Have you been finding it harder and harder to get the writing done lately?

This happened to me recently.

I felt like a rusty engine slowly grinding to a halt on rails that needed some oiling.

It seemed super-hard to focus on the article or blog post or email I needed to write. I just couldn’t get started.

My head felt fuzzy like it was stuffed with cotton.

Then I took a look around my home office, and all around my house.

Clutter outside, clutter inside

Know what I discovered? A lot of junk. On every available surface.

It’s the 21st Century American curse. Stuff is cheap and readily available, and it tends to pile up like you wouldn’t believe.

After 18 years in my house, the place was a clutter-hole. There wasn’t a cupboard or shelf you could put anything inside of anymore, so things were piling up in plain sight. And this house is loaded with more closets and drawers than you can believe.

In my office, a mile-high stack of about two years of project files sat, waiting for me to discard old files in the filing cabinet and make room for them.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m looking at a world of clutter all around me, I find it hard to focus. The visual clutter clogs my brain up, too. It’s too much stimulation and not enough serenity.

Getting clean and simple

Once I realized what the problem was, I committed to combing through the house to get rid of useless junk and get things put away.

It took a few weeks to get through the bulk of it, but the results have been well worth it, both for my writing productivity and for simply enjoying my home more.

Think you don’t have time to declutter? I hear ya. That’s how the clutter gets there in the first place.

Around my house, we often throw stuff down because we “don’t have time” to figure out where it goes right now. Two years later, it’s still sitting there. Junk was dripping from the tops of bookshelves, piled on the fireplace mantle, shoved under the beds…you name it.

The problem is, all that clutter calls to me. It makes me think I should be picking up around the house instead of writing.

I refuse to blow writing time to do it, so the clutter sits. But I also don’t write. It’s sort of a vicious cycle. And here’s how I escaped…

A busy writer’s de-cluttering guide

I didn’t get any less busy, but I managed to clear vast swaths of junk out of my house. Since getting the place cleaned up, I’m finding it much easier to sit down and get to my writing assignments.

Want to clear the visual clutter to kill the mind-clutter? Here are my tips:

• Do a 1-drawer quickie. On hold on the phone? Waiting for dinner to cook? Pull out one drawer or attack one shelf. Over time, these really add up, and allowed us to rip through most of the kitchen. It now has — gasp! — actual empty shelf space ready for new edibles, and half the counter clutter is gone.
• Get family buy-in. If you don’t live alone, you didn’t make this mess alone. Explain to everyone that we’ve got too much stuff, and their help is needed to cull the collection. (Anyone unwilling to participate will have to live with the decisions others make on what to discard.)
• Go for the worst. I was shocked when my husband went straight for the worst drawer in the house — the one we call “The Drawer of a Thousand Things.” You couldn’t even fully close it anymore, but whaddaya know, it didn’t take very long to clean it out! After that, everything seemed like a breeze.
• Pick a boring day. A dull, rainy day is a perfect time to organize a cleaning party. Warn family members that you’re planning to do some cleaning tasks that day so everyone is prepared.
• Think Container Store. Often, closets seem full but are just poorly organized. My daughter’s closets were a disaster area…so we bought three sets of new organizer drawers. Presto! All her art projects and raw materials are easy to tuck out of sight. Now, she can pick up her own room in 5 minutes flat, a task I used to spend at least a half-hour on twice a week — hello, extra writing time! There are pricey organizer systems out there, but plenty of cheap systems, too — this doesn’t have to cost much.
• Make it fun. We turned on the stereo and listened to music while we cleaned, and rewarded cheerful cleaners with treats such as a movie, DVD rental, or a fresh-baked muffin. There’s also the bonus of finding actually useful items you no longer knew you had.
• Have a splurge. Once you’ve got empty drawer space, treat yourself to something you’ve been wanting. One of my kids replaced three entire bins of ancient, little-used toys with one $30 copy of Wii Sports Resort. Now, he’s got a fun new game and tons of closet space to store his current, grown-up kid projects.
• Donate. Anything useful but outgrown can be donated to any of the many charities that run thrift stores or garage sales. Feel good that you’re helping others by passing on what you can’t use, especially clothing. If you haven’t worn it in a year or two, it should go.
• Don’t forget the computer desktop. If your online desktop is a morass of miscellaneous visible files, get those tucked away into folders and out of sight, so you can focus on your current assignment.
• Get into maintenance mode. Once you’ve got cleaner closets, commit to keeping them that way. Five quick minutes a day to make sure closets are still functional and clutter is stored gives you the reward of a tranquil writing environment. Be pickier about what you decide to purchase and bring in the house, and you can kill more clutter at the source.

When I’m stressed lately, my sister orders me to immediately throw away 10 things that are sitting out. That’s a great quick drill for preventing clutter from creeping back.

What clutters your mind? Leave a comment and tell us how you clear the decks.

 

 

My name is Carol Tice and I’m an email addict.

(You: “Hi Carol!”)

Here is the story of how email overwhelm nearly ruined both my freelance writing and personal lives, and how I slayed the email dragon and returned to sanity.

I’ve been writing since the days when email first began. And I loved it, right away.

It was so fun to come in, click that little ‘send and receive’ button, and get messages from people all over the world!

Until one day, it wasn’t so much fun anymore.

Drowning in email

I always got a decent volume of email. As a reporter, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and like to read widely to look for sources and story ideas.

As my freelance career grew, I had more and better-quality clients. I felt the need to read even more widely to be on top of all their topics.

With my reputation on the rise and my visibility growing online, tastier leads would pop in on email. I needed to check frequently in case I missed a great opportunity!

In 2008, I started this blog. In 2010, I got on Twitter. And in 2011, I launched a membership community for writers.

Each of these additions brought more email — from blog subscribers and community members. I felt obligated to be “on top” of these emails and be responsive to my readers and paying community members.

But things quickly got out of control. My day often looked like this:

• 8-9 am. Arrive at office. Pick up email and watch as 150 new messages load up. Spend 90 minutes to 2 hours responding.
• 10:30 am. Get to end of emails and decide to check one last time for email. Get 50 more emails.
• 12 pm. Time for lunch.
• 1 pm. Respond to more emails.
• 2 pm. Start to panic as I realize I am getting nothing researched or written.
• 3 pm. Kids arrive home from school. Cry softly, as productive writing time is gone.
• 8 pm. Kids have gone to bed. I return to email. 40 more messages. Husband: “Could we watch Walking Dead now, honey?” “In a bit, I’ve got to answer these emails first, and I need to just write this one blog post I couldn’t get to today…”
• 11 pm. Husband gives up and goes to sleep.

Email was killing my productivity like a deranged maniac in a horror movie. It wasn’t so great for my relationships, either.

Clearly, this had to stop. But how?

Over the past few months, I’ve taken some drastic steps to cut my email time. Now, I’m down to perhaps an hour a day, and don’t feel the need to check it more than perhaps three times a day.

Below are the steps I took to get my email back under control. Buckle up — this process took months, and this is a lengthy post.

1. Analysis

First off, I set out to study my email. How much was there a day? What types of messages did I get? When did they arrive?

How urgent were they, really?

In looking critically at my email over several weeks, I came to a few quick conclusions:

• Most of my emails arrive before 10 a.m. The rest of the day, email volume is low.
• Total messages per day were often north of 200.
• Emails rarely contain truly urgent information.
• I get a lot of junk or low-value email.

Armed with these insights, I began to take action. My first area of focus was to kill email at its source.

2. Unsubscribe

My first course of action was to begin taking the time to unsubscribe to every newsletter I received that was no longer of interest.

Over the years, my beats have changed. But I was still getting news on dozens of niches I’m not currently covering — healthcare, real estate, technology, and more.

I took a week and unsubscribed like mad. I replied to PR pitches and asked the agency to take me off their list.

The result was amazing. Immediately, my volume of email shrank by about 40 percent.

