I'm excited to share this special interview with productivity expert Laura Vanderkam. I've been a fan since I read 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. Her latest book, Tranquility by Tuesday, is currently available for pre-order.

Read on for my interview questions and Laura's productivity advice for creatives.

​1. Some of your advice (tracking time, setting a bedtime) is applicable to all kinds of professions. What productivity advice would you offer creative people that might differ from other types of pursuits?

One of my goals with Tranquility by Tuesday was to highlight time management strategies that would be helpful to just about anyone. They might be more useful to people who are in what I call the “busy years” (building a career, raising a family) but most of the rules work for many stages of life, and for many professions. 

As for creative professions? I find it helpful to realize that, if you are a working creative, then your creative work is a job like most other jobs! Indeed, we often undermine our productivity by treating creative work as somehow more fragile, or the muse as more elusive, than it is for any other job.

Doing a good job at any sort of work requires time — so, whether you are writing novels or fixing cars, you need to make sure your schedule has adequate time to do your work. You need to do a lot of your work, get feedback on your work, and iterate from there. You need to set long term professional goals, and break them down into doable steps. Then you need to designate time to execute on those doable steps. You need to hold yourself accountable for meeting the goals you set for yourself. You need to network and learn from other people. You need to monitor your energy and match your toughest work to the time when you are best able to do it. You need to limit distractions. That’s true whether you’re painting, composing, choreographing, writing fiction or non-fiction…or doing anything else. 
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3. Any last bits of wisdom or something you wished I'd asked?

I don’t have a favorite Tranquility by Tuesday rule, but one of the most helpful to me has been “Plan on Fridays.” Every Friday afternoon, I make myself a plan for the following week. I decide what I’d really like to see happen in three categories of life: career, relationships, self. I figure out where those things can go. I figure out what else needs to happen in the upcoming week, and make sure there’s something I’m really looking forward to. It sounds simple, but it really is life-changing. When you consistently plan in steps toward your big goals, you can accomplish them. And that feels incredibly rewarding! 
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Preorder Laura's upcoming book, ​Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos, to access special bonus materials.

Want to read my previous interview with Laura? Check out V is for Vanderkam.

Some terminology from the ALA: "A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others."

For more information, visit ALA's Banned Books Week site. 

The thing about productivity for creative people is that the focus is not traditional efficiency. Of course, ideas like avoiding social media first thing in the morning and not falling for the myth of multitasking still apply. But the goal of productivity is to make the most of your creative time, and one way to do that is through the of use rituals.

Using rituals can help you over the hurdle of getting started, which is often the hardest part. ​James Clear says that "the key to any good ritual is that it removes the need to make a decision: What should I do first? When should I do this? How should I do this? Most people never get moving because they can’t decide how to get started. Having a ritual takes that burden off your shoulders."

Your starting-to-write ritual might be as simple as drinking from a distinct mug and using a special notebook. Maybe the ritual is based on location--you could move your laptop to a different place from where you pay your bills or do other non-creative work. It might also include listening to a playlist or lighting a special candle. Try combining several of these to create a unique signal to your brain that it’s time to create.

In Productivity for Creative People, Mark McGuinness says to use any new rituals (or “anchors”) for at least ten days, “so that the associations become automatic . . . an easy and familiar way to slip into the creative zone and get to work.”

My current ritual involves my desk, my favorite candle, and coffee, but I might change it up this month and swap typing on my laptop with writing by hand. Do you have a writing ritual? Share in the comments. :)

Every month, the Insecure Writers Support Group hosts a blog hop with an optional question. Special thanks to Alex Cavanaugh for creating IWSG and to this month’s co-hosts: Kim Lajevardi, Cathrina Constantine, Natalie Aguirre, Olga Godim, Michelle Wallace, and Louise - Fundy Blue.

This month's question:
What genre would be the worst one for you to tackle and why?
Erotica would not be a good genre choice for me as a writer. My stories tend to be more PG-13.

In Hello, Habits: A Minimalist's Guide to a Better Life, Fumio Sasaki synthesizes existing studies and offers fifty tips about the psychology of habit formation. One concept I found interesting was hyperbolic discounting, “the human tendency to exaggerate rewards in front of us and to minimize our estimation of rewards (and punishment) in the future, making it tough to acquire good habits.” We need to make an extra effort to set up positive habits to be kind to our future selves. :)

As a single person living alone with no dependents, Sasaki certainly has latitude with structuring his creative life, but he writes with an earnestness I found compelling. Some of his tips include #6 “Examine the triggers and rewards for your habits”, #14 “Realize that hurdles are more powerful than rewards”, and #41 “Stop worrying how about how long it will take for something to become a habit” (since he dispels the 21-day assumption). A quick read, Hello, Habits is a good choice if you're learning the psychology of habits or looking for a productivity pick-me-up.

