What I learned from my 100-day writing challenge

100 days before the New Year, a friend and a colleague of mine Daria Maslovskaya suggested doing a 100-day challenge. The idea was to do any activity for 100 days for the purpose of building discipline. I agreed. We both went for writing. 

The rules were straightforward. We had to write for 20 minutes a day. If we didn’t, we had to make up this time on another day. In this post, I want to share what I learned from my 100-day writing challenge.

1 Time is plentiful.

I had the time to write for 20 minutes a day on 90% of days. There were days when I absolutely didn’t have the time but very few. Most of the time I found for writing came out of my lazy time. No important activities were hurt.

Takeaway: “I don’t have the time” is an illusion. You do.

2 Inspiration is a stereotype.

Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” This is very true. I didn’t feel like writing on most days. I made myself sit down and do it because of the challenge. However, more often than not, I found myself miraculously inspired in the middle of writing. As a result, even though we had agreed on 20 minutes, I ended up writing for 30-50 minutes on approximately 50% of the days.

Takeaway: Just do it.

3 You are what you do.

I wrote two things for my challenge: my blog and my C2 Proficiency writing answers. I had arrogantly thought the latter were going to be easy-peasy because of my blogging history. However, there is a crucial difference between these two types of writing. When I write for my blog, I write what I want. When I prepared for the proficiency test, I had to write what the exam creators wanted me to. Switching between these two was excruciating.

Takeaway: Don’t delude yourself. Practice the exact skill you need, not a similar one.

4 Time passes anyway.

When we think of embarking on a challenge or taking up an activity, we are often intimidated by the amount of time it is going to take. We tend to think, “N days/ months/years? Oh no, it’s too long.” But the thing is this time will pass anyway, with or without the activity. It passes more productively with the activity. My 100 days before the New Year would definitely have been less productive in terms of writing without the challenge.

Takeaway: Just do it.

5 Partial success is success.

I did complete the challenge. But at one point, when I was on the verge of giving up, I had a bit of an epiphany about partial success. Even if I had given up after around 70 days, I would still have written so much more than I would have without the challenge. Partial success is also success. It sure as hell beats laziness and procrastination.

Takeaway: It’s OK not to succeed 100% on your first try. Value partial success. Learn from the reasons you gave up and modify your next try.

6 Routines rule.

Routines play a vital role in our lives, which can be both helpful and harmful.

Writing became an integral part of my routine fairly quickly. I incorporated it into my day easily, so the challenge wasn’t a burden. However, I found it harder to write when my routine got broken (e.g. when I was travelling). I noticed that when I was home, I tended to write in the evening, after I'd done everything I had to. When I was travelling, on the other hand, I found myself writing in the morning so that I could get this commitment over with before starting the day.

Takeaway: If you are off your routine, establish a temporary routine. Try to figure out when you will be least distracted and do your activity then.

7 Variety is the spice of life - and of writing!

There are several types of writing in my life - blogging, IELTS, C2 Proficiency, creative writing. On some days I found myself sick and tired of writing the same thing, however much I loved the subject matter. So, it really helped to have the variety of genres at hand. Had I chosen to write blog posts only, I might have given up in midstream.

Takeaway: Writing the same thing day in, day out can be hard.  To keep going, add variety that will be in line with your main activity.

We have now completed several 100-day writing challenges. Maybe writing is all about such big words as "talent" or "inspiration." Or maybe, just maybe, it's about simply sitting down and writing for as little as 20 minutes.   


Image credit: Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash