Category: Productivity

4 tricks for finding time to write with a full-time job

by Maria

 Finding time to write with a full-time job can be hard, but a literary agent shares the four best ways to find time to write, no matter how busy you are!

Last week, we spent a few nights at a tiny cabin near the Blue Ridge Mountains. The first thing we saw each morning was a peaceful forest with rain-soaked leaves.

We’d roll out of bed whenever we felt like it—there was no alarm clock blaring in our faces—and make ourselves coffee. Then we’d fire up our laptops. But instead of jumping into work emails, we did something we wish we could do every day. We just started writing.

finding time to write with a full-time job

We wrote each morning for a few hours straight, without the distraction of Twitter, Facebook, or Gmail—because, gloriously—there was no Wifi at the cabin.

We spent each of those three mornings living our best writer’s life, waking up with nothing to do but write or edit. I finally finished a few book proposals I’d been working on, and Jarrett made great headway on a white paper. And most importantly, we felt like we wrote better in our little cabin in the woods. Heck, give us a few weeks like that, and we’d make it rain Pulitzers (ha!).

Pepper begging us to keep writing

So today I’m letting Jarrett take the spotlight and talk a little bit about what we learned at our beautiful little Getaway House. (Pepper finally learned how to look at the camera. Big stuff for her.)

Here’s Jarrett:

Back #IRL, Maria and I struggle with finding time to write with a full-time job. Even though our full-time jobs require writing, we still find ourselves sucked up in day-to-day to-dos (like responding to work emails, ugh) that prevent us from actually doing the writing part of our jobs.

So how can we fight back against all the forces in our life—stressful full-time jobs, social media, addictive TV shows—that constantly conspire to deprive us of writing time? Maria and I have come up with a few ideas over the years that have helped us with finding time to write with a full-time job, even during the busiest seasons of our lives.

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How to stop multitasking

by Maria

How to stop mulitasking: why multitasking doesn’t work and how to stop multitasking so you can actually get more done. Plus, free iphone and desktop wallpapers that serve as a beautiful reminder to stop multitasking!

Confession time: I am the most absent-minded person I know. I regularly lose coats, sweaters, purses, wallets, books and basically anything that isn’t physically attached to my body.

When I was 10, my mom bought me an awesome double edition of Sweet Valley High at the mall. Jessica and Elizabeth were lifeguards at the beach that summer, so naturally, I wanted to get home quick to find out what happened next.

Guys, I lost that book ten minutes later. To this day, I still don’t know what happened—did I leave it in the jewelry store? Did I set it down in a dressing room?—but suddenly it was gone. POOF. Into thin air.

I actually sat down and cried at the mall. And since then, I’ve been in a war with my own absent-minded nature to stop being there when I should be here. And that means learning how to stop multitasking so I can finally focus on what’s happening in front of me.

Why multi-tasking doesn’t work

how to stop multitasking

Many of us have spent years learning how to multitask, thinking that it would help us get more done. But multitasking just doesn’t work, and now we have to unlearn that bad habit and actively learn how to stop multitasking.

As Time Magazine put it,

“[Multitasking] decreases your productivity by as much as 40%. In addition to lessening your productivity, it also lowers your IQ and shrinks your brain—reducing density in the region responsible for cognitive and emotional control.”

Unfortunately, we’ve all learned the bad habit of splitting our brain into two places and two tasks at once. I did the same thing—I learned how to multitask in college, proudly trumpeted my multitasking skills on my resume, landed a publishing job, and then finally (!) got my head set right.

I first learned about the myth of multitasking when I was working as an editor at a publishing house and helping out with a book called Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life: Train Your Brain to Get More Done in Less Time by a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and an executive coach.

That was the first time I heard the phrase uni-tasking, and since then, boy oh boy, have I tried hard to uni-task.

It’s not easy.

And I think that as we spend more and more of our time on the Internet, our brains are increasingly losing the ability to focus on one thing at a time.

But there is one piece of advice that’s helped make a dent in my distraction. It’s the phrase I put on repeat every time my brain squirms away from what I’m doing and my eyes glaze over with inattention.

The one piece of advice that helped me learn how to stop multitasking

It’s this:

Exist in the universe of a single task.