​“. . . those who succeed are those who don’t quit in the face of failure, and they’re the ones who continue until the end.”
​~Fumio Sasaki, Hello, Habits

​Being productive isn’t just about getting more done. It’s about carefully choosing the activities you want to accomplish. If one of those activities is creating or improving an author newsletter, this post is for you.
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​Newsletters are a way to directly connect with an audience who wants to hear from you. In her Email Newsletters for Authors: Get Started Guide, Jane Friedman summarizes the main newsletter benefit: “. . . email has so far proven to be a more long-term and stable tool than social media, which is constantly shifting. . . .You truly own your email list, unlike Facebook or Twitter accounts. And if you use people’s email addresses with respect . . . those addresses can become resources that grow more valuable over time.” 

This doesn't mean an author newsletter is the best use of your time. But if you do decide to create one, here are five steps with resources to guide you.

On to the IWSG Blog Hop. . . .
Every month, the Insecure Writers Support Group hosts a blog hop with an optional question. I'm skipping this month's question (When you set out to write a story, do you try to be more original or do you try to give readers what they want?) but sending many thanks to founder Alex Cavanaugh and to this month’s blog co-hosts: Tara Tyler, Lisa Buie Collard, Loni Townsend, and Lee Lowery.

"It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" ~Henry David Thoreau

Lately, ​I’ve been clearing out a lot of unneeded things. I sort of follow Marie Kondo’s advice of tackling like items all at once (clothes, books, etc.) But since it's more satisfying to organize a single room or closet at a time, it’s been a bit of a hybrid approach.

I was making good progress until I decided it was Time To Tackle The Paper. So much paper.

My office filing cabinets have been overstuffed for years. I bought a smaller extra cabinet, even though the solution was really to get rid of the paper, not expand the storage. I’m not talking about old bills and takeout menus (although there were a few of those). I mean the kind of paper writers might accumulate, like journals of novel notes, research for books and articles, and folders from writing conference filled with driving directions, hotel receipts, and carefully handwritten notes dating back to 2002. (I know. It's bad.)

In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Marie Kondo says that when sorting papers, “Rule of thumb—discard everything.”

I didn’t go quite that far. But I did complete my biggest purge in decades, creating *lots* of space for future projects. I’m also making a new vow to use the scanner more. :) If you struggle with paper, too, Elizabeth Larkin's How To Get Rid of Paper Clutter Once and for All: 7 Steps to Reduce Paper Clutter might help. 

I found another article that featured a free printable checklist for reducing your paper clutter. Ha! I didn't print it.

Three productivity articles that might be of interest:

Declutter Your Brain by Decluttering Your Calendar by John Hall
Calendars (and by association, our time) can become cluttered just the way physical spaces can, so we need to prioritize how we spend our hours. (The article suggests focusing on the three most important things each day.) When possible, get rid of activities that don’t spark joy, the same way Marie Kondo recommends to get rid of non-joy-sparking objects.
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How to Stop Busywork from Stealing Your Productive Writing Time by Writing and Wellness
“The problem is that organized people, in particular, tend to be drawn to busywork. It makes you happy.” These busywork tasks can make us feel good in the short term as we accomplish them, especially if we value organization. But we can’t sacrifice the harder, focused work of writing for the fun of say, organized files. “You may love to have a perfectly organized desk and filing system, but be more passionate about finishing your novel.” Writing can be the more challenging choice of how to spend time, but leads to more meaningful long term accomplishments.
What often works for me: I save some of the busywork tasks for in between projects as a reward. If I’ve finished a round of revisions, for example, I then tackle some organizational projects. I set a specific time for the "busywork," then get back to the writing.

The First Step Isn’t the Problem, the 356,751st One Is by Laura Vanderkam
Choose your long-term project with care, since you’ll be dedicated to it for quite some time. Figure out how long  the goalwill take to complete, and if that can be broken down into short segments that easily fit into your routine. (She uses reading one chapter a day of War and Peace as an example.) Then just keep going: “Time keeps passing, so if you have a map, and a pace, and you stick with the pace, you will in fact finish.”

On to the IWSG Blog Hop. . . .
Every month, the Insecure Writers Support Group hosts a blog hop with an optional question. I'm skipping this month's question, but sending thanks to founder Alex Cavanaugh to this month’s blog co-hosts: J Lenni Dorner, Janet Alcorn, PJ Colando, Jenni Enzor, and Diane Burton. 

In case you missed it, my last blog post was a review of the productivity book by Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before.
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Happy Writing!

