8 ms·

What Is the Morning Writing Effect? (2011)

111 points by luu 6y ago

lorthemar 6y ago
Interesting paper, it's really weird that even night owls are writing in the morning. I write try to write fiction and the best time to do is after an afternoon nap. You get the sleep-creativity juice going. I'm normally a night-owl, I finish my other writing and works at night but when I write for myself it's in the late afternoon.
- jasonv 6y ago
  I'm definitely a "do something early in the morning" type -- whether it's working out or writing. I'd rather wake up early, do some writing, and then go for a workout afterwards. And to your point -- I'm one of those people who can't nap. Napping messes me up. I can feel my hormones sloshing and bending me around. To each their own, of course.
telesilla 6y ago
Absolutely! In summer I get up as early as I can handle, usually 5am in the height of it. The gentleness of the morning always holds such great expectations - no one is waiting for a response to emails or calls. Traffic is quiet, or birds or neighbours.. And you have the promise of the entire day to get something done, so something usually does.. As for the article, it does try its best to uncover reasons, which ultimately seems to conclude 'because'. Maybe it's just because it's very taxing, to write or be creative, and the body is best suited in short bursts earlier in the day. Skip to Additional anecdotes of writers’ preferred time if you want the good stuff.
MaximumYComb 6y ago
This rings true with my experience. I typically wake up at 3.30-4am to get stuff done before the day starts. When I went back to university I was finding two major issues with doing work at night. 1, I was tired at night from a days work. 2, Intense mental activity at night kept me awake longer than I'd like. After discussions with a friend I figured out I could just relax after work (which reduces stress) and wake up early to get my work done. It was the single best discovery I made in regards to improving my overall productivity.
rrreese 6y ago
I'm left astonished at the amount of work that went into this article! Not simply its length (which is padded with large amounts of quotes) but the number of sections. I had assumed there would be an enormous comments section at the end, instead section after section after section. Oh look a randomized study he ran. Oh an enormous table of anecdotes. Incredible.
- mckirk 6y ago
  That's gwern for you... it's unbelievable how much effort he puts into the things he's researching. Check out his 'nootropics' article for example.
- fredoliveira 6y ago
  Gwern is known for that, actually. There's some very in depth (and very good, also) articles on that site. Explore! :-)
d3ckard 6y ago
This rings very true. I'm a night owl and in the beginning of my career I worked in mostly 13-21 bracket, with strong preference for hours after 17 when office got quiet. It was great, but at some point it started to impact my life very negatively(days just pass and you do not do much beside work). Early mornings are the next best thing. You get quiet, you can easily focus, you're rested and when the day really starts you have something done already, which significantly reduces stress for me. Definitely recommend to everybody.
- JacobAldridge 6y ago
  I’m a night owl, struggling with the adjustment to fatherhood and expectations to be present at home right at the time my motor normally fires up. I’ve always felt 3-5am was the most beautiful time of the day; though I’m used to seeing it on my way to bed, and pushing myself to wake up early enough to make it worthwhile hasn’t paid dividends yet. Thanks for sharing your experience - it gives me confidence I can switch.
  - matthewaveryusa 6y ago
    Ah yes, fatherhood will change a night owl. I've made the adjustment for the same reasons, went from sleeping 4am-10am to 930pm-4am (extra half hour sleep!) and while the first two weeks are rough, it's been smooth sailing since. You can do it. The 4am-6am is just as magical as the 2am-4am was for me. I'll skip breakfast until after 6am so I can jump right in it. That being said, I still plan on going back to being a night owl when the kids are grown.
    - gmtx725 6y ago
      Jeez I wish I could survive on 6 hours sleep. I need at least 8 to feel fully refreshed. I can survive on 7 for a day or two but after that it catches up with me in a bad way. Any less than 7 and I feel like absolute death.
kieckerjan 6y ago
In my experience writing (at least writing fiction) consists of two different activities: the writing proper, in which you produce text, and the editing, in which you mostly get rid of text. Think of the editing phase as liberating the statue from the marble, and the writing phase as producing the marble. These activities, since they are so different in nature, are best separated in time and space and tooling. I produce in the early morning, sitting at my dining table in the living room, using a pen and paper. In the early morning your dreams still linger and your critical faculties are not yet fully awake. This makes it an ideal time for just producing stuff. I take this seriously in that I do not even allow myself to cross out words. Just keep on writing, and sort it out later. Later on the day I edit, sitting in my study and using a text processor. As a side note, I would not recommend this practice for writing code.
- dexen 6y ago
  Thank you for the visual write-up. You've named and described something that wasn't even aware of - how I came to develop my best functionalities. Initial work in a half-dreamy state, and clean up later on. Probably more of a holistic, rather than analytical, approach to design. The secret might have been, all along, wake up late, arrive at work shortly after without doing much in between[1], and start designing already while commuting. Notably I've been able to achieve a little bit of the same while half-falling asleep, with the added caveat that it requires jotting down good ideas for the next day. And they may be not quite discernible the next day. Bears repeating - not quite the best code, but certainly the best functionalities. -- [1] breakfast before work is a productivity killer
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Breakfast for me is the occasional weekend perk. A lazy luxury. I love it. But not for working days.
  - cainxinth 6y ago
    A quote often misattributed to Hemingway puts it even simpler: “Write drunk, edit sober.”
ajb 6y ago
Under the heading of "inspiration", the author A E van Vogt had a method involving waking himself up several times a night. His Wikipedia entry[1] describes it as "he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during his sleep period so he could write down his dreams", which sounds like an output process, but in an interview [2] it sounds like an input process: "When I was working on a story, I would waken myself every hour and a half, through the night--force myself to wake up, think of the story, try to solve it, and even as I was thinking about it I would fall back asleep. And in the morning, there would be a solution, for that particular story problem." However his output was notably different from other writers (by reports[1]) so it may not generalise. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt#Method_and_themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt#Method_and_them... [2] http://www.icshi.net/worlds/Plattprofile.htm http://www.icshi.net/worlds/Plattprofile.htm
