Snarling Grouch’s Morning Writing Routine

Got an email the other week from a reader named Roos who wants to email his list more but finds it a struggle.

Roos mused:

Dan Kennedy says fatigue makes cowards of us all. I have trouble writing emails in the later time of the day. Especially the ones that should both entertain and sell. I should bulk write these in the morning.

Roos is thinking along the right track here, especially when it comes to writing earlier in the day.

There’s no way around it—writing is HARD WORK.

And while writing itself gets easier and more natural the longer I do it, the act of STARTING always seems like an uphill battle.

That’s why I force myself to do it first thing every day, even though I’m not what you’d call a “morning person.”

In fact, most days I’m a snarling, cranky mess when I wake up. It takes me about 90 minutes plus a hot shower and a cup of coffee before the gears start cranking.

Once they do, writing is the first thing on my list.

I’ll admit I’m not 100% consistent on this.

Some days I’ll let myself get away with answering a few emails, and maybe tinkering with one of my landing pages or some setup in Google Analytics…

When I do that my day is always a disaster.

Almost immediately I feel stress starting to build up in my chest because I know I’m procrastinating.

Before I know it the morning is half over and I’m just getting down to write… My mood is shot, and the rest of the day is nowhere near as productive as it could be.

Now as far as Roos’s idea of batching his emails, here’s my experience:

I gave this a shot about 6-7 months ago.

I’d block off part of the day every Monday and write all my emails for the week.

Let me tell you, it felt GREAT to not have to think about them for the rest of the week.

UNTIL…

Until inevitably Monday rolled around again.

And I realized that since I hadn’t had to think about my emails all week, I hadn’t thought about my emails all week.

I had no ideas, I had no groove, and writing those 5 emails felt like ripping out my fingernails one at a time with the pliers in my Leatherman.

After 2-3 weeks of that I couldn’t take it anymore, and went back to doing an email per day.

That’s just my experience—your mileage may vary.

But I’m guessing you’ll find that the benefits of daily practice outweigh the “efficiency” of batching up your writing.

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