My Productivy Hacks and More on How I Write

Fake deadlines, multitasking and sprints

I got so many questions after yesterday’s post about my writing routine and schedule. You wanted to know how I get everything done, how I stay productive in the middle of the chaos of middle-aged mom life, and how I hit my word counts.

The truth is that I don’t have a perfect system. My process is a mix of messy hacks, habits that give me little dopamine boosts, and a willingness to plow through the shit.

I wanted to dig a little more into productivity today and then answer the writing questions you had on yesterday’s post. I also want to give a shout out to this great Substack dissecting the intense unreality of Carrie Bradshaw’s writing life which is a great reminder that a writing and publishing life on TV and in movies (and on social media) is way different from the reality.

Productivity

I set fake deadlines. A lot of my projects have deadlines, but a lot don’t so I give myself a deadline for almost everything I do because it makes me get it done.

I am a massive multitasker. I have read all the studies that say this is not good for productivity, but it is what works for me and I think most studies are skewed to get media attention.

In terms of multitasking, a couple of examples: I answer emails on the treadmill or Peloton sometimes. I also do it while I’m doing a final quality assurance listen to podcasts which is helpful because I know most listeners multi-task while they listen so I get a sense for where they might lose attention etc.

I do email answering sprints. Whenever I have to respond to something I star it in Gmail and then I do ten-minute email answering sprints throughout the day. I literally set a timer to get them done. I probably do about five of these to break up other tasks and it really pushes me to just answer things I have been a little lazy about doing.

I am also a list maker. Every night before bed I make a to-do list. I get a dopamine hit from physically crossing things off and it genuinely brings me joy. I have tried all sorts of fancy apps for this and abandoned them all because nothing is as good as just writing it down.

This week I am marking this newsletter down to the lowest annual price I am allowed, $30 for the entire year. I would love for you to join our community as we ramp it up in the next few months. It’s gonna be a wild ride with more audio and video content and all sorts of delicious new things.