This only made me hungry for more. What else could I do to reduce the amount of incoming mail?

3. Unsubscribe (the social media edition)

Besides news emails, I was receiving a ton of social-media notices. Each LinkedIn group I belonged to was sending an email each day. Facebook would hit me every time someone replied to a comment I left. Each tweet was also an email.

Then there was the blog and community side. I got a notice every time someone unsubscribed to my blog, or lost their password for the community platform.

This was the second wave of wasted time. These notices were unnecessary because I ended up visiting my social sites usually at least once a day anyway! And on the blog/community side, I didn’t really need to monitor all these stats

It was a little time-consuming and tiresome to go onto each platform and learn how to turn off notifications. But once I did, the effect was incredible. I could get 10 emails from Mailchimp a day before. Now, I get one daily digest of activity on my blog email list. Magic!

Not only did I spend less time on email, but each social notice tempted me to go waste time on social media. Without them, I could turn my attention to my own agenda.

4. Declare email bankruptcy

I tend to be a string-gatherer in my quest for good blog-post ideas and story ideas for my freelance clients. There are dozens of newsletters I do still want to sift through. And they do pile up in my Newsletters email folder.

Then I’d feel obligated to read them. I’d feel like I couldn’t kick back for the night, because those newsletters were calling me!

Particularly when it came to my blog, I was obsessed with learning more about how to improve it. So I’d read and read.

This came to a head when I went on vacation in December with a goal of reading 160 accumulated newsletters while I was on vacation.

Obviously, that’s not much of a vacation.

So I did something else instead. I’d heard about celebrities and tech CEOs doing this when they got overwhelmed with email, so I gave it a try.

I simply deleted the whole file. All 160 messages. Buh-bye.

Then I went and spent the day walking around L.A. Farmer’s Market instead, enjoying window shopping in the winter sunshine.

Immediately, it was like a 100-pound weight was lifted from my shoulders.

There’s always more we can learn…but we can only learn so much. Sometimes, we have to do our work. And sometimes, we need to relax.

Once I got OK with killing off newsletters I’d saved, I wanted to take it up another level. Why was I saving so many newsletters I’d never have time to read?

5. Take the subject-line test

I used to feel an obligation to open a lot of my emails and read a bit before deciding whether to delete. No more.

Now, I read the subject line, and if I suspect it’s something I don’t need to read, I delete it right then.

We all have favorite blogs we read, but if they post daily, I realized, I don’t necessarily need to read every post they put up.

I used to save emails automatically because they were from X blog or newsletter. Now, I read the subject, and try to be realistic about whether this is a current topic of interest. If it’s not something I need to learn about or plan to write about in the short term — zap! — it’s gone.

6. Delete the ‘rules’

One thing I’d had recommended to me a while back was to have email folders and then set up rules that would automatically route email to the appropriate folder.

This is supposed to save you time, but in my case it wasted even more time.

The theory is that with this system, only important emails would show up in my main inbox, and I could put off looking at the other emails until later.

Except that I couldn’t. I’d chase around through nearly a dozen folders, trying to see where new emails had gone! Were they something time-critical that had accidentally gone the wrong place?

To fix this, I’ve turned off all email rules. All emails come initially into my main inbox.

I look through, and if there is something I want to save in a folder for future reading, I file it there, just like I used to do when I was a secretary. This gave me the confidence that I knew where things were and they were safely put away where they’d be useful later.

When it’s time to do my blog for Forbes, for instance, I go to that folder and presto — there are all the leads I have about franchising and entrepreneurship, the theme of my blog for them.

7. Don’t double-read

I often couldn’t resist the urge to read a bit of each incoming email, even if the message was clearly meant for a project or topic I knew I wouldn’t write about for days or even weeks yet.

Then, when it was time to deal with that topic, I’d end up having to read it again. By that time, I’d forgotten what it was about!

Killing this habit saved another chunk of time. Now, if the subject line tells me it’s for a subject that’s not on my schedule today, I throw it in the appropriate folder unread and don’t open it until that client is on the agenda.

