#26: Why writing is like sleeping
Not an obvious comparison, I'll admit. But, trust me, you're way better at knowing how to draw boundaries around your sleep (even if you don't always put that into practice) than you are at knowing how to draw boundaries around your writing. Do you schedule meetings in the middle of the night, knowing that you'll need to interrupt your sleep to attend them? Thought not. But I bet you're guilty of scheduling meetings during time that you'd planned to spend writing. You probably even blame yourself when you find it impossible to get back to writing afterwards. It needs to stop. Now.
Dr Rhonda Patrick's interview with Dr Matthew Walker on her Found My Fitness podcast is here.
Here are the books and articles mentioned in the episode:
Newport, C. 2016: Deep Work (London: Piatkus)
Schulte, B. 2019: 'A woman's greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself', The Guardian, 21st July.
Sword, H. 2017: Air & Light & Time & Space (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press)
Walker, M. 2018: Why We Sleep (London: Penguin)
Episode transcript:
You need to think about your writing the way you think about your sleep. Hear me out.
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Yesterday I was listening to a podcast interview with Matthew Walker, who is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s an expert on sleep, and he’s written a really fascinating book on this, called Why We Sleep, which I read earlier this year and which inspired me to make several quite big lifestyle changes to try and snap myself out of my perpetually exhausted state - I stopped drinking alcohol in March and I stopped drinking caffeine in the evenings, I paid more attention to lighting at home, I’m not quite as terrible as I used to be about going to bed at a reasonable hour.
In the interview I listened to yesterday, which was for Dr Rhonda Patrick’s Found My Fitness podcast, Walker talked about his idea for his next book. He thinks that there are 4 pillars of sleep, all of which are important for sleeping well. Neglecting any one of these will result in a reduced quality of sleep. The 4 pillars are depth, duration, continuity, and regularity. Depth is the quality of your sleep. Duration is, perhaps obviously, how long you spend asleep. Continuity is about staying asleep for the whole time - so it’s better to sleep for a full 8 hours without waking up than it is to sleep for 8 hours in total but interrupted by periods of wakefulness. And regularity is about going to bed and waking up at the same times each day. Skimp on any one of these, and you lose out. This is more obvious in the case of some of the pillars than others. We all know that duration is important - we learn early on that we feel better after sleeping for 8 hours than for 5. And we understand depth, too - we know that we feel more rested after a night of really deep sleep. The other two - continuity and regularity - are less intuitive. Of course it’s not a good thing, sleep-wise, to be woken several times during the night - but the idea that that’s because continuity itself is important, rather than because being woken frequently tends to diminish the depth and duration of our sleep, was certainly news to me, and perhaps it’s news to you too. And regularity - well, while we might understand that working shifts causes trouble for sleep, and that it’s hard to fall asleep at the right time when you travel to a different time zone, we all like to sleep late if we have the opportunity, and the idea that this might make us feel less rather than more rested might strike you as counterintuitive. Even so, even with our inexpert, lay understanding of what’s required for a decent night’s sleep, we’re pretty good at making judgments about what we should be doing, even if we don’t always do it. And we just don’t do things like put something in the oven right before we go to sleep, and think to ourselves, ‘it’s fine, I’ll just set an alarm to wake me up every 15 minutes so I can go check on it’. That would be a terrible idea, and a reliable formula for poor sleep. If we can possibly avoid it, too, we don’t commit to doing things that would require us to wake up 3 hours before our usual waking time. We know that these things are bad for our sleep, even if we haven’t explicitly reflected on exactly why.
This got me thinking about writing - specifically, about what the pillars of writing might be, and whether we understand what they are and use that understanding to take steps to support them. As a first stab at thinking about this, I think they might be pretty similar to Walker’s pillars of sleep. The first pillar, depth, applies not just to sleep, but also to writing - or at least to the sort of writing that involves working on a book or an article, rather than responding to an email or typing a tweet. Often this sort of writing is hard to do in snatched moments here and there - we need time and peace to immerse ourselves in a problem and think carefully about how to craft a solution to it, and how to express it all in writing. This sort of work is hard to do while your phone is ringing, or while your child is asking you what your fourth favourite dinosaur is. We need a period of time to sink into this work, and when we’re pulled out of it with a distraction - the arrival of a new email in our inbox, or someone wanting to talk to us for a minute - we can’t simply snap back into it after the distraction has passed. If the distractions are too many and too frequent, it can be impossible to sink into the work at all. You’re probably familiar with this frustrating experience. This is why academic libraries are quiet, and why you can install website-blocking software on your browser. Cal Newport wrote a book about this, called Deep Work, in which he argued that certain sorts of work simply can’t be done unless you’re free from distractions. Historically, unfortunately, men have been afforded more opportunities for deep work than women, typically by having wives who take care of the mundane, domestic aspects of life so that their husbands can work undisturbed. There was a great article about this gender inequality in alone-time by Bridgid Schulte in The Guardian a couple of years ago - I’ll put a link to it in the notes for this episode.
