How to be a more productive writer

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This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post and an infographic about how to be a more productive writer….

I review about 80 blogs each week. Lest you think I’m being unproductive when I do this, let me tell you that I restrict myself to no more than one hour, once a week, always on the same day. (I also use the free software Feedly, which makes the process really fast and efficient.)

While checking out recent offerings, I encountered a fabulous infographic on John Soare’s website. Headlined 50 productivity tips to get more writing done, the post shares the infographic (which was prepared by a company called Wrike) and suggests that all writers pick two to three tips they figure will make the most difference to them.

John’s choices were:

  • Cleaning his desk
  • Quitting Facebook (partially)
  • Writing tomorrow’s to-do list tonight

Here are mine:

  • Muting my G-mail with inbox pause (I keep all my email turned off and always collect it manually)
  • Writing my 3 most important tasks on a document I keep on a clipboard on my desk
  • Writing tomorrow’s to-do list tonight (in my case, I do it at 6 am in the morning when I arrive at my desk.)

Since implementing these “rules” (five years ago for the first one and a year ago for the second and third), I’ve made myself a far more productive writer.

But every writer is different. I suggest you study and consider this excellent infographic and chose three ideas that will make a difference for you. Then do them!

An earlier version of this post first appeared on my blog on Nov. 6/17.

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