The Coffee Goes Here; Notes on Rebuilding a Skill

During my working hiatus I’m trying to return to some of the skills that dwindled a little over my career, namely writing fiction and making music. As part of this, I’m fascinated by different peoples process in how they create (you’ll note I don’t use ‘creative work’ here because I think that’s a very loaded term. I’ve worked in tech forever, and many of the things I worked on I’d label as ‘creative’. Thinking creatively is something we should all be doing).

I read an interview with Jerry Seinfield recently, where he talked about lockdown and his writing habits.

I still have a writing session every day. It’s another thing that organises your mind. The coffee goes here. The pad goes here. The notes go here. My writing technique is just: you can’t do anything else. You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else. The writing is such an ordeal. That sustains me.

There’s a couple of things to unpack from this short paragraph; firstly, Seinfield is notorious for his consistency, to the degree that one of his techniques is mentioned over and over again in procrastination articles. Sitting down and doing the work consistently — and not necessarily with a view on the end product, just with the process itself — will almost always garner improvement. Do the work every day, mark it on a calendar and “don’t break the chain”.

The coffee goes here. The pad goes here. The notes go here

Secondly, there’s a note of having a routine in a different way other than just repetition over time. “The coffee goes here. The pad goes here. The notes go here” sounds like a throwaway comment, but there’s a sense of ritual here; everything is set up and put in it’s rightful place so that there’s a subconscious signal — “it’s time to write”.

You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else

Finally “You don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else”. I originally heard similar advice from Neil Gaiman (you can find the discussion of this on the Tim Ferris podcast, 20:36 onwards). Writing — or any other creative work — isn’t always easy and, in the age of many people being ‘very online’, there are literally millions of other distractions we can be working on. Effectively, you’re giving yourself permission to do nothing — maybe sitting and thinking, or staring out of a window for a minute — but eventually you’re going to have to do the work. I’ve used this technique a lot over the last few weeks, sat around with a notepad and a pen, and it’s surprisingly effective.

There are a few more productivity suggestions I’ve picked up recently which I’ll be adding here, ensuring I set out my mug of tea correctly and giving myself permission to write accordingly, but if anybody has any other interesting solutions then feel free to drop me a line.