INFJ Writer Problem № 5: Not making time for yourself and your writing
One of the biggest challenges for INFJs when it comes to writing (at least in my experience) is making time for it. More accurately, taking time for it.
There are a least a million reasons for this:
Feeling guilty,
Feeling self-indulgent,
Making too much time for other people and their problems and interests,
Not turning off your phone,
Feeling silly/stupid,
Feeling like no one else takes you / your writing seriously,
Having people actually criticize or disparage your (using their judgmental tone here) “work” as a writer,
Feeling like a fraud or imposter,
Feeling like you’ll never be good enough to be a “real” writer (see definition of real1),
Thinking you don’t have time.2
I’ll stop there. We don’t need a million reasons (but that doesn’t mean we can’t come up with them in the moment!).
A brief side tangent: I was about to address each of these reasons individually, but they’re not worth defending, because it all comes down to just two things:
1—Do you actually want to be a real writer (see definition of real3)?
I don’t know the answer to that, and maybe you don’t either, because maybe you’ve never actually written for any length of time to see (in real life) if you even like being a writer.
I did two stints as a flight attendant in my 20s and 30s, and I used to tell new flight attendants to give it six months, which was the same thing I told friends and families moving to new cities. Give it six months. Try not to judge it either way (for or against) in that time. Just do the job, learn the job (or live there and learn the place, in the case of new a new city). Pay attention to possibilities, possibilities for why it could be good and possibilities for why it might be not-so-good.
Because new things suck by default. You’re not good at them. You don’t know how to do them. You don’t know where anything is or how anything works. Everything takes way longer than it should because of the learning curve and mess-ups involved.
And because new things are great by default. They’re shiny and exciting and fun. They’re not boring ever. Everything’s an adventure. Everything’s novel and cool and new to you. Isn’t this awesome?!
Both lenses skew your perspective, and you need to see clearly to evaluate fairly and accurately for you.
I don’t want to be judged for my worst moments (or in a time when you’re at your worst upon meeting me), because that sets us off on the wrong foot. But I don’t want to be put on a pedestal either, because who or what can live up to that? Nothing is perfect or without fault.
Writing and the writing life are going to be the same. It will suck sometimes, and it will be great sometimes, and you have to decide if this specific combination of suck and great, good and bad, pros and cons (because every option has both, and especially early on, we INFJs look exhaustively for the one, end-all, be-all, perfect, without-fault ideal that was just meant for us4).
So—spend some time actually writing. For real. And for at least six months. And after that, sit down with a constructively critical, cautiously optimistic friend or mentor and evaluate the as-objective-as-humanly-possible pros and cons list you developed in that time. And then, without your rose-colored-INFJ-idealist glasses, think: Do I really want to write?
And if the answer is yes, then get serious already! This is your work, or at least part of it. Take it seriously.
And if the answer is no, then give it up already! Let yourself off the hook. Have a funeral for it. Have a send-off party. Whatever you need. Invite all your friends and family if you want so that they can mourn or celebrate it with you. Because you might feel like you’ll have egg on your face if you give this up, and maybe you will a little bit, but who cares? You’ll finally be free of something you don’t even want anymore.
(And side note here: You’ll need to unsubscribe to this newsletter then, too, because this is not your dream anymore, so no need in revisiting it. It’s time for a new dream. One of my other newsletters might be better suited for you now. I hope so, but if not, it’s okay. Good luck with your future endeavors, I wish you well, Godspeed, and all that.)
But, back to yes, if that’s the answer, because here’s the next question.
2—Are you willing to take your writing seriously?
Because if this is your work (or part of it), then wouldn’t you take any other job seriously? Wouldn’t you have a start time each day and things to do and deadlines to meet and things to report (like what you’ve gotten done and the status of your work)?
Wouldn’t you have someone to report to, even if that’s “only” your readers? But your readers are giving you their most valuable asset, their time, and shouldn’t you cherish that by delivering something that you’ve created with your time, something you value. And don’t you value this? The writing and your time? Because isn’t that something we do as INFJs? Discount our time and value? Or prioritize the values of others over our own?
But here’s how I stopped doing that.
