Decisions take energy

I was reminded of this today (while reading a post by Mark Silver):

making decisions is one of the most energy-intensive things we do as humans. Making a decision just plain takes a lot of calories. With a complex life, our brains are exhausted most days, too exhausted to make good decisions.

And I realized that this is one of the important pieces of A Meeting With Your Writing.

A common scenario

You have a sense that you should be writing regularly. You don’t have time actually blocked off in your calendar but in your head you think of Fridays as research days, or have an intention to write every morning, or something.

This means that every day (or every Friday), you have to make a decision: Will I write today?

Actually you have to make multiple decisions: Will I write today? How much time to I really have to write today? What will I write today?

That’s a lot of energy going into decision making.

You have a limited supply of energy

You are busy. You know how tired you’ll be by the end of term.

If you are already having trouble finding the time and energy to write during term time, you really don’t have extra time and energy to spend on decision making about writing.

No wonder you end up half way through term despairing at the lack of time available to do any research and writing.*

*If you don’t end up like this, let me just cheer. You are obviously doing something right. Keep doing it.

How A Meeting With Your Writing will help

First, you will make one decision now to write every Monday morning. You will put the times in your calendar from September 10 to December 17. After a few weeks, this will be a habit.

Writing on Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern (whatever that is for you) will be your default setting. No decision necessary. You might need to miss a meeting or two, but the decision will be about doing that other thing not about writing. Your default will be writing. You’ll need a good reason to do something else.

Second, you can come to the meeting without any idea what you will work on that day. Even if you remember the meeting 5 minutes before it starts, rush to the washroom, and then call in, you will be okay. I will guide you through a process of deciding what to write. It will take less than 20 minutes.

Third, if you waver about either of those decisions there is support.* You know there are people expecting you. You have paid for this. If you get stuck in the middle of your writing, I’ll be at the end of a phone line to talk you back into it. It takes a lot less energy to do things if you have help.

*If a gremlin just piped up to tell you how you shouldn’t need that support to get some writing done, I’ve written that gremlin a letter.

If that sounds good, learn more and register.