xwdv 6y ago
I find this is also true for writing code. Sometimes I wake up at 4 AM and will easily code until 8 AM, and that will be 80% of my code for the day. I also found that this is the time when I write my least cynical comments, that pull in the most upvotes.
groby_b 6y ago
I am missing a rather likely cause in the article: The idea that writers lie about their morning writing because it makes them sound virtuous. (Which also explains why fiction writers prefer morning writing ;) Given that a large part of this article rests on self-reported data from interviews (which are specifically vehicles of self-promotion), and that the more anonymous data seems to contradict the interview data, I'd consider this as a more likely explanation than most.
- gwern 6y ago
  The problem with that is that it's just as easy to make evening writing sound cool and bohemian - look at the evening writer anecdotes like Hunter Thompson's (https://mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-daily-routine https://mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-dai...)! They're all like "after sleeping in to afternoon, I go to cocktail parties exchanging witty banter with New Yorker editors, and then at midnight I settle down in the darkness with my snifter of cognac and fine Cuban cigar and write immortal prose until dawn while the muggles snore away".
  - groby_b 6y ago
    You do, however, sound anything but virtuous doing that. Cool and bohemian, sure - but most people strive, ultimately, to be accepted as part of society, not live outside of it. And, tbf, I don't know if my theory is in any way applicable. But it's certainly more plausible than "the liminal space right after sleep" and other quite esoteric models. The article as-is is assuming humans without ulterior motives. That often doesn't hold in practice. (This is in general a problem with studies relying on self-reported data - how much is truth vs. wishful thinking) Ultimately, any decent writer understands that the purpose of an interview is to project an image, not to deliver truthful statements about mundane details. Thompson's image requires him to not be a lark. (It was likely shaped by the fact that he really isn't one, but it's a self-reinforcing cycle) So if you are interested in finding out more, I'd suggest that it pays to focus on writers where their stated behavior contradicts their public image.
    - 6y ago
ricksunny 6y ago
Everyone has their own circadian rhythm. I'm an owl and my writing flows most easily late at night.
occamschainsaw 6y ago
I just had this light bulb moment about separating the writing and editing processes a few weeks ago. I am grad student and writing is an essential part of my job. I am not as good as I would like to be, but writing first and editing later removed a lot of mental load for me. I experimented with a couple of systems in the past, but always got paralyzed by my inner critic commenting on every sentence. It was exhausting to even produce "one page worth" of writing a day. I thought that as I was editing while writing, it would be of great quality, but it was usually of pretty bad quality. Last week I just connected a bluetooth keyboard to my phone, opened up my favorite writing app[1], and started typing while staring out of a window. I was dishing out page after page of moderate quality writing. I would then wait a day or two and edit it. It was far easier to convert the moderate quality stuff by removing the fluff than to try producing great quality writing directly as I did before. Appendix: Previous systems 1) Try writing perfect prose on the first try: This is paralyzing. I would just sit staring at my computer screen for hours, thinking of the perfect introduction and perfect sentences. I have since realized that this is bad for my mental health and productivity. 2) Write on paper: I then tried writing on paper. Got more done than just staring at the screen. It is difficult for me to write for extended periods of time like this. My hands start aching, and my handwriting goes from bad to illegible. Typing everything out also adds unnecessary friction. 3) Hemingway mode: I was looking at markdown editors for Pop OS when I stumbled upon "Hemingway mode" on GhostWriter[2]. This disables your backspace key. Not being able to edit was frustrating for me at first, but I got used to this. I also implemented this on my MacBook by using BetterTouchTool to disable backspace in iA writer. The typewriter and focus modes on iA writer are helpful for a smoother writing experience. I wrote more using this system, but still spent a lot of time looking at the sentence I was writing and trying to make it better in my mind before I typed. 4) Typing blind, or "type the first draft without looking at it": I was trying to find a hardware solution to this problem. I almost convinced myself to buy a $500 typing machine with an eink display. That is overkill for me. I figured I could make my own by somehow displaying the text I was typing on a kindle. I found out about the kindleberry Pi[3] but that had too many moving parts. I tried using seashells[4] to output my terminal display from the mac on a website in kindle browser. That failed. While testing that, I realized I typed fine enough without looking at the screen! Spent that day experimenting with some keyboards and apps. I now use a small cheap bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone, or a nice mechanical keyboard connected to my iPad. I set up a GitHub repo for my markdown notes, syncing with my iCloud Drive iA writer folder through Working Copy. The repo is for redundant backup and to access the notes on my Pop OS desktop. I mostly write on my phone or iPad now, use my laptop to edit it later. I wake up, meditate and start typing while staring out of the window. I get about 1000 or so words out in about 30 minutes. This is better for ideation and stream of consciousness writing. For more technical stuff, I type blind to get ideas and general framework in place, and use Hemingway mode to type out the rest. Been very happy with this system so far. Writing is a joy again! [1] https://ia.net/writer https://ia.net/writer [2] https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ [3] http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html [4] https://seashells.io https://seashells.io, it seems down right now. Some info here https://github.com/anishathalye/seashells https://github.com/anishathalye/seashells
a_zaydak 6y ago
I have to write a lot of technical reports and I really dislike writing. Writing first thing in the morning is the only way I can be productive with it.
em-bee 6y ago
i am going through this right now. what i find so far is, that for the actual productivity, the time of day doesn't matter, but if i set myself a goal of achieving a certain amount of progress in my writing, then the later the day gets, the less likely i am to get it all done. so i want to start early simply so that i can relax later, or use any additional time available to write more.