8. Kill without reading

I used to feel obligated to open and read a bit of an email before deciding whether to delete it. This habit also had to go.

Now, I read the subject line, and if it doesn’t seem vital to any aspect of my freelance or blogging life, I delete it unopened.

This freaked me out at first, but now it’s become routine. I think of these like marketing calls you get on the phone — just hang up. Just because they emailed me doesn’t mean I have to devote time to their message.

9. Switch to ‘unread only’ mode

Looking at hundreds of emails sitting in my inbox always made me feel behind. Don’t these need to be dealt with?

I’ve solved this by putting all my folders into ‘unread only’ view.

Now, if I have responded to or read an email, it ‘disappears’ from view.

It’s still around in case I need to search it up again, but I don’t have to look at it sitting there. This makes me feel ‘done’ with email and ready to return to other tasks.

10. Strive for ‘inbox zero’

Inbox Zero is a concept created by entrepreneur Merlin Mann. The idea is that we should clear our inboxes each day.

Otherwise, the accumulation of email nags at us and makes us feel we have unfinished tasks on email.

I began to strive for this. When I review a batch of email, I want to either delete, file, or respond to each message. This ‘clean plate’ approach is very liberating.

I feel done! And ready to move on to another task.

I don’t always get all the way there — as I speak I have an unread item or two in my inbox — but it’s good to try.

11. Pick up in large batches

There’s a basic productivity issue with picking up email constantly — it’s inefficient. Each time we stop to deal with email, our focus goes away from an important task of writing or conceptualizing articles or blog posts or doing marketing or creating courseware.

I used to pick up email frequently. OK, really frequently. Really, really frequently.

Doing my data analysis and looking at how email wasted my time, I saw this was a big mistake.

I started to lengthen out the time between checks.

Now, if I pick up and there are fewer than 10 emails, I’m mad at myself. I’d prefer to deal with 30 or more at a time — it’s way more efficient.

With my data on when emails arrive, I came up with an email schedule that works for me.

I pick up once at 8 or 9 am, which catches the bulk of my email. Using all the techniques above, it now takes me perhaps a half-hour to process my email, at most.

I might check again mid-morning if it seems like a busy day.

From there, I really only need to check once or twice more in the day. I might check while I’m eating lunch, or at the end of the work day, or once in the evening. My data showed me few emails arrive in the afternoon, so now I’m confident I’m not missing a lot if I skip it.

This has cleared the afternoon as a block of newly discovered productive writing time.

12. Send less email and use EOM

Here’s a basic fact of email: Sending email tends to generate more emails in response. I started asking myself if I really needed to reply or if I could let a conversation end — or never start.

This is particularly true of spammy offers you get and other junk mailers. You might want to give them a piece of your mind, but it’s a waste of time. If you send less email, you get less email.

I also learned to write subject-line-only emails that close with (EOM) for end of message. As in, “I’m ready for our call now (EOM).”

This means there is nothing further to the email, it’s all in the subject line. So you can move on or delete after you read that line. I’ve trained my Den staff to use this, and it’s handy to cut a bit more time opening and reading emails.

The next step

I am far from done reducing my email clutter. I have yet to try any of the nifty new email-management tools out there.

One I’m intrigued by is The Swizzle — it helps you quickly unsubscribe from more emails, and turns all your remaining emails into one daily digest.

There are many more tools out there to explore. I’m a pretty low-tech person, so initially I’ve focused on killing email at the source and being smarter in how I manage the remaining messages…but there are many approaches to take.

So far, I’d say I’ve probably liberated four hours or more a week for writing with the email-management changes I’ve made. I’m excited to see if I can reclaim even more time in the future as I keep refining my email routine.

How do you keep email time down? Leave a comment and share your strategies.

 

 

 

Do you find yourself unable to get focused on your writing?

It’s a pretty common problem among writers. Among all freelancers, really.

Let’s face it — distractions are everywhere for the home-based, self-employed person.

