Tag Archives: productivity

Burnout comes in many forms

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For most of this week, I have been off work sick. This is an unusual occurrence for me. Given that I work from home a lot and have done for years, being sick doesn’t necessarily mean not working. I can’t even remember the last time I took a sick day.

But this week I got hit by something that wiped me out. Over the years, I’ve got pretty good at spotting and managing signs of work stress. I have tools and techniques in place to make sure I spot burnout before it arrives. My ‘no work phone on vacation’ has been a rule for a decade. I stopped checking emails after 7pm or at weekends years ago. All of these things stop me from arriving at a place I swore to myself long ago that I would never get to. I’ve watched too many friends crumble because of stress. I know that the journey back is a long and painful one. If you ever properly make it back at all, that is.

But as I lay in bed this week, my brain was chattering to me. Why wasn’t I reading? Why wasn’t I using the time to write? Why wasn’t I using my sick time effectively?

Wait? What? That was the warning sign I had failed to see. My life is busy, but no more so than anyone else’s right? Perhaps not, but clearly the pressure I put on myself to try to get everything done had taken it’s toll. For an introvert like me, even going out with people socially, no matter how much fun I have, is exhausting. Combine that with a three hour plus commute a couple of days a week and my body clearly had enough.

This week has been ECGs and blood tests and more blood tests. At some point I shut my brain up and allowed myself to just lie there while my joints ached like they belonged to a ninety year old. Even typing this now, I hurt.

Burnout comes in many forms. But my body has sent me a clear signal that I can’t keep juggling everything. For once, I am going to listen to it. That doesn’t mean giving up on goals and dreams. I’m going to just have to get better at taking time for mental and physical relaxation. I’m going to have to cut the busywork from my life where it doesn’t have significant benefits. I need to be intentional. When I feel better, it will be time to hide away somewhere and really think how this will all play out for the rest of the year.

Now though, I am going to rest again and not feel guilty about it. I’m sick and tired of feeling guilty all the time. No more.

Everyday carry for a writer

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Over the past year, I’ve become endlessly fascinated by people photographing and describing their everyday carry. Of course, because I don’t live in America, I still find it odd to see so many knives and guns as part of that. The knives I can understand from a practical sense, but the prospect of having a gun as an integral part of your everyday life still baffles me.

Anywho, I am a person who has a few items with them 99% of the time. I might not have them with me when I go out for a special occasion requiring a little black handbag, but that’s about it. So below is my everyday carry:

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I adore my nockco holder. Whenever I have an idea I just pull the whole thing out, rather than having to ferret around in the bottom of my bag to find a fluffy pen and an old receipt to scribble on. I have three notebooks with me most of the time: my current notebook, the Shelterwood Field Notes which contain details of a series I’ve been working on for a decade and the black nockco dot dash contains all the notes for the manuscript I’m currently submitting. For the writing utensils, a mechanical pencil, a retro 51, my sheaffer, pilot metropolitan and a lamy safari. I love to have a reliable selection of varying nib sizes and colours.

I also carry a set of worry dolls down around that were made for me by my sister a looooooooong time ago. They’ve travelled quite literally around the world with me and have huge sentimental value. No matter where I am or what is going on, I always have my family with me that way, all tied up in a little bag. Wait, that sounds sinister. Never mind…

The other things are purely practical: Swiss army card (has got me out of a few scrapes over the years for sure), a wallet ninja, lip balm, ear plugs (a sign I travel so much) and a USB stick, because you never know when you might have to grab documents on the go.

So, no guns or knives, but still the tools of my trade!

Writing YA in Lake Garda

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So, I’m in that flush stage of starting a new WIP and as so often happens with anything I write, it has a slightly warmer location than miserable old England. Which, of course, is making me think about holidays, which made me start going through my old photos. Jumping back to the top of places to visit: Lake Garda, Italy. I might try and squeeze in a trip later this year…

Lake Garda Italy

moleskine

Down to the last page!

There is something so wonderful and relaxing about sitting at the edge of the Lakes. Even though I have been there a couple of times, usually at the height of the tourist season, there is still a sense of peace there. I also completely conceived the plot of the YA novel I am currently submitting there. I remember vividly coming to the end of the Moleskine I was using at the time (pre Field Notes!), my writing getting smaller and smaller in the hope I would be able to get it all down before I got to the last page. I did – just about – but was willing to write on the cover if necessary.

