Posts Tagged ‘productivity’
Five Questions to Ask if You’re Not Enjoying Your Creative Work
Creativity can, and should, be an incredible source of fulfillment, meaning, and joy—and so, if you’re not enjoying your creative work, something might be wrong. If so, try answering these five questions: 1) Do I really want to be doing this? Sometimes we take on creative projects for the wrong reasons, like ego or to…
Read MoreThe Easiest, Most Powerful Thing I Do For My Productivity
The easiest, most powerful thing I do to boost my productivity is a nightly ritual that takes about ten seconds. Before I tell you what it is, I need to explain two things: (1) I use two computers: Using two computers may sound like an indulgence, but it’s not, especially given the productivity boost it…
Read MoreThe Difference Between High Standards and Perfectionism
Where does “high standards” end and perfectionism begin? When it starts to cost you. A recent New York Times piece by Karen Crouse recounts the trials of figure skater Gracie Gold, an Olympic contender who suffered mental illness, including eating disorders, in large part from the pressures of competing. Gold’s perfectionism, according to the article,…
Read MoreNow Do an Email Sprint With Me
Here’s another good technique: email sprints. Take a clicker* and use it to keep track while sending out ten QUICK emails in rapid succession. I love doing email sprints. You can fit them easily in between other tasks and they clear out your inbox like nothing else. Sprinting also gives you a wonderful little productivity…
Read MoreThe Best Productivity “Tool”
Just a little Tweet thread I came up with after seeing someone ask what the best productivity tool was. Hope you like it / find it useful! Follow me here, and also on my Facebook page. So many people searching for the ultimate #productivity tool but no tool works as well as the abilities…
Read MoreHow to Bingo Your Way to Fun Productivity!
In a recent newsletter I mentioned how I sometimes roll a die to decide which section of my project to work on. When you pick a section at random it’s hard to take the work too seriously or otherwise get perfectionist. Reader Nathan wrote in with another great randomizing technique from Viviane Schwarz: bingo cages…
Read MoreOn Trying to Write While Sitting in the Midst of the Battle of Hogwarts
An author friend of mine recently wrote on Facebook (and gave me kind permission to post): “Almost impossible to work these days. It feels like I’m sitting in the entrance hall of Hogwarts trying to write…while the final battle with Voldemort and the Death Eaters is raging around me.” She’s not alone. Recently YouTube celebrity…
Read MoreHarper Lee, “Second Novel Syndrome,” and Situational Perfectionism
Harper Lee, author of the immortal To Kill a Mockingbird, died last week at 89. She never published another book except for Go Set a Watchman, which was published in 2015 in what many consider to be dubious circumstances. Lee may have suffered from second-novel syndrome, a form of procrastination in which an author becomes…
Read MoreOnline writing is tricky…
…because it can be simultaneously intimate and public. For that reason, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – and even blogging – are not as easy to figure out, from a productivity standpoint, as they seem. Even email can be problematic because even the most personal email can be leaked. These are global, psychological, sociological and technological forces…
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