Pep Talk: Atomic Habits for Substack Writers

5 keys to self-discipline

» Your weekly expert guide to Substack and writing—with leading Substack Strategist and Northwestern faculty member Sarah Fay

Atomic Habits for (Substack) writers

Atomic Habits for Substack Writers

I’ve given paid subscribers meaty guidance as of late—how to write your AI policy, how to write your hero post, and how to use images—so today we’re going to kick back and talk about how to have self-discipline on Substack.

Self-discipline (def.): “the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it.”

Below I take you through the five keys to self-discipline that draw on what’s worked for me, the latest research on behavioral change, and parts of James Clear’s blockbuster Atomic Habits:

1. Define success

2. Make writing easy

3. Be your own boss

4. Reverse visualize

5. Understand your beautiful, primitive human brain

The Five Keys of Self-discipline on Substack

1. Define Success

There’s no objective measure for success on Substack or as a writer. You can win all the awards and get on all the bestseller lists and still not have the kind of clearly defined status in other professions: president, CEO, etc.¹

Think of success in terms of what you achieved each day and in each writing session. Clear talks a lot about incremental behaviors leading to lifelong habits.

Define Success in Terms of Results:

• Decide what a successful writing session or month on Substack will be. This might be word or subscribers count, pages or likes, chapters or restacks or connections made—any measurable amount. Write it down.

2. Make Writing and Being on Substack Easy

The basic premise of Clear’s book is to make the habit of writing or being on Substack obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying, and the surest way to break one is to make it invisible, unattractive, hard, and unsatisfying.

With writing, there are four ways to do this:

1. Always write or be on Notes for a set amount of time. If you think you “can’t write today” or don’t feel like it, set a timer for ten minutes and just write for those ten minutes. You can do anything (that’s not life-threatening) for ten minutes.

2. When you set aside time to write or be on Substack, mark it on your calendar. Be sure to set specific results for each time block, e.g., finish drafting chapter 1, not write.

3. Someone once told me, “Do what you want to be first thing in the morning.” I used to run after waking up but didn’t want to be a professional runner. So I write first and then exercise and get some air.

4. Set up your environment the night before: desk cleared except for a pad of paper and pen, document to work on pulled up on the computer, all windows closed and distractions off, ready for the next day’s writing session.

Bonus: It should go without saying that all your notifications—and phone—should be off while writing.

3. Be the Boss of Yourself

Take the drama-filled air out of writing and being on Substack.

The best thing you can do is treat writing and Substack as a job. Just a job. Like being a carpenter or the CEO of Apple. (If you aren’t yet earning an income, think of it as an internship.) Show up. You don’t have to feel inspired or even interested. Do your job. And that includes being on Notes if you want to grow.

Be the CEO of the nascent startup called you. Writing and Substack are entrepreneurial in spirit. When no boss is looming at the office down the hall and you would much rather sit on the couch and pet the cats (for example) or comment on student work (many writers use teaching as an excuse not to write), you have to draw on your inner resources, i.e., self-discipline.

Without a boss, we also don’t have anyone to tell us when we’re doing a good job, so we look everywhere for reinforcement: bestseller status, comments, acceptances, awards, etc. So be a supportive boss to yourself. Bestow lavish praise on yourself. After every single writing session, say to yourself something along the lines of You’re awesome or You’re the best. It may feel goofy, but it’s like being an athlete. Watch Serena Williams on the tennis court. When she nails a shot, she acknowledges it.

4. Reverse Visualize

Everything I thought I knew about visualization is scientifically incorrect. We’re told to visualize what we want—picture ourselves at the desk, finishing the novel, getting the email, and being on the bestseller list.

But a recent study found that people who succeed in achieving their goals actually visualized the worst-case scenario of what would happen if they didn’t achieve their goal.

For instance, if the goal is to stop spending money and save a hundred dollars a week, then the way to achieve that isn’t to picture your savings account with a hundred-dollar balance but at zero and you being evicted because you can’t pay your rent.

It’s morbid, but it works.

5. Understand Your Beautiful, Primitive Human Brain

Writing doesn’t appeal to the primitive part of your brain, which is designed to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy—i.e., sit on the couch and watch Netflix instead. You aren’t going to want to write most of the time. That’s normal. That’s your brain doing its job.

But you’re not just your brain; you’re a writer on Substack and a human.

Until next week…

Your Substack Strategist and writing mentor,

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1. A dear friend who’s since passed away—a poet—had won every award (MacArthur Genius Grant, Pulitzer, etc.) and still felt like a failure because he hadn’t won the Nobel. If he’d won the Nobel, I’m sure he would have seen himself as a failure because his books had never graced the New York Times bestseller list, even though poetry collections are rarely granted that luxury.