It’s been nearly fifteen years since travel and writing somehow became inextricably intertwined for me. It’s a beautiful combination that I hope I always get to enjoy and continue to be inspired and motivated by. Plus, pasta, pizza and good wine. What’s not to love?

Life hacking my year

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I set myself some pretty big goals in 2015 and intend to make 2016 my most successful year ever. Of course, we’re still in January, so making bold statements like that before the grudging reality of the daily grind kicks in is still possible. Even so, I picked up a few life hacks last year that I’m going to carry over into this year. They apply to daily life, so they cover off all my goal types: writing, financial, spiritual, physical etc.

Top tip number 1 – the standing desk.

Several personal development pros I follow have recommended this, but the biggest influencers for me were Jeff Sanders and Michael Hyatt’s blogpost and podcasts on the topic:

7 Amazing Benefits of a Standing Desk

4 Reasons you should buy a standup desk – right now

Previously I would spend 6-8am sitting writing, 9-6 sitting for my job, then often 7-9 sitting doing more writing. That is a lot of sitting. Now I still do the writing stints sitting down, but the day is spent standing, unless I physically need to be at head office. That persistent twinge in my left shoulder has gone, along with general back pain. I’ve recently added a balance plate to keep myself moving too, rather than just standing still.

Top tip number 2 – a really good morning routine.

I’ve had a morning writing routine for at least 5 years now. Time flies, so I can’t really be sure. Over 2015 I really upped my game on this. My morning routine now includes more than just knocking out 1000 words on my latest writing project each day. It includes affirmations and journalling (my form of meditative practice). It all felt very American at first, but once I got over being all British and reserved, it’s had huge benefits. It’s a real mental health compliment to the physical health tip above. For an idea of how to start setting it up, Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning is a great place to start (he has a pretty full on personal story to check out too).

Top tip number 3 – carry a notebook and pen EVERYWHERE

The more I did the above top tips, the more my brain seemed to become able to throw out ideas and see potential everywhere. As I wrote in my last post, I made a habit of capturing them straight away, rather than lose them or have to waste a ton of mental energy trying to remember them for later. It could be that sudden strategic insight that you needed to get a result on that big project, or it could be that you need to add cheese to the weekly shopping list – it doesn’t matter. Getting it down on paper means that your brain can then carry on being the awesome beast that it was designed to be. Field Notes have become my pocket notebook of choice, but it’s all personal preference.

Top tip number 4 – track it

Digital or analogue, tracking what you’re doing is the easiest way of making sure you’re doing what you need to do. I use coach.me and have a few habits that I’ve done so many days in a row that I will now go out of my way to complete them so that I don’t break my streak. I’ve done 10 pushups (upgraded to 20 nearly a year ago) each morning now for over 500 consecutive days. There is no way I’d do that without the app.

These all work for me, but if anyone else has any suggestions then feel free to comment. I’m always looking for ways to up my game…

Capturing ideas wherever, whenever

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Intuitively I felt like I was capturing so many more thoughts and ideas as I moved through 2015. So at the end of the year I collected together all the notebooks I had completed into one place to confirm the theory. Yep, I had indeed had a lot of thoughts:

2015 notebook stack

Because I’m a bit of a GTD fan, I was in the habit of capturing things to do the moment I thought of them, but story ideas and general everyday thoughts and feelings, not so much. I made much more of an effort to do that and it shows. I have a whole treasure chest of ideas for stories I can now return to, as well as all the highs and lows of the year that I’ve recorded for posterity.

Broken down into three notebook types:

  1. The filofax was my daily log book for 2015. For 2016 I’ll be moving over to a Hobonichi which is already proving to be an amazing experience.
  2. The large, hardback notebooks were for novel plotting and extended meditative journalling, including daily gratitudes to set my days up right.
  3. Pocket notebooks (especially Field Notes) were always in my jeans or handbag for keeping track of what I had to do each day, but also for those random confluences of inspiration that happen when I’m out and about. Now I can capture them immediately (I’m guaranteed to forget them if I put it off until I get home).

2015 Notebook collection

I made leaps forward in my writing processes and achievements in 2015 and I fully intend to keep building on the momentum in 2016. More than ever I believe the best way to succeed at anything is to just write it down!

The importance of finding peace

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Saying things have been crazy lately is an understatement. I know everyone in today’s world feels overwhelmingly busy most of the time. I’ve spent years putting systems in place to allow me to manage multiple products and still be uber-productive, but even I have had several moments of complete overload. I already know my yearly review of 2015 will be quite something.

