Stop squeezing writing into the gaps of your day
#8: A simpler way to find focus, protect your time, and actually enjoy writing again.
It was later than it should have been, and it was my fault.
Yesterday, I lost track of time while working on my Substack post. I scrapped the first version and came up with my own little framework for writing Substack articles.
I wanted more consistency—but also to improve my writing, and to feel in control of the process instead of staring at a blank page each day.
The whole thing took much longer than usual, and for a moment time ceased to exist—I was so in the zone.
I was giving it a last polish—reading it aloud for the rhythm, just before hitting publish—when Alex came in. He had his favourite dinosaur mascot and the book we read before sleep, and he started pulling me towards the bedroom. It was past his bedtime.
The last thing I did before sleeping was set the alarm earlier than usual—an hour’s advance, to gather my thoughts, prepare mentally, and do some worry-free writing in the morning.
Then it hit me
Early in the morning today—it’s day #8, and the article you’re reading now—I started writing in my notebook and it hit me. I can’t just live my life as normal and then squeeze writing into every free moment—every window where I’m less busy or have nothing specific to do.
I have to reorganise each day around my priorities and make writing a locked-in part of it. Yesterday, Substack almost won priority over my son. That made me feel bad, to be honest—it was a red flag for me.
And here’s the hardest part of starting anything new in adult life. Whatever you want to begin for yourself, you have to wedge it into a life that’s already full.
If you’re around my age—early 40s, verge of midlife—you know exactly what I’m talking about, especially if you live in a big city like me and you have kids.
Most days are a conveyor belt moving you through the day on autopilot, while you juggle several things at once.
From the outside everything looks fine—you work hard, the bills get paid. And yet the curiosity and energy you once had, to build, learn, start something new, get harder to reach.
And right in the middle of all that, I decided to challenge myself and add daily Substack writing.
But writing a post takes effort, clear thinking, time—and the right mood. It can’t be done right there and then, whenever a gap appears. Writing requires that you consciously direct your attention only to the writing itself—and the more relaxed you are, the more enjoyable the process and the better the result.
Otherwise, everything becomes rushed. Your attention is dragged in so many directions that you feel everywhere and nowhere at once.
That was the chaos I felt sitting down to almost every post these past seven days. At the back of my mind, always chasing myself—I have to do this now, because soon I’ll have to go and do something else.
Most of my posts were rushed like that. You can compare the feeling to the last ten minutes of a hard maths test at school—the harder you try to reach the answer, the harder it gets to think straight.
That shakiness, the pressure, the chaotic thoughts—almost every 40-something Londoner knows it. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi gave it a name: psychic entropy.1
So what is psychic entropy?
Psychic entropy is a disorder in consciousness—attention scattered across too many inputs at once. In simple terms, it’s what happens when your mind is being pulled in so many directions that it can’t settle on one thing long enough to think clearly or work deeply.
When attention scatters, something shifts. You start choosing what’s manageable over what matters—postponing ideas, lowering the bar, and eventually stopping the writing altogether.
That feeling is the opposite of flow2—one clear task, full absorption, and little awareness of time passing.
But here’s what most people miss: writing isn’t just the act of putting words on the page. It’s the conditions that make writing possible—gathering your thoughts, getting into the right mood, and creating enough inner quiet for the work to begin.
Flow doesn’t come from hunting for a clever idea and then rushing into the doing. It comes from a settled mind, clear constraints, and enough attention left to stay with the task.
So you cannot magically slip into the state of flow. It can only be reached, not summoned. Your mind has to arrive before the writing can—and that happens in two stages.
First you need space to think and reflect, which is exactly what a chaotic day with no breaks steals from you: you never slow down enough to think, and when you do sit down to write you’re not fully focused on the task at hand.
When you sit down at the desk, you should be relaxed and ease into the process slowly, rather than rush against a clock like I did at first. Flow tends to show up once you’re already moving, not at the blank page. So if you’re new to this and it never seems to come, you’re not short on talent or skills. You’re just not fully present with your writing.
How to build the conditions
So if you want to write regularly—and this applies to me as much as anyone—start by observing yourself. Not your writing but your day. Look at it from the outside, the way another person watching you would, and take notes.
The goal isn’t to find spare time. It’s to find the right time—the moments when you’re not drained, not rushed, not pulled in various directions. You’re not just finding time to write. You’re building the conditions so your mind can actually be on the writing when you sit down.
Here’s where to start:
1. Watch yourself for a few days and take notes. When do you wake? When do you go to bed? Where in the day are you busiest, most stressed, most scattered? Write it down. You can’t carve space until you can see the shape of your day.
2. Optimise for energy, not time. A free hour when you’re exhausted is worthless for writing. Find the windows where you’re rested and in a decent mood—those are the ones that count.
3. Cross out, rearrange, carve. Look at your week and consciously lock in your writing time. Protect it. These are the moments that are only yours—treat them that way.
4. Give your mind room before writing anything. A walk with nothing in your ears. Time in the park. A bit of movement. The breaks I never gave myself those seven days. You can’t write with a clear head if the head’s been in chaos all day—space to think is what makes space to write.
5. At the desk, keep it simple and ease in. One task. Phone out of reach. And don’t cold-start—reread the last paragraph or rough out a sentence to warm up, rather than staring down a blank page against the clock.
6. Stop while you still know your next move. Don’t write yourself dry. End the session while the next sentence is still clear in your head and you’re happy with the progress—even a bit proud. Tomorrow you’ll sit down and walk straight back in—no cold blank page waiting, and that good feeling you left with should come back.
7. Don’t outsource the thinking to AI. Do that and you skip the thought-gathering stage, the mood, the quiet, and ask the machine to produce what only a settled mind can. I believe AI can be a great writing coach and a partner that helps you become a better writer—if you use it like a writer would, not like a machine for mass-producing content. You first have to become a good writer to train AI to help you shape your piece.
Here’s the key takeaway from today: you don’t find time to write—you build yourself into someone whose life is shaped around it. Otherwise you give up. It has to become part of who you are.
How today actually went
This morning I woke before the alarm even went off, and that one thing changed everything. I wasn’t rushed. I started slowly, fresh, with the whole day still ahead of me—and I already felt better before I’d written a single word. I was in a good position, and I knew it.
I wrote for a while, dropped Alex at school, then went for a walk. No earphones. No phone. Just me and the morning. And my mind kept doing the work on its own—surfacing thoughts, drifting back to the text, pushing it forward while my legs moved. By the time I got home it was still early, so I made a few more notes before work.
Now it’s evening, and I’m finishing this.
It was a good writing day. And the difference wasn’t more time. It was a settled mind, given room to think.
Take it easy and do your thing,
Jack
References:
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper & Row, 1990). “Psychic entropy” = disorder in consciousness, when competing information pulls attention away from one’s intentions.
Csíkszentmihályi, Flow (1990). Flow = full absorption in a challenging-but-doable task, with clear goals and loss of awareness of time.