Education
How to turn writing into a habit
The problem with modernity is that we threw out the baby with the bathwater. Horrified by the excess and savagery of the past, we decided to place a stigma on what is seen as old. The word “wisdom” is rarely used in its literal sense or taken literally.
The problem of disciplining yourself and getting better at a craft is not new. It has been with us since the start, and sadly, the modern world tends to view things backward. A classic understanding of discipline is rooted in much more truth than the recent pop-psych self-help advice industry.
How to write every day? Well, you have to develop a habit.
Aristotle’s advice
As mentioned, we decided to throw out the baby with the bathwater at some point. So, we intuitively think that getting better at dieting, working out, or writing is all about motivation. After all, “motivation coaching” and motivation videos are a multi-million (if not billion) dollar industry.
Developing good writing habits is no different from any other habit formation.
Relying on motivation is a terrible idea. It is an emotion, just like any other. And similar to all other emotions, it is unpredictable and tough to maintain. Just try it for yourself: pick an emotion or a state of mind, and try to have it consistently.
We all fall into this trap. Due to a documentary or a YouTube video, we swear to ourselves that we will lose weight, start writing, or learn to play the piano. The passion and fire burn within us as we start, but then fade away after a few days.
Ever since the ancient world, people understood that men are creatures of routine, reflex, and instinct. To quote Aristotle: “ Excellence is a habit.”
There is nothing inherently wrong with chasing that motivational high, but we have to understand that it is fleeting. The essence of maturity is learning to do things when you do not feel like it.
At first, the “pain” of forcing yourself to write daily will be significant. But with time, a habit will form. To put things simply: to get good at writing you have to practice daily writing. And to write daily, a habit must be burned into both your body and mind.
Did you ever notice how hard it is to kick a bad habit? Well, the opposite is also true. Good habits also tend to stick around if they are hard-wired into your mind. People who are used to working out feel bad if they have to skip a week. Ex-military people still make their beds, iron their shirts, and sit with their backs straight.
To some extent, you are a programmable creature. Every culture was aware of this fact and used it to its advantage.
Beware of Dopamine extremes
Writing every day is a commitment. But it does not necessarily have to be very unpleasant.
Try to do the following experiment: eat a strawberry. Tastes good, right?
Now, eat a piece of cake, then eat a strawberry after. The very same strawberry now tastes extremely sour. Why is that?
Well, your taste buds adjusted themselves to the extremely sweet cake piece. Compared to the diabetes-inducing cake, the mildly-sweet strawberry tasted like a lemon.
This long analogy is important because the very same thing happens to your emotions. Your body is designed to produce pleasure during every small victory.
Making your bed, going for a run, eating a healthy meal, or just seeing someone smiling at you should give you a hit of feel-good juice inside your head. Finishing a page should normally give you a small rush of satisfaction.
Basically, modern people live in a type of luxury that would make pharaohs blush. Every TV program, commercial, video game, movie, or song is designed to produce as much pleasure as possible.
Your brain is so drenched in pleasure chemicals, that you develop a very high tolerance for pleasure. To use our analogy, you can’t taste the strawberry (writing) because you’re eating 5 pounds of extra-sweet cake.
Going on a dopamine detox for a few weeks will help you not just with writing time, but any other type of discipline. Try to stay away from extreme and artificial sources of pleasure such as substance abuse or digital entertainment.
Daily writing tips and motivational videos are fine, but without discipline, your writing habit will be neglected just like your gym routine or guitar lessons.
This is why many modern people are always in a funk or a foul mood. Normal daily things and the resulting pleasure are dulled, so we feel like we have to drag ourselves to do anything. The motivation centers of the brain are fried.
Third-parties
If you do not want to become a writer and just want to pass a class, you can buy a research paper for college on the internet. Some sites specialize in selling papers of all types, from CVs to Cover and essays.
Finding the best writing service for you is not that hard. But you should only consider this option if you don’t intend on becoming a good writer long-term. Having someone else do your work will spare you from some discomfort, but you are short-changing yourself in the long run.
Conclusion
Emotions are great for short bursts of creativity. However, it is not uncommon for people to go through half a dozen states per day, so you cannot rely on these bursts for consistent mastery of a craft like writing.
An ideal game plan would be to use the motivation to get started and practice daily until a habit or reflex is formed. If you find yourself consistently burdened by having to write, consider cutting out the more intense pleasures from your life, at least for a while to re-calibrate your hyper-stimulated pleasure centers.
Everyone has been turning their selfies into cartoon characters on social media lately. Our recent piece on how people are creating animated WhatsApp avatars for free proves just how fast these tools are catching on.
But beyond all the fun filters and fast effects, there’s a larger narrative at play here, and that is that AI is revolutionising the way people edit photos. What used to take hours or even days in the past can be done in minutes with a few clicks, and you don’t need to have advanced design skills to get the job done either.
Here’s a look at some of the best AI tools that are making photo editing faster, smarter, and more enjoyable whether you’re a creative or simply someone who is looking to have some fun with your photos.
