The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

Ernest Hemingway

Hemmingway used this approach in his writing. Given the source, it should be considered good advice. I take a somewhat similar approach to writing serious pieces, though my version is slightly modified. See, the tricky part for me is the “not thinking about it”; unfinished business tends to hang on my mind, and the very idea of an unfinished task that I know how to complete keeps me up at night.

That’s why I like to finish a draft, then re-work the piece in my head as I go about my daily business. I like to get my main ideas down on paper, a “roadmap,” if you will, and then think through the ways I’d like to revise them or flesh them out. This method affords me a sense of completion, and helps to alleviates some of the stress that comes with “finalizing” something.

I find that I use this approach when doing most anything creative – dreaming up new inventions, ideas, theories, etc. I wonder, is this advice applicable to non-creative disciplines as well?

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