Much Ado About Writer's Block

Much has been written about writer’s block. In fact, I have spent countless hours searching online and seeking out books that will help me to overcome being blocked. Over time, I have realized that writer’s block is really another name for perfectionism. You can’t out anything down on paper, or type anything on the screen, because everything you can think of to say sounds wrong even before you’ve written it. The longer you sit in front of the blank page or screen in front of you, the harder it gets to put something down, and eventually, you just get up in frustration, telling yourself that you are blocked. 

Incidentally, I am a master at writer’s block. I spent years planning the first chapter, the first scene of a memoir that I wanted to write. This was going to be my first book, my most important book. If I didn’t nail the first scene, then the book wouldn’t come together. I never thought of writing the chapters I did know how to write, and simply putting the initial chapter in place later. Eventually, of course, I did employ that approach, and wrote other books; but because of that thinking I lost years of writing time. 

Perfectionism in writing is an insidious thing. It creeps up in the guise of “standards”. Who wouldn’t want to write well? Or ensure that they do a good job?

But there is a difference between having standards and perfectionism. Having standards means you care about quality, maybe you go over your work one more time, you take extra care while editing, you strive harder to get better as a writer. Perfectionism tells you that you have to get it right in one draft. There is no room for improvement, no room for error. With that attitude, no wonder we freeze up when faced with the prospect of having to write a first sentence. We stare at the blank page, aware of the importance of that first sentence and think - “This has to grab the reader. This has to be witty and entertaining and shed light into the mysteries of life”. No wonder we are paralyzed. 

How do you get away from perfectionism? You remind yourself that what you’re working on is just a draft. I had a professor in law who introduced our class to the concept of the ‘zero draft’. This was the stage even before the first draft, which even though it has the word ‘draft’ in it, most people including myself, associate with the final or near-final version of something. That way, having a zero draft gives you a chance to write an unpolished, messy draft. Ever since, I always started my academic papers, and later my books, with a zero draft. 

Which hasn’t stopped me from having several other drafts as well. When asked how many drafts a piece of writing might need, writing coach Hilary Rettig said, “As many as it takes”. 

I think the best way to combat the tendency towards perfectionism in your writing is to give yourself permission - permission to write something that needs to be edited. Permission to write something that isn’t quite finished yet. And permission to write and publish something that isn’t perfect, but is something better - it represents you. 

The Myth of the Messy Creative

We have all heard about how truly creative people are supposedly messy, and its a mark of a creative genius if they live in piles of clutter. I bought into this myth, or rather used it to justify being perennially disorganized and cluttered. Who am I kidding - I continue to use it to justify my being incredibly messy. But unlike before, I no longer buy into the myth. 

I’m not really sure whether there are studies that prove this myth one way or the other. And if you are a messy person who doesn’t want to change how you work, far be it for me to pass judgement. However, as someone who has struggled with being organized and corralling my clutter my whole life, I think there are a lot of benefits to working in a neat space. And this coming from someone who basically used a big plastic box in college to store my clothes in lieu of actually folding them or hanging them up when they came out of the wash. I dumped everything in the box, and rooted around in it every morning when looking for something to wear. Needless to say, that wasn’t a great system. 

And I used only a slightly better system for organizing important paperwork - the put-it-somewhere-and-forget-about-it method. I would dump unopened correspondence, flyers for events I wanted to attend, and even free vouchers for food that I wanted to eat in a pile on my desk, and when that pile grew larger, I would just gently push it all to the back to make more room, ignoring anything that mysteriously fell behind my desk, only to be retrieved months later when I was moving out. Its a miracle that I even managed to hand in anything important on time, and definitely missed out on a lot of great opportunities. I do not recommend this! 

In subsequent years, I have really tried hard to learn how to get better at being neat and organized. I have read books and looked up systems that promise that I will turn into Martha Stewart. While I haven’t become an expert at any of this, I have picked up tons of tips to help the organizationally challenged. 

Firstly, why even bother trying to be neater? Why not just embrace that this isn’t an area of strength and live with it? 

• I often find that even if I let things slide while I am in the midst of a project or unusually busy with many things, neatening up helps me to close out a long and draining project, by putting away the detritus that accumulated while I was in the midst of working on it. 
• I also find that when I’m feeling particularly challenged and a project isn’t going as well as I would like, organizing things helps to get me back on track. This might be because neatening things on the surface helps me achieve a calmer state inside me. Or it could have something to do with the energy or chi of my space. 
• It helps reduce the distractions in my environment - seeing many different projects strewn around makes it harder to focus on the project at hand. 

So how exactly am I going to help you become more organized, at home or in your office? While I am not going to try and change you overnight into a neat freak, I will give you one huge tip that can help you in your organizational efforts: the rule of 80-20.

If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, its an economic term that basically describes a phenomena that often 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In simple English, things aren’t symmetrical or equal - a few people own a large proportion of the wealth, a few actresses get most of the Oscars and you use a few items in your home more often than the others. 

If you take the 80-20 rule and apply it to organizing your home or your office, you will realize that you wear some clothes more often than all the others combined, or some kitchen tools more than all the others, or some files in your office more often than everything else. 

How does knowing this help? It allows you to organize your space in such a way that everything you need regularly can be kept in an easy-to-access space, or kept close to hand. And the gadgets and files and handbags that you need only sometimes, can be put away - maybe in the cabinet that is harder to access, or in the top shelf of your cupboard that you need a step-ladder to get to. 

