A big thanks to Athena Grayson for guest-hosting about box sets for authors (Thinking INSIDE the Box Set) while I was on vacation. Readers love serials and box sets make great gifts and/or promotions.
This helped me to have a stress free vacation in Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Two days after returning, I was off to do the first review on the next book with Michael, my co-author.
Since we’ve done most of the writing and back-and-forth work online, we’d never really worked together. Michael let me know he had a routine. He took a 5-minute break every half hour and would take 30 minutes to meditate every 2 to 2 ½ hours.
My initial thought was that this would take time away from working but he was incredibly good at agenda setting and time management. Much better than me so I thought, why not give it a try? We put together an agenda at the beginning of the week, revised it daily, and figured out which portions of the agenda we wanted to work on.
The way he liked to work focused on maximizing our time. So much so that taking time to relax and talk about other things wasn't a problem at all. In all likelihood, it helped us keep our energy level high. We made it through everything with a day left.
This got me to thinking about some of the other things I’ve learned to do over the years to focus on writing even when it seems like there’s a thousand things going on.
A while back, I saw the author Carolyn Ferrell speak and she said something that stuck with me to this day. She said, “You will never have more time than you have now.”
I found this to be very profound. It spoke to the author in me who at the time was always thinking, if only I had more time to write.
It was very relieving and comforting to me to hear a professional say that this was something they dealt with on a constant basis. I wasn't alone. Not only that, but this was how it’s going to be. I suppose this could have been terrifying hearing someone say, it’s not going to get any better in terms of time than it is now, but it had the opposite effect. I felt like here was a person who understood me and her advice was don't let life and living it be an excuse for not writing.
This eventually led to blogging as a strategy to put down my thoughts in a short form without overly self-editing myself (a tendency I have).
It also eventually lead me to a book called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. This book was a recommendation from a friend.
Here, I have a confession to make. I am a huge fan of self-help books (I could easily do this, for example. Warning, you may or may not regret you clicked.)
I know, I know. They’re mostly promise and I know I won’t find all the answers to life in a self-help book. Still, I love them. Even some of the bad ones. I love them because they're people trying to help other people.
The beauty of David Allen’s book wasn’t so much that he had any new time management suggestions. It was in how he explained his philosophy in terms of mental energy.
He talked about how having too much going on in your head and too much "undone" could weigh you down. If you kept too many things inside your head that never got done, this could actually be extremely depressing. I had never thought about it like this before.
Allen’s advice was that you wanted to get as much out of your head as quickly as possible so that you would feel better.
Some of the ways he recommended that I remember off the top of my head:
- Writing things down on a list.
- Prioritizing what’s most important.
- Taking action on the items on your list.
- Checking them off as they are completed.
- Deferring things to a later list as an action.
This may sound simple, but somehow it was different because I now understood that if I kept too much in my head, it would prevent me from getting anything done.
Stefan Siebel drew this great picture of Allen’s advice:
Here’s a few things that I personally did based on Allen’s advice.
I started keeping a list of future article titles on my iPhone. This way when anything popped into my head, I could just write it down and it would be there in the future if I needed it. Out of my head!
I developed the habit of making a “to do” list every day before I started work and spending 10-15 minutes prioritizing what was most important. Out of my head!
Each time I completed something I physically checked it off. It literally felt good to me to check things off.
I also developed a folder structure that fit this new idea of getting things out of my head.
I organize by projects with a folder for each new project. The example shown with the top-level folder titled The Agile Experiment is for the current book I'm working on. Because I have a project folder for each article I write, I have hundreds of these project folders. For example, this article and all the self-publishing posts I've done has a project folder categorized under Self-Publishing 101.
The amazing thing about it is that I’ve found I can reference and remember information very quickly by referencing the project I was working on. I think this is my version of the memory palace. I have a terrible memory for specifics. But I have a great memory for things I’ve worked on. So if I keep all the specifics in a folder related to a project, I can almost always find something I've saved. I won't remember the details, but I'll remember where to find the details.
For example, within a project folder, one of the most important folders for me is the Source folder. The Source folder contains all my notes on subject matter and all the materials I've gathered. With the Agile project folder for Source, I've saved over 100 hours of research notes and materials.
The other folder that usually exists in some way, shape, or form within each project is a draft or sketching folder. In the example shown, it exists in several forms. There’s an early Outlining folder, where I sketched out some thoughts on the overall structure and initial chapters. Then, there’s a Storyboarding folder where I laid out how I would present the material in different PowerPoints. And finally, there’s a Draft folder, where I wrote the initial drafts.
Outlines and storyboards and drafts are all different ways I have of sketching with progressively more detail. All of this fits in with the idea of getting things out of my head as quickly as possible.
Michael, my co-author, marveled at my organization as I marveled at his time boxing and management skills. I found this unusual because I really hate organization and don’t think of myself as organized. What I like is getting things out of my head so that I can a) get things done, and b) enjoy life when I’m not working without all the overhead bouncing around in my head.
Literally, I found David Allen’s advice to be a lifesaver.
It took my level of stress down by an order of magnitude. If someone had tried to tell me to do these things as time management strategies, I would never have listened. But Allen, in my case anyways, is a kindred soul who understood that the mental overhead stood in the way of enjoying life. His advice to clear things off your plate in some way, shape, or form so you can enjoy life really helped me.
I had a great time at the Grand Canyon. Only thought about work once or twice and then it was only because I was having ideas while relaxing. After writing them down, I went back to vacation.
The way we work is very personal so I can only tell you what worked for me. I write it down with the idea that it might be of interest to someone. I am also, however, always interesting in hearing about what's worked for others. This is how I constantly learn.
How do you get things done? What’s helped you most? What do you struggle with? What are your vacation plans for the summer?
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David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy.