50 strategies for making yourself work

mapmaker.curtrosengren.com

If you're going to create a career that makes you feel alive, the responsibility lies with you to make it happen. Nobody else is going to do it for you. And inevitably there will be times along the way when you just don't feel like it and procrastination threatens to get the upper hand.

Here's a great article offering 50 strategies for making yourself work. It is focused on writing, but most of the advice can be applied to just about anything you do. Here are some of my favorites:

• Pay yourself an hourly wage for time worked, and don't allow yourself leisure activities (movies, dinner out, etc.) unless you can pay for it with this writing money.
• Write to music. Put two or three CDs in the player and stay at the keyboard until they're done. Crank it up. Boogie a little. That's not just background noise; that's the sound of you working.
• Unplug the TV for six months. This is a tough one, but it's the one with the biggest potential for shifting your priorities over to writing.
• Carry a note pad or tape recorder with you wherever you go. Use it to record ideas as well as the actual text of stories. Make it your external memory. The idea here is to keep yourself focused on writing no matter what else you're doing.
• Identify your best hours of the day and write during those. Let other people take the leftovers for a change.
• Light a candle. Make it a big, wide one. Write until the wax pool is entirely molten, as far out as it will go.
• Binge! Gear up for a major writing weekend. Get your ideas ready, set a goal, and plan to work every waking hour until you're done.

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Comments

[Autumn]

Thanks for pointing to this article. Relatively new to this whole writing gig, this is helpful for me.