems and practices that facilitate this difficult task. What I learn about how to make writing easier might apply to other tasks I struggle with. Part of the goal is also to become resilient so I am less dependent on having a perfect situation with no distractions.

I spend a lot of time pondering how I can improve my ability to accomplish things that I value. Often these conversations center on how to improve my work life or to spend more time making progress on projects. Last fall I had a discussion with researcher Andy Matuschuk about my pain points in that process and how I want to get better. After that conversation I honed in on the idea of better attention allocation. The core idea of that post is that I want to direct my energy towards meaningful tasks that are important to me. While that idea still resonates with me, the scope is probably too large.

This project centers on how can I do one thing; generating novel insight / clarity of thought which I can share with others. Rather than determining how I allocate all of my energy, I am prioritizing some of my energy towards doing one thing which is difficult and important. Learning how to allocate my energy once, will also teach me lessons about how to do it in general.

Without some structure or goals it is difficult to evaluate how I am doing. Without stressors and deadlines it is hard to evaluate what makes a good system. The stress lets you see the weak points and where it can be improved. This project with weekly deadlines forces me to look at the writing process frequently and critically.

A necessary part of improving my writing process is understanding it better. When I understand the different components it is easier to identify what impacts my ability to make progress. Breaking down my writing process into a few different steps is a helpful abstraction:

Step 1: The Spark The first step is when an idea is generated. This does not happen siting in front of my laptop when I am trying to write. It happens when I am doing other things. When I am talking to a friend, when I am in the shower, on a walk, meditating.

Step 2: Gathering Wood Now that I have a spark, I want to build a fire. This step involves collecting other ideas that connect to the spark. What else have I been thinking about that relates to this initial idea. How can this one idea build into a more cohesive piece?

Step 3: Building the Log Cabin Once all of the wood is gathered it needs to be arranged into a general structure. All the ideas are arranged into a coherent structure. This is when I outline the structure of the piece

Step 4: Light it up Now that we have an outline, it is time to fill in all the detail. Hopefully everything catches fire, but some parts might not. Filling in an outline with text feels very similar to the way a log cabin gets engulfed in flames

Step 5: Managing the fire Most of the hard work is done but things still need to be adjusted occasionally to keep the fire burning. We need to make edits and revisions. Occasionally this will be more substantial and sometimes it will just be small movements.

Using the stages of the writing process it is easier to pinpoint where my own difficulties with writing arise.

• Steps 1 and 2 are currently my favorite parts of the writing process. I have no shortage of ideas. It is fun to then look at those ideas and connect them with each other. If anything I generate at ideas at such a fast rate that it can be difficult to manage all of them.
• Step 3 is a place where I struggle quite a bit. I often skip that step or only do a half hearted job at it. I especially struggle with it when the ideas are disorganized already.
• How step 4 goes is dependent on step 3. When step 3 goes well then 4 is quite easy. When I skip 3 or do a bad job at outlining then 4 can be a real struggle. The other difficult part is that while I have represented it as a linear process, it is not always such. Sometimes as I am doing step 4, I should really stop and do more outlining. As I start doing all the filling in, a clearer picture about the structure also forms.

Having a goal for what my writing process should look like is helpful. Once I know what the current state is and what I want to future state to be, it becomes a lot more actionable to improve my process.

In order to create good pieces, there are a few properties that I want my process to have

• I want to be working on pieces over a long period of time. Good writing takes a long time. I rarely want the ideas for a piece to develop in only a week. I want pieces to be iterated on for extended periods.
• Over that extended period I want to touch the pieces frequently. When I am touching them frequently I will be thinking about them even when I am not at my desk writing. This type of thinking often leads to the best insights.
• When the structure of a piece is good, finishing it up and filling it out is easy. When the structure is wrong, it is almost impossible. I want a process that helps me find the right structures. It should be flexible so I can switch to different structures easily when I find something is not working
• When the space of possible things I could be working on is really large I gravitate to working on the easiest and most defined task. It can be helpful to have enforced structure that makes me do the harder things. This takes away the mental burden of having to decide what to do.

With these goals in mind, here is my current writing process:

• Sparks get generated constantly. Whenever I have a spark I try to either write about it in my remarkable or on my phone’s notes app. This is a solid way to chronicle initial thoughts that is not too disruptive to my day-to-day.
• During the week I spend one pomodoro every day writing. I find that earlier in the day I have a larger capacity for accomplishing hard tasks. My first pomodoro of the day is devoted to this project and writing. Right before sitting down at my laptop, I meditate.
• All of my writing work is currently done in Roam. I have one page that contains my writing notes. When I have decided I have some ideas that I want to be a piece, I turn them into a sub page. I also have a page with all of my sparks that are not fleshed out so I am still unsure if I want them to be a piece.
• Each day I have a defined writing task
  • Monday: Take all my sparks from my phone’s notes and my remarkable. Move them to Roam. Look at sparks and see if any feel really exciting. If so start connecting ideas.
  • Tuesday: Outline the piece that I want to publish at the end of that week
  • Wednesday: Flesh out ideas on a couple pieces further in the future.
  • Thursday: Fill out details for the piece this week. Goal is just to write and get ideas out. I try not to care about sentence quality.
  • Friday: Start by reviewing the piece’s structure. Make any changes if necessary. Finish getting all ideas out and start revising.
  • Saturday: Off
  • Sunday: Edit piece for week. Do two read throughs. Then publish

This current process means I am spending 3-4 hours a week. 2 Days I am working on pieces for future weeks and 4 days I am working on the piece for that week.

Part of why I turned this into a new project and made it separate from my other website is because it gave this project a new energy. The process I outlined above seems to be working well but I am sure there are opportunities for improvement.

I am interested in exploring if better tools could help facilitate this process better. As I keep writing I want to identify the biggest pain points and how I might improve them. If building my own tools that are optimized for my process would have a large pay off then that is something I will try to do.

A few ideas about what I would do if I built a tool:

• Currently I have to spend time transferring my sparks into Roam. It would be nice if they just were there and organized.
• Similarly, my page of sparks is quite long and disorganized. I could imagine something that manages sparks for you. It would resurface sparks at planned intervals or let me sample randomly from sparks.
• I like Roam’s editor for writing because it makes it really easy to drag snippets around. As I learn more about how I write, it could be worthwhile to build a custom text editor that forces certain structures and has affordances that align with what I want to do.