Day 350: Scheduling to decrease procrastination
I ended up not getting any of my regular work done on Saturday. My IBS was acting up, but it wasn’t horrible, so I probably could have done some work, but I was feeling unmotivated, which I know is a terrible reason to skip work.
I might have felt unmotivated because I haven’t been keeping up with my reading for the past few days, despite the fact I was supposed to be relaxing and reading after finishing the book. So on Saturday, I took some time to read and watch Netflix.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook Ultralearning. It’s mostly about learning new or hard things, which I’m hoping to apply to my Japanese language learning, but there is also a lot of stuff about focus since ultralearning requires intense focus to accomplish your goals.
Yesterday (Sunday) the book talked about procrastination. There are different types of procrastination, but the one I focused on was procrastinating starting a task because it’s something difficult (or unpleasant).
This might be why I didn’t want to work on Saturday, because the things I had to do were all (kind of) unpleasant. I could have checked email and social media, which I don’t like doing. Or I could have read my Regency books, but I’m also doing editing as I’m reading, which I also don’t like doing.
This also reminded me of how it takes me a while to start writing. I don’t procrastinate, exactly, and there isn’t anything I would prefer to do instead, but I dither and walk around for several minutes—sometimes doing minor tasks, sometimes doing nothing—before sitting at my desk to get started. I think it’s because the writing is difficult, and so even though I enjoy the work, I procrastinate starting because I know the work will be hard. I have to sort of prepare myself to get started.
For this type of procrastination, I found lately that the tight scheduling of my day, as recommended in Deep Work, has been helping me a lot because I get into checklist mode. I check off one task, then move automatically to the next. I think my brain is just wired that way. I think I’m lucky to have figured out a trick to get myself to do things, because in general I’m not a very disciplined person. So even though the detailed schedule can be a bit of a pain and sometimes too much detail for my liking, it has definitely helped me to have the discipline to do tasks without dithering or procrastinating too much.
The book also talked a bit about flow state and deliberate practice. I really should look up the original studies on those things rather than relying on articles that talk about them, because the book mentioned things about flow state that I hadn’t known (since I hadn’t read the original study/studies).
But the Ultralearning book also mentioned what the scientists who worked on the deliberate practice theory said about flow state. Basically, getting into flow state required tasks that were not too hard and not too easy. If it was too difficult, a person wouldn’t get into flow state, so the types of tasks made a difference as to if a person could get into flow state.
It made me think about the articles about flow state and writing that I’ve read. Maybe the reason people get into flow state when they vomit write is because it lowers the difficulty of the task. Vomit writing means they write the first thing that comes to mind, so they don’t have to make decisions on things like word choices or research or any of that stuff. All that can be fixed later in edits, so they just write quickly to get the bare skeleton of the scene down. It lowers the difficulty of the writing only in the sense that it reduces the number of decisions that need to be made.
This doesn’t make me want to take up vomit writing again, but that’s just because I’ve come to the understanding that my particular personality and character quirks are incompatible with that method. I can vomit write no problem, but the editing afterward ends up being sloppy since I hate self-editing so much. It’s much easier for me to edit—and edit well—if I edit as I’m writing. But that’s just me—I know tons of writers who are stellar at self-editing.
Also, it took a lot of experimenting and blogging about it to come to the realization that self-editing is so hard for me, and to figure out a way to combat that. Because otherwise I probably would have just assumed I had no choice but to self-edit, and I probably would have done like I did for Lady Wynwood’s Spies book 1, and procrastinated doing the self-editing on that book for MONTHS. It was truly pathetic.
Today, I unfortunately got a late start to the day because I was up too late last night. I have no excuse, I was working on my book catalog and lost track of time.
Today I will continue reading through the Lady Wynwood’s Spies books, doing light editing as I reacquaint myself with the series. I can’t believe how much I’ve forgotten. I hope this will put me in the right mindset to continue working on the series. The next two books are very exciting, and book 4 ends on a terrible cliffhanger so I’ll have to write book 5 quickly.
Actually, I hadn’t considered this before, but since book 4 ends so abruptly, maybe I should delay releasing book 4 until I can release book 5 about a month afterward, as opposed to my past system of releasing the books as I finish writing them. After getting so sick in March, I don’t want to have to delay releasing book 5 for too long.
Book 4 will already be releasing later than I had planned because writing the Hawaii book in between took much longer than I had hoped. I had released books 2 and 3 two months after the previous book, which was a nice, fast release rate (for me, anyway). However, book 4 will not be done before June, so it might release in July at the earliest, which is three months after book 3 released.
Maybe it would be better to delay the release of book 4 a month longer so that I can be further along on writing book 5 (or maybe I could even wait until I’m done writing book 5). So then book 4 would release four or five months after book 3, but book 5 would release only a month after that.
