Boosting Productivity Through Effective Writing Habits:Your First Work Session is All About Set-Up

Welcome to Get Your Writing Done, my new blog series filled with short, actionable tips that will inspire you to get out of your own way and get writing today.

Today’s Tip: If there is a task or project you’ve been putting off, schedule a 20-minute work session in your calendar today. During this session, your only task is to gather all of the materials you need to begin the project so they are at your fingertips and ready to go. Did you hear that? No actual work! So, can you do this? Yes, you can!

Get Your Writing Done: Your First Work Session is All About Set-Up

I actually put this strategy to work in my own life recently, with a non-writing task. There’s a meditation series I’ve been wanting to get into. I’ve read a little bit about it, and it sounds like it would be super helpful for me. Several months ago, I even bought an audio course with guided meditations. But, day after day, in spite of wanting to start the program, and even writing it into my agenda under my to-do list, I kept just… not starting it.

Finally, I realized that I had a few mental blocks to getting started: yes, I had bought the audio course, but I wasn’t sure how to access it. I also remembered that the first meditation was 30 minutes long, and that felt daunting. I have some other self-care practices that I do regularly, like exercise, expressive writing, and other meditation programs, and it felt tricky to add one more thing.

This is what I did: Instead of writing “Realization process” in my agenda and ignoring it yet again, I wrote: “Find realization process meditations.” That was all I had to do that day—just find where they were located and re-familiarize myself with how to access them. They were in an app and I even remembered my password (huzzah! A victory in this modern-day life!), so that step—the thing that was keeping me from starting at all—took about all of 30 seconds once I had made it small enough to get over the mental hurdle of starting.

The other things I needed for this particular task were readily available to me, but if they hadn’t been, as a general principle I would have endeavored to remove all of the remaining uncertainty associated with the task—for example, finding and charging my air pods, locating comfortable clothes (that’s never a problem for me), and deciding when and where I would complete the first meditation session. On that last note, I did decide ahead of time that I would do the first meditation on a day when everyone else was at school or work, and thus out of the house, and I decided to re-purpose one of my exercise slots, so that way I wasn’t stressed about finding “extra” time.

If it’s a writing-related task that you’re procrastinating, my advice would be to schedule a session in your agenda where your only task is to gather all of the files and other resources you need. Find where you stored the files on your computer—you could even leave them open if your next work session will take place soon! Order the books you need, download any electronic resources. If you’re currently involved in a lot of different projects, consider making yourself a “process” document, where you record all of the steps involved, where files are located on your computer, any passwords you need, and your next steps to move this project forward. After starting this blog and struggling several times to remember where buttons were located, or accidentally leaving off steps like tagging the blog with a “category,” I finally made myself a process doc for how to post a blog and it’s been a huge time-saver. I open it every time I’m writing a blog and simply follow the steps.

So, remember this: Your first work session is to gather your materials. Only that. What you’re doing is laying the foundation for getting actual work done in session two.

Happy writing!

Image by Alexander Zaytsev via Unsplash

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