Right now, at this very moment, I am not feeling very productive. I have a project (more like 12 projects) that I want to work on, but every time I pick one and get started, I either get distracted on Facebook, or I end up staring at my screen for twenty or thirty minutes and accomplishing nothing.
So, right now, at this very moment, I am utilizing one of my many strategies for jump-starting productivity, by picking a project that I kind of already half-started, and just going for it, even though it has nothing to do with the projects that are currently at the top of my list to work on.
I’ve had the idea for this blog post for about two months now, based off of a conversation my friend Ali and I had, where she asked me what strategies I use when I’m feeling less than productive. So I started listing them off… and listing and listing and I discovered that I have a rather large number of strategies and sub-strategies that I use.
I want to make it clear that not all of these strategies are created equal. Some of them work for me on a regular basis (like sprinting), while others (like yelling at myself until I start working) have worked for me exactly once. I would guess that the effectiveness of a strategy will depend on the person—their working habits, their environment, and their personality.
This picture has nothing to do with anything, but I found it while browsing a free stock photo site and decided it needed to be on my blog somewhere. Alternatively, consider it a metaphor for unpacking why you’re feeling unproductive or distracted. Take a closer work at the “inner workings” of yourself to figure out whats “making you tick (or not tick)” to help you “get back into gear.” Ok, I’m done now lol
In addition, I think it’s helpful to consider why you are lacking productivity. In my experience, being productive isn’t the problem. It’s not discipline—after all, I’m doing what I love. I want to do this work! Most of the time, my “lack of productivity” is actually something else—I’m hungry, have too many ideas, distracted, or anxious. It’s the same with writer’s block. Most of the time, being “blocked” is really not about the writing at all, but about me.
I’ve ranked these strategies according to what is most effective for me, but you might rank them in a completely different order, or never use some of these, or use strategies that I haven’t included.
My method for choosing which strategy to use in the moment is to start with the top strategy and use that; if that doesn’t work, I do the next one or the third one, and after that, I kind of pick randomly based on my mood and what I’m trying to get done.
1. Doing Sprints
If you are not familiar with the concept of sprinting, it basically means that you set a timer for a short period of time and try to write as many words as you can during that time. I tend to prefer somewhere between 15 – 30 minutes, and I usually land on 20 minutes. I find that an hour is less of a sprint and more of a 5k, and longer than that is like a marathon. Shorter than 15 minutes is just annoying, personally.
Sometimes, I also use sprints for doing other stuff. I call them focus sprints, and I aim to focus for 20 minutes or whatever amount of time. I might say, “I do not want to write these emails, but I need to, so I am going to set a timer and do just this for the next 20 minutes.”
I also use a sprinting bot to help in my Discord server. In the server, many of us sprint together at the same time, which provides a little bit of social pressure to do the work and stay focused. Participants simply input their beginning and ending wordcount, and the bot does the work. If I’m doing a focus sprint, I just input random things, or I might attribute a value—say, 50 for every email I send, or for every page I edit—and then I just start at 0 and do my own math.
Sprinting has helped me write hundreds of thousands of words, and I will swear by it as an effective strategy until my dying day.
2. Goal Setting
This is more of a long-term strategy, but it can also be used in the short term and mid-term. So, for example, I participate in National Novel Writing Month and their Camps every November, April, and July. I set a goal of anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 words, and I do everything within my power to achieve it. I’ve only failed once so far—and I still landed at 42,000 words in a month. I have also set more minor goals; for example, the NanoWriMo site has a badge you can get if you update your wordcount every day. I’m bad about that, so last time, I made that my goal. Another time, I made finishing the book I was working on my goal, no matter what the wordcount was. I’ve also set editing goals.
In the short term, I find it really helpful to set next-day goals. So I might say, “Tomorrow, I need to send out three emails, write 2k words, and post to my Patreon.” That gives me a very clear path to follow, even when I’m feeling distracted. I even sometimes do this within the day—I might say, “In the next hour, I am going to write 500 words or create a graphic” or whatever.
When I set these goals, I usually give myself permission not to finish, though I know that some people need the opposite to be true.