- Photoshop’s AI Photo Tools: Speed and Precision
Most people know Adobe Photoshop as the go-to program for editing images, but its latest AI features take things to a whole new level. Photoshop’s new AI-powered features can automatically identify faces, exposure, and colour issues, fixing them with the click of a button. The neural filters are especially clever, enabling you to smooth skin, modify facial expressions, swap backgrounds and even manipulate lighting to make everything look more natural.
With the integration of these new tools, what used to take a seasoned editor 30 minutes can now be accomplished in seconds, freeing up your time so you can focus on the creative side of things. Whether you’re editing portraits, creating graphics or resizing images for social media, Photoshop’s AI photo tools help to achieve that clean professional finish without the hassle of manual tweaking. It’s one of the best ways to give your photos a polished, cohesive look, even if you don’t consider yourself a pro yet.
- Lightroom: Simplify Bulk Edits and Maintain Consistency
If you’ve ever wondered how photographers maintain the same feel across hundreds of shots, Adobe Lightroom is the answer. Adobe Lightroom is an industry-standard photo management and editing app built for speed, helping you organise, adjust, and fine-tune large batches of images without getting lost in layers or complex tools. Most if not all professional photographers use Lightroom to edit photos before the final shots are sent on to their clients.
Like Photoshop, Lightroom’s built-in AI editing tools can be used for a wide variety of applications, including automatically detecting your subject and adjusting the exposure, colour and tone so every shot looks balanced. You can even apply the same “look” to an entire collection, making it great for projects that rely on consistent visuals – think wedding photos, product shots for an eCommerce website, or social media posts.
And speaking of social media, Lightroom is especially useful for content creators who want a clean, uniform look to their Insta grid or feed without spending hours editing each image individually. In short, Lightroom keeps your workflow simple, but your results professional.
- Sensei-Powered Auto Tagging and Smart Search
Organising photos can become messy and annoying quickly, especially if you have hundreds of folders full of similar shots. That’s where Adobe Sensei comes in. You might not have heard of it by name, but you’ve probably used this tool without even realising you have. How so? Because Adobe Sensei is the AI engine that runs quietly in the background across Photoshop, Lightroom, and other Adobe Creative Cloud apps. This innovative AI engine is programmed to facilitate a wide variety of processes, including facial recognition, recognising objects, and sorting your photos automatically.
Alongside being used for auto tagging elements in images, Sensei is also adept at using image metadata to organise your photo library, and make it even easier to find specific shots with typed search prompts. Say goodbye to searching through dozens of files trying to remember what you named them — just type in something like “beach” or “red dress” and your shot will pop up instantly. For anyone who shoots a lot or manages content libraries, Adobe Sensei’s generative AI engine makes organising photos simple and stress-free.
- Adobe Firefly: Intelligent Background and Object Replacement
Sometimes you take a great photo, but there’s one thing that ruins it. Maybe it’s an awkward background, an annoying photobomber, or a sky that just looks a bit blah. That’s where Adobe Firefly comes in. With this generative AI tool by Adobe, you can simply highlight the problem areas in your images and type in what you’d like instead, and it will make the changes for you. You could trade a dull sky for a sunset, introduce a gentle blur behind your subject or eliminate distractions entirely.
But it’s not just about fixing mistakes. Firefly is also fantastic for experimenting. You can change the feel of a shot, create atmosphere, or build new visuals for marketing and social media all without starting again from scratch. It’s an easy trick that makes photos look more purposeful and artistic, even if you’re starting off with something that looks average.
- Camera Raw: Smarter Corrections Right from the Start
Every photographer or creator knows that editing starts well before you get to the fun filters. Camera Raw’s built-in AI tools quietly sort out the basics so you don’t have to. These innovative AI tools fix lighting, balance colours, and pull detail back from shadows or overexposed spots. It even cleans up grainy low-light shots and straightens out lens distortion without much effort on your end.
For photographers and hobbyists, using Camera Raw’s AI tools just makes image processing easier, particularly for images that require only minor tweaks and adjustments. The attention to detail of Camera Raw’s editing tools makes autocorrecting blemishes, red eyes, and other small details across digital photography quick and efficient, supporting photographers and content creators in getting their image assets publication-ready.
- Adobe Express: Quick Edits for Social Media
Finally, not every photo edit has to be a full studio production. As this tool’s name suggests, Adobe Express is designed to be quick: you can trim, crop, and colour-correct your posts for social media in a matter of minutes. The AI auto-adjust tools detect the subject and optimise brightness, sharpness, and background balance without you having to do much.
Adobe Express is perfect for influencers, small businesses or creators who post daily content, stories and want to remain active on social media without having to spend hours editing content. You can create multiple versions of one image for different social media platforms and keep everything looking cohesive across your feed. It’s simple, practical, and exactly what you need when you want to share something polished without overthinking it.
Use these AI Tools to Elevate your Photo Editing
Editing photos has never been easier. With AI taking care of the technical fixes like lighting, colour, and cleanup, you get more room to focus on the creative side. Whether it’s for work, social media, or just something fun to share, these tools help you turn everyday photos into something worth keeping.
What really matters is experimenting and finding what feels right for your style. The tech is there to make the process faster, but the creative choices are still all yours. So have fun, experiment, and you just might be pleasantly surprised with the results!
