Vlog: Productivity? In this Economy??

Boy, we are certainly living in a ~time~ aren't we? Today I'm talking about my struggles with creativity and productivity the last six weeks or so—and learning to look at it differently. 

How have you been taking care of yourself? 

Twitter-sized bite:

Productivity?? In this economy?? @thegabecole talks about his struggles with creativity and productivity during the pandemic and how he's been learning to look at it differently. (Click to tweet) 

How to Wake Up Early and Be Productive

Photo credit: Richard Ricciardi on Flickr

It's 6:54 AM as I type this, and I've already done the following:

• Brushed my teeth and put on my contacts
• Let the dog out
• RTed stuff on Twitter (probably too much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
• Answered a potential client e-mail and did the math required for it
• Looked at my To-Do list for the day
• Re-arranged my blog post schedule a bit
• Started writing this post

I wrote a while back about how I became a morning person, which is a strategy that, two years later, has continued to work well for me. While I don't always get up quite as early as I used to (I average around 5:30 AM now instead of 5:15 AM), I do want to push that back again so I'll probably start doing that soon. Nevertheless, as I've gotten to know myself and the progression of my disease has carried on, I've found that my trend of having more energy and motivation in the morning to be productive than I do in the afternoon—especially because when my disease flares it usually happens later in the day—has continued.

Some days, though, I still struggle to drag myself out of bed.

So maybe, like me, you want to try this morning thing to see if it helps you get more writing done. I think that's awesome and commendable and not just because I do it—changing your schedule around and pushing yourself to do something not-so-fun (getting up early) not because you have to but because self-discipline is pretty awesome.

How do you do it then? Well, there are a few keys and tips I've picked up over time:

1. Go to bed early. I put this first because honestly, this is the most important part. I always try to make sure I get between 7-8 hours of sleep, which means if I plan to get up at 5:15 AM, then I go to bed at 9:15 PM. This right here is the easiest way to self-sabotage because going to bed early can be hard sometimes. But if you really want to get serious about waking up early to be productive, then you need to make sure you get however many hours of sleep you need every night.


2. Make it a habit. The only way to do this, of course, is to be consistent. This means going to bed early and waking up early every day—yes, even on the weekends. The only way to reset your sleep schedule to get used to your new sleeping pattern is to do it every single day. If you only do it during the weekdays then stay up late and wake up late on the weekends, your body will never get used to the sleep schedule and you'll be tired and cranky every time you wake up. And that's not fun or productive.
   
   I've made my habit so concrete that some nights when I make an exception and stay up...I still wake up at 5:30 AM. It's not really a bad thing—it means my body has gotten very used to waking up early, which helps me most days, but it is a thing that sometimes happens. 


3. Don't look at your phone notifications when you wake up. I started making this mistake last year and it was a huge mistake. I can't tell you how many times I woke up at 5:30 then spent an hour—an hour!—in bed scrolling through my Twitter. That was an hour I could have been getting to work. Oops.
   
   I've reigned that in again with the strict rule of not looking at my notifications until after I've gotten out of bed, put on my contacts, and brushed my teeth. Even though I do tend to do some RTing when I get to my computer, it's still made an enormous difference because I get to my computer a lot sooner than I did when I was lying in bed on my phone. 


4. Remember the whole reason you're getting up early is to be productive. While I won't say don't use social media at all until after you've been productive (if only because that would be hypocritical since I don't do that and even maybe checked a Twitter notification while writing this point), reminding yourself why you're awake early in the first place can help you limit that time so you can get to work. Or at least, it helps me. 


5. Put away the social media while you're working. I still have Twitter access on my phone, of course, but it's incredible the difference in my work output when I close Twitter on my web browser while I'm working. Something about not having a constant reminder of Twitter notifications I haven't yet checked allows me to ignore it for longer stretches of time—and get more work done as a result.

With those steps I've allowed myself to continue getting up before the sun for two years—and reigned myself in when I started making productivity-killing mistakes. If getting up early to get the words in is something you want to try too, I hope these tips help settle you into the early bird life. It's a pretty nice one, if I do say so myself.

Do you (or would you consider) get(ting) up early to be productive?

Twitter-sized bite:

Want to try getting up early to be productive? @Ava_Jae shares some tips. (Click to tweet)

Vlog: 4 Productivity Tips

Want to be more productive but don't know where to start? Today I'm sharing my top four productivity tips—also known as how to avoid procrastinating. :)

RELATED LINKS: 

• How to Get Productive
• How I Became a Morning Person
• Writing When You Don't Want To
• On Finding Time to Write
• Do You Have to Write Every Day?

What tips do you have for increasing productivity?

Twitter-sized bite: 

Want to be more productive but don't know where to start? @Ava_Jae vlogs her top four productivity tips. (Click to tweet)

How to Get Productive

Photo credit: J Dueck on Flickr

So if there's one thing I've learned about setting myself up to have a productive day, is it doesn't just happen on it's own. Productivity is something you have to dedicate yourself to, but sometimes it can be a little hard to focus or hold on to your motivation.