I learned this from Leo Babuata of ZenHabits, who says that when your mind starts squirming, you need to remind yourself that the one task in front of you is the whole universe. There is nothing else, so breathe deep, sit in it, and live it.

As he puts it:

“We speed through each task as if it’s nothing, looking already to the next task, until we collapse at the end of the day, exhausted. Having spent a day cranking through nothings.

That’s one approach, and I’ve done it many times. But here’s another: make each task its own universe, its own specialness. Then every moment of your day is ridiculously important and wonderful and powerful.”

I need this reminder over and over again, thousands of times a day.

So if you also have a hard time fighting the urge to multi-task, or if you feel like your brain skips around too quickly, or if you feel like the Internet and social media are eroding your attention, here’s a handy reminder to live in the universe of one task.

how to stop multitasking

You can download this free wallpaper to your desktop, so that you’ll have a visual reminder front-and-center next time you find yourself 10 tabs and 5 windows deep in a rabbithole.

You can also save this same reminder for free as an iphone background, so that you’ll see it next time your brain flits from Pinterest to the weather app to Facebook. I hope it helps you on your path to learning how to stop multitasking.

Consider it your deep breath and your invitation to come back to the universe of a single task.

Click here to go to The Library and download this free wallpaper!

 

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What I’m Reading This Week

Five Tips for the Distracted Reader (Osheta of The Art of Simple): Perfect timing to refresh ourselves on focused reading, too!

“Grown-Ups Shouldn’t Finish Books They’re Not Enjoying” (Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy): But if you’re not enjoying that focused reading, let the book go. (I STILL struggle with this. “I-want-to-like-this” book guilt is real.)

The Beginning of Silent Reading Changed Westerners’ Interior Life (Thu-Houng Ha for Quartzy): “People think of reading as the introvert’s hobby: A quiet activity for a person who likes quiet, save for the voices in their head. But in the 5,000 or so years humans have been writing, reading as we conceive it, an asocial solo activity with a book, is a relatively new form of leisure.”

How Writers Can Crush Absolutely Any Obstacle in Their Path (Chad R. Allen): Yes, asking “what’s one simple thing I can do right now” is one of the tips–and yes, it really does help.

What We’re Eating This Week

I just got a final copy of Once Upon a Chef, which means I am (finally!) treating myself to some darn good meals this week.

Sunday: Halibut with Tomatoes and Basil and Cauliflower Puree. Was this meal: delicious, easy, elegant, healthy, or a keeper? I’ll take the all-of-the-above write-in option, please!

Monday: Persian Kofta and Roasted Brussels Sprouts. It was not even funny how good this was and how fancy I felt whipping it up. I can do anything.

Tuesday:  Just kidding–I quit cooking. Off to NYC for me, but luckily, I have this fun event and maybe even some dumplings from Kungfu Kitchen, if I play my cards right.

Wednesday: Times it’s okay to zone out: when eating a sad desk dinner, when eating Pret, when eating alone, when eating at 8 pm. All of the above, thanks.

Thursday: Being terribly basic and going to Uno Pizzeria in Union Station with Jarrett so he can watch the Michigan basketball game the second he picks me up. Now, if that ain’t the glamorous cookbook agent life…

Friday: Back to my kitchen and my new cookbook! We’re making Jenn’s Spaghetti with Kale Pesto because it’s the only pesto I’ll make now; because it’s Friday and I deserve spaghetti; and because I said so. And those are the boxes I most care about checking.

Cheers!

how to stop multitasking

A beautifully simple way to stop feeling overwhelmed at work

by Maria

A beautifully simple way to stop feeling overwhelmed at work–this is the best go-to strategy for when work is piling up, deadlines are looming, and you finally want to stop feeling overwhelmed at work. (This post may contain affiliate links.)

I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday, glaringly awake, grumpy, and annoyed at myself that I’d stayed up watching the Olympics.

My mind instantly turned to work: emails I needed to return, proposals that needed editing, book delivery dates, production dates, and launch dates stretching far into 2020. (Yes, that’s how far in advance we work!)

And then I got really overwhelmed. Like, can’t-turn-it-off, panicky, sweaty, deep overwhelmed.

I got out of bed, and as the sun was starting to come up, I sat in the living room, wrote everything down, and got started.

Guys, I have never been more productive before 8 am than I was that day. I’m a morning person like Pepper is a human person. It’s that far off.

