Why Daily Writing Leads to Productivity

I began developing my daily writing habit in December 2006 – over ten years ago! Since then, I have written almost every weekday, except for vacations, of course. And, I have written a ton. I also have published a lot.

In 2006, when I began to write daily, I had two published articles and a dissertation. Today, I have published five sole-authored books, over 50 articles and book chapters, and dozens of blog posts, online essays, and OpEds.

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how to write every day.

This post is about why daily writing works.

I have writing on my calendar every morning. I write for two hours a day most days, and I get in a minimum of 30 minutes of writing on days when my schedule is packed with teaching and/or meetings. I thus write for a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of two hours every weekday.

At the beginning of the week, I decide what writing tasks I will work on, and which days I will focus on which tasks. Sometimes, I have no pressing deadlines. This means I have to think ahead to figure out which writing tasks I should focus on.

For example, I have an article due November 15. But, my co-author is working on it. I need to wait to hear back from her before I can work on it again. I also have been working on a grant proposal due in January. But, I don’t want to work on it now because I sent a draft to two readers. I am waiting to hear back from them before I get back to revising it. This means I don’t have anything to work on right now that has a deadline in the next couple of months.

I thus am writing today only because it is a habit – not because I have an upcoming deadline.

On Sunday evening, I pulled out my task list for the year to see what I can work on.

I have three pieces due at the end of February 2019. For two of them, I have to wait for co-authors to do their part before I can move forward. But, there is one of them that I can work on. I thus am likely to finish that piece way ahead of schedule. And, that is great because I have two other pieces also due in late February.

I think this is one of the main reasons daily writing leads to high productivity. If you set aside time to write, you will write regardless of whether or not you have an impending deadline. And, if you wait until you have a deadline to write, you might find that your deadlines are stacked together, making it difficult for you to meet them.

My preference is to write daily, but the most important thing is that writing becomes a habit. If you set aside two days a week to write and write on those days no matter what, I suspect you would find the same thing – that you write because it’s on your schedule, not because you have a deadline.

What about you? Have you developed a writing habit? Have you ever found yourself writing even though you don’t have an impending deadline?

How to Restart Your Writing Practice: A Few Ground Rules

Are you looking for a reset after a long year of teaching? Are you struggling to get back into your writing for the summer?

Many academics are mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted at the end of the academic year. So, the first step is to intentionally take some days off. At a minimum, take the weekend off. And, make sure you have some summer vacation planned, as you will need a real break. I plan a two-week vacation with absolutely no work every year. This year, after my writing retreat, I will spend that vacation in Peru! I hope you are also planning a vacation for yourself this summer.


Once you are ready to get back to work, one strategy that might work for you is to set some ground rules for yourself to get back into your writing practice. I set ground rules for myself and adjust them according to the season. I find they are helpful to keep me on track with my writing.

Here are some examples of ground rules for getting your writing done:

1. No social media before noon on writing days.
2. Don’t check email until writing is complete.
3. Complete two hours of writing before doing any other work or household tasks.
4. Take the weekend completely off.
5. Get some exercise 3 days a week.
6. Spend at least one afternoon a week enjoying nature.
7. Read fiction at least 30 minutes a day.

You may notice that only one of these sample ground rules is actually about writing. The first two are about what not to do before you write and the last four are about self-care. That is because, in order to ensure you write every day, you also need to take steps to avoid distraction as well as take time to refresh. And, summer is a great time to get back into fiction reading. (I am currently reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - what's on your list?)

What do you think would be good ground rules for you? What do you need to do to keep up your writing practice this summer?

If you want to be a super-nerd about this, you can do what I do, which is to create an Excel spreadsheet with your ground rules and give yourself a gold star for each week that you meet all of them.

Also, keep in mind that it is perfectly fine - even recommended - to change your pace of work during the summer. I talk a bit more about "summer hours" in this post.

I wish you a productive and relaxing summer – at least for those of you in parts of the world where it is summertime!

A Year in the Life of a Tenured Professor: 2016 in review

Academics, like many people, often focus on what is right in front of us. However, much of our work takes years to complete. My book that came out last year, for example, began with a proposal I wrote in 2008! Insofar as many of us are perpetually behind and barely meeting deadlines, it can feel as though we are unproductive, even when we are getting things done.

For these reasons, at the end of each calendar year, I like to reflect on what I have accomplished during the year. And, occasionally, I publish these reflections on this blog, as I did in 2012.

