I started writing a novel over a year ago (it’s ended up being 100,000 words and it’s on its third draft currently), and while it wasn’t part of NaNoWriMo, I learned a few things from the practice of writing X amount of words per day that might be helpful to anybody currently spending November burning up their keyboard. Hope it helps!

Be persistent

Regardless of how you feel, whether you have no energy or you just can’t can’t think of anything to write, force yourself to sit down and write something each day. The key is persistence, repetition and momentum. Once you skip a day because you just don’t feel like writing, any momentum you might have built up will be lost. And the biggest challenge is always starting (again) and picking up where you left off. Heck, just do a paragraph or two if you’re really not in the mood.

Be prepared for your writing to suck

Sometimes, you’re on a roll and write pages and pages of pure brilliance. Then the next day, it just doesn’t flow and you spew out unpublishable rubbish. Don’t get disheartened, that’s how it goes. If you wait for the magic to come before you write anything, you’ll be waiting a very long time. It will take several drafts and revisions, maybe even dozens, to get everything from the first page to the last polished to perfection. I would go so far as to say, you’ll spend more time editing and tweaking what you’re already written, than actually writing new content. Whatever you write in November is only the start.

Carve out a time in the day for it

Carve out an hour, thirty minutes, whatever. Just make this writing period each day sacred.  It’s critical you identify or make room for writing when you plan your day out. View it as more important than anything else you’re doing, make it your top priority, your number one task each day. And make sure everyone else understands and respects this too so you’re not needlessly distracted and they don’t take it the wrong way.

Read, read, read

This applies in two ways – read through your work often and read the work of others too. During my second draft, I got carried away, described things in a little too much detail, added a lot of superfluous nonsense that would have bored most people to death. This wasn’t apparent until I’d finished and began reading through it. If I’d read through my progress more often this would have been apparent earlier. Then I happened to start reading A Game Of Thrones and it was a timely reminder that it’s not about how many words you use to describe a person or a scene, it’s about how you use the words. Don’t write in a vacuum, be influenced by other great reads out there.

Don’t give up

It might take a month, or it might take a few years, to write your book. Be prepared for it to take just as long to get published. Rejection is part of the business. J.K. Rowling was rejected nine times, Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected thirty times. Keep evolving your work and getting  constructive feedback from as many honest people as possible. And, if you genuinely don’t think a publishing deal is forthcoming, there are numerous alternative options nowadays to get your work out there.

Write as much as you’re comfortable with

Yes, the goal with NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s basically 1,667 words a day. It’s a nice figure actually, but don’t view it as a golden rule. I went as low as 1000 words a day, or just one page a day, depending on how much time I had. It was a number that worked for me. Don’t think that such numbers are a small, effortless amount, because it’s surprising the number of well established writers who work at such a small scale. As my first tip pointed out, it’s all about persistence. 1,667 words today is smallfry, sure, but do that for a week and you have over 11,000 words. In a month you will have the magical 50,000 words.

Looking for work can be expensive. The job search process requires you to spend money on transportation, networking, mailing resumes and joining groups. The problem is, when you are unemployed you need to be especially careful with your money. The last thing you want to do is go broke trying to get a job. While looking for work, it is especially important that you setup a budget. Here are some things you need to consider:

Networking

Networking is an essential part of looking for work. The problem is networking can also be very expensive if you’re not careful. Here are some ways to save money making those connections:

• Avoid meeting for lunch. Going out to lunch with a potential business contact can cost £10 or more. That’s assuming you are purchasing a hamburger. Try to meet for coffee instead.
• Avoid paying for unnecessary networking events. Some networking events charge a membership fee. You need to get a reasonable return on your investment when you are looking for work. Be realistic about the kinds of job opportunities a networking group will provide. If they aren’t very high, then you should pass it up. There are plenty of free networking groups and meetings you can make it to.
• Learn to carpool. Networking isn’t just about finding a job. You can also make connections with people who will help you in other ways. Some people will help you find transportation to networking events. Take turns driving or share money for gas. This will reduce everyone’s expenses and make the job search process easier.

