We’re going to wrap up our discussion of Organization this month with advice from two experts as well as my own suggestions for how to keep yourself organized.
We’ll start with Steven Covey, whose The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a classic. When talking about organization, Covey has one simple suggestion:
Substitute weekly organization for daily planning.
This may sound counterintuitive. After all, don’t we need to know what we’re doing each day? Yes, of course, but Covey’s advice allows life to happen. By establishing goals for what you want to accomplish each week, you’re setting yourself up for success, not failure. Why risk the frustration of telling yourself that you absolutely, positively have to finish Task A on Monday and Task B on Tuesday when it’s possible that one of those will take longer than you expected or that what was supposed to be a half-hour trip to the supermarket took far longer, putting you behind schedule?
Organizing for the week, assuming that that organization includes the transition and unscheduled time that Marilyn Paul recommends, gives you a higher probability of actually meeting your goals.
The advice from our second expert of the month, Brian Tracy, is a corollary to Covey’s. Tracy, who’s the author of Time Power, urges you to:
Work from a prioritized task list.
This may sound like a part of our earlier discussion of priorities, but it never hurts to repeat it. Prioritizing your tasks for the day and the week helps you avoid detours and time-wasters. While it may be tempting to work on a low priority task simply because it’s easy to finish, it’s important – I’d go so far as to say critical – to tackle high priority tasks first.
Listen to the experts. They’ve “been there, done that,” and lived to tell the rest of us what they learned.
I’m not claiming to be an expert, but here are three ways I’ve found to keep myself organized.
- Find your own writing space.
Whether it’s a separate room or a corner in the basement that you’ve delineated with duct tape on the floor, if you have a specific place to write, you’ll be more productive. It’s also important that family members respect that space and recognize that you’re at work when you’re there.
2. Prepare to write.
There are two aspects to this.
- First, have all your raw materials ready before you begin. Remember Marilyn Paul’s “have a place for everything and everything in its place”? That’s a quintessential part of organization and a proven way to increase productivity.
- Second, reread the last scene you wrote or remind yourself of the problem you want to resolve before commuting, exercising, or going to sleep. This allows your subconscious mind to work on it while you’re doing other things and will often result in a solution popping into your brain seemingly unbidden.
3. Don’t leave home without it.
This was the slogan for a major credit card several decades ago, but it also applies to your writing. Take your work with you, literally. Whether it’s a pad and paper or an electronic device, if you’re always prepared to write, you won’t waste time when you’re caught in a traffic jam, when you’re sitting in an airport lounge, or when your lunch date is late. Instead of being frustrated by the delays, you can be productive and work on your book while you wait.
These are all part of being organized. They may not be easy initially, but once they become habits, you’ll find that you’re more productive, and that’s an essential part of reaching “The End.”
We’ve reached the end of Organization, but before I end this post, I have one last piece of advice:
Don’t forget that writing is your number one priority.
All the organizational techniques in the world won’t help you finish your book if you don’t believe that and if your day-to-day actions don’t reflect that principle.
(C) 2019 Amanda Cabot
Amanda Cabot is no stranger to getting to “The End.” She juggled a
sixty-hour a week job with nonnegotiable deadlines and building a house
long-distance at the same time that she wrote two books a year. Whether
or not she kept her sanity during that time is debatable. Amanda is
the best-selling author of over thirty novels, eight novellas, four
non-fiction books, and what she describes as enough technical articles
to cure insomnia in a medium-sized city.
Her most recent release is A Tender Hope, the third in the Cimarron Creek trilogy.
You can find Amanda at:
www.amandacabot.com
https://www.facebook.com/amanda.j.cabot
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