I am an incredibly productive writer in spite of the fact I’m also a master of distraction. Do you know what I mean? I’m very good at focusing on all those productive-seeming, useful tasks you do that help you organize and plan, but somehow you’re not actually writing?
It’s the nature of being a writer. You’re told you need to build a platform, market yourself, have a blog and maintain your social media. You’re being pulled in a million directions, so you procrastinate.
Why do we procrastinate in this way?
To-do lists have clear boundaries. The time we spend on social media is part of a larger conversation. Writing, by contrast, is solitary work that is harder to predict. You may sit down one day and produce ten pages of solid work. Another day may find you waffling over two paragraphs that never quite work. Not to mention how the writer’s life is full of rejection.
Again, it’s the fear. Fear of failure, of feeling irrelevant, of being overlooked and ignored even though you’ve done your very best.
I’ve read Anne Lamott. I’ve read Neil Gaiman. Hemingway. Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Emily Dickenson. Cheryl Strayed. All talk about how fear and insecurity never really go away. These and other writers describe writing as an infection, an addiction, a cruel taskmaster.
God, it really sucks, doesn’t it?
But you’re not going to let that stop you, are you? Here are nine ways you can reframe your fears so you can become a more productive writer.
1. Know what you want and plan for it.
When you know exactly what you want your writing life to include, it’s easy to create a clear action plan. I write about this in detail in my book The Writer’s Roadmap: Paving the Way To Your Ideal Writing Life:
If you don’t know what you want, how can you possibly hope to accomplish it?
Imagine going on a road trip. You lock the door to your house, jump in the car, and just start driving aimlessly. Sure, that could be exciting for a while, but at some point, you’ll want to do something. You’ll get hungry. You’ll get bored of driving. If you didn’t pack the right shoes and have no money for a hot dog, you won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities along the way. Lack of preparation forces you to backtrack, repeat steps, and may even leave you stranded and lost.
Then once you know what you want, you can set a plan of action to get there. It saves time and keeps you focused and on your objective.
Practically speaking, if you want to make a living freelance writing, then your daily work focuses on pitching. If you want to write a book but keep your fulltime job? You set aside time every week to work on your book.
2. Write first thing in the day.
Sit down and write as your first act of work for the day. It can be a blog post, morning pages, gratitude journal, short story or essay. Or you can work on your book. If you don’t have anything started, brainstorm or free write.
Just start writing!
Write daily. Write first thing. And yes, write like a mother fucker.
3. Stay off your phone for the first half-hour of the day.
It’s easy to roll out of bed and check your messages, especially if you’re using your phone as an alarm. Don’t do it! The minute you check e-mail or social media, you put yourself in a position to respond to someone else’s needs and requests. Spend the first half-hour of your day thinking about what you want.
What do you want to accomplish? What is your number one goal? How do you want to feel? How do you want to spend your day?
It’s much easier to write or focus on a project central to your overall goals when you’ve allowed it to take center stage at the beginning of your day.
4. Track your computer time
Do you know what you do on your computer each day? I mean, really?
I use Rescue Time to log my computer time. I use the free version, but they have a premium option as well. This app keeps track of every web site, application, every everything you do. You set which websites and applications are considered productive or not productive. At the end of the week, you get a neat little report detailing everything you did, how much time you spent and how productive you were.
When I received my first report, I was HORRIFIED, absolutely utterly HORRIFIED.
I am ashamed of what I’m about to tell you, but in the interests of science, I’ll admit the following.
I spent 80 hours on my computer and LESS THAN HALF OF THAT TIME WAS PRODUCTIVE. Let me repeat that. Fewer than half the hours I spent in front of my computer added to my writing, my work or my life in any useful way. I was literally wasting my life doing, well, what the hell was I doing?
What could I have been doing instead during that extra 40+ hours a week? Yoga. Spending time with my kids. Working on art projects. Photography. Hiking. I could have been blissfully napping, but instead, I was mucking about online with people I didn’t even know.
Once I saw exactly how much time I was wasting, I created a strategy to use my time more effectively and spend less time on my computer. Simply put, that meant avoiding the websites and applications on my computer that didn’t contribute to a productive day of writing.