Once, I sat down with someone that was helping me with some goal setting. And after I wrote out what I wanted to accomplish, he said, “So, you’re going to finish these by the end of the year, then?” And I said, “that’s the goal.” To which he replied, “Well, are you or aren’t you?”
I think he was just trying to be motivating, but it really annoyed me, because the whole point of goals is that they should be a stretch. They should be something the requires you to have to work at it, to try, to be consistent and dedicated—not something that you can achieve by staying up late the night before the deadline. So I tend to make my goals possible to achieve, but difficult, and then even if I don’t actually achieve them, I’ve still made significant progress as part of the process—basically, I’ve still been productive.
3. Keeping Track
I think keeping track is really important, especially with ginormous goals like writing a novel. I have several different ways of doing this:
Spreadsheets
Reports
Journal
Check-ins
Spreadsheets are great for things that involve numbers. For example, in the past I’ve tracked how many hours I wrote, what project I worked on, and how many words I wrote or how many pages I edited. It gave me a good sense of my speed as well as kept a running tally of how much work I’d gotten done.
I also now write up quarterly reports where I look at the last three months sales, words, publications, etc. No one actually reads the reports except my spouse, but just the act of doing it gets me excited about my projects and how far I’ve come since the last time I wrote one. Even if I’m doing worse, it still motivates me to do better, and usually after working on one, I’m raring to go.
Another related sub-strategy is my “Encouragement Binder.” I have a physical, three-ring binder, in which I print and paste demonstrations of my progress. I might book cover images in it, newspaper articles, screenshots of my most popular social media posts, printouts of fan emails—and then if my lack of productivity is the result of feeling like the work I’m doing is pointless, I can just flip through my Encouragement Binder for a small emotional boost.
I also have a couple different types of journals. I don’t write every day, but I like to check in periodically and see what was going on last time I wrote in it, and then add a few more details of things that I think are important that happened in between. If I’m struggling to write, sometimes I will just pull out one of my journals, write a few sentences, and that was all I needed to get the engine to restart.
Regular check-ins are basically just moments where I sit down and make a list. This is a super helpful strategy for me in the moment when I’m struggling with temporary distractions. I will make a list of all the projects I’m doing including writing, editing, marketing, publishing, and anything else, and I will highlight the ones I’m most excited about. Often, I will even post my list in my Discord server to add a little social pressure to get the work done.
Alternatively, I will go back to a list I already made and check off anything that I’ve finished. Frequently, what happens is that I see something on the list that I forgot about, get super excited about it, and then am ready to jump on board that project immediately.
That’s literally what I’m doing right now. I couldn’t focus on the projects that actually have deadlines, and so I scanned a list of other things I could work on and was like—this one! Blog post about productivity.
I’ve been working on this for 30 minutes now, and have 1300 words written—so I’d say that this strategy was a success. [note, wordcount might be different after editing]
4. Tangible Stuff
I’m a big stuff of real-life tangible stuff. I know a lot of people use tools like Trello or Google Docs to organize and keep track of themselves, but I really like binders (like my Encouragement Binder). I have a Project Binder where I make a new sheet for every project I’m working on. It has a checklist for everything that needs to get done on the project. I also have a Marketing Binder, an Ariele University Binder, and a Patreon Binder, as well as several world-building binders.
Now, I know this sounds more like an organization strategy than a productivity strategy, but it’s both, I swear. On one hand, it means that I never do the same work twice. On the other hand, if I’m feeling slow and sluggish, I just pull out my checklist and voila! I check off a few things and suddenly it makes me feel re-invigorated about the project.
I also really enjoy stickers. Sometimes I make sticker-charts, and every time I accomplish a thing, I get a sticker. Right now, I have a piece of paper on my wall that is split in half, with one half labeled “2k Days” and the other half labeled “15k Weeks.” Every time I write 2k in a day, I get a sticker; every time I get 15k in a week, I get a sticker. It makes me feel good and want to keep going.
In fact, I can already put a sticker on for today, because I wrote 2.5k on a project before this, and now I am… checking… 1600 words into this blog post, which puts me at 4.1k words for the day (that’s 2 stickers!), and less than 2k away from my daily goal.
