You Can Have a Totally Different Life a Year from Now

Everyone procrastinates. But the past year has been more productive for me than the ten years leading up to it.

What changed?

With conscious effort, I brought my words and actions into alignment.

Instead of saying, “I want to be a writer.”

I wrote.

Identifying with the word “writer” is the first step to creating a writing habit that sticks. When we identify with a value we see in ourselves — or we want to see in ourselves — it gives our habits a more significant impact.

"Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits." — James Clear

Before, when someone asked what I did for a living, I’d answer, “I’m trying to be a writer.”

When I got serious, I answered, “I’m a writer.”

Before, I found excuses.

When I got serious, I wrote every day without fail.

Before, I was busy, not productive. Busy with distractions, Twitter notifications, Facebook, emails, app subscriptions, texts, consuming large amounts of content on TV, and streaming services.

If you want to be a professional writer and make an income (even if you’ve never made a cent from writing), having a goal and stating what the goal is, is necessary. But what drives success is setting up a system to support the goal — the habit of writing.

Step One — Call yourself a writer.

Step Two — Set the goal and then say no to everything else. Next, concentrate not on the goal but on the system.

Step Three — Come up with a system.

As simple as it sounds, I changed my mindset. I decided not to spend much time thinking about the goal. Yes, I had a goal in mind — one goal. My one goal was to make an income from writing, and then I shelved the goal and concentrated on the effort of writing, and in the process, a system emerged.

Actionable steps to becoming a writer who gets paid

Concentrate on the system to create a writing habit

Your system is how often you write, where you write, what time of day you write, how often you submit to publications, whether you take a class to get better at writing, when you edit and how you break down an article to make it clear and concise for your readers

Those are systems and what drives your life toward what you want. For success, focus more on the system and not the goal.

My system started as bare-bones as it can get.

It emerged when in a writing course with a very successful writer, he gave some straightforward advice,

“The best writing advice I’ve ever gotten was to sit in the chair and write. You may not move. You may not get up out of the chair. You can’t look at your phone or anything on your computer but a black page on which to write every day. You can sit there and write or do nothing.”

You’d be surprised just how much writing you can accomplish if the only other option is staring into space.

As you grow as a content creator, you refine the system.

When I started, I got very clear on what I would spend my time doing from 8:00 am until noon. I was going to write, edit, and post one blog post a day for three months.

That is it. That was the system.

You become a better writer by actually doing the work of writing. If you wait to be perfect before publishing your work, it will die a lonely death on your hard drive. See perfectionism for what it is — procrastination.

My initial goal: No matter what, one blog post must go out at the end of the day for three months.

No one knew who I was anyway; if my writing wasn’t very good, it was the perfect time to put my not-so-great work into the void — no one was reading. 7K plus followers later… my audience keeps growing, my writing keeps improving, as my income keeps increasing.

When no one knows who you are yet, take advantage of this time to become a better writer.

Five months in, I was earning over $500 a month. By one year, I was earning over 2K a month. Now, I’m making close to 5K a month and growing as a writer.

Make the system stick

Showing up daily — even for an hour — creates the habit. Write and publish every day for three months. If some emergency involving my friends or family came up during the day, I stayed up until midnight to get that one post out. Other areas of my life received less attention, just until I formed the habit.

After you accomplish three months, increase your goal to three more months and so on. As you strengthen your writing muscle, less energy will be required to write one post.

Setting goals vs. habits

We all know the feeling of setting goals and not making any progress. We don’t make progress because we haven’t designed the system to support thehabit.

It isn’t about what happens during writing; it’s about showing up to write each day — forming the habit. It’s about identifying with the word “writer,” so you become the type of person who doesn’t miss the writing session. What is crucial is that you show up when you don’t feel like it.

If you have a system in place, it is more likely that you’ll follow through on the task.

Use habit tracking

Mark off each day you show up and write on a calendar. Many writers find habit tracking reinforces the goal. Get a calendar and write a red X through each day you write. Don’t miss an X or “don’t break the chain,” as Jerry Seinfeld coined it.

Even if only for an hour each day, write.

Let go of the notion that you’ll write a masterpiece each time you sit down to write. You won’t. The point is to develop the habit of showing up and sitting down to write. “Don’t break the chain” is a powerful tool to use if you need a visual of your progress.

As James Clear says, “The mere act of tracking a behavior can spark the urge to change it.”

Incentives like tracking a habit or sometimes bribing yourself — I bribe myself to write; I tell myself that after three hours of writing, I can look at my stock portfolio and plan which stocks to buy next (this brings me great joy) — reinforces the habit.

Add a constraint

When you add a contraint and a reward at the end of the constraint, you increase your focus and intentions for completing a task. A constraint is, “I can only write for one hour, from 11:00 to noon,” but you have to write and do nothing else for that hour.

When you practice writing under a constraint, you reach the flow state easier and get “in the zone” more quickly, which increases your output with focused presence to the act of getting words onto the page.

You know the time constraint has an end, so you’ll use that time doing what moves the needle toward your goal of being a professional writer — writing.

Success as an incentive

Another incentive is the success you’ll see when you’ve established a habit that sticks.

The more I write, getting the habit to stick, the more I earn. The more I earn, the more successful I feel, the more the habit pays off, reinforcing it. As James Clear wrote, “Incentives build a habit, identity sustains the habit.”

My system now as a writer

I focus on one essential task — writing — first thing in the morning. I don’t go through email, look at social media, or text anyone back until I get my writing time in.

I write from 8 to 11 am.

I wear noise-canceling headphones. Good writing requires deep work.Deep work results from uninterrupted thinking for several hours. Deep work is achieved when you only focus on one task at a time.Interruptions, like notifications, emails, texts, and people interrupting, interferes with deep work. You’ll get more accomplished if you focus on one thing for a few hours than if you focus on one thing for ten hours while being interrupted. Explain to your family that writing requires deep work.

Write at the same desk every day.

My iPhone sits in the other room on a charging station or turned off.

I don’t get up out of my chair for at least an hour and sometimes three except to stretch.

When I’m not writing, I’m reading or listening to podcasts for content ideas to hack and put my own spin on.

When an acquaintance at a party or strangers ask what I do for a living, I respond, “I’m a writer.”

When you write each day, you embody the identity of a writer.

Invest in your future self

When you write, you are making plans for your future writer-self and identity.

I have seen this in action over the last year. By comparing my before-writing-habit-self to my after-establishing-a-habit-writer-self, the worlds couldn’t be farther apart.

Before, I was busy getting nothing got done.

After writing for a year, my writer-self has emerged and persisted.

Real growth doesn’t come from measuring ourselves against others but from measuring our own progress. Compare yourself now to yourself a year ago.

What progress have you made?

Think of what you want your life to be like one year from now. Set your goals, and then focus most of your time on coming up with a system to support them. Envision what you want your best life.

A year ago, for me, it was, “I want to be a writer who is paid.” When I decided to write and publish every day no matter what, I was making plans for my future self.

A year ago, I wasn’t paid. After implementing the system, a year later, I’m a paid writer.

It starts with a goal, but it happens with a system that supports action.When you envision what you want your life to be like one year from now, it is easier to see the value in taking action that produces long-term benefits.

Tell yourself you are a writer and then write. You will be saying YES to the future you.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.