Even my morning journalling, a time solely dedicated for quiet reflection, has been interrupted by a compulsion to check my phone, having random ideas that need capturing elsewhere and, quite frankly, the fidgetiness of a five year old.

It kind of defeats the point.

But the absence of peace and stillness has made me realise how important it has become to me. Not to sound like some hippy white person trying to be an eastern self-styled guru, but there is so much to be said for the practices of mindfulness and gratitude. Of just being in the moment and being part of the world around you. Of being able to appreciate an autumn sunset, rather than just whizzing past it on your way to somewhere else.

Lake Windermere

It has been manic, and there is more to come. Nanowrimo is coming up and I have six days to complete it in. This is not one of my crazy, self-imposed deadlines and I’m certainly not going to try and beat last year’s three day completion, but I won’t actually have access to my computer from day seven. So it’s either type or fail and I’m not the kind of person who relishes failure.

But it seems to me that in order to keep moving forwards, one needs to be intentional about standing still. About appreciating where you are and where you are going rather than just charging forward blindly. Life is about progress, but not necessarily about speed.

It will be over before you want it to be anyway, so don’t rush to a final location that may not really be where you ever dreamed you would go.

Putting the wheels back on the wagon

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This isn’t my first blog about Getting Things Done (GTD for short) and it probably won’t be the last. Also, I always want to spell waggon with those two gs, but apparently that’s been classed as archaic now for a century. Clearly I really might be as old as I feel some days.

Anyway, I’ve had my GTD system set up for so long now that I’ve forgotten how to live without it. Or, at least, I thought I had. Then it became abundantly clear that I’ve been slowly sliding towards chaos in both work and personal areas. Luckily for me, my version of chaos is most people’s version of normal, so nothing slipped or became a problem. The only problem as such was in the way I felt. Like I was always on the edge of forgetting something important. It was horrible.

So on Friday I completely got things sorted on the work front: projects identified, next actions defined, emails and tasks list all up to date. It gave me a wonderful sense of freedom. One which was also, unfortunately, a false sense of security in how easy it was.

On Sunday, I then spent my day working through this:

GTD+workflow+diagram

By the end of the day, you know where I was at?

Step 1: Stuff to in (or collect, for those of you who prefer the term).

All of those things that had been lying around, pieces of paperwork, random receipts, half held thoughts in my head, were actually at least captured all in one place. For most people who pick up Getting Things Done, I think they fall at this hurdle. Don’t get me wrong, it is massively overwhelming. I burst into tears at one point and I am not a person prone to random crying. Well, not at this stuff anyway.

So why keep going? Because I do know what it feels like at the other end. To be able to be mysteriously more productive and still have time for creative thinking. Having this system will essentially allow me to have two jobs: employee and writer. The bills still need paying and without a system, the one I love the most would be the one I have to sacrifice.

That’s how you put the wheels back on. You remember that the two days of 100% overwhelm will be followed by many more days when you know exactly what has to be done and how you are going to do it. I’d rather do that than run through every day at 25% stress and go to bed each night kicking myself for making progress on everything other than the things that matter to me most.

Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook Review

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I mentioned in my last post that I had grown to love the Leuchtturm 1917 notebook for journaling. It’s also true for any kind of creative writing. I should apologise now, this post is probably going to have a lot of link love for those of you who are interested.

I don’t use the pocket size. For that, my love of Field Notes and the new NockCo Black DotDash notebook wins out every time. That’s my ‘shove in my pocket’ daily carry.

But using the A5 size Leuchturrm for plotting and planning has been an absolute joy. Anyone who like to write longhand or do their creative outlining by pen and paper should seriously check this brand out.

I’ve written before how I’m a fan of bullet journaling to keep track of things. The biggest pain in the backside about this method is having to number your pages in order to be able to create a table of contents for yourself. Voila! No longer a problem with the Leuchtturm, which is one of the reasons Ryder made it his notebook of choice for his kickstarter.