Ever since I had this epiphany of the 80-20 rule applying to organization, I realized that every room of my home violated it. I had the easiest to access drawers in my kitchen full of spices and utensils I almost never used. I kept files and papers I hadn’t touched in over six months on the table in my study. The most convenient hanging spaces in my cupboard were used for single-occasion dresses that I needed twice a year. No wonder I was disorganized - I hadn’t considered how I used my space. 

Faced with the challenge of keeping a neat dressing table, ask yourself: which items do you use most often? Put those on a pile to the side, and put everything else away. Voila! You’ve just made it easier to keep that dressing table neat. If you have a kitchen counter filled to bursting with gadgets, put away everything that is not used at least once a week. Stationery on your desk: do you really need six boxes of staples? Keep one and put the rest away. 

Why I love this method of keeping things neat - it doesn’t require you to remember complicated rules or buy special label-makers. You just ask yourself - what are my most easily accessed areas, and am I only using them to keep things I use most often?

I have been using this system myself and even converted my mum, who is much, much neater than me but still struggles with keeping everything contained. If you use this method and find it useful, email me or comment below and let me know. Better still, send me a photo! 

Ten Minutes a Day (and a Challenge)

This morning, after days of feeling guilty about not doing any exercise and basically feeling like cr*p, I decided to spend one minute doing some yoga. Now I am not a yoga expert, I have attended, over the course of a couple of years, maybe 15-20 classes. Depending on my current fitness level, I can do most beginner poses with ease, but pack too many of them into a one-hour session, and I will be looking desperately at the clock, willing it to move faster. 

I’m giving you this background to establish my credentials as not fit and not great at yoga, and in fact this morning, all I could remember was about 4 1/2 poses, that I executed clumsily. Even that minute or 90 seconds of yoga instantly eliminated my aches and pains and feeling of stiffness, and I felt loads better. And instead of feeling guilty about not doing anything, I started to look forward to the next time I would do yoga. 

Now I know that ten minutes a day isn’t going to make me the most fit person around, but it is a great start. And it is much easier to convince yourself to do ten minutes of something, even when you’re busy or tired or uninspired. 

I read recently in Tools of Titans (Tim Ferriss) about a meditation teacher who recommends that you take just one mindful breath a day. It’s the same concept. Anyone can take one breath. Its not that hard. 

So why am I writing about yoga and mindfulness instead of creativity? Because I think the same principle can be applied to being more creative. I know many people who say they would like to write a book, or do something creative that requires a large commitment of time. On hearing that I have written books, people invariably say, I would love to write a book, if only I had the time. It is true that I have been fortunate enough to have had large chunks of time that I could devote to writing. But that wasn’t the case for my initial books and it wasn’t the case for my most recent one. 

In fact, I finished my most recent book several months behind schedule and it got derailed several times. I raced to finish it while I was juggling a new job in a completely new industry, settling into a new (old) city and dealing with health issues. The way I finally finished it - a few minutes of writing a day. 

I often had only 10-15 minutes of time after my long commute home, and many days I would tell myself - “I’m too tired”, or “I will get to it tomorrow”. I thought I wasn’t inspired, or that I needed to not be falling asleep with exhaustion in order to write. And the days went by, the end of the year got closer, and I was no nearer to finishing. 

I was starting to panic, because I had imposed a deadline of publishing the book within 2017. It had already been delayed enough, and I didn’t want to delay it any further.

So I started working on it for 10 minutes at a time. Some days I spent 10-15 minutes editing an essay on my morning commute. I carried my work and personal laptop, and found I could edit a few paragraphs each way. On other days I came home and spent 15 minutes editing before dinner.

Progress was slow - most of the time I despaired that I was any closer to finishing, because I was only working on a few paragraphs at a time. But one at a time I finished editing 8, then 9, then 11 essays. I had 3 essays left and about 10 days before I would have to submit the book to be in time for publishing in December. I figured I could handle it, and get the work in in time.

And then I realized I had two important work projects due on Monday, and I would have to work over the weekend to get it done in time. And I had planned to complete the essays that weekend as well. 

I panicked, then determined that I would work on all of the projects. I got my work assignments and the essays edited. In 15 minute increments. In between my work projects, I edited the essays, putting in 15 minutes on them before going back to my work assignments. Over the course of that weekend, I made substantial headway on my projects, which ultimately got handed in on time. And I completed my book. 

I realize that everyone’s life circumstances are different, and sometimes it just isn’t possible to squeeze anything else in. This experience however made me realize that I don’t know how much more I am capable of accomplishing until I am pushed, until I have no choice but to challenge my assumptions of what I can and can’t do.

And that’s why I have set a big challenge for myself for 2018 - to write much more than I have so far, and to really stretch my capacity. If I can achieve it, it would be amazing and an example of how much we really can stretch. If I can’t, I probably would still get more done than I have previously, and learn a lot from the attempt. So I win no matter what. 

If you’re reading this at the end of December / beginning of January (or at any time really), I encourage you to set a challenge for yourself that seems like a big stretch, something that makes you feel excited and nervous in equal measure. Share your goal or keep it to yourself, but don’t hold back. After all, you will win either way. 

Positive Psychology for Writers

I have been reading a few books on principles that derive from positive psychology or as some call it “the science of happiness”. And I was thinking of how I could apply some of it to my own life, and I was wondering if there are ways that writers specifically could use positive psychology. So I thought I would share some of my thoughts. 