Of course, I wasn’t gracefully productive. I was angsty productive. I was just desperate to get a handle on all my projects so my brain would stop reeling with to-dos.

But even in that jittery, panicked state, I kept trying to breathe deep and repeat to myself the best piece of productivity advice I’ve ever heard.

stop feeling overwhelmed at work 1

I think of it almost as my Overwhelm mantra. When the panic starts rising, but I don’t have any time to spare with analysis paralysis, I run this break-in-case-of-emergency phrase through my mind on repeat.

I rely on it because it’s uncomplicated; it’s easy to remember; it’s not a fancy 10-step strategy; and it just works.

My beautifully simple strategy to stop feeling overwhelmed at work:

Take the first tiny step.

It’s not: plan out the entire project and set goals and deadlines. It’s not: look at the big picture before zooming in.

It’s the opposite of those two things. Because as important as it is to keep the long view in mind—to remember where it is you want to go and why you want to go there—sometimes the long view can cloud the short view.

Instead, you can fight fear and resistance simply by narrowing your focus. Put your blinders on and focus on nothing but that first tiny step. Don’t think about the end goal; don’t worry about what comes next. Just do the first small thing you need to do to get started on a project.

This quickly takes your focus away from your long list of to-dos and pending projects and zeroes it in on one tiny action, so you can immediately stop feeling overwhelmed at work.

But this first step is likely much smaller than you think. It’s not “write the first chapter” or “respond to emails” or “draft the report.” The first step is the smallest possible building block of a task—the very first action you must take to get started.

Often, the very smallest step is simply to create time and space and quiet. Once distractions are stripped away, your mind settles down and squirms away from the task less frequently.

4 examples of the smallest step
& how it can help you stop feeling overwhelmed at work

  1. Turn off your wifi. Open a Word document. Write one sentence.
  2. Close the windows on your computer. Open a spreadsheet. Add one line.
  3. Turn off the TV. Pick up a book. Read one page.
  4. Close your email program. Open a Word document. Write one sentence of a difficult email.

Most of the time, you’ll keep going. It’s the getting started that trips us up, but once we’ve jumped that hurdle, we start gathering momentum to keep going.

It sounds simple, but it’s changed the way I look at intimidating projects. It’s helped me stop feeling overwhelmed at work all the time, so that I have fewer deer-in-the-headlights moments and more productive, relaxed moments.

So next time your brain wakes up and goes right to the OVERWHELMED channel, remind yourself that you only need to take one teeny tiny step forward. And that is something you can handle.

(Credit goes to Leo Babuata of ZenHabits, who first introduced this idea in this piece on how to form the habit of starting.) 

For more reading on creative productivity, try:

how to get more writing done

How to get past writer's block

guided meditation for writers with anxiety

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What I’m Reading This Week

Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair (Maria Popova of Brain Pickings): If you’re despairing about making progress on a difficult project, I’ll allow you one 5-minute break to read this piece. But after that: get to work!

20+ Dorothy Parker Quotes for Your Daily Routine (Sarah Ullery for Book Riot): “When Your Alarm Goes Off: ‘What fresh hell is this?’” Yes, exactly.

Have You Chosen the Right Main Character to Tell Your Story? (Kristen Kieffer of Well-Storied): “Main characters can make or break a story’s success. Oftentimes, the doubts we face as we work to bring our main characters to life can seem endless. Are our protagonists’ well-rounded enough? Are they interesting? Will readers root for them to achieve their goal?”

28 Parenting Blogs and Magazines That Pay Freelance Writers (Brianna Bell for The Write Life): Freelance writing is one of the best ways to start building your platform and inching your way toward making a living from your writing, so it always makes me happy to see people generously sharing leads like this.

The Strange and Twisted Life of “Frankenstein” (Jill Lepore for The New Yorker): “After two hundred years, are we ready for the truth about Mary Shelley’s novel?” A deep and fascinating article about Mary Shelley and her famous monster.

35 Books To Build Your Character: The Definitive Reading List on Humility and Ego (Ryan Holiday on Thought Catalog): A great reading list from the author of Ego is the Enemy.

What We’re Eating This Week:

Remember last week when we played the Imaginary Menu Game because no real cooking was happening around here? Well, this week I finally get to cook like mad from Stonesong client Coco Morante’s book The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook. Happiness ensued!