111 points by luu 6y ago

Interesting paper, it's really weird that even night owls are writing in the morning. I write try to write fiction and the best time to do is after an afternoon nap. You get the sleep-creativity juice going. I'm normally a night-owl, I finish my other writing and works at night but when I write for myself it's in the late afternoon.

jasonv 6y ago
I'm definitely a "do something early in the morning" type -- whether it's working out or writing. I'd rather wake up early, do some writing, and then go for a workout afterwards. And to your point -- I'm one of those people who can't nap. Napping messes me up. I can feel my hormones sloshing and bending me around. To each their own, of course.

telesilla 6y ago

Absolutely! In summer I get up as early as I can handle, usually 5am in the height of it. The gentleness of the morning always holds such great expectations - no one is waiting for a response to emails or calls. Traffic is quiet, or birds or neighbours.. And you have the promise of the entire day to get something done, so something usually does.. As for the article, it does try its best to uncover reasons, which ultimately seems to conclude 'because'. Maybe it's just because it's very taxing, to write or be creative, and the body is best suited in short bursts earlier in the day. Skip to Additional anecdotes of writers’ preferred time if you want the good stuff.

MaximumYComb 6y ago

This rings true with my experience. I typically wake up at 3.30-4am to get stuff done before the day starts. When I went back to university I was finding two major issues with doing work at night. 1, I was tired at night from a days work. 2, Intense mental activity at night kept me awake longer than I'd like. After discussions with a friend I figured out I could just relax after work (which reduces stress) and wake up early to get my work done. It was the single best discovery I made in regards to improving my overall productivity.

rrreese 6y ago

I'm left astonished at the amount of work that went into this article! Not simply its length (which is padded with large amounts of quotes) but the number of sections. I had assumed there would be an enormous comments section at the end, instead section after section after section. Oh look a randomized study he ran. Oh an enormous table of anecdotes. Incredible.

mckirk 6y ago
That's gwern for you... it's unbelievable how much effort he puts into the things he's researching. Check out his 'nootropics' article for example.
fredoliveira 6y ago
Gwern is known for that, actually. There's some very in depth (and very good, also) articles on that site. Explore! :-)

d3ckard 6y ago

This rings very true. I'm a night owl and in the beginning of my career I worked in mostly 13-21 bracket, with strong preference for hours after 17 when office got quiet. It was great, but at some point it started to impact my life very negatively(days just pass and you do not do much beside work). Early mornings are the next best thing. You get quiet, you can easily focus, you're rested and when the day really starts you have something done already, which significantly reduces stress for me. Definitely recommend to everybody.