Job Search

You need to keep the same principles in mind when you are applying for work. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Don’t pay for fancy clothes. Many people think buying an espensive suit will help them land a job more easily. That’s just propaganda on the part of the suit companies. You still need to dress professionally, but you don’t have to spend a lot of money. Unless you are looking for an executive level position, some decent dress clothes at a secondhand store should suffice.
• Get resume help from someone from an employee agency. Private employment consultants can charge over £1000 for their services and are unlikely to provide better information. Work with good professionals who know how to help you with a resume for a fair price. Resume writing is subjective anyways and paying a premium price won’t guarantee results.

Inevitably, you are going to have to pay to get a job. Although you can’t eliminate all your expenses, you can reduce them. You don’t have to go broke looking for work. Many people create budgets for their personal lives, but aren’t as careful when actively looking for work. They seem to believe they can justify spending money if it can get them a job. Although that is true, that money needs to be spent effectively and you need to make sure you get a reasonable return on your investment.

The holy grail seems to be where you can actually get store credit (the money off is more than the actual cost of the product) through a strategic use of coupons. Who wouldn’t want to be a modern day consumerist Sun Tzu and  outwit a big supermarket by getting them to give you money?

Recently I decided to wise up when it comes to vouchers and special offers. My weekly shop is getting more and more expensive, and with all these stories of super savings I don’t want to miss out. The internet should be a great tool for this sort of thing so, out of curiosity I signed up to Groupon and Livingsocial… and subsequently unsubscribed a week later.

There were some nice deals to be had, certainly. 51% off a stay at an hotel with a free spa treatment thrown in? Nice. But, when was I actually going to go on this holiday? Not when they wanted me to, that was for sure. And for all that I might save it would have still been £100+ that I wouldn’t otherwise have spent.

And that is the problem with any special offer, no matter how good it might sound. A business doesn’t do it for their own satisfaction. There are any number of reasons why a company might offer 50% off their products, but it will almost certainly have little to do with being charitable and almost all to do with trying to grab your custom. If an hotel wants to ensure its rooms are filled during a quiet period, offering a “special deal” is a surefire way to do it. Making a saving is always a big buzz, and they know it.

If they are incentives to buy something you’d usually get anyway then great, but if you are buying something purely because there is money to be saved, that’s not so great. Half-price cookery classes, a third off bungee jumping, huge savings on tango lessons… are you doing them because you genuinely want to or because they are going cheap?

There are examples that have been reported about how people can knock hundreds of pounds off their grocery shopping through obsessive voucher collecting, but it doesn’t give the full picture. They often have to buy more than they otherwise would in order to qualify for the special offers, purchase brands and goods they might not otherwise consider, and even purchase inferior quality or less healthy options. What’s better? Buying £100 of (any) groceries and getting 50% off, or buying £50 of groceries you will actually eat and not waste?

Yes, that’s a convenient example, but it does emphasize the fact the sums behind these offers often don’t add up, particularly when you consider issues like sell-by dates. And isn’t it annoying how you never get coupons for the stuff you genuinely like, or regularly buy? Should I compromise buying my usual favorite pizza for a less tasty (and less healthy) one that happens to have a half-price sticker on it? And don’t get me started on the amount of time spent toiling around the internet to find any coupon that you might genuinely use.

Regardless of the savings to be made on the surface, there is nothing cheaper than not buying something. Wouldn’t it be refreshing, particularly in this current climate, if businesses ditched this obsession with flashy special deals that might last a week or a month, and look at knocking down the prices of their products generally?

In productivity circles a lot has changed since I last posted an update. Many regular readers will remember how I favored good ol’ fashioned pen and paper. Well guess what? I ditched the desktop for a laptop and invested in a decent smartphone, having relied on other people’s castoff phones for years. I still use a notepad for the occasional brainstorm and doodle, but fundamentally my system is now tech-based and portable.

The story of how this happened isn’t interesting so I won’t detail it here. However, it’s maybe worth noting that I opted for a Blackberry over an iPhone after testing the latter and preferring a BB keypad to a touchscreen one. I can quickly write entire blog posts and chapters on a Blackberry, but on an iPhone it takes too long and usually results in numerous spelling mistakes. Maybe it was a matter of getting used to touchscreens, but the BB keypad is just more responsive.

