During my weekend plant care at university I often listen to podcasts. This morning, I listened to an interview with Jerry Seinfeld on his work practices developed throughout his career. He seems to agree with me that if writing is part of what you do, you should practice it regularly.
His advice?
Aim for a specific target and realistic time frames – e.g., a fixed time of one hour – instead of saying “I’m going to write all day”. No one writes all day. It sucks. Specific targets give you a form of relief at the end, and I would largely agree with this approach.
Where we differ – except that he is a lot funnier and makes a lot more money than me – is that he said it is totally okay not to write in the set time. He said that you should, however, not allow yourself to do anything else.
Now to me that sounds like an invitation to procrastinate.
This is why I target 200 words. Everybody can write 200 words in roughly ten minutes. It is okay to write rubbish, but without a word target, you will find an excuse.
Write for ten minutes, polish for ten minutes.
Done!
Robin Heinen 