Time to Write

A Tool for Procrastinators Only

I’m sure you’ve heard that the way to tackle a big task is to turn it into small chunks. Good advice but I’ve found sometimes I do one or two of the small chunks, get distracted, and lose track of the bigger task. When I’ve confessed this, quite a few people have said they have the same issue. If that’s you, too, I recommend a simple little tool I’ve devised that I call a Task Map.

A Task Map is just a simple diagram of the smaller chunks in the order in which I think they need to be done.

The example pictured here is a breakdown of the steps I need to do in order to launch a feature on TikTok. As you can see, I’m starting from zero; I don’t even know the exact dimensions the graphics should have or the best format for the audio. I also need to find out the best frequency of posting (consistent with what I can realistically produce), and some tips on how to attract followers.

As reflected in the next step, I plan to produce the first dozen posts for launch day (they’re very short). I also want to have the related print-on-demand merchandise ready on a site like Etsy in the unlikely event of the site arousing a lot of interest right away. I also want to get feedback from some more experienced people, do any final pre-launch prep I’ve found out about in the meantime, and then launch. I put a check mark in each circle as I complete that step.

Of course, you don’t need to draw it, it could just be a simple list, but I am visually oriented and find this format stands out more and is less likely to get buried on my desk.

I haven’t done it on this map, but you may want to add deadlines for each step. Sometimes it turns out that something I’ve got down as one step needs to be broken down into smaller steps, leading to another map.

When I get to the end of the map, it's time to draw another one for the next part of the process. In this case, that would be continuing to post, responding to feedback, improving the posts, and perhaps creating additional merchandise. If that sells, there may even eventually be a step that reads, “Spend the income on something nice!”

 

If procrastination is an issue for you, give this a try and let me know how you get on, either in the comments or at [email protected].

How to Give Yourself a Procrastination Allowance

Once we start to procrastinate, we tend to keep procrastinating.

A common refrain is, "I don't have much time left today to work on that task, so I'll make a fresh start tomorrow."

Of course, tomorrow we may find ourselves saying the same thing, and on and on.

Instead, try giving yourself a procrastination allowance: a certain amount of time you will avoid doing that task, after which you will make a start.

For instance, if you plan to work on writing a report between nine and eleven AM, give yourself a procrastination allowance of fifteen minutes per hour. Use it for anything you want--looking at Youtube videos, checking the news, or staring into space.

You would start the first hour by procrastinating between nine and nine-fifteen. Set a timer to go off when the 15 minutes are up, then get to work.

At 10 you get another 15 minutes to goof off or do a more pleasant task. Again, use the timer so you won't spend more than your allowed time.

Idealists may say, "Wait a minute--that means I'm wasting 30 minutes every two hours!" That's true. But isn't that better than wasting the whole two hours?

Be upstanding for your health!

According to Science Daily, "Studies have linked prolonged sitting with health concerns such as heart disease, cancer, depression, diabetes, and obesity. Research shows that breaking up long periods of sitting with movement at least once an hour reduces those risks, while regular exercise at other times of day does not."

In other words, you can't make up for that long session of sitting by going for a jog or a walk later. 

Since writers tend to spend long sessions at the keyboard, it's a risk particularly applicable to us. Here are some suggestions for how to make sure you get up and move for at least a minute or two every hour:

• Use an app on your phone or smartwatch. Mine reminds me with a silent (vibrating) alarm and keeps track of how many times in a day I get up for at least a minute per hour.
  
  
• Use a similar app on your computer. Some offer badges when you stick to the break schedule, or make it part of a simple game.
  
  
• If you have Alexa or the equivalent, give it the task of reminding you to stand at the start of every hour.
  
  
• Link it to something you do frequently. If you keep a bottle of water handy, stand up to drink from it, or make some of your phone calls while standing.
  
  
• Break down the task you're working on into chunks that you think will take about an hour each and get up and move in between each chunk.

The bonus is that moving around a bit may also refresh your brain. For even better results, when you stand up, take a few deep breaths and stretch.

Time to edit your goals? Here's how.

If you made some writing (or other) resolutions at the start of the year, the odds are that you haven't been able to carry them out as planned. One study says that 80% of resolutions fail.

If January 1st is a good time to make resolutions, February 1st is a great time to edit them.

By editing, I mean taking a look at the obstacles that have come up that you didn't anticipate, and figuring out ways around them. For instance:

• Did you set too many goals at once? Consider focusing on your top one or two.
  
  
• Were you unrealistic about how much time and/or effort your goal would take? Chunk it down into smaller pieces and set more realistic deadlines.
  