There’s laundry to do, neighbors who stop by, and of course online there are distractions our grandparents couldn’t have dreamt of.

We all get distracted sometimes, or just want to goof off — after all, that’s one of the perks of being a freelancer!

But what if you can’t ever seem to focus on writing?

That’s bad news.

When procrastination takes over

Take this question I recently got from a writer and new mom who wanted to know if I’d accept her into my one-on-one mentoring program:

“I have a real issue that I can see killing my career really quickly if I don’t do something about it now. So far, getting gigs has not been a problem at all. I seem to get them with relative ease. My issue is the follow through.

I’m a stay-at-home mom with a 13-month-old, so I have that working against me. The problem is, when I should be working, I end up frittering away my time on Facebook, Twitter, checking email, even lurking around on Freelance Writers Den. The rest of the time, I’ve got my daughter to attend to, and before I know it, the day is over and I’ve done nothing. I’ve tried holding myself accountable to my husband, my mom, an accountability partner from the Den, and motivating myself by dreaming up ways to spend the money. I’ve tried programs that bar you from certain sites, but I always find something else to waste time on. So I think the issue is much deeper.

What I really need is someone to put the fear of God in me, because I’m not able to do that myself. I think my problem is a combination of self-confidence, lack of motivation, and poor productivity. I’m just not sure how great a role each one of those plays or how to get to the root of my problem.

I’d like to discuss the possibilities of mentoring with you as I think you’ll be able to help me out of this rut and get me on my way.–Tiffany

I turned her down for mentoring…because this isn’t the sort of thing that a writing coach or business mentor can really help you with.

In my mentoring, I help writers create goals and a marketing plan for reaching those goals, based on their specific experience and interests…and then if you’re this sort of writer, you’re going to procrastinate and never execute on that plan.

So that’s no help.

How can this writer snap out of her funk and get writing? Here are the possible causes of massive procrastination that I raised with her:

Bone-crushing fear. You may do the less threatening things because you’re scared to turn in that assignment. If you’re circumventing Freedom or whatever social media-blocking site you use and still timewasting, there’s definitely an emotional reason. This is something you really need to talk to a therapist about. Hypnosis, positive affirmations, and other techniques might help you break this fear down.

Not enough drive. At the end of it, being a freelance writer is about you really wanting to DO this. People love to vent and blather all day about their big dream of quitting the boring day job and being their own boss…but in the end, we each make time in our lives for the things we really, truly want to do.

If you’re never making time for it, maybe it isn’t the driving passion you thought it was. Maybe what you really want is to wait until your child goes to preschool to do this. Not a crime to feel that way.

Employee syndrome. Ultimately, we’re our own bosses as freelancers…and I’ve found some people just can’t make that transition. They can’t MAKE themselves hustle the way a boss put the fire under them to get it done. It’s a different mindset. You can help build your “boss” muscle by reading books about entrepreneurship…but ultimately, some people don’t have this muscle.

Need a scene change. Some people are more productive if they can get out of the house — especially writers with young kids underfoot. Consider trying a coffeeshop or coworking place to break your procrastinating routine.

Self-limiting behavior. You say you’re getting clients — are you blowing their deadlines and angering them and failing to turn in your work? Or are you getting it done? If you’re still making the deadlines you have, it’s possible you’re not doing more because you don’t want any more work than this. If you’re blowing deadlines and losing clients, maybe you subconsciously want a lighter workload than you have and more mommy time.

Too much juggling. Are you trying to dabble in several different projects per day, all while also minding a toddler? That’s enough to rip your brain straight in half. Instead, focus on a single client per day — I tried that and found I was way more productive.

Unrealistic goals. You have a 13-month-old at home — do you have any child care, or are you imagining you can somehow magically write articles while you meet the insatiable needs of a toddler?

I think you’re probably doing little timewaster things because you don’t have any ‘heavy lifting’ time, as Mike Vardy would say, when it feels like you have a substantial, viable hunk of time in which to either write, interview, or market your business. So you keep doing a few little low-level tasks and never reach the main event — writing.

