3 Habits I Gave Up to Win at Self-Publishing (My Self-Publishing System)

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The three habits I gave up to win at self-publishing were binge-watching TV, playing video games and my side hobbies like survivalism. I kept what gives me energy: sleep, exercise, healthy food, family, friends and my faith. That took me from under five minutes a day on my books to at least two hours.

Why did I have to give anything up?

I was burning out. Living in Norway, I was getting books onto the market and the first sales had made me excited, but I was also stressed by the work and by my other hobbies. My energy dropped, and the time I gave to self-publishing fell to under five minutes a day. Some days I did nothing.

This matters because the best way to succeed is to optimize your books, learn as you go and keep putting out more books, so readers can tell you what they want in the next one. It is why I say it takes three to five years before most self-publishers see traction. You can’t do that with five minutes a day. I knew I wasn’t sharpening the saw, the habit in Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that I still agree with, even though I disagree with some of the others. For related lessons, read what I wish I knew before self-publishing.

What did I try first that didn’t work?

An accountability coach, to get five minutes a day. My first one was in Washington DC. She found the five minutes a bit funny, but the idea is that if you get the first five minutes, you often keep going. It didn’t give me results, because it was one more thing to write down. It took almost as long to log the five minutes as to do them.

Next I cut my sleep, after reading about the Miracle Morning. I disagree with cutting sleep. The CDC says adults aged 18 to 60 need 7 or more hours of sleep each night (page dated 15-May-24), and it links enough sleep to better attention and memory and a lower risk of problems such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Cutting sleep made my burnout worse. The Miracle Morning point I do agree with is to do the things that matter earliest in the day.

What are the 3 habits I gave up?

1. Binge-watching TV. I still follow my favorite series, but I read the episode summaries instead. I find reading feeds my writing and binge-watching drains it.
2. Video games. This was painful. They had to go.
3. Side hobbies. Survivalism and others I found very interesting, but I couldn’t keep them and write books.

Be honest about your free time. When I ask people if they have no time to listen to music or watch a movie, they say they are just busy. If so, something has to go. Hunger for the win also matters: fake gurus will say it is easy and you will sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and that probably won’t happen. What can happen is that you get sales if you put in the work. My goal is two hours a day, 30 minutes is realistic for you, and on days with no progress at all, five minutes is a place to start.

What habits did I keep?

• Exercise. I hike up and down the mountains in Norway and take pictures at the same time. The WHO recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week for adults, and links it to better mental health and sleep (page dated 26-Jun-24).
• Healthy eating. Lots of plant-based food and protein. It uses time and gives energy back.
• Family and friends. Healthy relationships fall apart without care, like a car. When my kids want to play a game, I stop what I’m doing.
• Spiritual growth, such as church, which I treat as a priority.

Many self-publishers cut the healthy things and keep the habits that give nothing back, like games and Netflix when they need to relax. I cover more of the traps in self-publishing mistakes to avoid.

How do I decide which habit to give up?

This is my advice. Ask of each habit: if I stopped this for a month, would my books notice? Checking sales every hour, redoing a cover that is already fine and reading one more how-to book before you start are the usual suspects. They feel like work, and none of them puts a book on the market.

Pick one, stop it for a month, and spend the time on the next step instead. If you miss it, you can bring it back.

What turned things around?

Once I made the cuts, I went from 5 minutes a day to at least 2 hours a day. I still have an accountability coach, and we have swapped over the years between ones in Turkey and Tunisia. I think every self-publisher needs someone like that, which is why I coach authors one to one.

If you can’t tell which habits to cut, book a free 25-minute discovery call. We sit down on Zoom and map it out together. Once the habits are sorted, the next step is selling: read factors that matter most when selling KDP ebooks.

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