Toward Productivity

Is everyone enjoying the internet today having a happy Earth Day? Anyway, the day has inspired a few notes on writing.

Step one, after waking up and beginning a new day move toward the office to write a few good pages. If time is available to work in the office, then make sure to open the current document and just start working. Distractions only delay the possibility of productivity. Avoid all early morning distractions except explicit family obligations.

Step two, the move toward productivity involves starting to work on completing at least one publishable essay. When dealing with a work in progress, figure out exactly where the current essay stands. Develop a plan for dealing with the weaknesses in the essay and begin to address them one at a time. Typically, the best plan for striving toward productivity involves only working on one essay at a time. A writer may have started multiple projects, but most writers can only actively engage in completing a single essay.

Complete the project by editing and finalizing one page at a time. If the task involves completing one essay, then the writer should be able to complete ten or more pages in a single day. Writers suffering form writers block should consider keeping an idea notebook and consulting the notebook when necessary. Some of the pages in the idea notebook will probably never yield high quality results. However, sometimes even the worst false start can illustrate future paths forward.

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