  
• Did you start something new but find that you don't enjoy it? Think about what you're trying to achieve and consider a different means to that end. For instance, maybe you joined a gym but don't like the atmosphere there. Presumably, your goal is to get fit so think about how else you might do that. Of course, sometimes reaching a goal requires us to do the hard things that aren't enjoyable. In that case, keep your eye on the endpoint.
  
  
• Are you finding your family or friends are not being supportive? First, try explaining to them why this goal is important to you and ask them to be supportive or at least stop being critical. Look for people, locally or online, who understand and share your goals and support each other.
  
  
• If you feel like abandoning a goal you considered important, be honest with yourself about why. Sometimes it does make sense to quit and move on rather than sticking with something that isn't giving you what you'd hoped. However, if it's because it's more difficult than you thought, consider getting help in the form of workshops, mentors, coaches, or online groups.

Don't assume that you'll need to go through this process only once; repeating it at least every three months will help you get on and stay on the right track to reaching your goals. 

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If you want to be more productive, check out my book, "Focus: how to use targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

A Thought about achievement for the New Year--or anytime

 

"Most daily tasks, if it be really daily,

will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules."

            - Anthony Trollope

 

I'm no Hercules, but my tasks have been rather spasmodic for a while! Let's see if I can change that in the New Year...feel free to join in if you've had the same problem.

The Power of Deadlines

Sometimes when I'm supposed to be doing something, I find I'm drawn to doing something else--usually something easier and less important. Entrepreneur and writer Peter Gasca discussed a similar problem in an interview on Inc.com:

"I am mostly too organized, bordering on O.C.D., and have a mild case of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (self-diagnosed). This often gets me trapped in endless loops of being productive and getting meaningless things done. I have found this causes creativity paralysis, which is the inability to start a creative endeavor for fear of not being able to complete it.

I have mostly overcome this by engaging in projects that have deadlines, or giving myself deadlines, which forces me to start and complete a task, even if at the last minute."

He has a way of looking at deadlines that I like:

"I have come to understand that by having deadlines, artificial or real, my mind turns off the ‘input’ process and switches to ‘output,’ which forces me to be deliberate about a task in front of me."

That speaks to the danger of continuing to research the topic or to watch lots of videos and read lots of articles because, who knows, maybe there'll be something useful in them. Those are all 'input.' With a deadline, it's easier to be aware of when to throw that switch to 'output.'

(You may also be interested in the productivity techniques in my book, Focus: Use the Power of Targeted Thinking to Get More Done. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

The man with 21,000 rejections

A man who's collected 21,000 rejections? What a loser, right?

Nope, very, very wrong.

Jacob M. Appel is a doctor, lawyer, bioethicist, author, professor, and tour guide. He has seven master's degrees, a JD from Harvard Law School, an MD, and is a practicing psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

His short fiction has been published in 215 literary journals, his debut novel won the Dundee Prize in 2012 and raves from Philip Pullman and Stephen Fry. He's published 16 books and written ten plays. Next month he's making appearances at literary events in Connecticut, Virginia, New York, and Ohio. 

Can we agree this guy must be a genius? 

Maybe, then, you'll be surprised to hear that in addition to all his awards and accolades, he's had 21,000 rejections.

That means he's submitted work 21,000 times (actually more, because not all were rejected). He's 46 now.

I don't know at what age he started submitting work but let's say it was early, at 16. That's 30 years. That's 700 submissions per year, about two per day. And he still had time left over to become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, and tour guide. 

Very few will ever match Appel's abilities and achievements, but I think there are four things we can learn from him:

1. You have to produce.
2. You have to get it out there.
3. You will get a lot of rejections.
4. You can't let the rejections stop you.
   

Writing Excuses Demolished: "I don't know if my idea is good enough."

Some people never get around to writing because they don't know whether their idea is good enough to succeed in the marketplace.

Welcome to the club!

Every book, poem, short story, and screenplay is a gamble. Even the top publishers are not very good at predicting which books will take off and which will have disappointing sales. The same goes for movie studios, hence the famous William Goldman quote, "Nobody knows anything."

Sometimes writers have a huge success with one project and a huge flop with the next one, or vice-versa. 

All you can do is your best. Write the book or script, do as much as you can to help make people aware that it exists, and move on to the next one while still devoting some time to marketing your previous projects.

Writing Excuses Demolished: "I don't have time."

One of the most common reasons that comes up when people say they want to write but they aren't is "I don't have time."

Really? Do you watch TV, go to the movies, use social media? I’m not saying you have to eliminate these, but you could cut back on them and other things that take up your time in order to carve out at least a few hours every week for writing. For instance, is it more important to know who's dancing with the stars or getting chucked out of the baking competition, or writing your script or novel?

