Improving productivity

Tweet I'm quite a fan of the Brain Pickings blog, and last week they featured this animated video about the science of productivity, from AsapSCIENCE.


The main points raised by the video are;

• Willpower can be depleted, so simply convincing yourself to 'try harder' won't work;


• Starting a project is the biggest barrier to actually being productive;


• Successful people don't work more, they work better, putting in periods of intense work of around 90 minutes followed by breaks of 15-20 minutes to see more work done;


• Habit and discipline are key to establishing a productive routine;


• Deadlines focus the mind;


• A list of progress should be made so you can evaluate what you've actually done, helping you avoid mindless tasks;


• Avoid multi-tasking as you end up doing less; and


• Split big tasks into smaller tasks to make them more manageable.

Given I have to divide my time between PhD work, study for a teacher training qualification, preparatory work I need for teaching, writing, and having a life, I thought I might share my top three tips for being productive.

1) Make lists
I make two types of lists. The first is the things I need to do - I split this list into two columns, listing what needs to be done against when I'm going to do it, and I list things according to when they need to be done (naturally the things due for Tuesday will be higher up the list than those due on Thursday). I can cross things off as I've done them which gives me a natural sense of achievement as I end up with more crossed out tasks than uncrossed out tasks.

2) Set deadlines
If something doesn't actually have a deadline, I find that I'll procrastinate and find all sorts of reasons not to work on it...so I set myself a deadline to ensure that I will. I also do more work the less time I have in which to do it because I'm very much aware of the clock ticking. Even self-imposed deadlines get me working faster.

3) Take breaks
I have the attention span of a particularly hyperactive spaniel so I find my attention wanders very easily, no matter how engrossing the task at hand may be. The only way for me to get through it is to promise myself a break. Rather than making myself sit and focus on something for several hours, I work for an hour or so, take a break, then come back to whatever I was doing. Even when I'm writing something like a blog post, there are usually mini breaks, during which I check Twitter or read other blogs. It breaks up my work and gives me something to come back to.

What about you? What do you do to remain productive?

A Tidy Writer is a Productive Writer

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A few weeks back, blogger Ali Hale of Aliventures posted an entry about clutter and creativity. What, I hear you ask, is a post about tidying doing on a blog loosely dedicated to writing and other creative endeavours? Well, I've come to realise that it's difficult to be truly creative when you're drowning in a sea of your own junk.

You see, I live in a studio flat. I know, I know, I've just shattered the illusion that I've made my supervillain lair under a volcano or in an abandoned tube station (or have I? maybe this is all just fiction......no, it's true) Problem is, studio flats are notoriously short on storage space - think of me as a lonely writer in a cold London garret, if that's what butters your muffin. I admit that I'm lucky since my landlord provided two wardrobes and a small chest of drawers, but the other storage units (and copious bookcases) are my own. Without them, I'd be wading through piles of books, DVDs and electrical items every time I wanted to cross the room.

Trouble is, despite this storage, I still seem to have clutter. I'm reasonably logical so I've divided this clutter into piles, clustered around the perimeter of the room, but lately it's really been getting to me that I have so much stuff - most of which I probably don't even need. I've noticed its effect on my output, too. I find that I write more on my lunch hour because the office is tidier. There's more of a sense of order, particularly in the room where I have my lunch. I'm not distracted by piles of books or photos that I have yet to put in my album. At home, any fleeting sense of order created by dividing the piles by 'theme' or 'content' is very much undermined by the chaos of having these dratted piles of things in the first place.

I've been telling myself for months now that I will "tidy up a bit" but then I've found myself distracted by something else. I'd find myself leaving work, all fired up to go through the flat like a dose of salts, only to get home tired and cross after a hellish commute (particularly those three hour commutes when the damned tube staff decide to go on strike). I'd look at the clutter, sigh deeply, and then pull out my sketchbook and start drawing instead. I think the only thing in my flat that I managed to tidy successfully was my yarn collection, though I think practicality was a large factor behind that particular adventure. (Ever tried to detangle fine mohair yarn? My tip? Don't.)

But lately I've been getting antsy about it all, so armed with Ali's post and infused with a sense of just simply 'wanting more space', I sat back and contemplated the contents of my flat. I like to point out that there is method to my madness and that if I desperately need something, I remember exactly where it is. Trouble is, there are lots of piles of things on the floor, and I can't remember what's in most of them because the stuff isn't important enough to remember. My logic ran that if I couldn't remember what was in the pile, chances are, I didn't need it. If I had, I would have stored it either with like objects, or kept it to hand. Still, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so I decided I needed The Battleplan.

I've divided my flat up into nine 'clutter zones', and I aim to tackle them one by one. As I clear them, my flat will therefore look tidier, providing more motivation to keep tidying, but it also makes it seem like less of a gargantuan task. I've cleared two of these, and I found myself recycling 80% of the contents, throwing away 15%, and keeping just 5%. (If you're wondering, it was all old magazines, newspaper clippings, countless coffee shop receipts or padded envelopes from things I've bought online, which I reuse when selling on eBay or Amazon) Those two spaces already seem massive, and it's such a good incentive for me to move onto the next one.