First of all, as I understand it, positive psychology focuses on positive emotions and how to increase them. Now I am going to make the assumption that if you are a writer, you chose to do it because it makes you unhappy. Unlike many other professions, writing isn’t full of obvious perks like a company car and the corner office, so usually people choose to be writers for intrinsic reasons. So then, writing is supposed to make you happy. If it already does, that’s great, and you can skip further to my next point. If it doesn’t, then a good question to ask is why.

But first, does it matter if you are happy while writing? The culture is filled with examples that connect writers to negative vices - the alcoholic writer, the solitary writer who refuses to engage with people, the starving artist who can’t make ends meet. None of these connotations are positive, and sometimes we believe that’s the only way to be a serious, professional writer. Then there are the quotes - “You just need to stare at a blank piece of paper till drops of blood start to form on your forehead”. Not exactly encouraging a positive outlook. 

Positive psychology states that optimism and a positive mindset are more conducive to creativity than pessimism and being negative. You have more ideas, you are more original when you are feeling positive. So obviously, that’s something to aim towards, right?

The other thing I learned from positive psychology is that we are happier and more productive when we focus on our strengths. This might be obvious, but I often find that I obsess a lot more about my weaknesses than hone in on my strengths. I keep thinking of all the things I can’t do, what I am not good at. I can’t do social media, I am not great at marketing, I can’t popular fiction like XYZ author. I focus on my low sales figures, all the aspects of marketing I am not doing, all the platforms I am not on. I read a wonderful book and then fret because I could never write in that genre. 

However, positive psychology states that focusing on your strengths can make you feel better about yourself and you end up succeeding more. So ideally, I would be focusing on the aspects of writing that I enjoy and am good at. Write the book I want to read. Successful indie author Joanna Penn has said that she always thought that writing literary fiction was what she was supposed to do, even though what she loved to read were thrillers. She ignored her initial instincts, and today she is a USA Today bestselling author of Dan Brown-esque thrillers. 

To me, focusing on your strengths means being honest with yourself about what you are good at, what you can become better at, and what you are better off outsourcing or just forgetting about. Write the books you really want to. Hone your craft and get better at your writing, but only in the areas and subjects you really care about or are interested. And outsource anything that you absolutely hate doing so that you can spend more time on the aspects of writing you love and get better at that. If Facebook really isn’t your thing, don’t force yourself to do it. Spend time on writing a lovely author newsletter and send that out every month instead. If you can’t get the hang of converting your books to print, outsource that and start writing your next novel. 

Another aspect of positive psychology is gratitude. This is something that I personally struggle with a lot - I find it hard to be grateful, especially when I am focusing on all the lack in my life. Like the poor sales of my books, or how badly a certain book is coming, or how I wish I was doing better on social media and improving my author platform. However, changing how you think can change not only your mood but also your environment. There is so much to be grateful for if only we take the time to see it. We have the opportunity to write a book and put it out within 24 hours, and have readers from around the world read our books. We can get our books in different formats, and even translate them into other languages. Instead of honing in on poor sales or slow promotion campaigns, we can choose to be grateful for every reader that buys our books, and every follower on social media. We can celebrate every fan email or positive mention of our work online. We can be thankful for every reader who took the time to post a review. It can be hard to stand out as an author and get our work noticed, but we are lucky to have so many opportunities that were unavailable even 10 years ago. Let’s savor every good thing instead of only complaining or worrying about the bad. 

I am also learning from positive psychology to be less critical of my work. To be able to see the good parts, or at the very least, to reserve judgement while I am still in the draft stages. To edit with a light touch. To be optimistic about the merit of my work, instead of giving in to the voice that says that my work is terrible, that no one will read it, that writing the book is a waste of my time. I am trying to remind myself that this is only a draft, I can always do it over. I try to remember all the good things people have said about my work, instead of fixating on the negatives. None of this is easy, but all of it is worth it.

Whether you call it the law of attraction, positive psychology, optimism or being a dreamer, anything that makes it easier and more pleasurable to write, is worth trying, in my opinion. Focus on the positive aspects of your writing, give more time to your strengths, be grateful and try to cultivate a more positive mindset. Your writing and your environment can only improve as a result. 

A Lesson I Need To Keep Learning

This is a blog post I have been putting off writing for days, ironically, because of today’s post topic - perfectionism. 

I have written about perfectionism before on this blog, and I know it is a common topic, one that everyone is familiar with. I thought I knew that I was a perfectionist and that it was a tendency I had to guard against, but I didn’t exactly realize how much it was affecting almost every aspect of my life. Probably I still don’t. 

I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the things I need to do. I am fortunate, I have a lot of projects going on right now, many of them with other people, all of them work I am excited about, or was at one time. But right now, the number of obligations have grown beyond the point that I feel I can handle, and I am feeling the pressure. More than feeling it. 

Part of the problem is that I said yes to too many things and many of them are either coming due too close to each other, or have just been put off for too long and I feel guilty not completing them. I made lists and looked and re-looked and tried to get things off my plate - but unless I was willing to go back to people and say “Sorry, I took on too much and can no longer do this”, I didn’t know how to get it all done. And it seemed like I wasn’t really willing to do that - to tell people I was going to disappoint them. 

So the solution became: I will do it all, just work harder and faster and feel more stressed till it is all done. Not a great idea, right?

But it seemed to me like I had no choice.

