Joanna Penn - Productivity For Authors: Find Time to Write, Organize your Author Life, and Decide what Really Matters

If you dont produce, you wont thrive no matter how skilled or talented you are.

Cal Newport, Deep Work

I f you have more time to write and you use that time effectively, you will become a better writer and you will produce more books. Creativity is at the heart of what we do, but productivity is the only way to get your words out into the world.

Finished products print books, ebooks, audiobooks only happen when you finish your writing project. So, you need to be productive in order to be a successful writer.

Of course, you need to fit writing around the rest of your life, so optimizing the time you have is critical. But optimizing is not about short-term hacks. Its about sustainable productivity and doing the best you can with what you have in order to achieve more. The real question is: What do you want to achieve?

Ive been writing and publishing for over a decade and for many of those years, I focused on doing. I love making lists and ticking items off as evidence of achievement, and I am very good at getting a lot done. But a few years back, I realized that I was spending my time doing a whole load of things that werent helping me to reach my goals. I was often busy for the sake of being busy.

I took a step back to evaluate how I was spending my time and why. I read lots of books on productivity and used many of the ideas to reboot my writing and creative business. These days, Im much more productive in terms of what I create, but also have more time for my health and lifestyle goals. In this book, Ill share my lessons learned in order to help you become more productive and, hopefully, save you time, money and heartache along the way.

Productivity is the amount of useful output created for every hour of work we do. Did I spend my day producing enough benefit for all the time invested?

Seth Godin, Business/busyness

Note: There are affiliate links within this book to products and services that I recommend and use personally. This means that I receive a small percentage of sales with no extra cost to you, and in some cases, you may receive a discount for using my links. I only recommend products and services that I believe are great for authors, so I hope you find them useful.

B efore we get started, its important to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. No magic tool or technique is going to fix your productivity unless you also consider your mindset and the obstacles that are in your way. Be honest with yourself. Theres no one here to judge you.

Here are some common answers:

• I don't have time to write
• I don't know what to do when I have the time, so I dont spend it effectively
• I know what I have to do, and Ive made the time, but I end up procrastinating and not achieving much
• I spend too much time on things like marketing, which are important and necessary for writers, but then I dont have time left over to write

Most issues relate to time and in later chapters, well address how to find time and make the most of your time. But at this stage, I want to challenge you to dig deeper on why you want to make a change, because you are going to have to shift your behavior if you want to achieve your goals.

I spent 13 years as a business IT consultant. It was great money but I didn't have anything to show for my time. Everything I did at work disappeared, because it was overwritten by a new version of software or someone changed the business focus and my projects were left behind. Sure, I was paid well and I had a good lifestyle in many ways, but I was miserable and my creativity died a little more every day. In 2006, I made the decision to change my life. I was determined to leave my job and reinvent myself as an author entrepreneur.

The why that drove me to the page every morning at 5 am and every evening and every weekend for years was the driving desire to leave my job, to get out of the soul-sucking, creativity-destroying situation I found myself in. Of course, I knew I had made the choices that led me there, so I made the time and did the work to get myself out of it. I finally left my consulting job in 2011 and Ive never gone back.

Now I measure my life by what I create.

Thats the why that drives me these days, alongside the continued desire for freedom to spend my time on writing books, building my business instead of someone elses and helping others to pursue their creative goals through my books, podcast and website. And of course, the desire to never get another day job!

Perhaps you have an inner sense that you're meant to be writing. I understand that feeling because its common for those of us whose chosen medium of creation is the written word. Others have the same drive toward music, coding, dance, the visual arts, or other creative paths. But you need to be more specific.

Your why needs to be big enough to help you through the hard times, because writing might be simple, but its not easy. Some people talk about needing discipline to write, but for me, the word discipline has negative connotations of boot camps and drill instructors, which does not excite my creative soul!

You don't need discipline if you have a why because you have a positive reason that drives you to the page. You want to be there. So identify and write down your why and stick it somewhere you can see it.

Back in 2006, I wrote down these words:

I am creative. I am an author.

I wrote them before I actually was creative or an author. It was an affirmation for my future self, but my brain had to move toward it because I repeated it every day as well as taking action, and eventually, I became those things.

When you say I am about something specific, you claim the word for yourself. It focuses your mind on what you want to achieve. You obviously have to take action in a practical way, but the act of writing down an affirmation can help you to shift your self-definition which is the first step toward change.

Can you say, I am a writer out loud? Can you say, I am creative. I am an author? Or I am a six-figure author, or whatever you want as your affirmation. Once you say even something as simple as, I am a writer, then you must write. You must behave as a writer or you're not a writer.

So, who are you? What is your self-definition? When you say I am a writer, is it reflected in how you live your life? What do writers do? Are you doing that?

Who you are, what you think, feel and do, what you love is the sum of what you focus on.

Cal Newport, Deep Work