Anyways, my Blackberry is now my primary organizational tool. Gone are the sheets of paper, gone is my weekly planner. However, I don’t rely on any fancy app, just the default ones. This is partly because BB apps can be damn expensive and partly because I’ve got a Curve 2520 and the browser is clunky, which rules out a lot of online apps (on a sidenote, while the phone is a solid one, it’s evidently no longer supported by RIM despite still being heavily pushed in the UK).

Don’t expect no revolutionary tips here, folks. This is just me explaining what I use, and perhaps demonstrates how you can still adopt a tech-based approach without any added complexity, or even the expense of a top of the range smartphone from Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc.

My primary app is the tasks app. You can create a simple list of tasks, mark them as completed, deferred, etc. and set its recurrence, when it should be completed, what categories it should go in, and so on. It’s quite extensive really, but you can end up with one big mass of tasks with little option on how to organize them. Only when a task has gone passed it’s deadline does it become highlighted. However I use this to my advantage, and set the deadline to midnight so that as soon as I wake up all the tasks I need to do that day are already highlighted for me. Nice and simple.

The other app I primarily use is the notes app. I create several memos to cover various categories, so I have “blog”, “tasks”, “music”, etc. These effectively serve as catch-all buckets. If I hear an interesting song and I’m not near my laptop, I will type the name in my music memo so that when I get onto Spotify I won’t forget it. Similarly, the tasks memo is for any oddjobs I might want to do that I haven’t made official yet. The blog memos are for planning out new posts and even properly typing them up before transferring them to the relevant websites. Again, nice and simple.

Finally, I now track my expenditure on my Blackberry, using the Sheet To Go app. Because it’s not the premium version a lot of functionality is missing, but I only basically need to add data to it anyways. I had to create a excel file on my laptop first, but it’s now a simple matter of updating as and when I spend a bit of money (or even make money, crikey!).

What’s the benefit of all this? Portability, and everything essentially being in one package. I can Google anything, make phonecalls, take notes, photos, etc. all from one device. This is especially apparent with the finances tracking. Where’s before I had to wait till I got home to copy over all my costs, now I can tally everything up as I go. Ditto with my to-do list; it’s always in my pocket, available to be referred to.

There are probably plenty of hardcore Blackberry users out there thinking that this is a crap way of doing it, but it (currently) suits my needs. There are certainly those who can make good use of the many apps out there, and there are plenty more amazing things you can do on a Blackberry (or any smartphone) that I’ve not even touched on here. I’d love to hear what approach you use, what special apps I may have missed that are worth checking out, etc. And even if you have an iPhone, Android device or even a tablet, let me know how you use it to GTD.

It’s with all this in mind that I’ve decided to take a break. I like writing and blogging is a great way to, well, write regularly. Unfortunately with Organize IT, over the last year or so I’ve got lost in the nuances of promotion, of maintenance and of simply trying to have a well-functioning website. That and I’ve pretty much written everything I can about productivity, organization and the finer details of time management at this moment in time. When you’re rehashing the same old stuff, it’s time to step back for a while.

This is not a goodbye by any means. Organize IT won’t be going anywhere because plenty of people are still visiting and getting value out of the site, and I definitely plan to return occasionally and do the odd update now and then. In the meantime, thankyou all for your support!

I once heard that former British Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher said “Happiness is a ticked off list”. I have no idea if that’s true, but regardless of how one might have felt about her politics, I can certainly relate to that statement. I always write a to-do list for every project, and having recently completed a major one, I realized something about the process that causes it all to break down.