Until a few days ago, I was meditating and I had a lightbulb moment - maybe I am approaching some of this all wrong. Maybe I can do it all without losing my sanity - by letting down my standards some. Now I am not suggesting I phone it in, I am suggesting that I ask myself what is the reasonable standard that this task requires and then do it. 

For many things, when someone asks me to do something, I immediately decide it will be done the best way possible in the world. Even if they ask me to do A, I tack on B through E tasks. And then do them at 120% level. Now this was always appreciated, but it meant I did everything very slowly and couldn’t complete many projects. I started to think that I was either lazy or inefficient, and searched through the productivity literature for ways I could improve my productivity, increase efficiency and cut down on procrastination. 

I did all that. But it never occurred to me that one of the biggest things holding me back and causing my productivity to plummet wasn’t the fact that I was lazy or procrastinated too much, but that I was a perfectionist about every little aspect of every project. And that meant that sometimes I avoided working on something because it wasn’t up to my impossible standards and I didn’t know what to do about it. Or that I avoided taking on anything that was too challenging - for fear that I couldn’t do it (read: couldn’t do it excellently). Or that I added on unnecessary elements to things that didn’t need them, and added time and effort that could be spent elsewhere. 

This finally dawned on me this week, and I realized that I would need to go through my list and see where my need to do something perfectly was holding me up. 

The thing with perfectionism, at least for me, is that while it’s one thing to acknowledge that I have this problem and need to guard against it, it is another to see exactly what aspects of the project am I being perfectionistic about, and what is just doing a good job? Or being conscientious? 

For instance, I am helping my mom with a publishing project, that I will share more about later. My role in it is mainly to format the document, edit and proofread and take photos. Do the aspects that a publisher would traditionally. But the publishing industry has changed, and no one dedicates months to a book project like they used to. Even indie publishers who care about the final product, accept that their book won’t be perfect, and probably aren’t even looking for that. I know that my mom wants me to do an ok job, and move on to other things. A wrong comma or a few extra spaces or a missed italic doesn’t bother her very much. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop myself from wanting to spend the next several weeks perfecting the project, making sure there are absolutely no errors to be found. Since I am starting with something that is quite rough, that would be a challenge. And yet I am not sure anyone other than me cares, so clearly I could dial down the level of proofreading and editing and just get on with it. 

The same obsessiveness has been making several other projects take much longer than it should to complete, or in some cases, even get off the ground. I was offered a wonderful opportunity to work with someone on a project that I have very little knowledge in. I was very excited, but then since they gave me leeway in the timeline, I decided I must read every possible book on the topic and become a subject expert. I did this because I felt that was the only way I could even begin to know how to approach the project. But it was only recently that I realized that I was asked to do this not because of my subject matter expertise, but my ability as a writer. I don’t need to know everything possible. I don’t need to spend months on background reading. I need to know enough to understand conversations and then trust the other person who is the expert. I was using the need to know a perfect amount of information to deal with the anxiety I felt about beginning the project. 

I hope by writing this post that someone reading it recognizes similar tendencies in themselves, and is somehow helped. I know writing it down clarifies for me what specifically my perfectionism is about - it is rarely about falling short as I thought it was. Usually its about not knowing how to begin, or wanting to be able to control the outcome. Whatever it is, getting a handle on my perfectionism can have a huge effect on my productivity, and yours too if this is something you struggle with. Before chasing off to read about tomato timers and caffeine pills, see if changing the parameters of your project and how you are approaching it doesn’t make a significant difference to your productivity levels. It sure did for me. 

On Taking Care of Your Health

I am writing this while battling a cold and flu. It is mild, and I am not so sick that I need to go to a doctor, but sick enough to derail me from working or functioning at anything other than a slow pace. Not that there is ever a good time to fall sick, but now is a particularly bad time, as I have deadlines and owe work to people at the end of the week. As a result, I am wracked with guilt, trying unsuccessfully to work even though I feel like crap and just want to crawl into bed and stay there, and am worried that my work won’t be any good because basically my brain has gone to sleep. 

And only because I am sick and unable to work and this is affecting my productivity, I realize how important it is to look after one’s health before one falls sick. Cliched I know, but still true. 

Lately I have been obsessed with productivity and efficiency and lists - partly because I really enjoy that kind of thing and partly because I have a lot more to do than before and need to find a way to juggle it all. Having more work and more opportunities is always a good thing, but then again, we aren’t meant to be machines, and need to schedule time for maintenance. Despite knowing all this intellectually, I didn’t follow through practically. I keep skimping on workouts, squeezing in a couple of walks only under duress, even though I immediately felt better after each one. I kept promising that I would eat better, and then promptly skipped the salad and fruit smoothies for food that felt good in the moment, reducing my stress or giving me an artificial sugar or caffeine high so I could go back to work re-charged. I kept telling myself that at the end of the week, or just after this project, I would focus more on my health. I would take the time to eat right, I would exercise more. And before I could make good on these promises, I fell ill. And now I am taking the time to make soups and buy fruit, but it’s like the cliche of shutting the barn door after the horse escaped. 

We all know this - our bodies need maintenance. We need to take care of our health. But we sacrifice the currency of good health in the short term for more productivity, or so we think at any rate. We send more emails, do more busy work, execute on projects we already agreed to. But at what cost? Do we tell the car that now is not a good time to stop for gas when its running low? Why do we perform the same gamble with our bodies?