If you don’t have a sitter, know that a home business does not magically happen while you watch a baby full time. Total myth. If you have a sitter, you likely need more hours. Consider finding a co-op and trading hours with other moms — I did, when my first was a baby.

I know — you don’t want to miss a minute of these precious childhood years! Except that if you want to build a business, you’ll probably have to miss a bit of it. On the other hand, baby won’t be living under a freeway overpass if you can pay the bills, so it can be a positive tradeoff.

No goals. Are you setting goals? If so, then you can break those into smaller goals for this week and this day. Leave the office each day with your top three things you MUST do tomorrow sitting and waiting for you the next day. When you’re sleep fogged half the time with a baby, you need that, or you’ll easily waste the whole day trying to remember your priorities.

Have you got more advice for this procrastinating writer? Leave it in the comments.

Ever taken a freelance writing gig, and then wish you hadn’t?

Usually, we writers do that for one reason: We feel desperate for money.

You just know this gig is going to suck. The pay is horrid, the client is a nutcase…but you feel like you don’t have a choice.

After all, writers have to eat. And so do their families.

I could easily fill this post with tales of all the weirdo writing gigs I’ve taken over the years to keep the bank account from overdrafting.

Of course, when we do low-paid work, it creates a problem.

It sucks up too many hours and delivers too little pay.

At the end of it, you’re still broke and desperate.

So you feel compelled to hop on the next crummy offer.

And so on.

To quote an Elvis song, you’re caught in a trap.

Breaking the poverty cycle

There is only one way to break this cycle of desperation.

You’ve got to feel less desperate. Then you can walk away from insulting offers and hold out for better ones.

There are only a few ways you can do that:

• Increase your tolerance for financial uncertainty. I once had a screenwriter friend who worked in TV. In lean times, she would calmly charge every expense including groceries, while continuing to hold out for her next plummy series deal. It never occurred to her to go get a day job. She had perfect faith she’d land another show soon. She simply didn’t worry about money or debt.
• Lower your nut. Are there expenses you can cut? I ask because I’ve recently managed to pay off a coupla racked credit cards and a car loan and suddenly have like $600 a month less in monthly payments. That’s a chunk of work I don’t have to take! I feel lucky to have read Your Money or Your Life at a formative age, and its financial-management principles have helped me keep costs down for decades. Right now we are a family of five limping along on one very used car and public transit, for instance, because I find cars a poor investment. I have one friend who just moved from a $900-a-month rental to a $400 one that’s actually nicer. Examine your cost structure closely to see if there are places you can cut back. Lower costs mean more money stays in the bank. Then you worry less…and can hold out for a better gig.
• Take a side job. For some people, it’s mentally healthier to have a steady part-time job that allows them to refuse junk jobs and pick and choose only quality clients. They get a better portfolio and don’t feel the pressure to take every gig. I’ve known writers who pumped gas, stocked grocery shelves at night, taught school, and worked as a bar back to keep their career on track.
• Work more hours. If you are living lean and don’t want a day job, the other way out is to commit yourself to workaholism to create time for proactively marketing to better clients. Maybe you can send marketing emails at night after kids go to bed, or commit a month of Sundays. See this as a short tunnel you need to get through — a few months of intensive marketing and you’ll likely line up better clients and be out of the squeeze.
• Create your own products. The other hedge against feeling compelled to do low-paid writing work is to write some ebooks or courses of your own you can sell on the side. This also means more hours short-term, but can pay off in a nice little cushion against desperation in the long haul. Start cultivating those multiple streams of income you’ve always heard are the key to financial security.
• Drop your worst client. Many writers I know have one client who is really not worth the aggravation, if you figured the hours and pay. Ax this loser and you’ve cut yourself some new time for marketing to quality prospects, with little financial impact.

Hopefully, one of these strategies can help you walk away from lower pay and hold out for writing work you want — work that pays you a living wage.

How have you moved up in pay as a writer? Leave a comment and share your strategy.