(And as luck would have it, as I was drafting this post, Coco’s ebook went on sale for $2.99! I am trying very hard not to buy ten of them as gifts. But you can get one here.)

coco morante cookbook cover instant pot

Sunday: Coco’s Whole Chicken with Mushroom Sauce, plus roasted broccoli and beet salad. Every person that I know in real life (and likely you, too) would like me to shut up about this chicken recipe but I WILL NOT.

I made it again this week and if you hate me for not sharing the recipe, I am here to redeem myself: it’s coming in my February cookbook column for The Kitchn! I advise you to buy your town’s entire inventory of whole chickens.

Monday: One-Pot Roast Dinner, which we’re making with venison from The Farm instead of beef. And also, brussels sprouts instead of carrots, plus artichokes, because I am very bad at following recipes.

Tuesday: The Cajun Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya on page 66, but with pheasant from Jarrett’s Christmas hunt in place of chicken. See above re: very bad at recipes.

Wednesday: We’re going to Peter Chang’s for Valentine’s Day!! It’s our favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese place, run by America’s most elusive chef, says The New Yorker. But The New Yorker has not seen how elusive I am when I don’t feel like cooking.

Thursday: Spaghetti with something from the pantry? A vegetable of some kind? Cheese? Hiding under the kitchen table until tomorrow? (See? Elusive. Where is my New Yorker profile?)

Friday: Well, it’s Friday so…  (That is my canned excuse for getting out of most things on Fridays. You can borrow it if you want.)

Cheers!

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The one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism

by Maria

The one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism–this one word makes women feel guilty all the time, but you can choose to stop saying it to overcome perfectionism and guilt. (This post may contain affiliate links.)

A few weekends ago, Jarrett and I collapsed on the couch. It was supposed to have been a restful Sunday, but we’d just spent the day doing laundry, attending service, cleaning, grocery shopping, organizing the closet, taking Pepper to the dog park, and prepping food for the week.

We were ready for bed. It was 5:13 pm.

And we had one last thing on our list: cook Sunday dinner.

We’d already defrosted a roast, bought cauliflower and brussels for sides, and picked out a recipe from Meat. We were COMMITTED. No way out of it now.

The one word you should stop saying to overcome perfectionism

So the shoulds started.

We should cook a nice Sunday dinner. We should use the defrosted meat. We should have something healthy. We should stay on track with our meal plan for the week. We should not be slobs and lay on the couch all night like sacks of potatoes.

Apparently, only Pepper is allowed to lay around all day like a sack of potatoes.

The one word you should stop saying to overcome perfectionism

(Forget Pepper about getting a job. I want to apply for her job.)

As the shoulds piled on and yelled at me about how disappointed they would be if we didn’t execute our flawless dinner plan, another voice rung out.

“Guilt is to the spirit what pain is to the body.” — Elder David A. Bednar

I’d read that quote the week before because my author, Erin Falconer, had chosen it as the opening for her section about the word should in her book, How to Get Sh*t Done.

As Erin writes,

“Should is a word that implies obligation and expectation and often comes as a box set that’s gift-wrapped in guilt and even shame. It’s also a word that implies open-endedness and the absence of a decision. It describes possibility rather than reality. ‘I should go to the gym’ is not the same as ‘I’m going to the gym.’ …

When you find yourself saying should, you’re not anticipating something great, but rather remind yourself of that never-ending to-do list you should (there it is again!) be chipping away at.”

As Erin points out, should is an energy drain because it forces us to be in two places at once. We should be cooking dinner, but we are feeling guilty about it on the couch instead. So we don’t feel good about cooking dinner, and we don’t feel good about NOT cooking dinner. Pretty miserable, right?

That’s why should is the one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism. Instead, what we can do is banish should and get to the bottom of those should-tasks.

The one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism, and how to stop saying it

The one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism 1

As soon as you hear the word should come out of your mouth or pass through your thoughts, pause for a moment. This task you should be doing–is it really important? Here are the 3 questions you should ask yourself to overcome perfectionism and guilt that you’re not doing everything.

3 questions to help you debunk should and overcome perfectionism

Is your task essential and time-sensitive?

