How to Add Writing to Your Daily Habits

Time to stop thinking about it.

If you’re reading this, you likely visit Medium regularly. You enjoy the work other writers publish, and you wish you could do the same. Perhaps you do write, but you want to write more often.

No matter how much I write for clients or myself, I always feel like it’s never enough. It’s a way to express yourself, communicate ideas, and impact people. Writing turns into breathing.

Here are my best steps to turning writing into a daily habit:

Understand Your Creative Loop

While I believe we can always write more, I’ve also learned the importance of balance. You can only produce so much. Like anything else in life, your intake and output need to coexist. You consume calories, and you burn calories. You talk to friends, and you listen to them. If there is disharmony in these actions, then things fall apart.

You need to implement an intentional creative loop — balance consumption with production. Read your favorite stories, follow your favorite artists, and use these things to fulfill and renew you. Take up hobbies and spend time without technology.

Writing is only a result of something. You lived, and now you write. So to produce daily writing that’s fulfilling and interesting to both you and the reader, do exciting things and follow your curiosities.

Start Free Writing

Your goal is to write daily, not to create the most high-value piece of content ever published. Of course, there’s a time and place for the best of your work, but you can only get there by writing each day.

If you don’t journal, start now. Write down your thoughts and some of the things you are working on. Try not to structure it too much; this exercise is for creativity. It’s also effective at helping you articulate some of the thought-seeds that will one day become big projects or content in the future.