You see, as detailed as my lists are, I’ve realized that there are certain types of items that don’t appear on there. At best these unlisted tasks can slow things down, and at worst they can grind a project to a halt. I call these my hidden barrier tasks, perhaps an illustration is in order.;

My to-do list for the project of publishing my first e-anthology of short stories:

• Obtain a professionally designed book cover
• Format document in line with style guide
• Sort out PayPal
• Sort out PO Box for press releases
• Write sales blurb
• Write copyright notice and appendix
• Create landing page for e-book purchasers
• Research e-book pricing and decide on a price
• Publish e-book

Note how each of those seem perfectly reasonable and pretty detailed in some cases. When I was writing the list, I knew that some tasks would be relatively quick to execute and more straight forward than others. What I didn’t realise was that there were other tasks I had to tackle before the project could be completed. What it should have said was:

• Get over reluctance to ask my busy best friend for help
• Obtain a professionally designed book cover
• Format master document in line with style guide
• Sort out PayPal
• Sort out PO Box for press releases
• Figure out what the essence of the anthology is
• Write sales blurb
• Write copyright notice and appendix
• Create landing page for e-book purchasers
• Get over extreme block about charging money for my creative writing
• Research e-book pricing and decide on a price
• Push past the fear of failure
• Publish e-book

When I look at that second list, I feel like a fool! Those four hidden barrier tasks stalled the launch of my anthology by at least a week. The first of them was resolved in a conversation with the aforementioned best friend who turned out to be delighted to help.

Project launch delayed by: 1 day.

The second required consultation with a reader, as I am far too close to the stories to see them with enough objectivity.

Project launch delayed by: 3 hours (plus a huge amount of frustration incurred by my inability to write a sales blurb for my own project!).

The third hidden task really stalled the project, which was still secret at the time. It ultimately required the creation of a secret project support group of lovely people who were prepared to listen to my plan, look at specific concerns I had and then give me feedback and lots of kind encouragement. They also encouraged me to blog about it, and that helped immensely too. The lesson I learnt at that stage was that developing things in secret might lead to a grand unveiling, but doing something way beyond your comfort zone in secret is a recipe for procrastination.

Project launch delayed by: 5 days (ouch).

The fourth hidden barrier, well, that’s still there, but I have that fear with everything (even writing this post)! I did just have to take a deep breath and push the publish button regardless of the fear. But becoming aware of that fear made it easier to deal with, and squeeze past.

Project launch delayed by: 1 hour (that was me actively fretting about whether to click the button -  it was probably hours and hours spread over the last month).

I guess that’s what this is all about: awareness. So the next time I write a to-do list, I’m going to take a moment to see how I feel about each task, rather than a purely logic-based, practical appraisal of what needs to be done. After all, it was the emotional side of it that slowed me down, but bringing them out into the open helped me immensely. I’ll also be sure to prioritize tackling those previously hidden barrier tasks, to make sure the project proceeds more smoothly.

So, do you have a big project on the go? Or a to-do list the length of Italy? Are there any items on it that are taking far longer than they should, or just aren’t being tackled at all? Maybe there is a hidden barrier task that needs to be drawn out before you can continue? I hope this helps!

You can get Emma’s e-book, From Dark Places, here.

Recently I was asked how to maintain that blissful decluttered state. She’d followed this blog, checked out Unclutterer and Zen Habits and read numerous books, and she was now happy with the way her house and workplace was. She was no longer losing entire days trying to tidy up, and her husband wasn’t constantly asking where everything was. Well, most of the time ;)

But decluttering is only half of the challenge. Keeping it that way and staying organized is a whole different matter and she sometimes struggled with it. So, I looked at how I was managing and realized I was doing the same three things each day in order to stay on top of my clutter. It doesn’t require a book full of tricks and tips for this, just three simple rules.

I hope you’ll agree with me about these, but if you have your own set of golden decluttering rules, share them. I’d love to read your thoughts on this.

Do a little every day

Anybody who has let the dishes or the laundry pile up can attest to this one. Definitely doing a little every day is far, far better than trying to do a lot all in one go. You may come home from a hard day in the office, tired and fed up, and of course you’d much rather crash on the sofa than face up to all the clutter that’s gathered the day before, but you’re just making it harder on yourself. Don’t leave things till the weekend!

