Ride a New Habit on the Back of Another Habit

Journal Entry: Wednesday, February 11, 2026

CONSTRUCTION #17 - 2014 - Cecil Touchon

Here is a nice article that on Asemic Writing that Rebecca Borrelli pointed me to.

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Ride a New Habit on the Back of Another Habit

I decided to join the Bookfox Academy to increase my writing skills. My wife and I gave me this present for my 70th birthday. I signed up for the whole kit and caboodle. Listening to the Time Management lessons of Master Your Writing Habits I’ll tell you how I did it at the beginning back in 2022. My idea was that I wanted to write every day in a journal. But I have done this many times in the past and always failed. I would forget for days at a time and all of the sudden it was not daily or even weekly. I wondered, “Hum, how can I solve this problem?”

So I analyzed that the main problem was not the writing part, it was establishing the routine. So, then I thought “OK, I have failed at this over and over so I am not confident that I can do it and if I have never been able to do it why bother? I will just fail again.”

So I challenged myself. “Ok, I drink coffee every morning, that is an ingrained habit. What if I ride another habit on its back and with my first cup of coffee as my queue sit down at the computer and in my journal write down the date and the time I woke up. Less than half a minute of effort. Then, at night, before I go to bed, write in my journal what time I went to bed. That’s it. Do that every day - less than one minute for the day. Then if you can write something between these two points great - but not important - the goal is the habit. It takes 6 months until it is locked in. Then you have a record of capturing the day every day. You can look back at it and say with confidence, I have established that habit. Once established solidly, by holding yourself to account, by recording that very basic information every day. Like anything, it eventually gets boring and you start writing something. But it is riding on the back of that extremely tiny, but firmly established habit.

But now, 4 years later, I have created a monster. At this point I have been working on writing projects 10-12 hours a day every day for nearly a year, now that I have decided to figure out fictional writing. Total immersion. I am scaring myself. My main thing over the years has been developing an art career and writing has been eclipsing that activity so I need to break my time up a little better and get more studio time in. Now I am working on that part. At this point however, I am hooked on writing, and I want to get better and better at it.

Then there is the next trick. Organization. Think of all your writing, as needing organized baskets or folders to keep stuff in so you can find it later. Stuff accumulates and that must be anticipated otherwise it turns into an unmanageable disaster and that can create friction that slows down progress. Friction is not good; it burns time and energy.

As far as writing goes, I always write in a Word document not in a handwritten notebook. That way, since words are fluid, I can move things around, edit on the fly, copy and paste, and collage things together when I see a connection. I learned this from art making, if you work in sketchbooks, you are hard pressed later so separate the pages. You will want the whole sketchbook to stay intact. But as a working artist, I find that it is a mistake. So, anytime I am making art it is always on individual sheets so they can be shuffled around, reorganized, framed, exhibited and eventually sold individually.

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Kit and Caboodle

• The term likely comes from New England slang around the turn of the century, where “kit” meant a backpack or personal gear, and “caboodle” (or “kaboodle”) referred to bundles or a collection of things carried on a journey, thus signifying all one’s belongings.