With most any activity that we can engage in, focus is one of the most important things. We need to be focused on the task at hand in order to come up with excellent results. The same goes with writing – and maybe even more so. In the last post, we talked about how you should find your productivity zone and then write during that time. Yet how do you stay focused on your writing during that time? Here are some practical tips.
Log out of your messenger. Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, ICQ – whatever you are using, log out till your writing time is over. You know just how disruptive these messengers could be and even though you may be on invisible, you may still get messages that would distract you from your writing. After all, the world will now suffer from you being offline for several hours, would it?
Don’t check your e-mail. It is really the same principle behind logging out of instant messaging applications. If you are using Outlook or a similar mail client then shut it down for the moment. If you are using a web based account, just don’t log in.
Do not multi-task. I know, multi-tasking can be productive in its own way – you get more done in the same amount of time. Yet if you think about it, how is the quality of your writing when you surf the web while doing it? No matter which way you go about it, writing is a product of your thought processes. If your mind is divided into several tasks at the same time, the chances are that your product will be of inferior quality.
Originally posted on September 11, 2007 @ 1:26 am
