Psychotactics Blog

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I’ve now been writing articles for 25 years.

And in those 25 years I’ve learned some things that you may not always find on a writing site, or even in any writing article. Read this article and you’ll suddenly have a completely different view of how to go about writing your article.

Right click to save this episode.

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I learned one of my biggest lessons about writing in a Chinese restaurant.

It was our first trip to the U.S., and my sister-in-law suggested we grab some takeaway from the local Chinese place. Nothing fancy—just a casual dinner. But when I entered the restaurant, something unexpected caught my attention.

There, behind the counter, was this neatly arranged array of boxes. Each one filled with chopped vegetables, mushrooms, sauces, spices—everything prepped and ready to go. It wasn’t chaos; it was calm. Everything had its place.

Now, I know this kind of setup is common. Chinese restaurants all over the world use it. But at the time, I’d never seen anything like it. And that’s when it hit me:

The magic of cooking isn’t in the cooking—it’s in the preparation.

But here’s the twist. To me, it didn’t look like preparation. It looked like unfinished work. Unfinished work? That's an odd way to look at all of those well-chopped ingredients, but it was this weird concept of “unfinished work” that got my attention.

Today’s podcast is about that idea—about how so much of what we call creativity actually happens before we create anything. We’re going to look at writing, but in a slightly different way.

I’ll walk you through some of the techniques I’ve used over the last 25 years to write consistently, without running out of ideas and (for the most part) without hitting writer’s block.

1) The first tip is never to finish your writing.

I didn't say procrastination. I just said: leave it a bit unfinished. Let's say I start writing this article. I will write for a while, until I've got about ⅔ or even 4/5 of it done, and then I will take a break. I might go for a walk, grab a coffee, or even stop working for the day.

The logical move would be to finish the task and move on.

However, that system of getting the task done ends the momentum. Once I'm done, I'm done. However, this creates a problem for the next time I sit down to write.

It means I have to start from zero. If, on the other hand, I do most of the work and leave it unfinished, I have the wind behind my back. I can keep going and don't have to start with a blank page.

Leaving something unfinished seems counterproductive.

There's even a term for it. It's called the Zeigarnik Effect. This suggests that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

This mental “incompleteness” keeps the task looping in your subconscious, often pushing you to return to it or solve it later, sometimes with surprising clarity.

Usually, this means that the final part of my writing is a done deal.

In reality, I could have finished the article, but chose not to do so. And because my brain continues to chug away in the background, it also seems to come up with the next step. In my case, that could be the following article or the next chapter if I'm writing a book.

Procrastination is usually when you avoid the entire task

My goal is to get going; otherwise, my brain will drive me mad. I'll be eating and thinking about the article I have still to write. I'll be walking, talking, doing other projects, and the thought of having to get the article done will continue to bug me.

It also drains my energy with a task that's not even begun. By choosing to write most of the article and leave just a tiny bit, we're still using the brain in the background, but now it's helping me move ahead.

I'd say don't finish what you're writing. Take a walk and talk about whatever you're writing about to someone else. The benefits of putting the last bit off definitely outweigh the benefits of finishing it all in one go.

2) The second tip is to listen to or read something in between breaks in your writing.

You know how the purple car concept works, don't you? You've seen red, white, green, orange, and even a polka dot car, but not purple. By some happy coincidence, you see a purple car—or at least something hideously mauve.

Something similar happens when you're writing and take a break.

You may have already put in some cool case studies, maybe a few examples in the article. You walk out into the street, snap on your headphones, and the first line that comes out of the podcaster's mouth is a story that you wouldn't have dreamed up in a thousand years.

When writing a book called “Suddenly Talented” I was looking for complete ineptitude.

People often come up to me and say, “I can't draw, I can't dance.” They may even say rather silly things like, “I don't have the ‘genes' to do this or that.” There are hundreds and possibly thousands of examples of people who have achieved skills, but those examples don't help make the point.

I went for a walk and slipped on my headphones.

I listen to all sorts of. podcasts and this one was about something that I have zero interest in. It was about Celebrity Masterchef, but I listened to it anyway. Remember what I set out to do?

I wanted a good example of someone pretty hopeless at a skill. Well, I got that and a lot more. Let me share this excerpt from the book.

What is skill, after all?

An answer appears on Celebrity Masterchef as we zoom in on the conversation between the judges and contestant Amar Latif. Serving sea bass on a vermicelli rice noodle salad flavoured with teriyaki sauce, he appears like any other aspiring chef.

The judges seem to approve of his dish.

“In your noodles, the ginger, garlic, onions, and coriander are fabulous with the fish. But your noodles are also fabulous because there’s sweet teriyaki sauce running through it,” says judge Greg Wallace.

“I think this is great. The fish is cooked beautifully. The skin is crispy. The big pieces of green chilli across the top are a little too big. However, the rest of it, I think, is fantastic,” chimes in John Torode, the second judge in the competition. It sounds like everyday TV until you realise that Amir Latif is blind.

I'll stop right there.

The guy on Celebrity Masterchef isn't just hopeless at cooking. He's also blind. I couldn't believe my ears. Before you think I'm putting down blind people, I'm not. My father ran a secretarial college, and the people who got 100% of their typing right every time were those with limited or no sight.

