Writing for Your Wealth

Last Thursday, I planted ten fruit trees and six blueberry bushes in my yard. It took hours, it made my back sore, and three days later I’m still trying to pry dirt out from underneath my fingernails.

I might whine at the work I made for myself by ordering all my trees at once, but I felt pretty accomplished at the end.

Of course, I never would have finished before dark if I’d spent the day like so many of us spend our work days.

What if I’d stopped to read email a few times? Responded to a few Twitter conversations? Checked my feed reader for new blog posts? Answered instant messages? Googled questions that popped into my head? Checked Craigslist for *insert-random-thing-I’m-looking-for-this-week*?

Heck, I’d still be planting those trees right now.

The Dangers of Multitasking

I used to be proud of my ability to multitask. I felt very productive because I’d be typing 80 wpm and alt-tabbing from window to window, managing to keep a dozen balls in the air at a time.

And yet at the end of the day, I’d look back, and I wouldn’t be quite sure what I’d accomplished. I’d been busy, certainly, and I’d done a lot of work, but what sort of finished product did I have to show for it?

In our modern world, multitasking is the norm. Being busy is the norm. But as I’ve written before, there’s a big difference between being busy and being productive.

Busyness creates stress while productivity creates a feeling of accomplishment. Busyness makes you feel like a hamster on a wheel that never stops spinning while productivity makes you feel like a marathon runner with the finish line in sight. Busyness makes time fly in a holy-smokes-I-was-supposed-to-finish-that-today-and-it’s-already-11:30-at-night way while being productive means looking at the clock and being pleasantly surprised at how much you got done.

Okay, enough of that busyness. Let’s get productive.

Four Tips for Becoming More Productive (and less busy)

I realized the error of my multitasking ways more by accident than by insight. When I started having trouble with repetitive stress injuries and it hurt even to type, I had to figure out a way to make a living without sitting at the keyboard for 8 or 12 hours a day. Because I could only spend about an hour at the computer, I was forced to make the most out of that hour.

How?

Let’s start with the obvious…

1. Stop chatting all day

Like I said, it’s obvious. But because we like to justify it as “networking,” especially now with the social media marketing craze, chatting remains a huge time sink for many of us.

It’s hard to focus on anything when new messages are constantly inundating you. Also, the pressure to reply to everyone and give everyone on your ever-expanding “friends list” a piece of your time is a big stress creator. Want to fail as a blogger, writer, internet marketer, etc.? Get burned out, so you decide to stop altogether.

I’m not going to tell you to stop Twittering, Stumbling, Digging, IMing, etc., but if you often find yourself wondering where your days went, it’s worth doing the math and seeing how much you’re really getting out of your networking efforts. Consider analyzing your traffic logs to see which social efforts are giving you returns and which aren’t worth the time.

Again, I’m not going to say you should stop all forms of online communication, but as far as networking goes, you’ll probably get more out of a local mastermind group that meets once a month than hundreds of hours spent on Twitter. If you do want to continue networking (or just chatting) online, then consider doing it at the end of the day, or after you’ve accomplished something concrete. Make it the dessert after a healthy meal.

And for those who may be wondering… yes, it’s entirely possible to make a living online without talking to anyone. SEO + Adsense got me there. Maybe I’d be richer if I’d networked along the way, but I make enough, and I have a lot of free time. It’s hard to beat that.

2. Brainstorm ahead of time

By necessity, I started figuring out what to write about before I sat down at the computer. Personally I find that walking the dog, swimming laps, or running can make for fabulous brainstorming sessions. Maybe it’s that sense of forward momentum you get when your body is in motion: your mind naturally wants to go forward too.

If you already know what you’re going to write about when you sit down, the words flow easily. You don’t waste time scanning your feed reader or clicking from search result to search result looking for inspiration.

3. Focus on one task at a time

Perhaps the biggest “oh, duh” moment I had was when I realized multitasking wasn’t as efficient as focusing on one task until it was finished.

You may have laughed when I told you I didn’t send answer any emails while I was digging holes for my trees, since that would have been pretty hard unless I had my laptop out in the yard with me. But that’s kind of the point. If you remove yourself from temptation (in my case, the Internet), you’ll find it’s a lot easier to stay focused on one task.

While some of your work may require being online for research, there comes a point where you need to just sit down and create output. The fewer distractions around, the easier it is to stay on task.

If you’re writing, try taking your laptop to a coffee shop that (brace yourself) doesn’t have wifi. If you don’t have a laptop, grab a notepad and go to the library or the park or wherever you can be by yourself without distraction for a time.

It’s amazing how much you can get done in an hour if there’s nothing else to do.

I always laugh at the folks who suggest ancient monolithic structures were built by aliens. They were just built by people who didn’t have tv, internet, books, or any other modern distractions inundating them day in and day out! (Okay, being royalty and having tons of slaves probably helped.)

4. Give yourself one project a day

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you have to do this and get that done and get this posted and don’t forget about that. You end up with a huge to-do list, and it takes you as long to create the list as it does to actually do something. And half the time, there’s no way in a reality-based world you’d get all these things done in a day anyway.

What if you just gave yourself one key thing to get done for the day and decided to be happy with that?

That’s what I started doing, and lo and behold… it works.

Try it. Give yourself one main thing to do, and when it’s done, you know that you’ve accomplished something. Then you can go onto other smaller tasks if you want (no pressure to finish them since you got The One Thing done) or take the rest of the day off.

You might just be surprised at how much you can get done over the weeks and months with the One-Task-a-Day approach.

Today’s task was this blog post. And now that I’m done… time to go write for fun.

What about you? Do you have any suggestions for folks who are struggling to be less busy and more productive?