Strangely, by the time I've finished tidying, I feel fired up and ready to write again, as if removing the physical clutter in the room is enough to remove the mental clutter that blocks my motivation to write. Maybe it's the extra exercise, adding endorphins to the mix. Or maybe I'm just weird.

Give yourself permission to NOT write

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I've just spent a very enjoyable evening doing nothing but knitting a sock, and watching the first three episodes of Castle. Now, most evenings, I make myself sit down and do some 'work'. It might be drawing, or working out some more 'punchlines' for my forthcoming comic, or it might be working on the next instalment of my serial, The First Tale. I might even be writing another Friday Flash, or deciding what I'm going to blog about. I might be rewriting my novel, or figuring out what I'm going to say in my next AudioBoo. I don't know about you, but that looks like a fair amount of things to be doing in my 'free' time.

'Not finding the time to write' is a common complaint of writers. Other creatives say they simply cannot find the time to create. "Modern life is so hectic", they say. "I have a full-time job and three kids and an invalid parent to care for," they cry. I can fully sympathise with the full-time job issue. Of the approximate seventeen hours I am aware, I have just four to spend on myself, and everyday errands. That's without a family to take up my time!

There are a myriad of blogs out there that will tell you it's okay to cut down your TV time by 15 minutes, or it's healthy to wake up 15 minutes earlier, or that no one will mind if you skip something else in order to write. You can "give yourself permission" to write. It's a very valid argument, and I agree with it wholeheartedly - there probably is a lot of junk in your day that could be safely jettisoned to make room for your creative pursuits. However, creative people often don't like to do anything creative because it's fun. It doesn't feel like work. It can often feel like an indulgence when there are errands to run or chores to do.

That being said, I'm here to tell you it's also okay to give yourself permission to NOT write. Normally, I've got so many projects on the go and so much that I want to do that I get stressed out if I don't get it all done (which would be impossible anyway, unless I somehow found a way of adding more hours to the day). If I hit a creative block, I panic. The work I want to do becomes work that I need to do and thus it becomes actual work, rather than 'work', if you get what I mean. Once that happens, I don't want to do it any more, and then I become frustrated with myself because I start procrastinating, and stop producing. It doesn't help that all these books and blogs seem to be telling me that I need to be writing almost continuously in order to really be 'a writer'. So now I'm not a real writer because I'm not writing every minute of every hour of every day? Golly, talk about pressure!

Yet it has been a wonderfully relaxing couple of hours after I told myself it was alright not to do any writing (aside from this post) for one single evening. I've made some decent progress on my sock (this is the left one I'm currently working on - eventually it will look like the right sock I've posted a photo of up there) and I've discovered a new TV show that combines my interest in crime dramas with my love of Nathan Fillion and a consideration of the writing process - win! As it happens, various ideas have been ticking over in my brain and now I feel refreshed and rejuvenated - ready to start writing on my way to work tomorrow.

So give it a go. Give yourself permission to have a night off, and see what wonders you can accomplish.

Why A Netbook Makes Me More Productive

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Way back in April, I posted a snippet of my handwritten scrawl, lamenting the reliance of a lot of writers on technology. Well, I'm about to do a complete U-turn and announce that this entry was written on a Netbook, while I enjoyed a mocha and a chocolate muffin in a particular coffee store that shall remain nameless as I don't want to advertise them (even though the gentleman barista did make a damn fine mocha).

My Netbook is great. I bought it so that I had something far more portable than my laptop in order to write during my commute to and from work. That's a good forty minutes of just sitting there, which I considered to be writing time wasted since my handwriting is entirely illegible when done on a moving train. My Netbook makes sense. I type faster than I can write, illegibility is no longer an issue, I can work on stories I've already started on my laptop (typing directly into a document is a lot easier than scribbling on a print out) and I save oodles of time by writing my blog posts on here and then uploading them when I get somewhere near an Internet connection. Typing out what I've written by hand just seems to be a waste of time.

I actually feel more productive, too. I wrote the next instalment of my web serial during my morning commute (which is far more satisfying than simply completing the sudoku in the paper), and I made my edits to my contribution to the Chinese Whisperings anthology during lunch. Now I'm writing this over dinner (yes, my dinner is a coffee and a muffin) and I intend to start work on the short story for my title swap with my good friend Sophie Bowley-Aicken on the way home. How's that for a day's work?

If you're interested, I got myself an Asus Eee PC 1001ha netbook. I love it. It's small and light, and it has a very comfortable keyboard. It's also got an Intel Atom processor, meaning it zips through tasks in no time at all, and the LED backlit screen makes reading what I'm writing a doddle. It's not too brilliant at playing back videos I've downloaded from the BBC to watch on iPlayer, but I do that so infrequently, it's not even an issue. As a laptop, it would probably be a poor investment, but as a Netbook, it's fine. Why would I want to run Adobe CS3 on a Netbook when I already own a laptop? No, this is my digital notebook that allows me to access the Internet. Can't say fairer than that.

I think it's fair to say that I'm converted. Now I can write in public. Doesn't that make me a real writer?