Many novels have been written in moments stolen from lunch hours and work breaks, or early mornings or late nights. One friend of mine took a job working at a pizza parlor because during the slow hours between lunch and dinner he had the chance to work on his novel. His supervisor didn’t care, as long as the customers who came in were tended to.

What are the odd moments you could use—if not to actually write, maybe to brainstorm in order to flesh out your characters or plot?

What's one thing that you can stop doing and use that time to write? 

I'm an info addict. Are you?

Science proved what we probably suspected all along: you can get addicted to information in the same way you can get addicted to junk food.

ScienceDaily reports: 

"A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain's dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food.

'To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it's useful,' said Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, 'And just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful -- what some may call idle curiosity.'

''The way our brains respond to the anticipation of a pleasurable reward is an important reason why people are susceptible to clickbait,' he said. 'Just like junk food, this might be a situation where previously adaptive mechanisms get exploited now that we have unprecedented access to novel curiosities.'

I've read articles about people going on a digital diet and recently I was forced to go on a digital semi-diet for a couple of weeks. The place I was staying didn't have wi-fi, you had to go to a clubhouse to access the internet. It wasn't a far walk, but a lot more effort than picking up a close-at-hand iPhone or iPad. 

Now it made more sense to actually finish the task I was doing before going to the clubhouse to check email and headlines.

I didn't have withdrawal symptoms, but I did notice one big effect: I got more writing done.

Lots more. 

When I was able to get back on the internet there was a definite "Ahhh!" once I was able to snack on all the unimportant information featured on my favorite sites.

Yep, it's time for me to consider one of those apps that lets you shut down your access to the internet for a length of time you set. 

What about you?

 

 

 

You DO have time to write!

There’s no question about it, even though technology was supposed to make life easier and give us more time, the demands on us are escalating.

Making the time to do something that is important to you, like writing the screenplay or novel you’ve been thinking about for ages, is a bigger challenge than ever…but it IS possible.

Here are three ways to help you get started:

Consciously decide what you are NOT going to do anymore.

You’re already doing something every hour of the day. There’s no way to turn a day into 25 hours just because you want to now spend an hour a day writing.

That means you have to decide what it is you do now for an hour a day that you will stop doing.

Some likely candidates are watching TV, surfing the web, housework, errands, laundry, and hanging out with people out of habit rather than because you enjoy it. You may be thinking, “Wait--the laundry has to be done, so do errands! That brings us to strategy number two:

Find ways to delegate some of the things you are doing now.

• Can your spouse or kids take over some of the chores you are doing now?
  
  
• Can you hire a high school or college student to run errands for a you a few hours on the weekend?
  
  
• Can you hire somebody online? (There’s a great site at www.Fiverr.com that lists what people will do for $5 (or more). There’s a UK version, Fivesquid.com, and you can use either one. There is an amazing variety of services on offer. For instance, I’ve used it recently to get somebody to transcribe 10 minutes of an audio interview recording and to create original music for the introduction to a podcast I’m planning.

Barter or exchange services

For example, if you and your neighbor both have kids, you might swap babysitting services to give each of you a free afternoon. 

The bottom line

At the end of your life, do you want to think back and say, “Well, I never got around to writing the stories I was passionate about, but my kitchen sure was spotless!”? Or, “I could have written a script that would have had an impact on the world, but then again going bowling with the gang from work every Friday night was fun even though George from HR got on my nerves and my feet always hurt from wearing those stupid bowling shoes”?

The time to start doing something about your dream is now, and you CAN make the time to make it come true.

Will your screenplay or novel be a hit?

It's easy to expend a lot of energy worrying about whether what you're working on will be a success.

I've done it and I'm sure I'll do it again, but it's wasted energy. It can even lead to writer's block.

In his book, Drawing From Within, artist Nick Meglin writes:

"I once asked a writer friend what he was working on and he said wryly, 'I'm writing a hit play.' He knows what all playwrights know: You can't write a hit.

You can only write a play and have it performed. The public will then determine if it's a hit. 

Neil Simon wrote more commercial hits than any other living playwright, but even he would be the first to tell you he never knew which of his plays would be a 'hit.' It's totally out of his control. What he does control is the time and energy he devotes, and the personal statement he makes in his writing. When he writes 'The End,' the curtain goes down on both his play and his control of its success."

That's worth repeating: The only thing we control is the time and energy we devote to our writing and the personal statement we make with it. If we find ourselves fretting over whether the world will judge our writing to be any good, that's a cue to focus on those three elements instead. 

What's the best place to write?