What I like best about Better Than Before is that it analyzes productivity through the lens of personality. Author Gretchen Rubin divides people into four “tendencies” based on whether or not they meet or resist inner and outer expectations. (She has an online quiz that further explains these and helps determine your tendency.) She poses a series of questions to guide you in beginning new habits and keeping established ones going. "We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature,” Rubin says. 

Two pieces of concrete advice that especially suit creatives: schedule both playtime AND writing time. Waiting until work is done to have guilt-free downtime means (according to research she cited) you will be less likely to tackle the hard stuff. And scheduling your creative time allows you to relax when you’re not working, instead of letting “I should be writing” overshadow time away from the words.

In Better Than Before (the full title is Better Than Before: What I Learned about Making and Breaking Habits--To Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life), Rubin summarizes the need for good habits: “We can use decision making to choose the habits we want to form, we can use willpower to get the habit started; then—and this is the best part—we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. We take our hands off the wheel of decision, our foot off the gas of willpower, and rely on the cruise control of habits." If you’ve read about productivity before, the power of habits is not new, but her vivid explanation is a good reminder.

​This week is my birthday, and it also happens to be my book's birthday: Sky Pony Press is publishing a new edition of Pandemic. My young adult debut novel was written pre-COVID, and although this version of the story is the same, I updated the resources and back matter to reflect current events. The cover design has been modified slightly--the words "A Novel" have been added, in case people were to confuse this with nonfiction. Is this more of a reincarnation than a birthday? I'll celebrate either way. :)

In honor of this happy week, I wanted to highlight the connection between productivity and joy, which also relates somewhat to this month's Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. Thanks to Alex Cavanaugh for creating IWSG and the hop, and to SE White, Cathrina Constantine, Natalie Aguire, Joylene Nowell Butler, and Jacqui Murray for hosting. This month's optional question:

It's important to find (and remind ourselves!) about the joy of writing, especially during the tough patches. Here are ten tips to joyfully reach "The End" of a novel.

1. Map out your story with construction paper, a piece of oaktag, scented markers, glitter, crayons. Make it fun. :) This can be a map of the setting or plot, or even a collage reflecting your character's personality and interests. (For a tech version of the collage, use Pinterest.)
2. According to a recent article on Entrepreneur.com, Increased Productivity Will Increase Your Happiness, "You get a great sense of accomplishment when you cross out tasks or mark them as complete on a to-do list. . . . Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel light and happy, is released when we check off tasks." But writing a novel is a huge task, not easily crossed off the list. One technique I use is it to break "writing" into small chunks of time. (You can also use word count as a metric.) Since starting is often the hardest part, once I begin, I work much longer, and I get the happiness of checking the box.
3. Write haikus from your MC’s POV summarizing what will happen in the remaining chapters.
4. Consider taking a break. (But not for too long....)
5. Consider powering through. Reaching the end is a huge accomplishment! And you can't revise unwritten pages.
6. Do you have the right tools to finish? Maybe a binder to hold the work-in-progress would help, or a fun pen to use for editing? Or would a change in scenery be inspiring? Gretchen Rubin says in Better Than Before, ". . . attractive settings relieve drudgery, and well-made tools make work a joy--which helps to strengthen habits."
7. Create a schedule to finish, even if it's your best guess. Consider telling someone else your intended deadline, if that type of accountability works for you. Don't wait to be inspired to work. (ICYMI: My previous blog post is about Productivity and the Myth of the Creative Muse.)
8. Write with other people, setting up a common time (by Zoom, for example) when you work together even if you can't meet in person.
9. Make a list of a few scenes you can't wait to write, then work toward them. These are what Holly Lisle calls "candy bar" scenes, and she has an excellent article, How to Finish a Novel. I highly recommend giving it a read.
10. Imagine how great it will feel to finish! As Frank Norris originally said (and reiterated by many authors since then), "Don’t like to write, but like having written." 

Creative people sometimes believe that they need to wait for inspiration, for the incredible idea, for the muse to visit, before they can begin work. But based on my experience, it’s the other way around. You inch forward with whatever creativity you can muster, and as you work, the magic happens.
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Maya Angelou said, “When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come…’”

So it’s not: If inspired, then write.
But instead: If write, then inspired!

​I‘ve lost track of the many times I’ve experienced the inspiration that comes after I begin. For example, maybe I’m not sure what happens next in a story. Then I convince myself to muddle through, to start writing anything, and it’s while I’m working that insights occur. As Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

​Of course, when inspiration and creative time coincide, it’s a wonderful, glorious thing. But it shouldn’t be something productive writers count on. In Deep Work, Cal Newport quotes Mason Currey:  “. . . waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.”