I think that taking the time to reset helps us gain more than just energy and better health. I think that pausing and reflecting, building the time for renewal also lets us evaluate - are all the things on my plate truly necessary or am I running around in circles? How can I accomplish more while doing less in certain areas? Where has inefficiency crept in? Asking these questions might actually allow us to get more done while being less stressed and having more down time. After all its the results we achieve that matter, not whether we maintained an empty inbox. 

I’m still struggling to implement a lot of these lessons myself. I have been looking at my to-do list, and as each new project comes along, instead of wondering what I can bump off or downgrade in importance to include it, I try to see how many more hours I can work to get it all done. The fact is that there are finite hours in the day and there are limits to my energy, especially if I don’t take adequate steps to replenish it. It is more productive to be healthy, to walk more, to buy flowers or light a scented candle or watch the sunset. The work will still be here when we get back, and maybe we can look at it from a completely different perspective. 

My Current Productivity Routine

Every few months I change up my productivity routine - usually in response to something I read or maybe several somethings that I mash up into something that I think will work for me. Sometimes the change is because I don’t think the earlier process was working for me anymore. Recently I overhauled my process completely, and streamlined it significantly, and so far I think it is working really well. I thought I would share it here in case anyone else can benefit from it, and also I guess in a way to document how I have changed my work routines.

At the beginning of this year I started to evaluate my priorities and the things I wanted to accomplish, and the list, looking just at the projects that were coming up and important, was quite overwhelming. I also realized that I have fallen behind on several commitments, that at the time were open-ended, but due to the sheer amount of time that has passed, needs completing. And fast. Plus I recently moved house, and have many unfinished tasks and projects related to that, as well as just a lot of other backlog that isn’t exactly urgent, but has been pushed off to the back burner so long that it was beginning to stress me out just thinking about them.

My process till now has shifted and moved, especially with every book I read on time management, I added new ways of working. I had someday /maybe lists and lists for each area of my work. I had lists for personal tasks that were administrative and projects that were exciting but I didn’t have time to start yet. I had accounts with every new task planner and way of working - Wunderlist, Trello, Todoist - you name it. I had entire folders in Evernote. Somehow despite or maybe because of all this, I still wasn’t sure exactly how much I was getting done, what I was forgetting or letting fall by the wayside and what happened to all the projects I didn’t have time to work on but hoped to get to soon. 

I think I may have solved all of these problems with my current system. I now work in OneNote, but I think this plan is flexible enough to be used in whatever platform you prefer - Evernote, Wunderlist, whatever. In OneNote, I have a Planner notebook. Within the notebook I have several sections, and each section has multiple pages. This works for me, but the hierarchy is changeable. For the purposes of conveying my process, only 3 sections of the notebook are important. One section hosts my plans - these aren’t time-restricted in a calendar sense - and these are separated into 3 main buckets. I will come back to this in a minute. The second section contains weekly to-do lists. And the third section contains a monthly archive of tasks completed. 

Ok I will address each of these sections one by one. The first section with the 3 main buckets. I have 3 main pages within the section - Current, Backlog and Future. I call them Current Projects, Backlog Tasks and Future Projects, but the naming is arbitrary and you can call them what you want. Every single project that I owe someone else or myself, that I can remember, is on one of these lists. Each list is broken up by categories - for me, some of the categories are Writing Projects, Publishing / Marketing Tasks, Household, General Admin. You get the picture. You can obviously create whatever categories work for you - maybe one for family or for your kids, one for each of your major projects or clients. The idea is to break up the list into categories that are uniquely meaningful to you - keeping in mind that you should not have more than 6 or 7 categories (or it will be too overwhelming) and you shouldn’t end up having only 1 or 2 items or conversely 20 items in any one category. As you work with this system, you will find a balance. For instance, one of my categories is learning, because I am at any one time, reading several non-fiction books and need to remember to take notes on them, and I also take online courses or am studying something else. So that learning category usually has 5-7 items on it. 

The caveat on the number of categories and number of items in the categories doesn’t apply however to the Future Projects list, since this is a holdall for things you will do later. For instance, if you have a learning category like me, you might add in 20 courses there that you might want to remember to take, but presumably you won’t do them all at once. Likewise I guess with the Backlog category - if there is a lot you have put off, initially it might be long, but as you get through things, hopefully you can whittle it down.

Right - so the Current Projects list has only things on it that you are focusing on actively at the moment. It doesn’t mean that you move every project on it forward at once, but these are the projects for which deadlines are coming up, or things you are working on actively. On my current list I have muddled both tasks and projects in - it makes it easier for me. 

The Backlog list contains all those projects that you have promised people, or things you started working on and didn’t finish, or anything that is a priority, but not as much as those on your current list. 

The Future Projects list contains everything that you hope to accomplish at some point soon, but doesn’t have a deadline associated with it, or the deadline is a while away, or things that you will work on as soon as the current project is finished. You can even put in projects that are the next part of a project you’re working on. Let’s say you have a project with 4 parts. You can put Part 1, what you’re doing now, in your Current list, and the subsequent 3 parts in your Future list. The idea is that when you finish Part 1, you move Part 2 from the Future list to your Current list. 

This method ensures that everything you need to do has a home. I went back through all my endless lists scattered all over the place, and tried to find them a home on one of those lists. If you feel it is too overwhelming to have everything on one page, you can have sub-lists or sub-pages. I have done that on OneNote, and if you’re using Evernote - you can create a separate list and link to that note from the main page. Let’s say you want to make a list of all the books you want to read, you can create a separate list in Evernote, and in your Future projects just write a line - read books or something similar, and link to your note. 