Tangible strategies go a lot deeper than just sticker charts, though. For example, one of my favorite options is drawing. If I get stuck, I just draw a picture of the scene I’m working on. It takes my eyes off of the computer for a moment (and Facebook, as it turns out), and helps me refocus on the actual story. I keep all of these drawings and put them in world-building binders. I also have a chalkboard wall where I can write, scratch, scribble—sometimes a simple realization about my project can reinvigorate my inclination to work all over again.
Writing by hand is also helpful at times. I usually hate writing by hand because it’s too slow, but sometimes slowing down really helps me shift my focus back into the story and start to feel excited about it again.
You can also make binders, write your plot out on a chalkboard, make something out of clay, roll dice, clean your office—these sorts of things can often give your brain just the right amount of space to get rolling.
5. Freewriting
I hate freewriting. Hate it. Alas, it works. One of the reasons I get distracted is because I don’t know what to do next in a story. I don’t know where it should go, or what the next words should be—some people call this writer’s block. So, what I’ll do is sit down at my computer (or by hand, if you want to double-down on strategies) and just write whatever comes out of my head. Usually it’s really, really, really stupid. For example, “I hate freewriting because it’s boring and uninteresting, but I really need to get started actually writing because all I’m doing is wasting time and Askari needs to get to the next scene…” and that’s all it takes for me to suddenly know what to write.
Similar to free-writing (but different), sometimes I will try to take an alternate angle on a project. So, I might imagine I’m being interviewed on a TV show or by a reporter, and they will ask me questions about what I’m doing and working on. Sometimes I imagine it’s the future, and the reporter asks me how long it took me to complete the project, and I answer, “Several months. In fact, there was one week in mid-June when I couldn’t get anything done...” and I make up a whole story about how I got started again. This works surprisingly often.
Imagining the future can also help, by picturing where I’ll be when I have ten or twenty or fifty books out, or when I have my first TV show premiere launching.
6. Rewards
When I was little, my mom kept a jar of M&Ms on the back of the toilet for potty training. Anytime we used the toilet properly, we got candy.
Giving yourself rewards for answering 10 emails or writing 1k words might seem ridiculous, but it really can help. Sometimes, acknowledging your distraction and promising to give it to yourself later is all you need. For example, all I want to do right now is play Elder Scrolls. I’ve promised myself that if I can hit 6k for today, then I can play for a couple of hours this evening. Honestly, half the time I don’t even take myself up on the rewards—but just having them in the back of my mind can help.
I use food, stickers, movies, TV time, social media, and all kinds of things to motivate myself to keep going. Sometimes, I’ll even bribe myself with another project—“If you write 2k on this project, Ariele, then you can work on that other one, too.”
One thing to remember about writing books is that it’s a marathon every time. There aren’t very many mini goals on the road to focus in on, which means there aren’t very many things to reward yourself for accomplishing. So just setting up the smaller goals and celebrating those can go a long way towards helping you stay motivated for the long haul.
7. Positive Affirmation and Self-Care
I’m sure you’re familiar with this as a common psychological tactic designed to restructure negative brain processes—like thinking, “I am strong, I can achieve my goals” when actually you’re kind of feeling like a failure. Here’s a link to a helpful article about positive affirmation.
Well, guess what—the same tactics work when you’re feeling distracted!
The first step: identify the feeling.
Is it really distraction? Or are you just labeling it as distraction because you can’t focus? You might actually be feeling sad, hungry, bored, anxious, depressed, nervous, or any other emotion—even positive ones like happy or excited. Any emotional state can be distracting.
Once you’ve identified the feeling, then you can decide how to respond to it.
For example, if you’re hungry—eat! Problem solved. If you’re sad, maybe take a few minutes to acknowledge why you’re sad, write a little bit about it, and then try working again. If you’re anxious, try to think about why you’re anxious, and if you can’t let it go, then engaging in some self-care might actually be more productive than sitting and staring angrily at your computer monitor.
