My Best Creative Poductivity Tips For Writers

Here’s how to be the most happily productive writer you can be:

Be imperfect. If you have to be perceived as perfect, or worse, feel like you have to be perfect, one day, with all that pressure on yourself, you might not be able to get out of bed in the morning. Here’s a better idea: get your imperfect self out of your imperfect bed and get going on your imperfect day. Then all that imagined pressure that comes with perfectionism becomes a non-issue.

Organize your career around work you love to do with people you enjoy working with. What a concept! If you are going to work for yourself, then you owe it to yourself to do the kind of work you love and only work with people you enjoy working with. Your work won’t be perfect and neither will your colleagues, but if you basically like it and them, you are on the right track.

Let it grow. Don’t expect your fledgling writing career to become the size of Stephen King’s or J. K. Rowling’s overnight. In fact, don’t expect your career to look like anyone’s career at all. Your career is yours. If you want to find out what it’s going to look like in the future then you have to get in it and grow it. This takes daily effort and patience but so does anything worthwhile, right?

Prioritize the most pressing concerns down to the single next most important thing. You can’t do everything at once, so identify what needs to be done next and just do that. Then do the next thing and the next and the next. I don’t care if you use a list or what method you use to determine what needs to get done, but you need to have a method of recalling your priorities that works for you. You also need to not get compulsive about organizational systems and chasing down the latest hacks because that’s not the same as following the dance of your own creative spark (unless that’s your passion).

Forget shoulds, what others are doing, and advice that runs you ragged. There is no shortage of people out there who would be happy to tell you what you should be and do. There are many others you can waste your time envying. And, you could waste time on the Internet until you die. But you are the only person who knows what matters to you. Figure it out and live by it.

Seek out win-win-win associations and partnerships. Steer clear of draining, negative types and once you figure out how, make it a habit. Do your own work first and then network with other successful, focused people. Only partner with the best of them.

Regularly assess what you’ve accomplished vs. what’s next vs. your future goals. There is a natural tension between where you would like to be and where you are. You have to learn to enjoy this feeling as a challenge you embrace rather than a mental construct your struggle against constantly. There are people who would rather struggle than succeed. If you are one of them, stop being mean to yourself and just take one constructive step every day. Pretty soon, you’ll be in the habit of taking constructive steps and you’ll find yourself happily productive in no time.

Learn from what has worked successfully. Pat yourself on the back for what you have already accomplished. Every time you are successful there is a goldmine of information revealed just for you. Learn from your personal experience and always build on your strengths even as you address your weaknesses.

And remember, no matter how much success you have already had, you still won’t wake up perfect. So don’t waste your time trying to create some pretty picture of what you think success should look like based on how it looks for others. Start doing your own work, your way, and stick with it.

~ Photo by the trial