In 2016, my biggest accomplishment for the year is an edited volume, which will come out from Oxford University Press next Fall. That project is unusual as most of the work was completed during the calendar year of 2016. Another thing I can say I did this year is I drafted three (similar) 5-page grant proposals to request seed funding for my new project on incarceration. I also drafted and got under review two co-authored articles and three book chapters. At least half of what I did this year, then, is still under review. On the other hand, I have several articles that came out this year that required little to no effort in 2016.

This reality makes it difficult to get a handle on what I actually accomplished this calendar year. I thus find it useful to break down my accomplishments by category of effort expended in 2016. This spectrum ranges from projects I began in 2016 to articles that appeared in 2016 with no effort on my part at all.

Here is a list of works I started in 2016 and their current stages.

Works I started and finished in 2016 (for the most part)

1. Edited volume for OUP – in production.
2. Short article with C RnRed
3. Article w Z and B under review
4. Three small grants for mass incarceration project drafted and under review
5. Short article in Spanish written and published
6. Book chapter on DR w YC written and accepted
7. Book chapter on racism and deportation drafted and submitted
8. OUP Race textbook second edition first complete round of revisions
9. 7 online essays published

There are also two pieces that were accepted in 2016. These pieces involved significant revisions of works started in a previous year.

Works accepted in 2016 (that involved substantial revisions this year)

1. ERS article w Z accepted
2. Obama book chapter finished and accepted
3. Book chapter for my edited volume revised and accepted

Then, there are three articles I learned were accepted in 2016, but for which most (but not all) of the work was done in previous years.

Works accepted in 2016 (where most of the work was done in a prior year

1. 2016. “Parallels Between Mass Incarceration and Mass Deportation: An Intersectional Analysis” Journal of World-Systems Research 22.2: 484-509 Download here.
2. 2016. “Feeling Like a Citizen, Living as a Denizen: Deportees’ Sense of Belonging” American Behavioral Scientist doi: 10.1177/0002764216664943 Download here.
3. 2016. ““Negative Credentials,” “Foreign-Earned” Capital, and Call Centers: Guatemalan Deportees’ Precarious Reintegration” Citizenship Studies Download here.

Additionally, there are pieces that required no effort in 2016, but that came out this past year. (I can't even remember when I wrote #4 - maybe three years ago?)

Works published in 2016 where all the work was done in prior years.

1. 2016. “A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2: 2. Read online here
2. 2016. “Racialized and Gendered Mass Deportation and the Crisis of Capitalism” Symposium on Race and Ethnicity in the Capitalist World-System Journal of World-Systems Research. Read online here
3. 2016. “National Insecurities: The Apprehension of Criminal and Fugitive Aliens” The Immigrant Other: Lived Experiences in a Transnational World Edited by: Rich Furman, Greg Lamphear, and Douglas Epps. Columbia University Press.
4. 2016. “Peru” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, First Edition. Edited by y John Stone, Rutledge M. Dennis, Polly S. Rizova, Anthony D. Smith, and Xiaoshuo Hou.
5. 2016. Review of Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy: Denaturalizing U.S. Racisms Past and Present by Moon-Kie Jung in Political Science Quarterly.

Finally, there are several works that involved research, reading, and writing, yet are not publications.

Work that is not publications but involved research and writing

1. 9 interviews for new project completed
2. 4 external P&T reviews
3. 28 article, book, and grant reviews
4. 2 grant panel reviews
5. Read and took notes on 12 books on mass incarceration
6. 3 Get a Life, PhD campus workshops
7. 1 keynote in Spanish
8. 4 invited public lectures on Deported
9. 4 conference presentations
10. 18 letters of recommendations

2016 was a relatively light teaching year for me yet teaching relief was replaced with a heavy service burden as I launched our Faculty Equity Advisor Program. I did not teach in the Spring of 2016 and I taught two classes in the Fall of 2016. Throughout the year, I maintained a writing schedule of one to two hours a day. I rarely wrote for less than one hour and hardly ever wrote for more than two, even when I wasn't teaching.

I always marvel and how much you can accomplish when you focus for an hour or two each day on writing. After taking account of what I have done, I can say that 2016 was a success and I can take my well-deserved end of the year two-week vacation! See you in 2017!

How to be a prolific academic writer

I often hear academics worry they are not putting enough time into writing. But, how much is enough? For me, two hours of writing every weekday is more than enough time to be extremely productive.

