Have you struggled to create a writing habit that supports your efforts to achieve a nonfiction publishing goal or dream? Or have you found it challenging to break unhelpful habits, like procrastination, that don’t support your efforts to get the writing results you desire?

Most habit-formation experts say it takes a minimum of 30 days to develop a new habit. However, others claim it takes as many as 200+ days to truly solidify a new behavior.

They’ve done the research. I’m not saying these experts are wrong, but…

Habit Formation can be Easy and Fast

I can tell you that forming a new writing habit—or any habit—doesn’t have to take that long. In fact, you can have a new writing habit in 24 hours or less.

Not only that, when you create a supportive habit, an unnsuportive habit disappears. This is because the new habit replaces the old one you previously struggled to break.

Who am I to make this claim?

First, I’m a transformational coach. I combine my High Performance Coaching certification with my knowledge of metaphysical tools to offer a unique brand of personal and spiritual growth coaching.

Second—and more importantly, I’m someone who has done it! I have created a new habit in less than 24 hours.

Third, I am a nonfiction writer and author. And I’ve created a writing habit in less than a day.

If I can do it, so can you.

Forming a Supportive Nonfiction Writing Habit Fast

For years, I had the unsupportive habit of hitting the snooze button when my alarm went off in the morning. It’s no wonder, therefore, that I couldn’t seem to develop the helpful habit I wanted—a morning routine that included time spent working on a book project. I never had time to do this before my “real” workday started because I was too busy wasting time lying in bed.

Then, one day, I decided I would no longer be a person who hit the snooze button. Instead, I would be a person who woke up when the alarm rang.

The following day, the alarm rang, and…you guessed it…I hit the snooze button. But then I thought: Oh, right! I said, starting today, I would be a person who has the habit of waking up when the alarm rings. If that’s who I am now, I better turn off that snooze button and get up.

So, I did…and I’ve never hit the snooze button again.

That’s how fast I formed a new supportive habit.

3 Steps to New Writing Habits

It’s time to finally create the habit or habits that will help you create the writing and publishing career you want, is it not? And it’s time to sustain those habits—rather than starting, stopping, starting, and stopping, right?

Of course, it is.

So, here’s my three-step Supportive Habit Creation Process. Give it a try.

Step 1: Identify a needle-moving habit.

To identify the habit that will “move the needle” and help you travel toward your goal or dream faster, first, determine what you want to accomplish. What do you want to create or achieve in the next three, six, or twelve months? What result would you like to get?

For example, maybe you want to sign a contract with a literary agent, finish your book manuscript, or publish an essay in a magazine. What supportive habit will help you accomplish that?

Second, get clear on why that goal, dream, or result is important to you. Why do you want an agent, desire to write a book, or feel it will be valuable to publish an essay? How will doing this change you or your life? Take some time to journal about or visualize what your life will be like in five years if you achieve the writing goal, realize the publishing dream, or get the result of being a successful writer…and if you don’t.

Third, identify a habit that will help you create what you want. What habit will move the needle the most? Why that habit? What makes it a needle mover? What does your life look like in three or six months if you have this habit? What if you don’t?

For instance, maybe the habit is writing every morning. Or it might be sending out query letters to agents weekly. Only you know the one habit that will move the needle most in the direction of the results you desire.

Step 2: Become a Person who has the Habit

This step is all about developing the habit you chose and doing it fast! How do you do that? Simple.

Be a person who would have that habit. Right now…be that person.

Let me explain.

First, consider who you know who has the habit you have chosen. Find role models, like successful authors or productive professional writers. How would you describe these people? What is their “identity”?

Second, choose a new identity for yourself. For example, to stop hitting the snooze button, I decided to “be a person who woke up when the alarm rang.” For my writing habit, I chose to “be a writer,” since writers write consistently.

You might find it helpful to describe your new identity or even give it a name.

The third part of this step is where the magic happens. When you take on that identity and become “a person who ____ (fill in the blank with your habit)”, you develop the habit. Be that person…and you will have the habits of someone with that identity.

Step into that identity 100 percent. Be that person right now.

Be someone who writes daily.

Be a successful author.

Be a productive writer.

Despite what you might think, you don’t have to wait until you have more time, earn more money, the kids are grown, or anything like that. So, give up your excuses, all of which are focused on external circumstances.

To develop your new helpful habit quickly—or even over time, you must change internally. Shift your identity. Become someone who has the needle-moving habit. Then, your writing and publishing results will change.

Be a person who takes the action you identified—who has the habitual behavior. That new habit will then lead to the nonfiction writing and publishing accomplishment, achievement, or result you desire.

Step 3: Maintain Your Habit

Habits are consistent rote behaviors that are hard to give up. That means that if you start habits and then stop them, they aren’t really habits.

Therefore, the key to this step is to develop actual habits—behaviors you do consistently no matter what—related to your writing and publishing goals.

To accomplish this, learn to quiet your “habit voice,” as my coach and mentor Jim Fortin calls it. This is the mental chatter that wants you to keep doing what you’ve always done. It is generated by what is known as the “reptilian brain,” which is the oldest part of the brain and controls the body’s vital functions. It’s the part of your brain where habits are developed.

Additionally, the reptilian brain does everything it can to keep you safe. Anything new—even a supportive habit—is seen as threatening your safety. Thus, it will talk up a red streak to try to get you to keep doing what you’ve been doing—even if that behavior doesn’t support your writing and publishing success.

The key here is to learn how to dismiss the habit voice. Yes, it wants to keep you safe, but you need to tell it to take a break from this job. Then put your attention on being the person who has the habit already. Once your brain realizes you are safe, it will quiet down and even support your efforts.

Second, you need to learn how to retain your habit. Yes, being a person who has that habit is enough. But many people fall prey to the habit voice or life happening (external circumstances). As a result, they drop the new identity.

How to Retain Your New Writing Habit

Here are a few ways to stop that from happening.

• Apply consistency and accountability to solidify your habit. You can do this with a habit-tracking app or a calendar on which you mark each day you perform the habit.
• Be self-integral. Having self-integrity means keeping your promises to yourself. You have integrity with others and keep your promises to them. Now do the same with yourself. Keep your word, and do what you say you are going to do, such as write daily, submit weekly, or query editors monthly.
• Align your habits with your values. To develop a habit and keep it going long-term, your new behavior must align with your values. If you take on the new behavior because you should, or someone wants you to, it won’t stick. You can’t develop a habit out of obligation. You can create it—and quickly—from what you want and feel is important. And this is even true of writing and publishing.

New Habits Lead to Greater Success

I know you have nonfiction writing and publishing goals and dreams you’d like to accomplish. Yet, that simply won’t happen if your habits don’t change.

You know the adage: Your current level of success is the result of your current habits. If you want a higher level of success, you need new habits.

If you’ve read this far, you know you need a new supportive habit or two. You also know you can create that habit (or habits)—quickly and relatively easily.