I sit down every time I write and ask myself a lot of questions, like Who is this for? and What is it for? And I keep asking myself questions until I get down to the relevance of the thing (the piece, the work, whatever). And when I can find the relevance, it’s hard to think that it’s not important. And then I remember that I have subscribers, people who have either decided it’s important to them, too, or who suspect it might be, so they subscribed. And now I’m on the hook, because we both think it’s important, and I made a promise to both of us by making this vessel and setting a deadline, and I have the belief that keeping promises (as much as humanely possible) is important. So now I’ve got two things that are important and that I value: the relevance of this work and the promise I’ve made. And then all of a sudden this work matters and this little piece matters, and no matter what anyone else thinks of it, you and I have decided it matters to us, and that’s worth showing up for.
So what about your work?
Can you figure out who it’s for and what it’s for? Can you figure out it’s RELEVANCE?5
And can you create a VESSEL for it? It could be a blog or a newsletter or a folder in Google Drive.
And can you find a “SUBSCRIBER” (which could be an actual subscriber, in the case of a blog or newsletter, or simply a willing and able reader who’ll regularly check in with your shared Google folder)?
And can you make a PROMISE? Like maybe you’ll write and deliver (to your blog, newsletter, or Google folder) 1,000 new words every Friday (we’ve talked about this6), and your subscriber/reader can leave notes as comments in either place to help you refine your work.
And then (until you get in a rhythm with it) set yourself a recurring reminder to alert you at midnight or 7 AM or whatever time is before you get out of bed each day (because you know you’ll grab your phone first thing and so you’ll see it!) that says: Today is a work day.7 And not in a 9-5 kind of way. You have work to do in the world. You should get to it.
the INFJ writers club at Maison d’Evangeline
From Oxford Languages:
re·al
/rē(ə)l/
adjective
actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed
In other words, being a “real” writer means that you actually write in fact. That’s it. Nothing in that definition says you have to be or do anything else except actually doing the thing. Write. That’s what makes you a real writer.
Which is really just saying that you won’t make time. I just did this math for a 21-year-old mentee in the Rock Your Genius program who currently has no job, lives at home, and doesn’t go to school. If you take 8 hours to sleep and give yourself 4 more hours for personal / home time-y things (cooking, cleaning, grooming, etc.) and work an 8-hour job (which this person does not), that would still leave you with 4 hours of time to devote to whatever else you want (like writing, launching a business, etc.). Cut that in half, it’s still 2 hours. Cut it in half again, it’s still 1 hour. Cut it in half again, it’s still a half hour. Cut it in half again, it’s still 15 minutes. Maybe that won’t help the mentee in business, but that’s good enough for wanna-be writers, because you can write 250-500 words in 15 minutes. Do that every day, and that’s 91,250 (at 250 words per day) to 182,500 (at 500 words per day). That’s one or two solid novels or one to nine nonfiction books per year, depending on how you structure them! FIFTEEN MINUTES. You can find fifteen minutes.
From Oxford Languages:
re·al
/rē(ə)l/
adjective
actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed
In other words, do you actually want to write in fact? Like actually doing the thing? Write? For real? Because maybe it’s just an ideal, a fantasy you created for yourself at some point that you wouldn’t really want if you had it.
Young and smart-enough-to-learn-from-others INFJs, it doesn’t exist. Pick one and run. Learn to love it. Make it yours. Read The Little Prince. It’s yours because you spend time with it and make it important to you. That’s all.
And it’s relevance could be as simple and as important as making someone laugh or helping them get lost in a world or in the life of a character. Laughter is profound. Life reflected through worlds and characters is profound. Your work matters. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa. And you don’t have to write like Neil Gaiman. Or Elizabeth Gilbert. Or [fill in your idol]. Someone out there would enjoy your work. That’s enough. You would enjoy doing your work. That’s enough, too.
First, see Footnote 2 above, if you missed it, and then we can do new math for you here.
New math for you: 250 words x 5 days a week = 1,000 words and 2 fudge/makeup days (or 2 days off if you make your targets on time).
My favorite quote over the last couple of years is one by Rumi: “Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead, get up. This is a work day.”
This is a work day. We need to get busy.