Confessions of a Substack Pantser

And why that had to change

Your Free edition from Substack Lab.

I’m a recovering pantser.

A pantser, for the uninitiated, is someone who flies by the seat of their pants. It’s usually used to describe fiction writers who don’t outline or plot—they just go where the story takes them.

But I was a Substack pantser.

I loved the freedom, the spontaneity, the creative chaos. And for a while? It worked. I got to know the platform, my voice, and my audience by doing, not planning.

But now I’m building a paid tier.
And launching a product.
And trying to, you know, make actual money.

Chaos no longer cuts it.

🧠 Freedom is great—until it becomes your excuse not to plan.

James Clear built an empire out of “Atomic Habits.” But the word I keep coming back to is behaviour.

Because every behaviour—what we write, when we work, how we procrastinate, what we think—is a choice. And those choices either move us toward our Substack goals… or quietly sabotage us.

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🧠 The Four Steps of Behavioural Change

1️⃣ Identify the behaviour
You can’t change what you don’t see. My panstering wasn’t laziness—it was tied to my need for freedom and avoiding structure. Your “thing” might be perfectionism disguising fear, or procrastination disguised as “research.”

2️⃣ Choose a better behaviour
We’ll never be perfect, we’re human, but we can be better. Being better leads to doing better and to be better we need to make better choices. Mine? Keep my high-focus time sacred. And no editing at midnight just because I’m spiralling.

3️⃣ Practice
New behaviours feel weird. Like hacking through a jungle with a soup spoon. But the more you do it, the more you create a pathway in your brain. Eventually it becomes natural. Not necessarily easy, but normal.

4️⃣ Build a monument to your Why and your What.
Some people need vision boards. Some write letters to their future self. Me? I don’t need a Pinterest board to know my WHY. Substack is my retirement plan.
Done right, it will give me a location-independent income doing work I love through the latter years of my life. That’s my “what.” Together they are the monument that reminds me why I’m here and what I want out of it.

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🗓 Planning Isn’t Optional (Unless Burnout Is Your Plan)

You will only willingly give up your weekends and evenings to Substack for so long.

In the beginning, the hustle can feel exciting.
But eventually you’ll want at least some of your life back. And if you’re not building something sustainable, the whole thing topples.

That’s why I want you to start thinking about this now—even if you’re still in the early days of excitement.

Next week’s paid post will walk you through creating a workflow that works for YOU. But this week is about collecting the data that will make it work.

Here’s your prep:

👉 Track how you’re spending your time.
👉 Start identifying your behaviours using my traffic light system:

• 🟢 Green = go behaviours (supportive, aligned habits)

• 🟠 Orange = slow-you-down behaviours (slightly sabotaging)

• 🔴 Red = full-stop behaviours (momentum killers)

💌 I’m pushing my paid newsletter out a a few days so that I’m not sending out back-to-back emails. Here’s what paid subscribers will get: -
• A weekly time tracker to log your high- and low-focus hours
• A Behaviour Upgrade worksheet with the traffic light system
• A deeper dive into optimising your time and upgrading your behaviours.

If you're ready to go from chugging along to doing the right things faster, this is your invitation to upgrade and build with me.

💛 Deb
Your recovered (but still a little wild) Lab Partner