Next section - Weekly To-dos. I no longer make daily to-do lists or even generic to-do lists, because they stress me out because I have a tendency to put everything I can think of on them and nothing gets done. I find a weekly to-do list helps keep me focused and I try to only put enough on the list that I can accomplish in a week. I make this list using the same categories as my Current list. You decide how many items on your Current list you think you can get done in a week, and add them in. Usually I don’t get to everything for the week, in which case it gets moved to the next subsequent week, or if I realize its not a priority right now, I move it to the Backlog list and remove it from my weekly list. Also you can take projects you put in your Current list and break them down into stages or specific tasks and put the relevant ones in your weekly list. I save each of my lists on its own page - so I create a new weekly list labeled with the dates (Sunday to Saturday is the week I like to do). 

The final section is the Archived Tasks list. This list is by month - so I create a new page for each month. Every time I complete a task, I copy it into the list for the month. So for instance, when I finish this blog post, I will pop it into my list for March, and tick it off on my weekly list. For productivity junkies, the act of ticking off the task is often the best part (I know, we are weird). And being able to put it in another list is really fun - which basically gets longer the more you get done. This is my favorite list of all - and it’s fun to see how much I got done by scrolling through it. It is also useful to have a list like this if you need to update your boss or show your colleagues what work you completed. And having it by month I find is more helpful than a general long list that goes on for pages, and a weekly archive for me would be overkill. This archive isn’t separated by categories by the way, its just a running list. 

I also label every to-do as soon as I finish it with the date - so at a glance I can see when I finished something and how much I got done on a specific day. This might be overkill for you, so treat this as an optional thing to do. I personally add this date label to the archive list as well.

So that’s basically my system. A planner with 3 buckets for holding all my projects and tasks, a weekly to-do list which keeps me focused, and an archive to see how much I have gotten done. So far this system is helping me get a lot more done and save time when deciding what I need to do next, and helping me use fallow time that I would otherwise just waste surfing or something. It’s also great to have everything that was spread out over several lists and in several systems in one place, and by looking at these lists daily, I have a better idea of all the things I have to get done eventually. Its also therefore helping me to say no to new projects that aren’t that important to my bigger goals, because I can see at a glance everything I have already committed to and can honestly say that I can’t take new things on till my current backlog is done. 

I hope sharing this system helps someone with their own process. I would also love to hear how others manage their tasks and projects. 

Schedule A Process Day

My to-do lists become full of maintenance items like sorting physical papers, dealing with non-urgent mail, various marketing and publishing tasks that are important but don’t have a definite date attached. On their own, it doesn’t really matter if I do any one of these maintenance items, but over time, the sheer quantity of them unfinished start to nag away at my brain and overwhelm me. More importantly, subsequently when I want to add a similar item to my to-do list, I do so with a slight sinking feeling - like what’s the point, this will fall into the black hole along with all the other ones. 

Time management books are full of advice like “spend your time on the 20% of tasks that get you the 80% of results”. I read enough of these books that I now feel that any amount of time working on something that isn’t tied to a specific project is a complete waste of time. While I do agree that it is easy to get sucked into working aimlessly on things that don’t get you anywhere, every so often, you do need to complete a myriad number of unrewarding but important to do tasks. 

So how do you deal with them?

I recommend scheduling a regular Process Day. Some companies actually give their employees one day to catch up on paperwork and sort through all the stuff that invariably piles up. If you don’t have a secretary or admin help, or you’re overwhelmed with the amount of unfinished projects in your personal life, this might be a strategy that really helps you to get from under that crushing pile of “Stuff”.

Today I had a process day, although it was unscheduled. In the sense that I had planned to do something else, but ended up spending the day getting through a bunch of things that had been piling up. I guess I had some pent-up energy or was wanting to procrastinate on something else, but the upside was that I got through some items on my list and started on others that had been pending for several months. 

Process days are a great idea if you don’t want to be constantly interrupting your project work with taking care of little things. You could instead set aside a day every two weeks or once a month to batch process all those things that pile up. In my case I realized from my process day that I need to do this a bit more often if I want to clear out my backlog. 

I would suggest making a list of the things you want to get done, in priority, so that even if you can’t do everything, you do all the important things. While you make the list you should even question every item on the list - should you even be spending time doing it? Can you delegate it? Or simply not do it? Maybe you have many things on your to-do list that you put off, because in reality they simply don’t need to be done. Make a decision and strike it off. But do it in such a way that you “close the loop” on that task and it doesn’t take up any more brain power or space. It’s a bit like closing an application you’re done working on, it no longer takes up any space on the CPU. 

You might not have the time to dedicate an entire day to this - in which case consider a half-day, perhaps Friday afternoon. You probably won’t be incredibly productive in that time anyway, why not tackle some process stuff and leave with a clear head for the weekend. 

I have read many versions of this approach, and you can decide to dedicate a few hours every few days, 30 minutes a day or a whole day every so often. In either case, I think batch-processing a lot of items and getting those small things off your plate and off your mind is vital to be able to work clear-headed on important projects, the ones that bring results and make you look good to your clients and/or bosses. 

As a writer, I often find that any time spent on something that is not directly-related to one of my writing projects is something I tend to resent, mostly because I am evaluated on how much work I get done, not on how many papers I file or emails I sort. But I have started to see the benefits of getting those niggling things done and off my mental to-do list, as a way to go back to my projects with more peace of mind and greater clarity on what I need to do. The more I let things pile up, I feel like I am holding the rest of the world at bay while I try to work with their demands clamoring in my ear. 

In fact, I am feeling so energized by tackling a large chunk of my process work, that I am now itching to get back to my work-in-progress. 

The Corollary to Deep Work

I read Cal Newport’s book Deep Work earlier this year and was very affected by it. I started to look at how I was allocating my time, and whether I was giving enough time to deep work. If you haven’t read the book, what Newport means by deep work is basically focused, undisturbed attention to projects that will make an impact in your professional life. Now it's not that I haven’t been trying to focus on projects, it's that like most others, I feel like I am not making fast enough progress on such projects, and I was intrigued by the idea of getting more out of my time simply by the way I spent it, or by changing certain habits. The topic in the book wasn’t new to me either, I have been reading everything in the productivity literature I possibly can, and am familiar with these concepts.

However, I recently realized what was lacking from this framework, something that has been making it hard for me to truly reap the benefits of deep work.

I work from home at the moment, and although I have tried to find libraries and coffee shops where I can do focused work, I haven’t succeeded in finding places that are consistently effective for me. Depending on the time of day, day of the week or a variety of other factors, the places I have tried are too full, too noisy or a combination of factors that make concentrating difficult. But at home I have many other distractions, including housework and reminders of myriad other tasks. I have tried to block out certain times of the day for working on certain projects, or times when I don’t take phone calls, but none of the strategies have truly helped. And I couldn’t always figure out why. One day was truly productive, and then the next one was disastrous.

And then it all clicked.

I have been reading another book, Work Clean by Dan Charnas. And it gave me insight into why my system so far was failing me. Because I was focusing only on the deep work aspect. And failing to take into account the other stuff. Failing to find a way to deal with all the stuff I had to do, and only giving attention to those few projects that needed in-depth attention or would lead to obvious benefits. And trying to squeeze everything else into the margins.

Perhaps the problem was that I wasn’t even following Newport’s system properly. Or maybe he had internalized some of the principles and failed to articulate them.

For instance, I would give swathes of time to my writing and research projects. And try to squeeze in everything else, everything that wasn’t related to a book project or something big and hairy, into the margins of my day. I would try to tackle it when I was exhausted and then inevitably postpone it to another day. And so it went on. I was routinely piling more on my plate than I could handle, mainly because I wasn’t even making time for a large chunk of the work. And while this is blindingly obvious in hindsight, I didn’t realize it at the time.

I am not saying the admin and related work wouldn’t get done, its just that I would resent the time spent on such work, or try to put it off for months at a time, only tackling it when it somehow became urgent. This meant I was living with a pile of unfinished tasks of ambiguous proportions, studiously trying to ignore it while I tried to get my mind to focus on my book project. Some days that worked. Other days it didn’t. I felt stressed about how much other things I had to do, but I was afraid that if I started to work on them, I would get derailed and never get back to the book or the research. But I wasn’t always able to concentrate with the nebulous piles of work just outside my peripheral vision.

And this made me realize that while deep work might require focused blocks of time without distractions, such as checking social media or email every quarter of an hour, it also requires a system of planning and working that supports the deep work. For me this meant scheduling time to handle all the other stuff. As an indie author I have myriad duties related to maintaining my blog, my social media platforms, setting up book promotions, responding to email. Then there are the usual administrative aspects of life, bills, filing, keeping surfaces tidy. There have been so many days when I have tried to sit down to work while actively ignoring the piles of filing and sorting of papers that are calling out to me. I manage to let weeks, sometimes months go by like this, rationalizing that completing the book project is more crucial. But unfortunately those incomplete projects, whether urgent or not, eat away at my attention in little slivers, till I find it hard to focus at all.

This was happening to me even when I didn’t realize it. I have been struggling with a project that is way behind deadline. And the longer it takes, the more things I put off telling myself I will get to them when the book is finished. And unsurprisingly its taking longer and longer. I finally took some time off from the book and tackled some of the more urgent things I had let pile up, but it wasn’t done in a way that I could control, a lot of it was me just running around trying to catch items as they fell into my lap, do some triage and lob them back out.

This was a terrible way to work. I felt like I was in a brain fog at all times. I was snappy, irritable, annoyed at my family, and liable to burst into tears at any point. I kept thinking I had taken on too much. Or that I should start saying no more. I looked at my lists and kept thinking there was nothing I could remove. They were all important. How had it come to this? I wasn’t even that efficient or effective, why was my plate piled up so high and what could I do about it?

I am not sure I have a solution yet, but I have a hypothesis. I think I have been allocating time to my various obligations disproportionately. I have been in denial, imagining that I can get tons of work done in certain areas while allocating only a few minutes to them, and then annoyed that I am not making faster progress. I have underestimated the role of the shallow work in supporting the deep stuff.

One of the observations in Work Clean really resonated with me. When I read it, I stopped short and realized that surely this was one of my biggest issues. The book said - a project that is 90% done is really 0% done. And this is really my issue. I have tons of things that are 70, 80, 50 % done, but not complete. I start things and don’t finish. I could write a whole separate post just on finishing, and I probably will. But for now, suffice it to say that I needed to allocate time to some of these unfinished projects and finish them.

And here is how I plan to do it. The book Work Clean makes a distinction between two types of work - immersive work (equivalent to deep work) and process work (or shallow work). While Newport’s books all but sneers at shallow work or process work, and almost relegates it to a corner of one’s life, Work Clean gives almost equal importance to the two. And that’s when the lightbulb really went off in my head. Well actually it went off when I made a list of my obligations (big projects or goals or categories of work), and realized that almost 60% of the work could be classified as process work in some form. And I was allocating at best 20% of my time to this work. Often I didn’t even allocate time during the workday, sometimes trying to squeeze it in late at night instead, or intruding into my personal time on weekends. If I instead balanced my time between the different types of obligations, I might not only get more of the process work done before it became a crisis and added to my stress levels, I could relieve some of the pressure on my attention, so when it was time to do the immersive work, I could truly focus on it.

This is a fairly recent revelation and I still have to experiment with my schedule to work out the best combination of time allocation. However, the main takeaway that I want to suggest is this - that in order to be successful it is important to be focused while doing deep work, and be intentional about the work the rest of the time, ensuring that you balance your obligations and set yourself up for success during the times you allocate to work immersively. This may have been obvious to other readers of Newport’s book, but for me the main takeaway was the more time you spend doing deep work the better. Which lead me to try to minimize everything else, but without the best consequences.

I still haven’t found a philosophy or way of thinking and working that is comprehensive, but with each experiment and attempt at streamlining my work process I am getting better at figuring this out. I hope to write a more in-depth review of the book Work Clean, and report on what progress if any I have made, but for now here’s something to think about - its better to work with balance, rather than skewing too far one way or the other, towards only shallow or process work peppered with distractions, or giving yourself entirely to deep work.

The Never-Ending Project

Sometimes you’re working on something, and the thing just morphs and changes and takes on a life of its own, and before you know it, it feels like you’re light years away from ever being done. In truth, this does happen to me on most projects to some extent, usually a day or so when I start to think, will I ever be done? Will I really get there?

That happened to me on occasion during Nanowrimo last year, when I had a late start due to a scheduled vacation when I didn’t really find the alone time or the head space to be able to write (try writing or thinking with your mum barging in every hour or so, saying “Do you have a minute?”) So anyway, I was a week away from the deadline with more than 30,000 words still to go, wondering if I would ever be able to make it.

But that’s really not what I am talking about today. This is not so much about the logistics (I didn’t get a chance to work on it much and now I am right up against the deadline) or even about ability (I am not sure I can really pull this off), although to some extent it is just a little about that. No, I am talking about the distinct feeling that your project is a sentient being that simply doesn’t want to be completed, and keeps coming up with excuses to thwart being done. (Or at the very least, does a very good imitation of being said evil, sentient being.)

I am currently working on a book that is supposed to be a revision. For the life of me I can’t remember why I decided to embark on this revision. I am sure I had good reasons when I started out, but that was so long ago, that I am sure I must have had a temporary bout of insanity when I thought taking this on, at this point, was a good idea. This was already a book that gave me a ton of trouble the first time I wrote it, which was a revision of my Masters’ thesis. So really I have been working on this my whole life almost.

Perhaps sub-consciously I think that I will never be able to get it right, to do the topic justice, so I keep coming up with ways to expand its scope, or do more research, or alter something that will just take a few weeks of effort. The beast keeps getting bigger and I keep finding more holes to fix, more arguments to patch.

So why am I talking about this today? I was hoping to come up with some strategies of dealing with this situation, in the extremely unlikely event anyone other than me finds themselves in a similar predicament.

So here’s what you should do, or rather what I am trying to do, in this situation.

1. Lower your standards.

Like right down to the ground. This is not a time for big ambition. Don’t fantasize about that exclusive prize or hitting those best-seller lists. Other than the fact that that is extremely unlikely and very difficult to aim for for anyone, if you have a beast of a book, your first and only goal is to finish it. So make that your standard. What is the least bad book you can live with? How many changes do you need to make to be able to sleep at night after you are done?

2. Work when you are at your highest energy

The book is probably already sapping your energy, so you need to be at your game to do battle. Wake up as early as you can, brew yourself a cup of industrial strength coffee, and go for it. Working at your highest energy point if at all possible means that you will be able to make faster progress, and the quicker you can get through the work ahead the less likely that other issues can come up and derail you, or even new ways the project can morph and drag you under.

This is part of the reason why I am struggling with my current project - I was obliged at several points to stop work on it and do something else, or just got distracted and allowed other items on my agenda. And then before I knew it, getting back to it was that much harder, and when I did, somehow all these additional things just had to be done to get it to where I needed it to be. It would have been far better for me to just keep going and finish it at one shot.

3. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

One of my favorite authors on productivity for writers, Hillary Rettig, says this about completing projects - simply them. No matter what your project is, there is probably a way you can simplify it further. Although this advice was given in the context of graduate students writing their dissertations, and taking on monster assignments that had no hope of being finished, I believe it applies equally to all manner of authors.

Whether you are writing a children’s book, a crime novel, or the next great literary masterpiece, if you’re hoping to get it done and the project just keeps metamorphosing beyond your control, make it simpler. Take out that subplot, at least just for now. Get the interesting side tangents out of the way. Complete your book and then assess whether you need those additional elements. Chances are you will realize they weren’t strictly necessary. As you increase your skill level, you can more easily handle more complicated and bloated books, for now keep it simple.

So there you go, my advice to you, and most importantly, to myself. I will now go attempt to apply this, and report back.