Given that it's important for writers to learn how to make the most of their time, I thought I'd share some productivity tips to help you reach your goals, whatever they may be.

• Figure out your zone. One of the best things I did for my productivity was figure out when I work best—which for me is early in the morning. I changed my schedule around and became a morning person so I'd have more early morning hours to get things done, but maybe you'll find your best hours are late at night, or at two in the morning (which isn't uncommon!). The key is to experiment a little and listen to yourself to see generally when you work best.


• Establish accountability. As distracting as social media frequently is, it can also be really useful in terms of establishing accountability. This week on Twitter, for example, there's #YAGetsStuffDone in which YA writers of Twitter are announcing their goals for the week and cheering each other on. More consistently, there's myWriteClub, a (free) site with customizable graphs so you can keep track of your goals with various projects and cheer with others as you progress. Even just tweeting a goal you want to get done on Twitter can often bring a little extra motivation, both because you've made your goal public, and because sometimes people will jump in to cheer you on, which is awesome.


• Cut out distractions. How you do this is up to you. I usually just close my internet browser and leave it at that (unless I'm using myWriteClub, which I'll explain in the next step), but some people use Self Control to block their access to internet for a given period of time. There's also Forest, which is a mobile app for $1.99 that keeps you from using your phone when you're supposed to be working, which I'm very much considering getting because while I'm good at not opening Twitter on my browser when I'm supposed to be working, I'm not quite as disciplined with my phone. (Forest also has a Chrome version, which I didn't know until just now.) Alternatively, turning my phone face-down on my desk sometimes helps.


• When drafting, try writing sprints. If you've never participated in a writing sprint before, it's basically an established chunk of time (sometimes thirty minutes, sometimes an hour), where you try to write as many words as possible. Sometimes if you participate with other people, it can become a competition of sorts, which can be pretty motivating and fun. myWriteClub recently set up a writing sprint section on their site which allows for global sprints that I've really come to love and I wrote about here.

So that about covers my productivity tips. What would you add to the list?

Twitter-sized bites:

Need to boost your daily productivity? @Ava_Jae shares her top productivity tips. #writetip (Click to tweet)

Accountability, reducing distractions, & more make @Ava_Jae's list of productivity-boosters. What would you add? (Click to tweet)

myWriteClub’s Word Sprints

Photo credit: manoftaste.de on Flickr

So after over a year of not drafting anything new (because So. Many. Revisions.) over the weekend I finally started playing around with a new sekrit thing. For the longest time I’d depended on Write or Die to get me through first drafts, largely because I found I work best with a timer/word count system and something encouraging to me to stop thinking and keep writing. While I was in endless revision mode, however, I’d heard that my favorite writing buddy myWriteClub had launched a new writing sprint feature, so you can bet I was eager to try it out. 

So I did, two days in a row. And I have to say, I like it even better than Write or Die. 

Write or Die functioned with negative reinforcement—in that the screen would turn red and a loud noise would start up if you stopped typing for too long. And while this was pretty effective, it also meant I quickly figured out a loophole that made the negative reinforcement moot, anyway. Which is fine, because it still kept me typing, but anyway. 

myWriteClub’s word sprints, however, use positive reinforcement to encourage you to write more, and if you want, it also connects you to other sprinters to race against. 

So how does it work? 

First you log into myWriteClub and go to their sprinting page. From there you can join either a global sprint or a custom sprint. From there you type in the browser, which looks like this: 

The sprints start every half hour and go for 25 minutes, but you’re free to write before or after that—your word count will continue to grow. You get a green star for every 100 words that you write, and a gold star for every 1000 words. The progress bar also grows as you type until you reach 100 words, you get a star, and it starts over. 

I haven’t sprinted with anyone else yet, but if you do you’ll be able to see the other person’s word count grow, which could be fun if you’re competitive (you can’t see each other’s words, though). It automatically saves to dropbox if you have that activated, and otherwise just automatically saves to the browser—I was pleasantly surprised to find my words from the previous day still in the browser when I logged in the next day (according to the site, your words are stored on your computer and not on myWriteClub’s server, so don’t worry). Usually I write, copy/paste whatever I wrote into my Scrivener doc, then close out. There’s also a chat function which I probably won’t use because distracting. 

At some point I’ll probably try sprinting with others, but I still find it really helpful and motivational when writing alone. Between the timer counting down, which encourages me to write faster, and the progress bar and stars, the interface really helps me focus and get words down on the page. Which ultimately is the most important part. :) 

I definitely recommend myWriteClub’s word sprint feature to those who like a little competition and/or accountability. It’s a fantastic addition to an already awesome productivity site. 

Have you ever used myWriteClub’s word sprint feature?

Twitter-sized bite: 

Need some writing motivation? Check out @my_write_club's Word Sprints feature and start first drafting! (Click to tweet)