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The second winning feature for me is simply the page quality. The slightly off-white, creamy colouring is really easy on the eyes. When using a gel ink pen it is like writing on glass it is that smooth. When writing with fountain pen, there is very little feedback, feathering or bleedthrough, even with a 1.1 stub nib:IMG_9258And despite the off-white colour, it still allows the colour to come out, like here with the gold flecking that comes with the J Herbin Stormy Grey ink. A lot of people love this ink concept, but were disappointed by how little it actually stood out on a lot of paper types. The Leuchturrm handled it beautifully, even if my photography is crappy and you can only see it here on the ‘I’. Forgive me, I’m only using an iPhone and the summer weather is once again verging on apocalyptic end of days when it comes to natural light.j herbin stormy grey

I should note that this isn’t a cheap notebook by any stretch of the imagination. It’s also quite hard to find in the UK in any retail stores, but you can always Amazon it. Or go to the airport. That’s where I found mine. If you’re prepared to pay for a Moleskine though, I would suggest trying this as an experiment. You also get a lot of pages for your money (248 in the A5), so it’s going to last you quite a while. They also do a range of sizes to suit your preferences, even if the huge master planner dimensions sound a little bit intimidating!

Writing should be a joy and good tools make this much more fun to do.

Finding my inner calm

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One of my goals for this year was being able to meditate for 30 minutes. I am nothing if not ambitious. I think the most I achieved was 4 before getting completely frustrated and distracted. Oh, and really, really uptight and anxious.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s meant to happen. It was certainly not what I was hoping to get out of it.

Then I had an interesting conversation with someone at work who pointed out that feeling the state people (other than me) achieve while meditating is more to do with being in the state of flow, rather than specifically being able to put your ankles on your hips and say ohhhmmmmmm.

A lot of people get this state from running. That’s never worked for me either. The only thing I get from running is aching hips and a weird heart rhythm for the next three hours. Again, not relaxing.

That’s when I heard that people were using Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages principles to not only become creatively unstuck, but also to get that sense of peaceful personal insight that comes from meditation. I took one look and realised I had the four things needed to make this engaging for me:

  1. Plenty of attractive notebooks
  2. Even more pens
  3. Even more inks
  4. Also some coffee and candles to create a bit of ambience and a sense of ritual.

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So I decided to give it a go.

I started on the 6th July. Since then I’ve got through nearly three A5 lined notebooks (think moleskine, although I’ve discovered that a Leuchtturm 1917 is much better in terms of paper quality and features. Especially when using my current favourite fountain pen and ink combo, the TWSBI 580 1.1 Stub nib with Iroshizuku yama-budo). Turns out I’ve got a lot of thoughts going on.

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The benefits have been pretty significant. I make sure that I start each set with three gratitudes. Not just in a list form, but really describing what I’m grateful for and why. After that, it’s whatever springs to mind. It can be positive, negative or just really, really boring.

Even though I’ve only been doing it for just over a month, I’ve already found I’m calmer and less responsive to external stress when it happens. I’ve become better at creative problem solving, both at work and play. I’ve become more willing to trust the universe, or whatever it is out there. Slowly, I’m becoming more accepting of myself. With that, comes a growing confidence too. Those last two points are a much gentler curve, but there is progress now where there used to be none.

So I’ve redefined my goal. It is no longer meditate for 30 minutes, but instead 30 minutes of daily meditative practices.

Sometimes, it’s about walking the road that’s right for you, not the one most travelled.

Jack of all trades, master of some

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I’ve come to a bit of a realisation. For most of us, specialism is dead.

I’m talking in a work sense here, rather than anything else, although I do wonder if the same principles apply. Sure, some roles will always be very specific. I mean, you don’t want to be operated on by someone who ‘dips in and out’ of being a surgeon. But in the fast paced world we are now living in, even those with a specific craft or skill will need to adapt quickly to ever-changing scenarios.

For the rest of us, everything is now fluid. Core skills (literacy, numeracy etc) will probably always be required at the heart of most roles. But now there are other important skills that need to be brought to the workplace: flexibility, innovation, creativity, persuasion and a learning mindset. It can be bewildering, but I also realised something great:

For those of us who have never wanted one of those very specific, narrowly defined roles, this is the best time to be in the workforce.

Because there will always be something new to jump into, if you see the opportunity and take it. I have an English degree and my masters was studying Critical Theory. Strangely, neither of them appear at all applicable to any of the jobs I have held, yet they have been the foundation of everything. Communication and appraising a scenario, seeing a problem and defining a resolution is a great thing to be able to do. And, if you’re prepared to learn a little code here, a little statistics there, then top it up with a hefty dose of project management, you can play the game in just about any industry.

Being a Jack of all trades is no longer a bad thing.