5. Create boundaries on your workweek
We’ve been conditioned to think the workweek lasts forty hours. We’ve also been told to expect that we’ll have to work much longer hours. The average entrepreneur — which includes writers, because writing is a business — works fifty or more hours a week. Then add social media and other potential distractions, suddenly work expands to fit as many hours as you allow it.
It’s easy to set start and stop times when you work at an office, but when you work from home or writing is your side gig, you have to structure your own time. Set clear hours each week for writing. Stick to them no matter what.
Stick to your schedule in the same way you stick to the other appointments you make in your life. Respect the edges. Keep the boundaries. When someone asks you to make an exception — unless very special circumstances arise — say no.
6. Take breaks
The human brain has a hard time really focusing on projects that require deep thought and concentration for more than three or four hours. Cal Newport discusses this in detail in his book Deep Work.
So why expect yourself to spend eight hours engaged in work? You don’t focus as clearly nor will you produce more writing.
Too much time at work has other negative impacts on your health and life. It raises stress levels, impacts your ability to sleep, and leaves you feeling less in control of your relationships among other things. We need proper sleep, breaks, and relaxation in order to create and produce quality writing.
When you create time for regular breaks as well as lunch, you set yourself up to be a more productive writer.
7. Protect your off-work time fiercely.
Do you work weekends as a rule? Do you sneak onto your computer after dinner or late at night to finish a project or get ahead on a new one? Do you answer your e-mail immediately, whenever the message appears in your inbox?
It may feel like you’re getting more done, but in truth, when you work too much and don’t spend enough time resting, you cut your ability to focus. Your performance on the task at hand suffers. Research shows how taking breaks helps you work more creatively.
Carve out your weekends, nights and breaks during the workday and guard them well. Your time is valuable. Use it to reach your goals without (much) compromise.
8. Automate Your To-Do List
One of the best ways to start your day productively is to know exactly what you want to accomplish before you sit down to work.
An easy way to do this? Spend ten minutes at the end of each day making a list of what you want to do the next day. At the end of your workweek, write out a list of tasks to tackle when the next week begins.
And never, I mean never, start your day by going through your lists and trying to organize.
Why is there such a strong pull to organizing and e-mail? Simply put. It’s easy. You have control. They’re a pat on the back, a job well done and checkbox accomplished. While these tasks are productive on many levels, save them for after lunch when you’re still digesting and relaxing and leave your mornings and afternoons for projects that require your deepest attention.
9. Stop lying to yourself about social media
Social media. The mother of all time wasters.
Social media can be extremely productive. Can. Be. It can also be the digital Charybdis of Time. The Succubus that drains you. The Chupacabra that silently steals the lifeblood of your day.
But I digress.
If you want to be honest with yourself about the ways you use social media, then it’s time to create limits for the time you spend there. Try installing a website timer to keep track. I added the free Chrome extension StayFocusd to my browser, but there are other options, too.
StayFocusd allows you to block websites or create time limits per day for each website. I gave myself 45 minutes a day for all social media websites. Twitter. Facebook. Linked In. Instagram. Once I’ve used my 45 minutes, StayFocusd blocks those websites completely until the next day.
Knowing my time is limited helps me make better choices. I work quickly and walk away when a discussion isn’t worth my time.
My social media time falls into three categories:
One. Useful stuff. Social media helps me connect with editors and places to pitch. I moderate writing forums and groups. I chat with other writers and focus on trending topics on Twitter. I moderate The Workshop, my online writing community and then my author profiles on each platform.
I rarely need more than forty-five minutes a day for all of that.
Two. Stupid stuff. Message boards and Facebook group discussions rarely result in the productive use of my time. Sometimes I allow myself to get sucked into a conversation, but I keep it to a minimum.
Then there’s three. The middle ground. I share articles, blog posts and links to my book. I also join Twitterchats and love interacting with friends, clients, readers, and writers online. These things can be productive but can easily go south, too. When you find a discussion is going in a direction that’s not useful, leave. Or if you’re having a productive discussion, consider scheduling a time to meet face-to-face — in real life or via skype or another video app.
