These 3 Habits Are Killing Your Motivation as a Writer
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People think being a profitable writer is about skills, networking, and hustle.

But it’s about patience, motivation, and a willingness to help people.

I started writing back in 2015.

After 12 months in the game, I earned $1000.

After 24 months, I had earned $25,000, and it was all because I kept my motivation to keep trying.

Without motivation, you give up before all the benefits kick in, and never make a penny.

It starts by falling victim to the same three bad habits all new writers face. Break them now or suffer the consequences.

There’s always someone making more in less time.

I’ve been at this building online businesses thing for nine years now. At times, it feels like everyone is building a more profitable business in smaller time frames.

My fellow name twin, Kieran Drew, for instance, has a $50k-a-month business after 4 years, whereas before I sold my business, I had a $20k-a-month business after 5 years.

But there is always someone earning more, working less, looking prettier, who’s more fit, has more followers, and is probably packing more in the underwear department than I am too.

Look away.

It doesn’t matter that Alex Hormozi made $100M by the time he was 30.

You can build a profitable writing business that suits you and your lifestyle. And it doesn’t make you a bad person not to be happy for them.

They’re strangers on the internet! Who cares? They might be lying anyway. Just look away.

Hourly earnings checks

When I started seeing affiliate commissions come through on my first successful writing business, I would wake up 4 or 5 times a night to refresh transactions.

One in ten refreshes would show a sale.

But I was hooked like a junkie. I kept going back for more, wanting that boost I felt when a new sale went through.

Then, when I’d wake up the next day to start work, I’d have all the energy of a sloth who’s finished a marathon. And did I do any useful work? Fuck no. I was too exhausted.

Looking at earnings doesn’t change them.

Once per day is plenty. Once a week is better. Once a month is enough.

Don’t get caught in the trap of looking at earnings and wishing they’d change. Spend all your energy on creating those earnings and as little as possible on tracking them.

Notifications are the mind-killer

Take Medium.com for example.

Coming on to Medium to check notifications and see what’s working and what isn’t is fine.

The bad habits come when you start checking notifications constantly.

Every hour at work you wish you were writing you spend refreshing Medium to see if you’ve had any more engagement. You sit watching Netflix at night and refreshing notifications because it feels good.

But what happens is you begin to tire.

You feel like you’ve been working on your writing constantly for days at a time when you haven’t written anything.

Looking at stats and notifcations is not creating. It’s a weird proxy that feels good but keeps you from doing the important work.

And this starts to compound.

You spend all day checking stats, and when it comes to writing at night, you’re mentally exhausted because you’ve been thinking about it all day.

Plus, the notifications don’t come fast enough for how often you check, and so you start to feel sad.

“Aww man, I didn’t get any new notifications for the last three checks. I thought I was building momentum. This sucks.”

This happened to me for months. I’d be checking in hourly and start getting depressed every time views hadn’t gone up.

So I started wondering what the point of even trying was. Had I stepped back, I’d have seen that, actually, everything was going up. The only problem was me.

Get notification off your phone and check once per day max.

Focus on You

Don’t fake productivity by checking stats, notifications, and earnings. And look away when someone else is flaunting their success in front of you.

Focus on the important work in front of you. The work of writing, connecting, and building a business. The rest is just noise.

Much love from my screen to yours,

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