Matt Levine, who writes the Money Stuff newsletter for Bloomberg News, said something as a guest on the Conversations with Tyler which stuck with me:
Here’s the transcript of that audio:
What I think is, people have their proper metabolism for producing stuff. For me, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, it’s incredibly difficult, but it is reliable that I can produce something in a panic every day.
Whereas, I think if I had to produce something every week , and I have some experience with this , if I have to produce something every week, I do it about every three weeks. So that’s like one thing, is just the drive of panic.
For whatever reason, knowing that I’ll need to write something and publish it today and every day is a more persuasive motivator than knowing that I’ll need to have something written this weekend or next week. I’m not sure why this is though I think it has something to do with the natural cadence of habit formation.
I wrote about my new writing work habits in “Brief: Work Habits”. I start thinking about what I’ll post in the morning and wait until the evening to quickly draft, edit, and publish. I haven’t been satisfied with quality of my posts, for the most part, but I have been satisfied with the fact that I’m writing and publishing something every day.
When I made the commitment to write every day I didn’t give it much thought. I knew it was the right decision in the same way that I know it’s the right decision to exercise every day. Extending this metaphor, some days you have a great workout and others you don’t but at least you showed up. “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
I didn’t touch on the panic component because, honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me until I started thinking about the post I’d need to write tonight while I was in the middle of cooking dinner. This reminded me of Matt Levine’s comment about panic as a motivator. Some people think and act more slowly when panicked. I don’t. When I’m panicked about a deadline I’m able to work faster and with better focus.
The question this raises is this: how can panic be used most productively?
Moving my self-imposed writing deadline earlier in the day would be the easiest and most direct step to take. Structuring my work more with firmer deadlines for researching and drafting posts, what I think of as “prewriting,” would be less direct but would also probably work. Note that the lack of a “post or no post?” fear of failure means that the feeling of panic will be less intense. The more discipline I exercise, and the greater my remove from possible failure, the less persuasive panic becomes.
Discipline is great, if you can manage it. But panic will work in a pinch. Panic is a tool.