For the past ten years, I have written for two hours a day, five days a week, and taken at least four weeks of vacation every year. With that schedule, I have written more than many scholars will write in their entire careers.

Writers writing for two hours a day at the Creative Connections Retreat

I am telling you this not to brag, but to make the case that two hours of writing can be more than enough. Of course, this does not mean that I write for two hours and then sit around and eat cherries for the rest of the day. In contrast, I write for two hours, and then spend the remainder of the workday responding to the 50+ emails I get on a daily basis, attending meetings, reading, preparing class, teaching, and doing many of the other tasks required of academics. Each day, I carve at least two hours out of my day to write. (In case you are wondering what I mean by "write," here is a list of ten ways to write every day.)

These two hours a day have been more than enough for me. I began daily writing nearly ten years ago, in January of 2007. Ever since I began, I have endeavored to write for about two hours each day. I rarely write for less than one hour and almost never write for more than three hours, even during summer or when I am on research leave. With this consistency, I have written a lot over the past ten years.

What have I done in 10 years?

I have written, revised, and published 12 peer-reviewed journal articles.
I have four articles that were published between 2005 and 2008. I would not count those as part of this tally, as two of them were accepted prior to I began daily writing. The other two had been written, but required some revising. We can definitely count the other 12 articles I have published since 2009 as I began writing those from scratch after 2007.

I have written, revised, and published 15 book chapters and invited articles.
As for my book chapters, I will not count the four book chapters I published in 2008 or earlier, as those had already been at least partially drafted by the time I began daily writing. I have written and published 15 book chapters and invited articles since 2007.

I have written, revised, and published 4 books.
I have published five books. My first book, Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru, is based on my dissertation, which I defended in 2005. I had already begun the revisions by 2007 but certainly spent a lot of time between 2007 and 2010 revising and re-revising it until I finally sent off the final version in February 2010. I wrote my other four books from scratch since 2007.

I have written and published lots and lots of blog posts and online essays.
I have also published 74 OpEds and online essays in addition to about 150 blog posts.

So, what can you accomplish by writing for two hours a day, five days a week? In my case, it looks like in ten years, you can write four books, 15 book chapters and essays, and 12 articles. A normal tenure review is about half that time – five years. And, half of what I have accomplished in these past ten years would exceed the bar for tenure in most places. Finally, this is a conservative estimate as I am not counting the three articles and two book chapters I have under review nor the edited volume that is nearing completion.

A lot has happened in these ten years. I moved to Chicago for a one-year post-doctoral fellowship. I spent a year traveling to four countries to do research for my book, Deported. I moved to Merced to start a position at UC-Merced. Each of these moves derailed my writing patterns temporarily. But, the important thing is that I have always eventually been able to get back on track and find my writing mojo.

In sum, carving 30 minutes, an hour, or two hours out of your schedule every day for writing is a great way to achieve tremendous productivity. Instead of feeling as if you have to write all day every day, I encourage you to write a little bit every day and see what you can accomplish.

How to Develop a Daily Writing Habit

You have seen research that confirms that writing every day is the best way to become a productive academic. And, you want to be a productive academic, right? But, are you writing every day? Do you want to learn how to write every day? If so, this post is for you.

The basic trick to writing every day is to develop a writing habit. New habits take a long time to form. However, if you make yourself write every day, eventually it will become a habit. Once writing is a habit, it will become second nature to get up and write every day.

Developing this habit requires writing consistently. How do you do that?



During the Creative Connections Writing and Meditation Retreat, everyone writes for two and a half hours each morning together. Although the writing session starts early, everyone participates for several reasons. First of all, we are on a writing retreat, so everyone knows that writing is expected of them. Secondly, we write because everyone else is writing so that creates a bit of peer pressure. Thirdly, we write because we know we will have to share our work during the retreat, thus giving us an important deadline to meet.

You don’t have to be at a retreat, however, to incorporate these strategies into your life. Here are a few suggestions to get you on track to making writing a daily habit.

• Write at the same time every day. If you have your pick of times, choose the early morning. When you do something at the same time every day, you are more likely to form a habit. If you do it in the morning, you are less likely to let everything else you need to do get in the way.
• Treat your writing as you would any other appointment. Make an appointment with yourself every day to write. Show up to your appointment with yourself and decline any other invitations to do other things during that time.
• Incorporate some accountability. This can be to yourself, where you keep track of your writing on a spreadsheet. But, it is better if you are accountable to someone else, as a bit of peer pressure goes a long way.
• Write towards deadlines. If you don’t have any external deadlines, set deadlines for yourself. Aim to get your article finished by the end of the month. Or, set a deadline for a draft of each book chapter you are writing.
• Develop an expectation for yourself that you will write every day. If you want to become a writer, if you want to publish, if you want to finish your dissertation, you have to write. So, expect yourself to write.