It also might be worth it to put up a preorder for books 4 and 5, just to let readers know that they’re coming. I still don’t completely trust Amazon’s preorder system, after several authors had a terrible experience with it and losing their preorders. However, to be honest, I don’t actually know the full story behind those stories since I wasn’t personally acquainted with the authors. But a preorder might relieve the minds of people who will likely be frustrated at the cliffhanger at the end of book 4.
I thought at first that a long preorder will make it difficult for me to change the prices for my Street Team to buy at a deeper discount than anyone else, but I realized that I can do it just like when I release it without a preorder. Even though it’ll be a month or longer before release day, I can start it off at 99c, give my Street Team time to buy it, and then raise it to $2.99 for the rest of the time until release, which might be 3 weeks or longer. My Street Team might need to decide to buy it before reading the ARC, but it’s only 99c so they may not mind.
However, I’m not sure I want to go through the stress of a deadline for a preorder. Would it have the same effect as a preorder if I put up blog posts and write in my newsletter about book 4 to let people know it’s coming? Or maybe I can give myself an extra month or two in the preorder time so there’ll be less pressure to finish the book quickly? But that would push the release date out to October, which might be too long between books 3 and 4.
Maybe after I finish writing book 4, I can not release it, but have a preorder up? Then when I’m further along writing book 5, I can put the preorder up for book 5 a month after book 4? No, I’d still have the stress of a deadline for writing book 5 in order to make the preorder date.
I’ll have to start writing the book and see how long it might take me. Maybe I’ll have to have a long interval between the release of books 3 and 4, in order to finish book 5 and release it a month after book 4.
***
I did some reading of book 1 in my series, with some light editing while I was at it. To be honest, even if I had tried to do a more detailed edit, there wasn’t a lot I could see that needed to be changed. I’m kind of glad about that, because it means my self-editing wasn't quite as sloppy as I feared it had been.
However, in going through my book again, I can totally see how some writers can’t stop editing. I could probably find something to change every time I went through the manuscript.
But I also remind myself that I’m not going for perfection. A manuscript is never perfect. But I put in a lot of time in outlining the book, so I know the structure is as good as I can make it, and the writing is the best I could do at the time. If I were a better editor, I could possibly polish it more than I have, but I also don’t want to keep working at it when I have other books to write. So I’m trying to read through so that I can better write book 4.
Anyway, I did about 3 hours of work, but then my back started bothering me, and I also want to try to get to bed earlier tonight than I did yesterday so I can get an earlier start at work tomorrow. Considering the amount of chores I had to do today, 3 hours isn’t terrible but I hope to get more done tomorrow.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 7 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 7 minutes
My takeaway for today: A detailed schedule of my day seems to help me not procrastinate as much.
I might have felt unmotivated because I haven’t been keeping up with my reading for the past few days, despite the fact I was supposed to be relaxing and reading after finishing the book. So on Saturday, I took some time to read and watch Netflix.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook Ultralearning. It’s mostly about learning new or hard things, which I’m hoping to apply to my Japanese language learning, but there is also a lot of stuff about focus since ultralearning requires intense focus to accomplish your goals.
Yesterday (Sunday) the book talked about procrastination. There are different types of procrastination, but the one I focused on was procrastinating starting a task because it’s something difficult (or unpleasant).
This might be why I didn’t want to work on Saturday, because the things I had to do were all (kind of) unpleasant. I could have checked email and social media, which I don’t like doing. Or I could have read my Regency books, but I’m also doing editing as I’m reading, which I also don’t like doing.
This also reminded me of how it takes me a while to start writing. I don’t procrastinate, exactly, and there isn’t anything I would prefer to do instead, but I dither and walk around for several minutes—sometimes doing minor tasks, sometimes doing nothing—before sitting at my desk to get started. I think it’s because the writing is difficult, and so even though I enjoy the work, I procrastinate starting because I know the work will be hard. I have to sort of prepare myself to get started.
For this type of procrastination, I found lately that the tight scheduling of my day, as recommended in Deep Work, has been helping me a lot because I get into checklist mode. I check off one task, then move automatically to the next. I think my brain is just wired that way. I think I’m lucky to have figured out a trick to get myself to do things, because in general I’m not a very disciplined person. So even though the detailed schedule can be a bit of a pain and sometimes too much detail for my liking, it has definitely helped me to have the discipline to do tasks without dithering or procrastinating too much.
The book also talked a bit about flow state and deliberate practice. I really should look up the original studies on those things rather than relying on articles that talk about them, because the book mentioned things about flow state that I hadn’t known (since I hadn’t read the original study/studies).
But the Ultralearning book also mentioned what the scientists who worked on the deliberate practice theory said about flow state. Basically, getting into flow state required tasks that were not too hard and not too easy. If it was too difficult, a person wouldn’t get into flow state, so the types of tasks made a difference as to if a person could get into flow state.