The best place to write is wherever you feel most inspired and productive, but there's a good case for trying writing or brainstorming in your nearest nice park. According to Science Daily:

"Taking at least 20 minutes out of your day to stroll or sit in a place that makes you feel in contact with nature will significantly lower your stress hormone levels.

That's the finding of a study that has established for the first time the most effective dose of an urban nature experience.

Healthcare practitioners can use this discovery to prescribe 'nature-pills' in the knowledge that they have a real measurable effect." [The study was published in Frontiers of Psychology] 

Especially now that we're on the verge of friendlier weather in many places, why not take your favorite notebook or even your laptop to a park bench, spend the first ten minutes just breathing deeply and enjoying the scenery and then have thinking or writing session. When people are blocked I always suggest a change of location, and that could be another benefit of writing in the park.

If you try it, let me know how it works for you, in the comments here or via email to [email protected]. And if you can't get out to a park today, stare at the picture below for a minute...

 

Four mistaken beliefs about writing

There are a few bits of writing advice that I run across a lot that I think are bogus and may be damaging your confidence:

"You must write every day."

It's great if you do write every day, but there are plenty of successful writers who don't. Some have periods during which they research and periods during which they write. Some write a lot for a few days, then take a couple of days off. Whatever works best for you is right.

"You're not a real writer until your work has been published."

Was Charles Dickens a real writer the day before his first book was published? I'd say yes.

It may be fair to say you're not a professional writer until you've been paid for your writing, that's just how we define "professional."

If you're writing, you're a real writer. Anybody who doesn't think so just has a different definition of real.

"Your success as a writer is determined by how many books or scripts you've sold."

You get to set your own definition of success.

Is the best-selling writer automatically a better writer than someone who hasn't sold as many copies? Obviously not. The former may just be a better promoter, or have a more powerful agent, or a big publisher pushing his or her book.

My definition of success for myself as a scriptwriter was (and still is), "Am I making a living from this?" That's because I devote full-time to it.

The first three years I wasn't successful because I didn't make enough from writing to support myself. Ever since, I've been successful--although of course there are many, many scriptwriters who have made more money and had more projects produced. I respect and, in some cases, admire them, but I've never found it helpful to spend much time comparing myself to others.

Another definition of success is, "the things I'm writing these days are generally better than the things I was writing a couple of years ago--by my own standards."

"You're an imposter and will be found out."

This is one a lot of people tell themselves. Not only in the arts, although it's likely that it's more pervasive in the arts than in, say, accounting. The odds are that you're not an imposter and if you are, probably you won't be found out.

A belief of mine that may be more useful: "I'm not as good as I think I am on the days I think I'm really good, and not as bad as I think on the days I think I'm really bad."

A couple of useful questions:

When you find yourself worrying about issues like these, ask, "Says who?"

Literally, who says that?

What makes them the expert?  

They may be an expert on what works for them, but does that makes them an expert on what will work for you?

Might the opposite be true?

If so, which one feels more constructive?

Try operating on the basis of that one.

 

 

 

 

 

How to Schedule Procrastination

Despite being aware of many productivity techniques, I still struggle sometimes with procrastination. Here's a little technique I've found helpful when I've been avoiding a simple task for some reason: Schedule procrastination by scheduling the task.

Rather than saying, "I'll do this task today," which leaves me free to move it down the to-do list until it's too late, I say, "I'll do this task at 3 pm." 

It may seem like I'm just scheduling the task, but I'm also scheduling procrastination at the same time. Between whenever I start work and 3 pm, I can be guilt-free about not doing that task.

To make it more likely that I'll stick to the plan, I combine this with micro-chunking by saying, "I'll do this task starting at 3 pm and ending at 3:15 pm."

I can stand just about anything for 15 minutes, and once I get going on the task I may well just continue, but knowing I don't have to makes a difference.

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For more great tips, get my book, "Focus: how to use the power of targeted thinking," published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

 

What's your MDR for writing?

When you don’t have time to do a full session of writing, do you think it’s a lost cause and leave it for another day?

Unfortunately, those lost days can pile up.

I found that happening to me recently due to several distractions, including various medical tests (I found out I’m going to need a heart operation, probably next month).

There’s nothing wrong with taking a break from writing, of course, if that’s what you want to do; it’s when it happens even though it’s not what you want to do that a different strategy is called for.

I’m trying out one that I call MDR, for “minimum daily requirement.” That’s a phrase that usually refers to the minimum amount of a vitamin or nutrient you need every day.

I’ve set my writing MDR at either 30 minutes of focused brainstorming or 250 words. Of course I don’t have to stop at 250 word or at 30 minutes, but at least with the MDR I know I’ll keep some kind of momentum going.

If this might be useful for you, too, give it a try.