I hope these strategies help you become a daily writer if you are not already. Let me know of any challenges you face to becoming a daily writer in the comments section. Also, let me know what strategies are working for you.

Summer Hours: Enjoy your summer and be productive too!

We all know that it is a myth that tenure-track and tenured faculty do not work at all during the summer. However, it does not have to be a myth that we work less in the summertime.

I know some of my colleagues take pride in bragging about how much they work during the summer – probably to push back against the myth that we don’t work at all. However, I neither brag about overwork nor do I actually work that much during the summer.

Summertime should look like this!

Scaling back on work hours is one of the great privileges of having a tenure-track or tenured position, or even a lecturer position that pays enough during the year to be able to avoid teaching during the summers. Of course, if you are in a position where you have to work as a lifeguard during the summer to make ends meet, this post won’t apply to you. However, there are many faculty members and even graduate students whose summers are taken up by research and writing. If that describes you, then this post will help you to think about how to have a productive summer by working only four hours a day.

My summers always involve a two-week vacation where I do no work at all and recharge my batteries. This year I will do that while camping in the Pacific Northwest. During the rest of the summer, I try my best to stick to summer hours – which, for me, means only working before lunch. I have stuck to that routine most summers for the past decade, and have been quite productive.

The summer begins for me, as it did last year, with a writing and meditation retreat in Yosemite.

Last summer, my husband spent six weeks in Peru, and I stayed in Merced for the first half of the summer with our three kids. During that time, I finished and submitted an article, wrote and submitted a book chapter, submitted a major grant, developed drafts of two articles, and finalized two syllabi for my fall courses. I did all of this working just in the mornings.

I met my goals by sitting down and working on my writing projects every weekday for about two hours. During this time, I turned off email and social media, and told my kids to leave me alone. Since it’s only for two hours, and often before they even wake up, they were happy to oblige. Once I finished with writing, I had to take care of emails and other work-related tasks. Before lunch, I closed my laptop and called it a day.

With this routine, the rest of the day is mine to enjoy and to take care of myself, my family, and my house. I go to the gym most days – a unique summertime luxury. I cook most of my meals at home. I clean the house. I watch television with my kids. I grocery shop and drop the kids off at their various activities. I read novels. I go swimming. I listen to podcasts. Basically, I do whatever I want to do in the afternoons – which I dedicate to rejuvenation and renewal.

If you dedicate your mornings to writing, and resolve not to work after lunch, this allows you to be productive in the morning, and to feel as if you are having a real break each afternoon. Spend your afternoons taking care of yourself and your family – taking your kids to the pool, hanging out with your friends on patios and in backyards, going to the gym, taking long bike rides, reading books, and checking out that yoga class. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere where there are summer festivals, take advantage of them.

If your children are too small to leave you alone for two hours in the morning, arrange some activity for them and use that time to write. You can sign them up for camp or drop them off with a nanny. I enjoy having the summers to spend more time with my kids – but that doesn’t mean I need to spend every single minute with them.

In addition to taking your afternoons off, plan to take at least two weeks of full-on vacation. Your mind and body need to recharge. Taking a vacation is the only way to feel as if you have had a break from the normal stresses of life and work. If you can’t make leaving town happen, you can have a staycation by spending your time reading novels, taking long walks, watching your favorite television shows, getting a haircut, or even making those long overdue visits to the doctor and the dentist.

It might sound crazy to you to take it easy during the summer, but the best way to be productive and sane during the year is to use the summer months to rejuvenate. There is a good reason why countries in the European Union all have a minimum of four weeks vacation for workers. Intellectual work is hard and we need to rejuvenate in order to be consistently productive.

If you also are fortunate enough to be free from teaching and administrative responsibilities during the summer months, you can dedicate these months to research and writing; spending time with loved ones; and rejuvenation. Each of these is equally important.

If none of this is possible for you because you are spending the summer teaching or doing paid administrative work, then it may be time to ask yourself if there is any way you can make ends meet next year without relying on the extra summer salary. Of course, this is not possible for many people, but it’s worth thinking about the balance between short-term financial gain and long-term physical, mental, and emotional health.