Hence, my admiration for someone overcoming an issue is extremely high. Let's not veer away from the point, though. The point was that I merely wanted an example of someone who considered themselves hopeless.

Yet, I got that this individual was not only terrible at cooking but also blind and had to learn how to cook with his mother over video chats. Then, he goes on to win Celebrity MasterChef.

Tell me you can beat those odds because I know you can.

You will find, as I have, that walking away and. listening to something else isn't a guaranteed jackpot. However, more often than not, you will find the odds are in your favour. Also, it's good to chat with someone about what you're writing.

Author, Michael Lewis has this neat little trick.

He doesn't tell others that he's written the story. He just tells them the story and waits for a reaction. Here he is on Masterclass.com in his own words:

Write the thing you're gonna write as best you can. Read it aloud to yourself, edit it, and get to the point where you feel it's kind of polished. It's a story of some sort.

And then try it out at a dinner party. Don't tell people that you've written it. Or on a walk with people. Just start to tell a story. As if it's just, oh, a story you know.

Make sure that you're writing it and see if you can keep their attention. And I try out material like this all the time. I'll try it with a group of friends, they have no idea I'm working on subject X.

I say, “I just heard this story” and I start talking. And I can tell by their response if it's working or not, whether they're bored or interested.

The problem with writing is that you don't see reactions from your audience. Only in very rare instances do you see someone reading your book and responding to your book.

But playing it for an audience without them knowing that's what you're doing, all of a sudden you see stuff in the material. You see, and beyond where interest flags.

You see, oh, I could have told it better if I'd not given that away up front kind of thing. It's, a live audience and it is extremely helpful. Especially when they don't know that's how you're using them.

I don't have to be, there's no rule I have to pretend to use. The strength of oral storytelling, of reading your own work or telling someone the story without, just to see how they respond. You purge your work of pretension, of idiocy that you don't spot until you say it and someone who hears it reacts to it,

It's an antidote to the, sort of like the risks of writing, the creative risks of writing. You're isolated, you're not able to speak. The creative risks of writing is you're isolated and you're in your little bubble and you don't know what you don't know. Talking to others opens up the printed work.”

Let's summarise this part a bit because it has a few points.

The first point is simply to listen or read something else in between. You know that research that you're always looking for? Ideally, you need to find the research before you write.

However, there's nothing to stop you from adding a story or example after you're almost done. If anything, you're more sure of what you're writing and the example is likely to be both unusual as well incredibly precise.

That's the first point. The second is talking to someone about it.

I talk to Renuka about the articles I'm writing, but often it's just a discussion. She already knows I am going to turn everything into an article, but it's still a discussion. If you have someone, anyone, who you can present an idea to, it almost immediately improves your writing.

Yes, your writing. You're not at your desk. You're walking about or just at the cafe, but that's where the story; the article is starting to become a much better version of itself.

Okay, so we have finished two sections.

We looked at the first tip, which is never to finish your writing. The second was this trip you need to take and encounter other audio, video or text. Or wait, even a human being.

Finally, we look at the third tip: outlines matter. But bulleted outlines matter more.

3) Outlines matter, but bulleted outlines matter more.

When we started doing the storytelling course at Psychotactics, I noticed clients getting quite frustrated.

Storytelling isn't exactly easy, even if you were to boil it down to four main concepts. A client has to learn, and then implement the concepts. On top of it all, they have to make the story interesting and keep it down to a paragraph or two.

If you think all of these steps sound like a lot of trouble, it's mostly because of the lack of outlining. More so, because the outlines are not in bullet points.

I'm not against scraps of paper, Post-its, or even fancy apps on the tablet.

However, you'll find to your amazement that bullet points give your thoughts a sense of order. You can type out a bullet point in a matter of minutes, skipping merrily to the next. While you're typing these points, you're not focused on editing your work.

If you start to write articles in paragraph form, you're usually in deep trouble.

You are almost always engaging with the backspace key on your keyboard, which is in almost direct contrast to when you type out bulleted outlines.

What's cool is that once you have bullets, you can easily move them around as needed. If you call yourself a perfectionist (well, almost everyone does), then you have the joy of being perfect in a fraction of the time.

You may hear some big-name authors say they never outline.

Well, I don't look at a recipe when I cook Indian food, either. That's because I've done more or less the same thing for decades on end. Just putting your faith that you'll be like some famous author is misplaced trust.

It's possible to write without too much of an outline, but professionals always outline. A movie isn't likely to be made without a storyboard, and that chef at the restaurant is working to a plan. Outlining matters, but bulleted outlines rock.

And with that, we have three core writing tips.

Even one of them will make a world of difference, but all three are pure magic. Let's go over them again, shall we?

The first tip is never to finish your writing.

The second tip is to listen to or read something in between breaks in your writing. Or talk to someone.

Finally, bulleted outlines work—and you know the reason why.

P.S. That Michael Lewis story got added as I went about writing this article. I posted this article and then Cliff Spenger added more detail to the Zeigarnik effect. And I did write this article with at least three separate breaks. Plus, I have outlines in bullet points. Except there were four bullet points and I decided to expand just three.

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