Productivity Trick – Leave Something Undone
Posted on July 3, 2017
One of the most difficult parts of any project is . . . getting started.
You can have a long list of household chores and they don’t talk to you at all – until you sit down to write. Then all of a sudden they go crazy.
“Hey, look at me. Shouldn’t you be doing up these dishes that have been sitting here for 2 hours?”
They didn’t bother you before. They didn’t even recognize you were in the room. But somehow, the minute you decide to write, they jump awake with a mission to keep you from diving in to that writing project of yours. Well here is a simple and practical tip that just works and it starts with your last writing session.
Remember that last writing binge you were on where everything was flowing and you were a word machine pounding out words faster than they could come to you? Can’t remember that time? Me either. Okay, then remember that other time when you were working on your project and it was going okay? Maybe you weren’t a word-phenom, but at least you were writing.
When we’re writing, we have a tendency to write until our well is dry . . . and therein lies the secret. The next time you’re on a roll, don’t finish up that last chapter, don’t kill off your character just yet, don’t finish up your major editing rewrite. Save it for your next session.
Now normally, stopping just short of the finish line is not recommended. But that’s my suggestion for you today to kick start your next writing session. End while you’re on a roll but don’t finish. Then jot yourself a note as to the next step in the process and then walk away to complete it tomorrow.
One thing I find so powerful about this approach is what happens in the in-between hours. When I stop my writing project just short of the prize, I find those next few hours to be quite interesting as the ideas are put on a “slow simmer” in the back of my mind. When I come back to the writing table, I’m often blessed with some fresh insights I didn’t have the day before.
Try and see if it works for you. You can try anything once, can’t you?
Today’s Question: Do you have tried-and-true tricks that help you start a new work session? Let me know in the comments below.