Brainhack

33 Don't Finish

“When you are going good, stop writing.”

Ernest Hemingway

When it comes to writing or creating anything, people always talk about the fear of the blank sheet of paper.

But it's not really a fear of paper, unless you've got Papyrophobia and then it is.

It's the fear of a blank mind.

But there's an easy way to hack your way out of having a blank mind. When you sit down to work on a project, don't finish.

Say, for example, you're writing a long work document, the natural inclination would be to stop where you find a natural ending: at the end of a thought or, at the very least, the end of a paragraph.

You're dotting the i's and crossing the t's and leaving it neat and tidy for tomorrow. But the trouble is, putting your project to bed like this also puts your mind to sleep and that's the last thing you want.

The project might only be half way through, but to your mind it's done and dusted. The next day when you come back to it, you really are starting afresh.

“When you sit down to work on a project, don't finish.”

You need to re-engage your mind in the project and this can be hard. You can't really grasp that thought that seemed so clear the night before. And then because it's not coming easily, you start to feel blocked and negative emotions start arising about your own ability. You get distracted by emails and then when you come back to it later, getting into it again seems an even more daunting task.

Writer's Hack

Well, Ernest Hemingway had an answer to ...