A "Shortcut" to Build Success Habits Into Your Writer's Life
By Mindy McHorse

Have you ever jumped the main path in favor of a well-worn shortcut?

Like when you're walking in the woods and the designated trail takes the long way around a boulder … But closer to you is a shorter, dirt path that cuts directly through the undergrowth and gets you past the boulder faster …

Which path would you take?

Personally, I'm a huge fan of shortcuts. Whether it's landing on Gumdrop Pass in Candyland or throwing together a one-pot meal, anything that gets the job done faster and easier is a victory. (Particularly in a world where to-do lists are forever lengthening!)

So today, I want to share an unusual way to build robust shortcuts into your writing business. It all starts in your head, with your neural pathways …

Neural pathways are like tiny roads in your brain. They're made up of neurons (information messengers) that are connected by dendrites (like tiny roads that connect messaging systems). These pathways develop based on your habits and behaviors.

The more you perform any action, the more dendrites you'll develop that connect those neurons, effectively carving out a deeper and hardier pathway.

Now think back to that shortcut in the woods …

The best shortcuts are the ones that have been traveled so often, they're well-worn, smoothed out, and easy to travel.

Deep neural pathways in your brain are like any well-worn shortcut. The roads get smoother and more defined as those neurons communicate more frequently. And the more that road is traveled, the faster those messages can transmit.

So when you learn something new and then practice it over and over, you're creating and then reinforcing a new neural pathway.

Riding a bike is a great example of this. Or knitting. Or speaking a new language.

With enough repetition, these learned behaviors can become automatic.

And that is the sweet spot when it comes to getting paid to write for a living.

Anytime you can automate a behavior that leads to faster and more effective learning and writing, you're setting yourself up to increase both your output and your skill. That's usually followed by an increase in income.

The next question is about how you can do it effectively … painlessly … and fast!

This involves "stacking" any new behavior you want to adopt on top of a current behavior you already have.

Habit stacking is surprisingly effective because it makes a new behavior loads easier to implement than if you were simply trying to add it independently into your life.

But why?

It goes back to those neural pathways, those well-worn trails through your brain. If you already have something you do daily, like having a cup of coffee every morning, then that path is already there. It's strong and established.

But let's say you want to drink more water throughout the day …

You could just try to remember your goal and tank up on random glasses of water when the thought occurs to you.

Or, you could stack that new, desired habit of drinking water onto your preexisting habit of drinking coffee. For example, every day when you take that last sip of coffee, you get up to fill the same mug with water and drink it down.

You'll make this a habit faster and with less mental effort because it's getting stacked on top of your existing coffee-drinking habit. Meaning, you don't need to carve a whole new road in your brain … you're really just extending the one that's already there.

It's less effort with a bigger, faster reward because you're relying on the brain power you already have.

Cool, right?

At the beginning of this year, I decided I wanted to walk two miles every day. But making it a priority was tricky in the first few weeks.

Everything changed when I stacked two new habits within my morning routine. To start, I always put on workout clothes when I get up in the morning. Brush teeth, wash face, pull on leggings.

The win here is that it saves mental effort. Instead of trying to decide when I'll fit the workout in, it's a given that it has to be first thing because I'm already wearing the clothes.

Then, because I take my kids to school or sports practice every morning, I built a habit of leaving for my walk as soon as I return home. I don't even need to go inside my house; I just take off on the walk as soon as I'm out of the car.

Thanks to this habit of putting miles under my belt before I even sit down at my desk, I start my writing day clear-headed, have more energy throughout the day, and no longer battle the nagging thought that I should take a break and exercise.

It also works because lazy me loves the idea of capitalizing on those existing neural pathways instead of going to the effort of making new ones.

This habit also gets reinforced with the win of reviewing any progress made. (I've walked over 110 miles since the first day of January — and that feels great!)

I've had similar wins in my writing business using the same approach to new writing and productivity techniques. But instead of habit stacking, I'm skill stacking.

Skill stacking works the same way. Just as habit stacking creates strong new habits because it builds off of existing neural networks, skill stacking is a way to easily learn new skills by building from existing ones.

For example, long ago I built the habit of writing 1,000 words as soon as I sat down at my desk, followed by checking email. (The two habits here were writing every day before letting other items cloud my focus.)

After that habit was firmly in place, I worked to write my 1,000 words in a 30-minute time block, followed by allowing only 15 minutes for email. (This built speed in my writing and productivity in email.)

With those time blocks established, I was able to build in the habit of spending the next hour going back to edit and strengthen anything I'd written the day before. (This led to better writing with boosted SEO and stronger calls-to-action.)

Granted, I don't follow this process every day … and it changes as my project load shifts. But building on my already-strong habit-driven neural networks, I've used this technique to sharpen my skills and productivity as a writer, but with comparatively little thought or effort.

Try it and see — stack a new habit onto any existing habit you have, and see where you can start stacking new skills as well. It's the simplest route I know to making regular big wins.