Summers are one of the best things about being an academic and I hope you find a way to enjoy yours.

Daily Writing: How Prolific Scholars Do It

I am most productive as a writer on days when I wake up before the crack of dawn and get an hour of writing in before everyone in the house is awake and and, most important, before checking email or social media. I know several highly productive academics – some of them chairs, deans, and provosts – who do the same thing. For people with administrative duties, that is often the only time they have to write.

You don’t have to wake up at 5 a.m. to be a prolific scholar. You do have to write however. And nearly all of the prolific academics I have met are daily writers. Daily writing is one of the most important strategies I can recommend to boost your productivity. Theresa MacPhail calls daily writing a “no-fail secret to writing a dissertation.” That advice is just as crucial for new (and older) faculty.

It’s also backed up by research.

A study by Robert Boice, reported in his book, Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing as well as in this article, provides concrete evidence that daily writing produces both more writing and more ideas. Boice conducted an experiment with 27 faculty members who wanted to improve their productivity. He divided them into three groups and examined their writing progress for 10 weeks.

Boice instructed Group No. 1 – the abstinent writers – not to schedule any writing sessions but to write only if they felt compelled to. He also asked them to keep a log of creative ideas to write about. The thought behind planned abstinence was that these writers would have a list of creative ideas ready when they finally did feel like writing. Result: The abstinent writers produced an average of 0.2 pages a day and had one creative idea a week.

Boice told Group No. 2 – the spontaneous writers – to schedule writing sessions five days a week for 10 weeks, but encouraged them to write in those sessions only when they were in the mood. They also were asked to use part of the scheduled writing time each day to come up with a new idea to write about. Result: The spontaneous writers produced an average of 0.9 pages a day and one creative idea a week.

Group No. 3 – the forced writers – agreed to a strict accountability plan. They scheduled five writing sessions a week for 10 weeks, and kept a log of creative ideas to write about. To ensure they would write every day, whether or not they felt like it, the members of this group each gave Boice a prepaid check for $25, made out to an organization they despised. If they failed to write in any of their planned sessions, Boice would mail the check. Result: The forced writers produced an average of 3.2 pages a day and one creative idea each day.

I first heard about this study in 2006 from Kerry Ann Rockquemore. When I saw the results, I was convinced I wanted to be in Group No. 3. I have been a daily writer ever since, and recently submitted my fifth book manuscript for publication.

If you are not a daily writer, but are producing as much writing as you think you should, then there is no reason to change your habits. However, if you are unhappy with your productivity and would like to write more, my experience as well as the research show that daily writing is very likely to work for you. Here’s how.

Pull out your calendar and schedule writing sessions five or six days a week. Writing experts Patricia Goodson and Wendy Belcher both recommend that you start with 15 minutes a day if you have never tried daily writing before, or if you are overwhelmed with other tasks. Patricia Goodson recommends that you start with 15 minutes and increase your writing time by one minute each day until you reach your desired level.

If you are not sure what counts as daily writing, check out this list of 10 ways to write every day.

Nearly all writing experts agree that you should not schedule more than four hours for a writing session. My colleague Anthony Ocampo says that if you push yourself too far, you might get a “writing hangover.” If you have one day that you can dedicate to a long stretch of time for writing, you may want to schedule four hours for that day. On your busiest days, set aside at least 15 minutes – even if it means waking up 15 minutes earlier in the morning.


Once a writing session is on your calendar, treat it like any other appointment. By that I mean show up for it and schedule your other obligations around it. If you have scheduled a writing session from 10:30 to 11 a.m., and a student emails to ask if she can come by at 10:30, tell her you already have an appointment at that time and to come instead at 11 a.m. It might seem odd at first to be making appointments with yourself, but, over time, you will get used to it. In fact the busier you are, the more crucial it is it schedule your writing time and stick to it.

Once you start writing every day, it becomes a habit. I will admit there are days I don’t get my writing done, but I notice it when I don’t. I notice it so much that I make sure to write the next day.

My preference is to write every morning from Monday to Friday for at least an hour, but usually for two. What about you? Are you already a daily writer? How long have you been at it, and has it made a difference in your productivity?

Re-posted from: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/836-the-trick-to-being-a-prolific-scholar

On Writing: Sometimes Less Is More

I have published my first piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education's new site: Vitae. You can read it here and I have pasted the first few paragraphs below.