If your task is essential and must be done right then or truly bad things will happen, tell yourself, “I will get that done now. It will feel great to get it out of the way.” That way, you’re focusing on the good that will come out of this unexciting task, and you’ll feel more motivated to just get it done.

If your task essential and not time-sensitive?

If your task is essential but can be done later, create a reminder on your phone or add a time slot to your calendar for when you will do it. Remind yourself why you’re doing it. “I will call the insurance company because I want the peace of mind that everything is okay.” “I will edit my manuscript because I will be so proud of myself once it’s done.”

Is your task nonessential?

If it doesn’t matter and you really don’t want to do it, don’t. Think of it as saying yes to the things that matter (your family, your self-care, your creativity), and no to the things that don’t (keeping up with others, perfectionism, guilt, resentment).

 

That day, as I sunk into the soft couch with a sigh, I realized that I did not want to cook a complicated meal. Hell no. Not tonight.

So I remembered what I’d read in Erin’s book about the one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism. And channeling Erin’s courage, I decided to kick those shoulds right out the door.

What I really should do, I decided, was respect the reality of margin. (Start with this book on margin if you want to learn more about that!) I would not start the workweek exhausted and unable to give my best to my authors and colleagues.

I was going to eat something simple so I could have more time and energy to hang out with Jarrett (marriage > fancy meals, every time.) I was going to skip cooking one night so that I’d be more excited to cook the next.

I was going to stop feeling guilty about completely silly things and let the smart advice from my badasser-than-I authors sink into my life.

So we scrapped the fancy dinner plan and boiled spaghetti. And we ate it in our jammies, on the couch, with no guilt at all.

——–

If you want 2018 to be the year you stop feeling guilty and start getting sh*t done, pick up How to Get Sh*t Done: Why Women Need To Stop Doing Everything So They Can Achieve Anything. In it, Erin shares much more about should–the one word you need to stop saying to overcome perfectionism–as well as hundreds of other tips for achieving more while doing less.

As one Amazon reviewer wrote:

“As a multi tasking, working, single mom, I could really use insight on how to do less yet achieve more. It is like she is in my brain. I love this book! So, while everyone around me is thankful I won’t be running on empty anymore, I am thanking Erin for writing this book and sharing her stories as well as her useful system of productivity.”

Erin is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Owner of Pick the Brain, one of the most widely read and well-respected self improvement blogs on the web, and Refinery 29 named her 1 of 10 Women Changing the Digitalscape for Good.

She’s also one of the kindest, bravest, most badass women (she delivered a beautiful baby just two months before releasing her book baby!), and her advice has done a lot to help me stop feeling so darn guilty all the time. I hope you find it helpful, too!

For more productivity tips, keep reading:

how to start writing a book

how to get more writing done

how to be more productive writer

Get one free tip for reading more + living better each week!

What I’m Reading This Week

24 Books You Can Read in Basically One Sitting (Terri Pous for Buzzfeed): Binge-reading: activate!

How To Stop Being “Busy” And Start Getting Stuff Done (Erin Falconer on GirlBoss): If you want more Erin (I do!), here’s an excerpt from How To Get Sh*t Done that was excerpted on GirlBoss.

7 Ways to Make It Easy for Publishers to Offer You a Book Contract (Chad R. Allen): It’s true: every publisher (and agent) wants that easy, slam-dunk book to say yes to. While exact numbers may vary based on category and house, these are all sure-fire ways of perking up attention for your project.

Two dying memoirists wrote bestsellers about their final days. Then their spouses fell in love. (Nora Krug for The Washington Post): This story is so beautiful, it almost makes me teary.

Best Book Marketing Advice for Authors: The Best of 2017 (Jane Friedman): This article is jam-packed with incredible resources and insight for smart book marketing. This is where I’d start if you’re ready to promote a book!

What We’re Eating This Week:

Well I just told you this whole story about how I struggle with shoulding myself in the kitchen (and really, lots of other places), so be gentle as I tell you about how sad, sad, sad our meals were this week.

Monday: Don’t let Monday fool you, but we did cook a real thing: Chicken and Veggie Lo Mein. I was so proud!

Tuesday: I’m in NYC so ???

Wednesday: Street cart? Chipotle? Panic and dismay?

Thursday: Airport food. Yeah.

Friday: We’re in MIAMI! I’ll take one thousand fish tacos, please.

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