Don’t make others tell you what to do
All of the writers that write blog posts or any content that require long writing struggle to force themselves to work. The hardest part is to start; the second hardest part is to finish.
It has been known and named many things, starting at writers' block and to pen and paper procrastination. There are too many names, and that shows that it is a huge and very relevant problem in the writers' community.
I have been noticing a pattern that most of the most successful bloggers or writers. They struggled with one piece of writing, and they force themselves to stick with it as they usually do.
The hardest is to do research and to think of your next paragraph and sentence when you really think that you have nothing else left to write about. At this moment, many break down and stop writing for weeks.
When famous writers power through exactly this period, something magical starts to happen. During the writing process, they start getting new and exciting ideas that they never even thought of. The only problem that those ideas for another book, the ideas can not be integrated into the book or a blog that they are writing right now.
This exciting process forces them to switch focus and start writing in a frenzy with those ideas in the next manuscript. This, of course, takes their focus away from the main book and it gets put back on hold.
But, while writing and working on the second book, they now start to get ideas for the main book, and that leads them to break out of the writers' block.
This hole process can be pretty hard to understand, but what it means is:
- Don’t be afraid to pivot and start working on something else entirely, if you are struggling.
- Side projects are not bad for your productivity. They are what make your productivity.
- Listen to what your mind is telling you. Write down what your mind wants and if it is possible to do, just do it.
Not writing can use this as well
If you are an IT specialist and you write code for yourself or others, you know that some of the problems are harder than others. Some require extensive research, and maybe learning a new framework or language.
That, of course, is not easy. As I have already said, there are 2 pivotal points. When you start and when you need to finish.
You have to start on any task straight away, that is my Moto. But if you are really struggling to force yourself to finish, then you have to switch focus. There can be multiple reasons for your struggles; it can be that your entire approach is wrong. Maybe you need to think about it critically, that is exactly the reason when other problems and tasks come in. If you are struggling too much, don’t spend another 20 hours thinking why the button is not bringing up the function and uses it to parse the table.
Do other tasks, and most of the time when you come back, you will have an idea on how to solve the problem.
This can be applied to marketing, sales, project management and even economics, and machine learning. This is a universal idea that helps an unbelievable amount of people at work every single day. You might wonder how some people do so many tasks? Well, they switch their focus but prioritise starting.
Don’t think that this is a pretend work. It is not.
Start now. Get perfect later.
Klim Y
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