So, when it comes to writing, depth is important. We need time and peace to go deep. Walker’s second pillar of sleep - duration - is also relevant to writing. This is probably the most obvious point. You don’t need me to tell you that the longer you spend working on your writing, the more progress you’ll make. You already know this. Simple. Duration is no substitute for depth, of course. If you don’t have an opportunity to go deep, it doesn’t matter how long you spend on your writing - you’re not going to really get to grips with the issue if it’s something you need to think long and hard about.
How about the third pillar, continuity? I think this is relevant too, but that it’s more complicated in the case of writing than in the case of sleep. If you’re working on a long writing project, like PhD thesis or a monograph, but also like a journal article or an essay, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to work on it continuously from start to finish. I mean, we’ve all encountered people who’ve written a paper in a single sitting, but for us mere mortals, it’s more likely to be a process of weeks, months, or years. In the course of that, you’re going to need to do things like eat, sleep, take holidays, rest, feed kids, clean up after your cat, and so on. Even so, I want to say that continuity is important. The question is: continuity of what?
There are two ways we can approach that question. One starts by recognising that, as I explained in episodes #19 and #20, ‘Not writing is an essential part of writing’ and ‘Don’t just write it - ferment it!’, writing involves doing a lot of things that aren’t writing. Writing isn’t just about getting words down on the page. It also involves a lot of pottering and faffing and doing nothing in particular - all things that leave your mind free to wander and your creativity free to work its magic and make associations that you wouldn’t have made in more focused work. That means that, when you walk away from your laptop and head out for a walk, or take a nap, or do some knitting, or unload the dishwasher, you’re not necessarily interrupting the process of formulating ideas, making connections, and solving problems. You still have the right sort of continuity. On the other hand, if you walk away from your laptop and do the wrong sort of activity - arguing with people on social media, answering emails, attending meetings and committees that suck up your attention and divert it from your writing project - you lose that continuity. Of course, we all have to do those things (well, maybe not the bit about arguing with people on social media), so avoiding them completely is not an option. You’re more than just a writing machine, whether you like it or not. But with some understanding of the writing process - I mean the entire process, not just the bit above the waterline where you’re typing the words - you can get better at scheduling those things so that you minimise their effect on the writing process. Just as you wouldn’t agree to attend a committee meeting at 1 a.m. because you take your sleep seriously, you can avoid attending committee meetings during your writing time - which includes your pottering, faffing, and thinking time - because you take your writing seriously. And since we don’t always have the option to move the meeting, that often means rescheduling our writing time instead.
And let’s pause to reflect on the fact that the reason why you wouldn’t agree to attend a committee meeting at 1 a.m. is not simply because your sleep would be reduced by the amount of time that the meeting takes. It’s also because you’d find it hard to get back to sleep after the meeting finishes. If the meeting lasts an hour, you’re not going to be able to drop straight back into a deep sleep at 2 a.m. Your mind is going to be buzzing with whatever was discussed in the meeting. All that screen time is going to have made you more alert than is ideal at that time of night. You’re going to need to wind down. The amount of sleep that you lose far exceeds the duration of the meeting.
It’s the same with writing. Many of us make the mistake of thinking, ‘I’ll agree to join this committee, it’s not too demanding, it’s just two one-hour meetings each term.’ But it’s not just that. It’s not just a commitment of time. It’s also energy, focus, mental alertness - all things that you could pour into your writing. I’ve spoken to countless clients who have over-committed themselves by getting involved with various committees and projects, underestimating the effect it will have on their ability to write. You need to get real about what the process of writing is actually like, and what sorts of things interrupt it and make it more difficult. Often, we don’t see these things clearly because we’re too busy beating ourselves up: we come out of a meeting, a little dazed and exhausted, and then tell ourselves that we’re lazy and undisciplined for not jumping right back into our writing. We’re so busy feeling guilty that we fail to notice the causal connection: meetings (and various other things too) diminish our ability to write and we need a period of rest and recovery before we can get back to it.
