Finish your long project and clear it out of the way. This is not one of those big leap things you can not do over night. It takes a commitment over a longer period of time so today I am looking at what we can do to get our longer term projects blog, larger 10k white paper or novel done over an ongoing basis.
The Long Term Game Plan for Finished Projects
Just 11 simple steps are all you need to get finish the project without going nuts.
1. Make your project a new habit.
Working from a habit perspective means you need to work regularly on the project. In general this is a daily thing, but you can also work from a five work day plan or a work around like three days a week. Working from a habit perspective allows us to work in manageable chunks and make progress to our goal or deadline without the stress of trying to pack too much work into too few hours of the day.
2. Setup your work space.
Give yourself the added help of a single space where you do your work. Do not spread your work around so that it can be done anywhere. When we try to fit our work in just anywhere we often windup getting the work done nowhere because we are constantly fighting distractions. Working at one place allows us to minimize distractions. We can remove or hide reminders of other projects, your 9 to 5 job and limit immediate access all the time of our kids and pets. Setting limits, especially for kids and pets will still allow them to run in just to ask a question or give you a hug but still allow you to get those words down with some focus and flow.
3. Tell others about your time and space.
This is for both accountability and distraction reasons. Tell people what your project’s requirements, hours and deadlines are. Bring them in as team members who are there to help you keep your hours consistent and free of distractions when working. Everyone who might be a distraction then becomes your helper instead of your source of frustration. Our team members also provide us with motivation to write and get done on time. Trust me. A kid asking you if you should be writing is an excellent reminder that can not only help you with your habit but also give your child an excellent roll modle to copy in their own lives.
4. Don’t be available.
Read that tag again. It is your new mantra if you just can not say no. You want all your friends, spouse, kids, neighbors, the people in the office, anyone who might interrupt you that in this time period you are not there for them. You will not be saying yes to anything. The answer for anything outside of broken bones or profuse bleeding is a big fat NO! Only 911 call type emergencies will qualify for an interruption. This means when they walk up you don’t talk to them. You focus. That focus is a finished project. It is a bit on you if you are a yes type personality, but that is what it will take to get the respect your time and space need when you have a big project.
5. Write rough first.
Don’t cheat by staring at a blank page. Put words down. Every minute counts and so does every word, whether you think it is right or not. Cleanup is for later. You need words to work with first. Get that idea down. Cover the page.
Make an agreement with yourself that your time on your work is for just writing. Don’t use it for anything else. You can treat your edit and rewrite times the same way too, but that’s for later. First you need that draft.
6. Get over yourself. Finish that Project.
Your perfectionist ego is going to kill you. You want a perfect draft but that is never going to happen. So get the words down. Forget perfect. Promise yourself it can be perfect after your final edit…when ever that is. For now let yourself be messy and imperfect.
For the pantsers out there, present yourself with a problem and write your way out of it. If you are a plotter type, you have your outline. Either way, you need something to focus your mind on when you sit down. Professional writers do not sit down to wait for inspiration. They sit down to write. With our without a map, they have a destination in mind.
The best advice I have seen on this is to write what the next step is for your work when you finish with a given step. This trick can be used for both your overall flow process as you move from idea creation, to draft to edit to rewrite to publish or it can be used in a given piece of work such as a scene or chapter in a book or the next article you have to write for your blog or client. However you choose to use it, write down your next step just after you get done with what you are doing. It’s that little review is a great way for your brain to cue up what needs to be worked on when you come back to the desk.
7. Focus.
Whatever project you are working on from blog posts to a book, keep your work flowing by keeping it the main focus of your work. That could be a novel you want to get done or it could be a build up on your blog or it could be getting more copy writing clients. Whatever you are working on, that is your main focus. Keep it mentally locked when you are working on it. Finishing your projects will not be all that hard then.
8. Write for a habit not just to Finish The Project
I have seen some argue for building writing habits by writing something. What you write does not matter. I agree that you can create a lock for yourself to write that way, but there are several bigger problems that come from that kind practice. The largest being that while you will get in the habit of writing in and of itself, you will also avoid the main project you really want to write on. The result will be you do not have the real results you want (say a book draft done) about six months down the road because you do not have the exact habits for the exact result you want. Your habits will be too generalized.
Solution is simple. If you want a book in a year, that is the focus of your practice time. In practice we create the exact kind of discipline we need to fit the results we want. We want to be a novelist, blogger or copywriter not a letter writer to great aunt Gertrude.
9. Trust your natural work flow Luke.
One of the more subtle habit traps is using another person’s word or page count. You already have a basic word count you can already do. For now that’s all you need. Over time the your words will increase as your skills improve, not to mention the muscles in your fingers get stronger. For now learn how much you can do in whatever reasonable time period and word count you can get done. Not only will it help make you more consistent, it will also give you an idea how much time you will need to realistically complete this project and the next one.
10. Take a break. Finishing your projects need one too.
Don’t try to type for hours on end. You will burn out on every level doing that and your project will grind to a halt. The best way is to take breaks about every thirty minutes or once an hour to rev up your physical and mental juices. Just five minutes every half hour away from the work is all it takes. Yes, that means take ten if you have got a good 50 minutes plus in.
Use those breaks to release some cortisol and move the blood about. Five minutes is time enough to pace a bit or do some burpees or a few yoga poses. You can also get a coffee refill and grab a snack. Anything is useful as long as it takes your mind off the work and lets you release some of the pressure.
In general the longer the work day you have, the more important it becomes for you to take breaks. There’s a reason in the public sector breaks have been fought for and won by unions. They work. Without a break any kind of work for hours at a go will grind you down. Your errors will increase. For a writer this will mean far more bad ideas than what we really want and a lot more time spent in edit and rewrite mode. Save yourself some frustration and take the breaks to finish your project. You will come back to the work with a new energy, better ideas and things will work out.
11. You need fun in the sun.
Schedule some fun time away from writing too. Whatever you find fun, do it. The work is a kind of reward, but you need some other kinds of fun too. Life is a balance. Take a hike. Play with the kids. Share some time with the spouse. Heck grab some popcorn and watch a movie. Some say all work and no play makes you dull, but for a writer dull really mean ugly manuscripts.
Parting shot
Self-discipline is not just about controlling your-self or getting your writing done. It is also about how your life is lived as a whole. Follow the steps, adapt them to meet your needs and live your life on the writer’s path. All you have to do is start.
Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash
