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S is for Set a Deadline to Improve Productivity

4/22/2016

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

If you are not under an official deadline, one way to encourage progress is to manufacture your own due date. You can make a promise to yourself (“I will finish this draft before the kids are off for summer vacation!”), and if that doesn’t work, make a promise to someone else. Let your niece know that you’ll finish knitting the blanket in time for her birthday. Tell your critique partners that you’ll have chapters ready for them. Set up a blog schedule and notify your followers that you’ll be posting on certain days. If you have an agent, give her a date when you’ll have the manuscript done.

I find that once I’m accountable to other people, I’m much more likely to honor that commitment. According to The Power of Deadlines, “the general pattern is that, as people approach a deadline, they typically become more motivated and work harder at the task in hand, and performance can even improve.”

Do you find deadlines motivating or stressful?
Have you ever manufactured a deadline to complete a creative goal?

R is for Routines to Encourage Creativity

4/21/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

Author Jack Gantos has an impressive writing routine. He writes about 200 days a year in the library. Each day, he spends two hours drafting, two hours revising, two hours reading, and about two more hours working before he heads home. (He spoke about this during his SCBWI Winter Conference speech a few years ago.) I was able to ask Gantos about it recently, and he said, “I try my best to keep to a rigid schedule which still allows for me to be creative within the boundaries.”

Author Jack Gantos

The concept of having a routine (or set schedule) means that you don’t need to decide what to work on next, or how long you will work, or whether or not you are feeling inspired. It just means the creative stuff gets done.

James Clear compiled the daily routines of twelve other authors. Two excerpts:

E.B. White: “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

Barbara Kingsolver (about writing while raising kids): "I used to say that the school bus is my muse. When it pulled out of the driveway and left me without anyone to take care of, that was the moment my writing day began, and it ended when the school bus came back."

Do you have a set creative schedule? Do you use environmental cues (like working in a library or waiting for the kids to leave for school) to trigger your creativity?

Q is for Quit Something

4/20/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

I started this post with Quit Something as the title, with the “something” to be determined. (Last year, my post was Quit Bad Habits.)

Then I realized that Quit Something was actually a great title. Because it doesn’t matter what you specifically eliminate. Find the task that is not useful, that does not bring joy, that is not required, and quit doing it. Maybe you can stop watching a TV show you no longer love or unsubscribe from newsletters that you delete without reading. Or maybe quit multitasking, if nothing else comes to mind.

Is there something you can quit (or say no to) in order to regain some time? Even small increments add up.

P is for Productivity Book Recommendations

4/19/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

Sometimes I think I procrastinate by reading books about productivity. The irony! If you want to try this method of procrastination, too, here are some books that I recommend:

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Everyday by Todd Henry

First Things First by Stephen R. Covey

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind, edited by Jocelyn K. Glei

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block by Hillary Rettig (Thanks to author Maria E. Andreu for recommending this one.)

Do you have any favorite books about productivity, time management, decluttering, or simplifying?

O is for OneTab

4/18/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

OneTab is my newest favorite application. I installed it to work with Google Chrome so that when I have a lot of windows open with articles and blog posts I want to save for later, I click on OneTab and it makes a nice list of links for me in a single place. You can then reorder and categorize them. For example, I have “Read Later” and “Blog Ideas” as categories. It’s a convenient way to save temporary links that I don’t want to bookmark until I’ve read them.

OneTab

Do you have any technology tools or applications that make you more productive?

N is for NaNoWriMo Principles

4/16/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

November is National Novel Writing Month, and whether or not you’ve tried to accomplish writing a novel in four weeks, I think there are some useful principles that can be applied throughout the year. (April is Camp NaNoWriMo if you are interested.)

Principles for Any Month

Set a concrete goal. (NaNoWriMo suggests writing 50,000 words in 30 days.)
Publicly declare that goal. (Whether this works because of accountability or shame, I’m not sure. But it does change the dynamic from just promising yourself.)
Find other people trying for the same goal, if you feel like that will help. (You are all suffering together!)
Monitor your progress on a regular basis. (NaNoWriMo includes daily word count tallies.)
Consider changing the way you create. For example, I normally edit as I write, but NaNoWriMo encourages participants to keep going, without revising, until they reach the word count goal. I found this change very freeing. Because I kept writing, instead of going back and fixing plot problems, my story evolved in a different, wonderful direction.
Check the results at the end of the project. If you encountered obstacles, think about how can you avoid them in the future.

Have you ever tried NaNoWriMo or creating in a crunch-time atmosphere?

M is for Marking Progress

4/15/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

_Why do so many of us start our day with email instead of a creative project? Daniel Ariely says, “For many things, it’s hard to figure out how much progress you’re making. When you answer a thousand e-mails, you see every e-mail you answer” (“Understanding Our Compulsions,” Managing Your Day-To-Day).

So there isn’t necessarily that sense of progress for a bigger project. While it’s satisfying to see your inbox hit zero emails, it’s harder to measure a novel revision. One solution is to brainstorm ways to track progress. For first drafts, writers can do words written, and seeing the wordcount grow satisfies. But what about revisions? What about an artistic project?

One idea is to count the hours spent, if that makes you feel accomplished. Another method is break a larger project into pieces. Novels can be divided into chapters. Break an art project into distinct phases. Or track the number of days you’ve worked on something in a row, creating a chain of success, an idea Jerry Seinfeld implemented to write jokes on a regular basis. The visual chain of Xs serves as a source of encouragement, so you don't break the chain.

Do you like Xs on a calendar? Gold stars? Increased word count? Other ideas?

L is for Lessons Learned: Inspirational Quotes

4/14/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

L is for lessons learned, through three quotes from Lincoln, Lee, and Lakein.

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” ~Abraham Lincoln

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” ~Bruce Lee

And finally, from Alan Lakein:

Do any of these quotes resonate?
Share your own favorites, L-authored or not.

K is for Knowledge: How Are You Spending Your Time?

4/13/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

How do you spend the bulk of the time that you control? (Time may not be 100% in our control -- some people have day jobs, and almost everyone has certain commitments that they can’t eliminate.) Understanding the facts versus the perception of where time goes can help solve the problem. Author Laura Vanderkam recommends tracking your time for a week (168 consecutive hours). She said, “If you want to spend your time better, you need to know how you’re spending it now.” I’ve done this a few times in the past for the entire week and it always proves enlightening. (By the way, there are apps to track your time, but I use the low tech approach of pen and paper and tally it at the end of each day.)

On an ongoing basis, I continue to track my “writing work time.” This is the time I spend on my writing-related stuff, but it could be used to create a new novel, to promote Pandemic, to blog, to participate in a book festival, etc. Ideally, I’d like to spend the bulk of my time creating, but when I looked at the hours for 2014 when Pandemic was published, it didn’t align that way. A large percentage of my time was spent on publicity. Now I check each month: what percentage of my time is spent writing? Am I happy with the amount of time spent?

Do you think you have a good understanding of how you use your time? Are you happy with the way your time, over the course of any given week, is spent?

J is for Journaling

4/12/2016

By Yvonne Ventresca

My theme for the April A to Z blogging challenge is productivity for creative people.

I used to keep an ongoing journal, and I recently started journaling again by writing “morning pages” as described by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Basically, she recommends that you write three pages by hand first thing each morning.

In the beginning, I pretty much hated this. It felt like one more thing I had to do each day. But after about two months, it became a useful part of my routine. Sometimes I vent. Sometimes I daydream on the page about my work-in-progress until I can barely wait to work on it. Sometimes I think of ideas that get transcribed onto my to do list. It’s like a mini-brain-dump on the page. I like using a cheap spiral-bound notebook (rather than a nice journal) so I don’t feel pressure to record anything "important."

(As an aside, some people use Bullet Journals which is more of a way to track tasks and goals than it is a free-form writing journal. I have yet to experiment with this, but you can learn more about it at Bullet Journal--Getting Started. )

These two articles link journaling to productivity: The #1 Productivity Tool You Aren't Using and Start this Simple Habit to Rocket Your Productivity: Journaling.) I do think it helps me have a certain positive mindset to start the day and increases my focus for the creative work ahead.

Have you ever kept a journal? Do you keep one now? If so, how do you find it helpful?

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S is for Set a Deadline to Improve Productivity

R is for Routines to Encourage Creativity

Q is for Quit Something

P is for Productivity Book Recommendations

O is for OneTab

N is for NaNoWriMo Principles

Principles for Any Month

M is for Marking Progress

L is for Lessons Learned: Inspirational Quotes

K is for Knowledge: How Are You Spending Your Time?

J is for Journaling

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