Staying Balanced While Writing to Deadline by Marydee Sklar
I’ve published two books in one year. While that was no small feat, I’m most pleased that I produced those books while running my own business, seeing clients full time, putting up a state-of-the-art website, and doing ten presentations. I did it all without going crazy or going to bed after 10 p.m. How you can do it:
- Plan your week and each day check in with your plan. Keep your plan in sight.
- Set up a space/office that is so lovely and comfy that you WANT to spend time there writing.
- Put up a 3×5 dry erase board dedicated to be the master plan for all of your writing and other projects.
- Put an electric kettle in your office to make tea. It keeps you from getting distracted and wasting time going to and from the kitchen.
- Every afternoon go for a twenty-minute walk. The exercise is important, your brain gets to relax and often inspiration comes.
- Don’t keep food or snacks in your writing space. Writing is no excuse to gain weight and feel yucky about yourself.
- Use a timer to schedule breaks, your brain and body needs them.
- Learn to hula-hoop. Just eight minutes of hula hooping to rock and roll on Pandora radio is more invigorating for my brain than a nap.
- Cry when you need to. Writing books is a birthing process and tears and frustrations need to be expressed so you can move on with the project.
- Be open to getting help and be gracious to those who do.
© Marydee Sklar. Marydee Sklar is an educator who specializes in helping students and adults who struggle with time management. By focusing on the brain and it’s relationship to time and learning she teaches effective strategies to change time-management behavior. She is the author of Seeing What I Need to Do: Visual Tools for Executive Functioning Success – Instructor’s Manual and Course Notes. You can learn more about her work at www.ExecutiveFunctioningSuccess.com. Writers will find her site, materials, and coaching helpful http://www.copyblogger.com/write-with-a-knife/.
If you liked these tips and would like over 560 practical, immediately-implementable tips to read, print, and/or post as reminders, then you will want the Top Ten Productivity Tips – The Collection, available to access and download right away! Inside this full-color, 108-page productivity manual, you’ll find several hundred tips covering topics such as meetings, workspace organization, planning your day, effective delegation, and how to keep your mind focused on your work. With these clever tips in hand, you’ll be more peacefully and predictably productive than you’ve ever been.