JacobAldridge 6y ago
I’m a night owl, struggling with the adjustment to fatherhood and expectations to be present at home right at the time my motor normally fires up. I’ve always felt 3-5am was the most beautiful time of the day; though I’m used to seeing it on my way to bed, and pushing myself to wake up early enough to make it worthwhile hasn’t paid dividends yet. Thanks for sharing your experience - it gives me confidence I can switch.
- matthewaveryusa 6y ago
  Ah yes, fatherhood will change a night owl. I've made the adjustment for the same reasons, went from sleeping 4am-10am to 930pm-4am (extra half hour sleep!) and while the first two weeks are rough, it's been smooth sailing since. You can do it. The 4am-6am is just as magical as the 2am-4am was for me. I'll skip breakfast until after 6am so I can jump right in it. That being said, I still plan on going back to being a night owl when the kids are grown.
  - gmtx725 6y ago
    Jeez I wish I could survive on 6 hours sleep. I need at least 8 to feel fully refreshed. I can survive on 7 for a day or two but after that it catches up with me in a bad way. Any less than 7 and I feel like absolute death.

kieckerjan 6y ago

In my experience writing (at least writing fiction) consists of two different activities: the writing proper, in which you produce text, and the editing, in which you mostly get rid of text. Think of the editing phase as liberating the statue from the marble, and the writing phase as producing the marble. These activities, since they are so different in nature, are best separated in time and space and tooling. I produce in the early morning, sitting at my dining table in the living room, using a pen and paper. In the early morning your dreams still linger and your critical faculties are not yet fully awake. This makes it an ideal time for just producing stuff. I take this seriously in that I do not even allow myself to cross out words. Just keep on writing, and sort it out later. Later on the day I edit, sitting in my study and using a text processor. As a side note, I would not recommend this practice for writing code.

dexen 6y ago
Thank you for the visual write-up. You've named and described something that wasn't even aware of - how I came to develop my best functionalities. Initial work in a half-dreamy state, and clean up later on. Probably more of a holistic, rather than analytical, approach to design. The secret might have been, all along, wake up late, arrive at work shortly after without doing much in between[1], and start designing already while commuting. Notably I've been able to achieve a little bit of the same while half-falling asleep, with the added caveat that it requires jotting down good ideas for the next day. And they may be not quite discernible the next day. Bears repeating - not quite the best code, but certainly the best functionalities. -- [1] breakfast before work is a productivity killer
- jacobush 6y ago
  Breakfast for me is the occasional weekend perk. A lazy luxury. I love it. But not for working days.
- cainxinth 6y ago
  A quote often misattributed to Hemingway puts it even simpler: “Write drunk, edit sober.”

ajb 6y ago

Under the heading of "inspiration", the author A E van Vogt had a method involving waking himself up several times a night. His Wikipedia entry[1] describes it as "he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during his sleep period so he could write down his dreams", which sounds like an output process, but in an interview [2] it sounds like an input process: "When I was working on a story, I would waken myself every hour and a half, through the night--force myself to wake up, think of the story, try to solve it, and even as I was thinking about it I would fall back asleep. And in the morning, there would be a solution, for that particular story problem." However his output was notably different from other writers (by reports[1]) so it may not generalise. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt#Method_and_themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt#Method_and_them... [2] http://www.icshi.net/worlds/Plattprofile.htm http://www.icshi.net/worlds/Plattprofile.htm

xwdv 6y ago

I find this is also true for writing code. Sometimes I wake up at 4 AM and will easily code until 8 AM, and that will be 80% of my code for the day. I also found that this is the time when I write my least cynical comments, that pull in the most upvotes.

groby_b 6y ago

I am missing a rather likely cause in the article: The idea that writers lie about their morning writing because it makes them sound virtuous. (Which also explains why fiction writers prefer morning writing ;) Given that a large part of this article rests on self-reported data from interviews (which are specifically vehicles of self-promotion), and that the more anonymous data seems to contradict the interview data, I'd consider this as a more likely explanation than most.

