Developing A Writing Process: Standardize before you Optimise
Especially when changing my writing process, I'm learning to be more patient.
“Standardise, then optimise.“
I stumbled across this statement in a YouTube video, as I dutifully trundled down another rabbit hole on a search for something else.
This little gem was buried in a deluge of other words and insights.
The subject of the video in question, it’s author or even the original search are all lost to time and my internet history purge, but this little sentence, these three words, burrowed into my brain.
Standardise, then optimise.
You see, I have a recurring problem. Not quite a nightmare, but certainly frustrating.
Whenever I make a change, whenever I try something new or experiment, I'm often stuck looking ten steps ahead. Trying to gauge the consequences. And endlessly recalibrating my actions. Often before I start, often before I take the first step.
That's can be great for strategy, but it's really really crap for implementation. You might know it by another name, “analysis paralysis.”
My wife doesn’t have this problem.
And it’s why if we ever started a business together, we might do really well.
If we could just decide who was leading or driving. 😉
Because I think ten steps ahead, I'm thinking of the future, I'm trying to see around corners and be innovative and iterate. And that's great, but when it comes down to getting things done, checking things off the to-do list, that's where my wife excels.
Because she looks at what needs to be done now. What's the very next step?
How can we get all of this done?
And I’m Captain Distraction, “Ooh but if we change this and that then it would go like 3% faster and be 23% less annoying and only cost us a month.”
Just use a pencil, not a space pen
Don’t waste time on an expensive solution when a simple one exists.
There was an apocryphal TV advert years ago, about how the American space program spent years and millions producing the space pen. A technological wonder that did not rely on gravity for ink to flow down the channel around the ball point and onto the page.
The Russians supposedly just used a pencil.
While they’re not to popular these days (at least their leadership shouldn’t be) that sort of practical mindedness makes a lot of sense for soloprenuers. And it’s why this phrase stuck out for me, as I worked on my writing process. Too much change is not the point.
Because at the end of the day my writing process is about writing.
If you standardize, you choose good enough for now, and focus on doing it every day, so that you build up the all-important habit. You standardize it. You make it the standard, the new normal, so that it'll stick.
That’s half the battle won.
But if you keep changing it, it never normalizes and it’s always an effort, a battle of your will against old habits. And you start to change things without knowing why. You can end up exhausted, having spun your wheels endlessly for what seems at the end of it, like “nothing.” Because it’s the writing the matters.
Once you've locked in a change, made it normal, then you can make it better.
And it's a really, really good point. Because in the Tech world, my day job, it's a big danger if you start optimising too early. If you haven't finished development or if you haven't rounded out the features yet, but you start optimising.
Because there’s a massive temptation to perfect.
To edit something into oblivion.
To rework the entire concept or world.
Endlessly looking for ways to kind of cut down the code base, to make things more efficient, to make things more performant, you can shoot yourself in the foot by optimising too early. Before you know what is actually working.
By getting hung up on perfection.
Before you’ve nailed “done.”
And this is a trap that I've fallen into myself.
Throwing too much stuff at the wall, without being patient enough to see what actually sticks.
I really enjoy process design, it’s the part of my job that I like the most, helping remove friction and make this bit easier so that bit gets done faster. And designing your writing process is not a problem, in itself, it’s just we need to remember to stop faffing and get back to the writing.
Because we writers’ love to do things other than writing.
That’s why I’m not changing anything on the Reader Experience format for the next quarter. And I’ll only make changes quarterly. Less wheel spinning and more learning first. I’m sticking to a weekly rhythm, posting an update, a prompt or a How To. Using the same core structure and format in every post.
Standardising until being consistent is easy.
That’s it. Just something to think about.
Until next time, keep writing.
Zane
PS - This post was a little delayed due to a sad life event, my little fur buddy took a sudden turn for the worse on Friday and we had to put him down to avoid unnecessary suffering. He gave us 17 years of joy and little adventures, at times my nemesis, and at others a quiet sentinel waiting for us to come home.
His amazing resilience, from being rescued from Rissik Street, to sailing way past nine lives, will always be a source of roguish pride. And his quiet presence around the house will be missed. Little footsteps walking elsewhere.