There are many decluttering chores that won’t ever go away, so don’t worry about constantly having an empty letter tray, having all of your clothes always hung up, having every room clear of dust, etc. It’s a losing battle. Just focus on doing a little every day. All you have to do is clean a few dishes each day, wash and iron a small basket of clothes each day, file away some letters each day… Just stay on top of it!

A space for everything

It’s the oldest known decluttering tip in existence, dating right back to the Romans (well, maybe not), but unlike similar old tales about broken mirrors and walking under ladders, this one is genuinely true!

Everything needs a designated space (different items can share the same space of course, hence the ‘messy drawer’). If not, stuff gets put anywhere and everywhere, often in the easiest place you can find. An important letter will get shoved in a drawer simply because it happens to be next to you when you open the mail, and your drills and screwdrivers will find homes everywhere from the garage to the storage cupboard because that’s where you left them when you last used them.

This problem doubles and triples (I’ve done the maths) if other people are involved because they will make up their own ideas as to where things go. Offices and workplaces are a nightmare for this. Mail gets mixed up with all the other paperwork rather than going in one letter tray. Paper clips end up in a dozen peoples’ drawers rather than in the stationary cupboard. I’m sure we can all provide workplace stories of people not following this rule.

So it’s simple. Follow the oldest advice known to mankind (at least it feels that way). Find a place for everything and put everything in its place.

Clean up as you go

This to me personally, is the number one decluttering golden rule, riding triumphantly above everything else (ignoring the fact it’s actually the last rule I’m covering). I think this rule is so important that it was originally my intention to dedicate this entire post to it. Now that’s special.

This is a simple one really, but it makes the biggest difference. Having spent what feels like a lifetime dealing with people who snack on the sofa and subsequently leave the crisp packet on the floor, or open their mail in the hallway and leave the used envelopes in a pile on the table, it’s also seems to be one of the hardest to do.

It takes a little bit of effort there and then to put your pen away after writing a letter, or hanging your coat away after you come home, but it saves you soooooo much time later, and that’s what makes it valuable. Take an average week and think about all the little items you didn’t put away there and then. Then imagine having to do them all in one go on a Sunday and you’ll realize quite how effective this rule is.

Looking back, I think a lot of the problem was that I expected immediate results. I tried so many faddish routines both at the gym and at home, from attempting to go for regular jogs to simply doing pushups every morning, only to ditch them within a month. My motivation would disappear because it was so heavily dependent on short term results. I wanted to bulk up, and after each exercise I’d look in the mirror and see… no change. It was always the approach I took, rather than the fact I was giving up too early.

This short term attitude stopped me from doing so many things for so many years, particularly when it came to writing my book. Because a particular approach I took didn’t necessarily ‘click’ with me straight away, I’d put the notepad away in frustration and forget about it until some other method occurred to me.  A bit like what I was doing at the gym and what I was doing with healthy eating and dieting. I could go on and on…

It turns out that our brain has two sides that are constantly competing between satisfying short term rewards and long term gains (I’m providing a simplified description here, so if you want the science read this). If you’ve ever been on a diet and walked past the cake display in a shop, you’ve probably felt that battle raging inside of you. The problem is, modern society makes it so easy to satisfy those short term impulses, and there are so many temptations put right in front of you by money-hungry businesses and advertisers, that this internal battle going on in your brain has become distinctly one-sided.

While doing  my thing on the exercise bike, I came up with a few ways to regain the balance:

Be aware of that internal battle

If you’ve ever wondered why you’re always impulse buying, why you can never say no to a cigarette, or why you ditch your latest diet after a week, now you know what’s going on in your head. Being aware that there really is a short term versus long term battle raging, gives you a new perspective on those daily challenges you have to face. Remind yourself of this fact constantly!

Break your work down into bitesize chunks

Short term rewards, whether it be that cigarette packet in your coat, the doughnut on the table or that nice shirt on the clothes rack, are often tangible and right in front of you. Long term goals are generally anything but, and encompass all sorts of planning, tasks and projects to achieve. So, make those goals tangible somehow. Break them down into actionable, bitesize chunks of activity. My focus nowadays is less on becoming super healthy – vague and confusing and far off in the future – and more on doing X minutes on the treadmill each week.