One big distraction for me is anxiety caused by a messy desk, but often I don’t even realize it’s bothering me. My desk gets messy really slowly—like I cleaned it this morning, but there are a couple of books and some headphones still out of place, and while they’re fine for the moment, I might set down a piece of paper and an empty bottle and a couple of dirty dishes, and I’ll start to feel… just off. Like something isn’t right. But if I recognize that feeling, then I know all I have to do is clean my desk or office, and I’m on track all over again.
Taking stock of how you feel, identifying those emotions, and then dealing with them, can often enable you to be far more productive than just ignoring them or trying to work despite them.
Another example: I was feeling bad about one of my Land of Szornyek works in progress. I didn’t realize it at first, but every time I sat down to work on it, I got anxious. And it was the project itself causing the problem. So, once I realized it, I got up and wrote on my chalkboard wall: “I love my universe. It is great. It is exciting. It has value. I want to FINISH it.” Now, every time I walk by it, I read it and think, “Yes!” and slowly get more and more excited to finish the project—and in fact, I did finish the next book and publish it.
As part of this, I will also indulge new ideas. Sometimes, a new idea is bugging and bugging and bugging me, distracting me to the point that I can’t finish anything else. I then take a deep breath, open a new word doc, and write about it. I usually give it between 2k – 5k words, enough to really get a handle on whether the idea has merit or is just being annoying. Then, I can go back to what I’m supposed to be working on, knowing that the idea will be there when I have time for it.
8. Location, location, location.
Sometimes things start to feel the same—boring, dreary, same old, same old. So one thing I like to do is switch it up. This might be as simple as going into the bedroom and sitting on the bed with my laptop on my lap. Or writing on the couch with a notebook and pen. Sometimes I might go to the park or a café somewhere. I even sometimes will move around all the furniture in my office or house. Once I even moved around all my furniture, decided I didn’t like it, and then moved it back. It was a lot of work, but then it turned out all I really needed was to clean my office.
Another, even simpler thing is to change up something that’s always been the same—like a poster on the wall. A candle on your left—move it to the right. Or actually light it, if it’s one you don’t like. Rip a picture out of a magazine that you like and hang it on the wall beside your desk.
Even intentionally making the smallest change can sometimes shift your brain into gear.
9. Abstinence
Sometimes I simply get tired. I know that the popular advice write now is that we should all be writing every day, or at very least, every week. But sometimes, not allowing myself to write is actually more effective—so long as I start back up again. Not writing for a period of time, a few days or a few weeks, causes the creative pressure to build and build and build, and when I start back in again it all comes rushing out.
I think short breaks can really help, too. Going for a walk or a run, taking a shower, reading a book, or meditating—simply giving yourself permission to relax and your brain room to breathe can really help. I think there comes a point when I try to force productivity out of myself, that it actually causes the opposite to happen, and my productivity worsens over time. So plan in breaks, plan in vacations, and remember that it’s okay to not be working all the time.
Your creativity isn’t going anywhere, and neither are your ideas. They’ll be there when you’re ready to start back up again.
10. Permission to be distracted
I think one of the most helpful things I’ve done is given myself permission to be distracted by things. Sometimes, I allow myself to be distracted by another project or organizing or world-building. But I also have a list of things that I am always and forever allowed to abandon my work for:
Other story ideas (for up to 5k worth of words)
Cats
Birds
Food
Exercise
Daydreaming
Plants
This list changes over time, but I think it’s important to remember that my brain is a brain, and it will get distracted… and that’s okay.
Ultimately, the most helpful thing I’ve ever done is to experiment. If I can’t focus, I’ll say to myself, what should I try? And then I might try one of the things I’ve mentioned here, or I might go online and Google “Tricks to be more productive” or “how to stop getting distracted all the time” and I’ll let myself get distracted trying to figure out how to stop being distracted.
And what works for me has changed over time. Sometimes sprinting (though it is my #1) just doesn’t work. Sometimes what I need is a nap and a meal. Or a chance to work on a different project. Or time to answer a bunch of emails so I can stop feeling stressed about the fact that I haven’t been emailing everyone back. Or just a few minutes to check Facebook or Instagram or whatever.
There’s no one right answer. But once you’ve decided you want to be more productive, you’re already on the right track.
