Improve Your Focus and Productivity with Writing Rituals

By Cathy Baker 

Productivity is my love language so it may come as no surprise that several rituals are in place to help boost it.

 

Does waking up earlier, staying up later, tidying up a writing space or steaming lattes to the perfect temperature propel creative energy into overdrive? I can’t say for sure, but I have discovered how some well-placed rituals help to spark ideas and stir the muse. And I’m not alone. 

“I’m a full-time believer in writing habits. You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away.” – Flannery O’Conner 

Drying up and blowing away seems a bit drastic, but the benefits of creating specific rituals are hard to deny. 

Psychology Today reports, “There are countless examples of these peculiar athlete rituals. But it’s not limited to just the professional sporting world. Anywhere performance happens, a ritual will be found. From military to medicine to business and education, it’s clear that rituals are an important part of our day-to-day functioning, helping us improve our focus, concentration, and attention.” 

Below are some of the rituals currently working for me. 

• Wake up early. The hours between 5:00-10:00 a.m. provide my highest levels of clarity and energy. While I enjoy staying up late, I choose to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. to ensure a healthy amount of sleep. Night owls may find late hours through midnight to be their most optimal time. The key is to find your most efficient time of the day and to plan everything else around it whenever possible. 

• Pour a second cup of coffee. The first cup starts the engine, the second cues the brain that it’s time to chug along and get to work. 

• Cue the music. I listen to different genres of music depending on the type of writing I’m working on that day. For instance, when working on longer pieces, such as a book or a block of blog posts, instrumental music complements the focus required. (I don’t listen to the same instrumental Pandora station at any other time than when I’m writing, strengthening the trigger to my brain that it’s time to get to work.) Fiction authors might find inspiration by listening to music that ties in with the subject of the book, or to the period of music used in their setting. 

• Get dressed. As tempting as it is to stay in soft, warm pajamas, I get dressed early in the day. It’s a mental thing. If you’re a pajama lover, I’m sure you agree that my choice to get dressed early is definitely mental but hear me out. Getting dressed cues my brain that it’s time to work—that my writing is not a hobby. So before 8 a.m., I throw on a sweatshirt, jeans, and finish up the routine with a swipe of my favorite pink lipstick (because my grandmother always said every woman needs a pop of color). 

• Work in a prepared setting. Before finishing up for the day, I take a few minutes to jot down the starting point for the following day. If certain folders are needed, I go ahead and put them on the desk, so I don’t waste time launching a search party the next morning. 

“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write… I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half-hour every morning…I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.” – Stephen King 

Your goals and the steps will probably look different than Stephen King’s or mine but hopefully these ideas will help to jumpstart your own rituals. Nothing illustrates this more than Mason Currey’s, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. It’s a peek into the minds of brilliant artists of all types. Their idiosyncrasies make mine look mildly boring, and it’s a lovely feeling, I must say. 

How about you? Do you have some type of ritual that helps you to be more creative and productive? Please share! 

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

TWEETABLE

Do you have rituals that help you to be more creative and productive when you write? via @Cathysbaker (Click to tweet.)

Cathy Baker is an award-winning writer and author of Pauses for the Vacationing Soul: A Sensory-Based Devotional Guide for the Beach as well as Pauses for the Vacationing Soul: A Sensory-Based Devotional Guide for the Mountains. Cathy is a Hope*Writer, a member of the Advanced Writer and Speaker Association, and Bible teacher who has taught numerous studies and workshops over the past twenty-five years. Her work has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Upper Room, and Focus on the Family’s Thriving Family. She and her husband, Brian, live in the Blue Ridge Foothills where she writes from a space lovingly known as the Tiny House on the Hill. Connect with Cathy @ Creative Pauses from the Tiny House on the Hill @ https://www.cathybaker.org, or visit her Facebook Group, Creative Pauses