<p>Due to a large number of distractions and obligations nowadays, it is increasingly hard to focus on creative writing.<br><i>Modern-day writers have the problem of procrastination and may be suffering from writer's block as well. <span>Our idea of a successful and productive writing session is three hours of uninterrupted writing in a quiet place. But this is not happening regularly for most writers.</span></i></p>


Writing in 2020

<p>Just find five minutes and start doing your work, with complete concentration. <span>Write for five minutes with seriousness and focus. </span><span>You would need to tell yourself that if you don't write for five minutes and wait for the ideal three hours of free time, along with coffee, you may never get any writing done.</span></p>
<p>It may be painful to come out of these creative five minutes and get back to regular work, so set your expectations right from the beginning: <strong>Five minutes is all you have got.</strong></p>


The Five Minute Writing Session

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<div><a href="https://writingcooperative.com/@deyabh93?source=post_page-----533f6fc70722----------------------"><img src="https://miro.medium.com/fit/c/96/96/1*Dvd2S_ZOz-b_Jb53IzUxQQ.jpeg"></a> </div>
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<figure>Photo by <a href="https://www.pexels.com/@black-ice-551383?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Black ice</a> from <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/alarm-clock-lying-on-multicolored-surface-1314544/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels">Pexels</a> </figure> <p>To write is to dive into a world of creation, one into which it's hard to go and from which it's painful to come out. The writer of today, surrounded by distractions and obligations, experiences this pain on a daily basis, and it's the sort of pain that never gets better.</p>
<p>You're tempted to tear your hair out, cast your eyes to heaven and scream out that eternal lament of every modern-day writer:</p>
<em>"How do I ever get any writing done???"</em> <p>Add to that an overwhelming tendency to procrastinate, and you seem to have a recipe for sure-shot disaster.</p>
<p>This apparent lack of time is - along with writer's block - the main reason I've been unable to get as much writing done as I would have liked. I've recently resumed full-time work, and it's a job where my performance in the first six months will determine my final salary - which means that I have every reason to be as diligent as possible now. I don't mind that - I really want a good salary - but it does mean that my writing takes a bad hit during the weekdays. Sure, I could technically wake up early to write or carve out time after dinner, but I am magnificently bad at waking up early and the only thing I want to do after coming home from work is to fall asleep after a YouTube binge.</p> 
</section><section><p>The answer is one I found after weeks and months of agonising over my lack of productivity and cursing the world that had turned me into a smartphone zombie.</p>
<strong>The five-minute writing session.</strong> </section><section><p>Now I know you may be tempted to yawn and stop reading at this point. Yes, yes, jot down ideas on the go, we all know that.</p>
<p>But I'm talking about writing. Not idea jotting.</p>
<strong>Actual writing.</strong> <strong>Writing with concentration, not absently and on-the-go.</strong> <p>I mean five minutes of conscious, focused writing, treated with as much seriousness as any three-hour writing session in a cafe.</p>
<p>Inclined to scoff? Hear me out.</p> 
</section><section><p>To every writer with a day job, think about your life at this point. It's probably a busy one, filled with work and other obligations, family commitments and household chores. You're likely keen on maintaining at least a decent level of good health, so a good night's sleep and meal prepping are essential (on paper, at least).</p>
<p>Under such circumstances, writing for hours on a weekday simply isn't feasible.</p>
<p>Forget hours - sometimes it's hard to chalk out even half an hour of uninterrupted writing time.</p>
<strong>So instead of relying on unbroken stretches of time, it could make sense to a lot of busy writers to use those five-minute intervals here and there to get their work done.</strong> <p>I know the first objection will be - "But it takes at least five minutes just to declutter my mind enough to write!" And yes, granted, it can take a helluva lot of time to knuckle down to business. Even getting into the writing zone (ah, that hallowed place) could take a while, depending on what you were doing before that. And as for tuning your mind out of the kaleidoscopic world of the Internet? I'd give a million dollars to anyone who can come up with a real solution to that.</p>
<p>So, how do you actually focus and make use of that five-minute break you have before it's over?</p>
<p>Simple - <strong>remind yourself that this is probably all you will get.</strong></p>
<p>And just telling yourself won't work either. You need to really, really convince yourself of the truth of this.</p>
<p>I'm a firm believer in the power of the mind. Once I'm truly convinced of the importance of something, no force on heaven or earth can stop me from achieving it. And I too used to believe that the only way I could get any real writing done was in a quiet place with unlimited coffee and no interruptions for at least three hours, but I quickly realised that such sessions would happen about once a month (if that), so I'd need a more feasible solution if I wanted to write regularly. And while I'm still working on chalking out a decent daily routine that involves waking up early *cough*, it makes a lot of sense to use those five minutes of empty time that pop up throughout the day and which I would otherwise have spent browsing shopping apps on my phone. The same applies to you. Chances are you have several five-minute breaks throughout your day that are used up on random phone scrolling. If you convince yourself - unshakeably - that you need to use those intervals on writing, because you won't get any more time to write - you'll end up getting quite a lot of work done.</p> 
</section><section><p>As for how one ends the five-minute writing session?</p>
<p>Sadly, it's not always in our control, and usually involves something prosaic and irritating like a phone call, a reminder beeping out or a summons to a meeting. The shock can be a rude, even a painful one, and coming out of it and back into work mode can be hard.</p>
<p>But the best way, I've found, of mitigating this shock is simple - <strong>start each session with the expectation that you will have no more than five minutes to yourself. </strong>That every second over and above five minutes is a gift and hence not to be taken for granted.</p>
<p>Regarded in that light, a six-minute writing session can become a bonus, and a ten-minute session can be a blessing. Of course, weekends and days off are a completely different affair, and you should aim to get in at least 14-16 hours of writing time across Saturday and Sunday (more on that in a later post). But on busy days, when you're less in control of your time, a five-minute session entirely to yourself can be more powerful than you realise.</p> 
</section><section><p>If there's anything I have learnt in my last eight months or so of writing professionally, it's that the simplest solutions are often the best. Elaborate routines and unrealistic schedule shifts rarely work, and obligations simply cannot be wished away. Combine that with the natural human tendency to procrastinate, and you have a situation that needs a practical solution. And one of the best solutions to the time crunch issue, I've found, is this - using those short intervals throughout the day to get bits of writing done, be it a few sentences, a short paragraph or even freewriting, and thus getting a substantial amount done over the course of the day. Is it easy? Not at first - conditioned as we are to believe that writing needs hours of free time, we're likely to scoff at the idea of anything happening in five minutes. But is it possible? With practice, patience and a lot of conviction, it is not only possible but also an indispensable part of your life as a writer.</p>
<p>Time, however fleeting it is, can be our friend. We just need to find the right ways to get it on our side.</p> 
</section><section><figure>Helping each other write better. </figure> </section> </div>

To write is to dive into a world of creation, one into which it's hard to go and from which it's painful to come out. The writer of today, surrounded by distractions and obligations, experiences this pain on a daily basis, and it's the sort of pain that never gets better.

The Five-Minute Writing Session (And How It Can Up Your Writing Game)

Writing in 2020

The Five Minute Writing Session

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