Be consistent

Remember what it’s like when exercising. You won’t see results immediately, and you’ll probably find it tiring and hard work (if you’re doing it properly). You won’t get a muscled or toned body in a few weeks no matter how hard you exercise. But if you go regularly and consistently, eventually it will happen and you will notice a difference. The same applies for whatever goal you have. Whenever, you feel like you’re wavering, remind yourself that persistence wins out over short-term fixes everyday. And don’t dismiss the value of doing something, anything. Going to the gym and doing fifteen minutes rather than your usual sixty, is far better than simply not going at all.

Focus on today rather than next year

If you’re thinking about what you need to do today to push forward with your goals, that fuzzy future which causes us so much confusion and inaction becomes an irrelevance. Regardless of how clearly we define our long term goals, we all get de-motivated when we contemplate the year and a half it will take to do this or the six months it will take to do that. If I have to do a particular workout for six months to see results, of course I’m going to struggle to do it. But, what if I just focused on what I can do today instead?

When I started the blog in 2006, productivity was the buzzword, fueled by the discovery of a little known book called Getting Things Done. But over time, I stopped writing about  lists and getting things done, and started applying that “productive” mindset to finances, health, decluttering one’s home, etc. Was I still writing about productivity or was this lifehacking?

Lifestyle design seems to be a popular term nowadays too, after it got popularized by Tim Ferriss and his 4-Hour Work Week. However,  judging by the replies I got to this question on Twitter, the old school term of personal development still seems pretty popular as a catch-all term. While that makes sense I think it has too much baggage. It reminds me too much of affirmations, positive thinking and the whole self-help stereotype, but that’s just me (or course, lifestyle design has it’s own baggage – “epic shit”, ebooks, constant traveling…).

What term do you prefer, and why? Maybe it’s one I’ve not already mentioned. Share your thoughts in the comments below. As ever I look forward to all of your opinions!

Most professionals can name a handful of time management systems that they have come across in their professional careers. They can probably also list a few people here and there who have embraced these systems and are quite happy using them. If they were to think of improving their productivity they would probably look to adopt one of the systems they have heard about and take a course, read a book or visit a few websites in order to learn what to do.

Except, what if the way we think about time management is completely confused? In reality, aren’t we all really just walking around using unique systems of our own creation?

Perhaps our time management systems are like fingerprints – one of a kind. The most recent research has focused on the fact that habits, rituals and practices are the building blocks of ALL time management systems, whether we realize it or not. In other words, even if we don’t do it consciously, the habit patterns we use on a daily basis to get things done are uniquely ours, developed over time to suit our particular circumstances. In other words, there are potentially over six billion time management systems walking around, one for each person on the planet.

Is there something wrong with thinking in this way? Should we all be following one system instead of adopting infinitely many? While it’s possible to teach groups of people to goose-step in unison in some settings, companies should not be encouraging all their employees to take the same approach to managing their time. The fact is, needs differ from one person to the next, and it would be a mistake to try to implement the CEO’s habit pattern, for example, in the life of all employees.

Why so?

First there is the fact that habits are quite difficult to change. New rituals are hard to establish, and old ones are tough to quit. It’s a misguided executive who wastes the company’s money and time trying to get all the employees to follow a single time management system.

Secondly, the CEO’s lifestyle is very different from that of employees. While he may be a black belt in time management, the front-line employees may simply not need such sophisticated skills, nor even want them. Sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, if top performance from employees is what is most desired.

This isn’t to say that companies shouldn’t encourage employees to be more productive. Instead, they should help employees learn how to manage and upgrade their own time management systems, in order to achieve their individual goals. This kind of assistance could start by helping employees to see and understand the time management systems they have been using on a daily basis, without necessarily being fully aware of them. Then, once they gain some awareness, it’s not too hard to teach employees how to perform upgrades to their system using best practices taken from wherever they can be found.

In this way, each employee ends up with a truly custom system, plus a pathway for steady improvement. That’s the way to tap into the creativity of each person on the payroll, as a way to ultimately achieving superior results.