Writing on my Phone?

Some of my best blogs were written on my phone. The blogs that really boil down a concept to a concentrated, digestible metaphor were written on my phone. 

Isn’t this ironic? Using a less-than-efficient writing machine to write your best work? How does that make sense? It makes sense because of constraint. 

Right now, I’m tying on my computer, and I’m tempted to be more wordy. My fingers are just getting warmed up, I’m hitting a rhythm on the keyboard, and words are just falling out. It’s not this way when I write on my phone. Writing on my phone makes my thumbs hurt after a while. So I use fewer filler words. I’m not so descriptive. I choose my words more carefully. I think about the sentence I’m going to write before I write it, instead of tossing out the usual spineless sentence-starter. 

Parkinson’s Law states that the amount of time needed to complete task will expand to fill the block of time given to complete it. If I give myself an hour to do something that could take me 30 minutes, it’ll take me an hour. but if I give myself 20 minutes, I might be able to do it in 20 minutes. 

I think about this idea often when I talk to my friends who have kids. I’m amazed that some people with kids can still have careers and hobbies and free time. I feel like my career takes up a majority of my time, and I don’t even have kids. But it’s all about constraint. People with kids have less time to fuss around with inconsequential details at work. They’re writing the story of their career on a phone, so to speak, making intentional choices about the sentences they use. They don’t waste time. 

I’ve spent years running away from constraint. I wanted more flexibility, more freedom, more control. But maybe what I needed all along was more constraint.