To Improve Yourself You Must Know Yourself

How to make change stick

If you attempt to write a novel, one of the first challenges you'll encounter is whether to meticulously outline it or discover the story as you write.

“Discovery” writers like Stephen King start with an interesting character or two, a situation, and then sees where it leads, letting the story unfold organically.

“Outline” writers like Brandon Sanderson try to map every plot point and character arc before starting, reducing revision time but front-loading much of the work.

These are fundamentally opposite approaches, yet both can yield great books. There’s no way to know which one is going to work for you before you try both of them. And her'e’s the kicker: whichever one doesn’t work for you will most likely REALLY not work for you.

The mistake you can easily make, whether writing a book for the first time or trying to start a business or trying to get out of bed earlier each day, is finding a strategy that’s worked for someone, attempting to apply it to your own life, then getting annoyed when it doesn’t work. It can easily lead to self-loathing and frustration and bashing your head against the wall trying to force it to work when that strategy was never meant for you in the first place.

This isn't just inefficient. It’s harmful. When you fail at someone else's system, you don't question the system; you question yourself.

In elite sports, training programs are intensely personalized. No coach would give identical regimens to different athletes. Yet in work and personal development, we act as if one-size-fits-all is reasonable. Like we can just grab what’s worked for someone off the shelf and it’ll solve all our problems.

I've wrestled with this myself. For years, I berated myself for not maintaining the steady, consistent writing schedule that supposedly marks a "real writer." Three to four hours every morning, like clockwork. I can maintain this for brief stretches, but my best work emerges from manic sprints—like when I drafted Husk in a month.

For a long time, I viewed this as a character flaw. I thought I needed to become more disciplined, more consistent. But I think now my creative metabolism simply runs differently. Explosive bursts rather than steady output.

The revelation wasn't that I needed to change my process to conform to some Platonic ideal. Rather, that I need to embrace what works for me and figure out how to make it work better.

Self-improvement isn't about becoming someone else. It's about becoming a better version of yourself.

Instead of fighting my sprinting nature, I’m trying to optimize for it. Clear my schedule for month-long creative binges. Develop better recovery techniques. Accept that there will be weeks where I’m basically a hermit, unresponsive to the outside world. And then be diligent about cleaning up whatever little messes I’ve created for myself afterwards.

But this raises an obvious question: How do you figure out what works for you in the first place to even decide what to improve on? The simple answer is to “get more reps,” but a few other self-observations might help:

Experiment with extreme variations: Try working at radically different times, in different environments, with different constraints.

When I was writing the first draft of Crypto Confidential, I tracked every single writing session, how it felt, how many words I wrote, where I was, what time it was, etc.

I quickly realized that I actually didn’t do my best work first thing in the morning at 5:00am. It was better to spend that time burning down email etc. and then start writing at 9:00am. And getting out of the house was a 1.5-2x productivity boost.

Look at your “natural” behavior: What do you slide back to when you’re not trying to force yourself to adopt someone else’s process?

There’s a balance here: Your default behavior might not be optimal. But there might also be a nugget of useful insight in it.

My default behavior since I was a kid has been to get hyper-obsessive about things and then cast them aside the minute I’m bored. That manic focus needs to be balanced with some degree of responsibility, but it can also be harnessed.

Examine your outliers: Your best work often happens when conditions accidentally align with your nature. What was going on when you did your best work in the past?

I consistently do my best work when I’m pressed against some uncomfortable deadline. It’s not ideal to always be under the gun, but if it consistently creates better work, then it’s worth lining up these deadlines occasionally to try to force it out of myself.

I often let myself procrastinate on things because I know there’s some part of my brain that feels like the time pressure isn’t strong enough yet. When the pressure gets strong enough, the motivation to work will appear.

Do I recommend that for most people? Definitely not. But if you’re like me, hey, it might click.

Don't contort yourself to fit someone else's (supposedly) perfect system. Architect an environment that amplifies your natural strengths while accounting for your limitations. It's the only form of self-improvement that will stick.

Oh and if you’re curious: I tried King’s discovery writing and it utterly failed for me. I’m much more of an outliner. But I’m glad I gave it a try.

Other Things

• I’m planning to announce pre-orders for HUSK and do the cover reveal in the next week or two, very excited for this!

• Nathan and I have a great episode out this week on getting and incorporating feedback on your book.

• Our next podcast episode will be Q&A on anything related to writing, editing, outlining, publishing, audience building. Please respond if you have any questions you’d like to hear me / us answer!