So, back to that question: continuity of what? The second way we can approach it is by breaking down the activity of writing into its various parts. ‘Writing’ is an ambiguous term. We use it, often, as a shorthand for ‘all the activities that are required in order to complete a writing project’. That involves not just writing and thinking but also reading, making notes, presenting our work to other people, receiving feedback from others and using it to improve our writing, formatting references, discussing ideas with like-minded colleagues, trying to work out why Word has re-started the page numbers halfway through the draft, and so on. Some of these sub-tasks withstand interruption better than others. Reading and understanding a stodgy and challenging academic journal article is often something you need to do during a quiet few hours, without anyone bothering you. But discussing ideas with like-minded colleagues can often be done in a noisy coffee shop, and formatting references is a task that is unlikely to be undermined if you have to pause mid-way to clean cat vomit off the carpet. (Can you tell that I’m speaking from recent experience?)
It might seem a simple task to reflect on what the various sub-tasks involved in writing are, and to work out how important it is that any of them is done without interruption. And it can be, if you take the time to document it as you go. But most of us don’t. And when we don’t, we risk forgetting a lot of it. We look back on previous writing projects and remember those afternoons we spent in the library with a laptop, or those presentations we made, or who read our work - but we forget about the tasks that are harder to pin down: the important connection we made unexpectedly and spontaneously while assembling IKEA furniture, or the meetings with co-authors we scheduled on our phone while standing in line at the post office, or the proofs we corrected while boiling pasta. That means we end up underestimating how much work is involved in writing, how much it can pervade our daily lives, and how flexible some of the sub-tasks are with regard to when and where we do them and what else we can have going on too. The more you understand your own writing process, the better you’ll get at knowing what you need in order to do it. There’s a great book I recommend here, which takes a look at the diverse ways in which various academics approach writing, and draws some generalisations about what sorts of things might be useful to try implementing into your own writing process: Air & Light & Time & Space by Helen Sword.
And then there’s the final pillar of sleep: regularity. This, too, applies to writing. Writing is easier if it’s a habit. That might mean getting up 30 minutes earlier each morning to do a bit of writing. Or writing every time you sit at a particular table in a particular cafe. Or, as one of my clients does - committing to write two new sentences each day. Whatever you choose, keep the bar low. You’re much more likely to establish a writing habit - or any other sort of habit, come to that - if you focus on trying to do something that does not require a huge effort of will. When you’re deciding what your habit should involve doing each day, don’t start with the question, ‘In the ideal world, what would I do every day to make progress in my writing?’ Because you know the answer is going to be something like, ‘write 5000 words of perfect prose’, and then you’ll squeeze out 150 words on day 1, feel rubbish, and never try it again. Instead, start with the question, ‘What is the bare minimum I need to do each day in order to feel that I haven’t wasted my time?’ The answer to that might be something like, ‘write for 15 minutes’ or ‘write 50 words’ or ‘write 2 sentences’. Much more realistic, and much less ominous. If you want to do more, fine. But you’re not allowed to tell yourself that you should do more.
Now, as I’ve said, Matthew Walker tells us that you can’t short-change any of the four pillars of sleep and expect to feel refreshed the next day. The same goes with writing. It’s all important. Don’t short-change your writing. If you wouldn’t commit to some meeting or project that goes on in the middle of the night, then don’t commit to it if it goes on in the middle of your writing time either. If you wouldn’t drink an espresso right before bed because you know it will make it hard to sleep, then don’t do things right before trying to write if you know they’re going to make it hard to get going - that might mean not checking your emails or social media until after you’ve done your writing. If you wouldn’t skip a night of sleep without very good reason and even then only rarely, then don’t skip writing time without very good reason either.
The analogies between sleep and writing don’t end there. Insomnia is a thing. People find it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep - often because of anxiety about sleep itself. They don’t trust themselves to be able to sleep. Similarly, lots of us find it hard to get started with writing, and to keep going once we’ve started - often because we are anxious about whether we’re capable of writing, or writing well. I’ve spoken before on this podcast about my own struggles with writing anxiety. And just as suffering from insomnia doesn’t entail that you have some character flaw - that you’re lazy or undisciplined, or unworthy, or someone who shouldn’t even be trying to sleep in the first place - suffering from difficulties writing doesn’t entail that you have a character flaw either. It’s just the way it is. Take the guilt, the emotion, out of it and accept it. Then take it seriously and do something about it. You’d go to your GP if you were suffering from long-term insomnia (at least, I hope you would), and if you’re suffering from long-term writing anxiety, you can and should seek help too. Talk to friends and colleagues. See a coach. Join a writing group, online or in person. Get an accountability partner - that can be as simple as asking a friend to text you each evening to ask how your writing is going. Whatever you do, treat it as a problem that can be fixed. Happy writing, and sleep well.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d consider leaving a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You’ll find links there to The Academic Imperfectionist on Twitter and Facebook too. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via my website or by tweeting your idea with the hashtag #AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
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