It made me think about the articles about flow state and writing that I’ve read. Maybe the reason people get into flow state when they vomit write is because it lowers the difficulty of the task. Vomit writing means they write the first thing that comes to mind, so they don’t have to make decisions on things like word choices or research or any of that stuff. All that can be fixed later in edits, so they just write quickly to get the bare skeleton of the scene down. It lowers the difficulty of the writing only in the sense that it reduces the number of decisions that need to be made.
This doesn’t make me want to take up vomit writing again, but that’s just because I’ve come to the understanding that my particular personality and character quirks are incompatible with that method. I can vomit write no problem, but the editing afterward ends up being sloppy since I hate self-editing so much. It’s much easier for me to edit—and edit well—if I edit as I’m writing. But that’s just me—I know tons of writers who are stellar at self-editing.
Also, it took a lot of experimenting and blogging about it to come to the realization that self-editing is so hard for me, and to figure out a way to combat that. Because otherwise I probably would have just assumed I had no choice but to self-edit, and I probably would have done like I did for Lady Wynwood’s Spies book 1, and procrastinated doing the self-editing on that book for MONTHS. It was truly pathetic.
Today, I unfortunately got a late start to the day because I was up too late last night. I have no excuse, I was working on my book catalog and lost track of time.
Today I will continue reading through the Lady Wynwood’s Spies books, doing light editing as I reacquaint myself with the series. I can’t believe how much I’ve forgotten. I hope this will put me in the right mindset to continue working on the series. The next two books are very exciting, and book 4 ends on a terrible cliffhanger so I’ll have to write book 5 quickly.
Actually, I hadn’t considered this before, but since book 4 ends so abruptly, maybe I should delay releasing book 4 until I can release book 5 about a month afterward, as opposed to my past system of releasing the books as I finish writing them. After getting so sick in March, I don’t want to have to delay releasing book 5 for too long.
Book 4 will already be releasing later than I had planned because writing the Hawaii book in between took much longer than I had hoped. I had released books 2 and 3 two months after the previous book, which was a nice, fast release rate (for me, anyway). However, book 4 will not be done before June, so it might release in July at the earliest, which is three months after book 3 released.
Maybe it would be better to delay the release of book 4 a month longer so that I can be further along on writing book 5 (or maybe I could even wait until I’m done writing book 5). So then book 4 would release four or five months after book 3, but book 5 would release only a month after that.
It also might be worth it to put up a preorder for books 4 and 5, just to let readers know that they’re coming. I still don’t completely trust Amazon’s preorder system, after several authors had a terrible experience with it and losing their preorders. However, to be honest, I don’t actually know the full story behind those stories since I wasn’t personally acquainted with the authors. But a preorder might relieve the minds of people who will likely be frustrated at the cliffhanger at the end of book 4.
I thought at first that a long preorder will make it difficult for me to change the prices for my Street Team to buy at a deeper discount than anyone else, but I realized that I can do it just like when I release it without a preorder. Even though it’ll be a month or longer before release day, I can start it off at 99c, give my Street Team time to buy it, and then raise it to $2.99 for the rest of the time until release, which might be 3 weeks or longer. My Street Team might need to decide to buy it before reading the ARC, but it’s only 99c so they may not mind.
However, I’m not sure I want to go through the stress of a deadline for a preorder. Would it have the same effect as a preorder if I put up blog posts and write in my newsletter about book 4 to let people know it’s coming? Or maybe I can give myself an extra month or two in the preorder time so there’ll be less pressure to finish the book quickly? But that would push the release date out to October, which might be too long between books 3 and 4.
Maybe after I finish writing book 4, I can not release it, but have a preorder up? Then when I’m further along writing book 5, I can put the preorder up for book 5 a month after book 4? No, I’d still have the stress of a deadline for writing book 5 in order to make the preorder date.
I’ll have to start writing the book and see how long it might take me. Maybe I’ll have to have a long interval between the release of books 3 and 4, in order to finish book 5 and release it a month after book 4.
***
I did some reading of book 1 in my series, with some light editing while I was at it. To be honest, even if I had tried to do a more detailed edit, there wasn’t a lot I could see that needed to be changed. I’m kind of glad about that, because it means my self-editing wasn't quite as sloppy as I feared it had been.
However, in going through my book again, I can totally see how some writers can’t stop editing. I could probably find something to change every time I went through the manuscript.
But I also remind myself that I’m not going for perfection. A manuscript is never perfect. But I put in a lot of time in outlining the book, so I know the structure is as good as I can make it, and the writing is the best I could do at the time. If I were a better editor, I could possibly polish it more than I have, but I also don’t want to keep working at it when I have other books to write. So I’m trying to read through so that I can better write book 4.
Anyway, I did about 3 hours of work, but then my back started bothering me, and I also want to try to get to bed earlier tonight than I did yesterday so I can get an earlier start at work tomorrow. Considering the amount of chores I had to do today, 3 hours isn’t terrible but I hope to get more done tomorrow.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 7 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 7 minutes
My takeaway for today: A detailed schedule of my day seems to help me not procrastinate as much.
Comments
Post a Comment