gwern 6y ago
The problem with that is that it's just as easy to make evening writing sound cool and bohemian - look at the evening writer anecdotes like Hunter Thompson's (https://mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-daily-routine https://mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-dai...)! They're all like "after sleeping in to afternoon, I go to cocktail parties exchanging witty banter with New Yorker editors, and then at midnight I settle down in the darkness with my snifter of cognac and fine Cuban cigar and write immortal prose until dawn while the muggles snore away".
- groby_b 6y ago
  You do, however, sound anything but virtuous doing that. Cool and bohemian, sure - but most people strive, ultimately, to be accepted as part of society, not live outside of it. And, tbf, I don't know if my theory is in any way applicable. But it's certainly more plausible than "the liminal space right after sleep" and other quite esoteric models. The article as-is is assuming humans without ulterior motives. That often doesn't hold in practice. (This is in general a problem with studies relying on self-reported data - how much is truth vs. wishful thinking) Ultimately, any decent writer understands that the purpose of an interview is to project an image, not to deliver truthful statements about mundane details. Thompson's image requires him to not be a lark. (It was likely shaped by the fact that he really isn't one, but it's a self-reinforcing cycle) So if you are interested in finding out more, I'd suggest that it pays to focus on writers where their stated behavior contradicts their public image.
  - 6y ago

ricksunny 6y ago

Everyone has their own circadian rhythm. I'm an owl and my writing flows most easily late at night.

occamschainsaw 6y ago

I just had this light bulb moment about separating the writing and editing processes a few weeks ago. I am grad student and writing is an essential part of my job. I am not as good as I would like to be, but writing first and editing later removed a lot of mental load for me. I experimented with a couple of systems in the past, but always got paralyzed by my inner critic commenting on every sentence. It was exhausting to even produce "one page worth" of writing a day. I thought that as I was editing while writing, it would be of great quality, but it was usually of pretty bad quality. Last week I just connected a bluetooth keyboard to my phone, opened up my favorite writing app[1], and started typing while staring out of a window. I was dishing out page after page of moderate quality writing. I would then wait a day or two and edit it. It was far easier to convert the moderate quality stuff by removing the fluff than to try producing great quality writing directly as I did before. Appendix: Previous systems 1) Try writing perfect prose on the first try: This is paralyzing. I would just sit staring at my computer screen for hours, thinking of the perfect introduction and perfect sentences. I have since realized that this is bad for my mental health and productivity. 2) Write on paper: I then tried writing on paper. Got more done than just staring at the screen. It is difficult for me to write for extended periods of time like this. My hands start aching, and my handwriting goes from bad to illegible. Typing everything out also adds unnecessary friction. 3) Hemingway mode: I was looking at markdown editors for Pop OS when I stumbled upon "Hemingway mode" on GhostWriter[2]. This disables your backspace key. Not being able to edit was frustrating for me at first, but I got used to this. I also implemented this on my MacBook by using BetterTouchTool to disable backspace in iA writer. The typewriter and focus modes on iA writer are helpful for a smoother writing experience. I wrote more using this system, but still spent a lot of time looking at the sentence I was writing and trying to make it better in my mind before I typed. 4) Typing blind, or "type the first draft without looking at it": I was trying to find a hardware solution to this problem. I almost convinced myself to buy a $500 typing machine with an eink display. That is overkill for me. I figured I could make my own by somehow displaying the text I was typing on a kindle. I found out about the kindleberry Pi[3] but that had too many moving parts. I tried using seashells[4] to output my terminal display from the mac on a website in kindle browser. That failed. While testing that, I realized I typed fine enough without looking at the screen! Spent that day experimenting with some keyboards and apps. I now use a small cheap bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone, or a nice mechanical keyboard connected to my iPad. I set up a GitHub repo for my markdown notes, syncing with my iCloud Drive iA writer folder through Working Copy. The repo is for redundant backup and to access the notes on my Pop OS desktop. I mostly write on my phone or iPad now, use my laptop to edit it later. I wake up, meditate and start typing while staring out of the window. I get about 1000 or so words out in about 30 minutes. This is better for ideation and stream of consciousness writing. For more technical stuff, I type blind to get ideas and general framework in place, and use Hemingway mode to type out the rest. Been very happy with this system so far. Writing is a joy again! [1] https://ia.net/writer https://ia.net/writer [2] https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ [3] http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html [4] https://seashells.io https://seashells.io, it seems down right now. Some info here https://github.com/anishathalye/seashells https://github.com/anishathalye/seashells

a_zaydak 6y ago

I have to write a lot of technical reports and I really dislike writing. Writing first thing in the morning is the only way I can be productive with it.

em-bee 6y ago

i am going through this right now. what i find so far is, that for the actual productivity, the time of day doesn't matter, but if i set myself a goal of achieving a certain amount of progress in my writing, then the later the day gets, the less likely i am to get it all done. so i want to start early simply so that i can relax later, or use any additional time available to write more.