I recently organized a writing retreat in Yosemite National Park. When the participants learned that we would only be writing for two and a half hours each day, many were surprised. “Isn’t this a writing retreat?” they asked. “I am a slow writer, can I skip the afternoon activities so that I can get in more writing?”

I understood their frustration and surprise. It is normal to expect that the more hours you spend on a task, the more productive you will be. However, writing is different. I liken it to hauling stones: When you haul stones, you deplete your physical energy. When you write, you deplete your intellectual energy. Because each of us only has a limited amount of intellectual energy, it is not the case that the more hours you spend writing, the more productive you will be.



Your intellectual energy can be a bit delicate. If you run it to its bitter end each day, you will find that you have less and less. Have you ever spent an entire day working on a project only to find that the next day you are unable to move forward? Have you ever pushed yourself to the limit to meet a deadline and found yourself unable to be productive for the next week or longer? When that happens, it is because you have pushed your intellectual energy to the limit. You have hit a wall and need time to recover.

By limiting the amount of time you spend writing, you are protecting your intellectual energy and ensuring that it gets renewed daily. For that reason, I suggest that you can be most effective by spending one to four hours on your writing each day.

Of course, if you prefer, you can continue to overwork yourself and hit walls. However, wouldn’t it be better to figure out how much intellectual energy you can expend on a daily basis and stick to that? Wouldn’t it be better to wake up each day fresh and ready to move forward?

Then when you do sit down to write, you can completely focus on your work. And I mean completely. Turn off your phone, and step away from email, the Web, and social media. For most people, the best time to write is first thing in the morning--before checking email or Facebook. Try writing for at least an hour before looking at your email or social-media accounts.

Use a timer as you write to see how much time you are actually writing, as opposed to looking for distractions. Turn the timer off each time you are distracted by anything not directly related to your writing. (If you are not sure if you are actually writing or not, please see this list of 10 ways you can write every day.)

When you write first thing in the morning, and then stop writing for the rest of the day, your mind will continue to process thoughts related to your project. Take advantage of that. One of the best ways is to go for a walk alone and without any electronic devices. Use the time to process your thoughts. Think back on what you have written for the day and about what you will do the next day. You may be surprised about the revelations you have about your writing when you are not writing. You may even wish to take a notepad with you on these strolls.

Read the rest here.

And, if you are interested in that writing retreat I mention above, please see this website as there are still a few spots open for the next retreat - which will be in Hawaii.

How to Get in the Writing Zone

I write every weekday, and I think that this is the key to my writing productivity.

People sometimes ask me how I can get in the writing zone every single day. After having written every day for the past several years, writing has become a habit. I no longer need to get in the zone, as writing is habitual for me.

However, it is also true that there are a few strategies that I practice that enhance my clarity and make it easier to get in the writing zone. In this blog post, I will share a few of these strategies with you. I also will challenge you to try these strategies for two weeks to see if you are able to develop a writing habit.



Are you struggling with writing consistently? If so, try and implement these strategies, adjusted for the particularities of your schedule:

• Make a writing plan for the week. Decide exactly what writing projects you will work on this week. For example: Finalize article and submit to journal. Finish literature review for Chapter Three.
• Break your writing plan down by days, and make specific tasks for tomorrow. For example: Monday: Refine methodology section and add sample details from proposal. Tuesday: Add references on neoliberalism to literature review.
• At 8pm tonight, turn off all electronic devices: cellular phone, laptop, tablet, television, etc.
• Find a novel and read it in bed.
• Sleep by 9pm.
• Wake up at 5am or 6am.
• Write for 30 minutes when you first wake up, before checking email or social media accounts.

I know that not everyone has the life circumstances that would permit them to implement this schedule. So, it is not for everybody. However, I will say that having children or a family does not necessarily prevent you from having a similar schedule.

At some point, your children will be old enough to put themselves to bed and to take care of their immediate needs in the mornings. In my house, everyone turns off their electronic devices at 8pm and reads or goes to sleep. My children are old enough to do this on their own. When they were younger, I would read to them, and thus had much less time to read novels that I found interesting.

In these strategies, you will find that I suggest getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep. Nearly everyone needs this amount of sleep in order to function at their highest mental capacity and to have the ability to focus.

I also suggest reading novels, as any writer should read to perfect our craft.

If you think these strategies are feasible for you, I encourage you to try to implement them for two weeks to see if daily writing - and writing before checking your email - can become habits for you.

Let me know how it works for you.