3 Planning Strategies That Will Boost Your Productivity and Minimize Stress

Grow Your Reach and Achieve Success…

There’s a lot that goes into writing a novel, and even more into building a platform where your story can reach thousands. This is why one of your top commodities is time. To keep improving your writing abilities and growing your reach, you need to be intentional with the time you are given. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about work ethic and productivity in recent weeks, and I’ve come away with two conclusions. 

1. I could do better prioritizing my time and minimize time wasted.  

2. The expectations I hold for daily progress is unrealistic.  

Call me an overachiever, but I rarely finish all I plan for my day. Half of the problem is my lack of organization. The other half is my skewed judgment of realistic goals.

If you have big dreams yet feel like you are moving at a snail’s pace—or just surviving—it is discouraging. But with a little reorganization and change of view, I believe there is a solution. 

Below we’ll explore 3 pitfalls writers face, and then 3 strategies to help you organize your daily and long-term projects. 

The Pitfalls 

Pitfall I: It’s a Process

This is the truth of writing: it takes time. 

Writing starts in the imagination, then expands to words and the journey of reaching readers. Learning and acting on these dreams takes time, and with so much to be done it’s natural to feel overwhelm. 

The pitfall is believing you can progress in all of your projects daily. 

While writing and still keeping together the other necessities of your life, there is simply not enough time or brainpower to go around. You will face discouragement from consistent failure believing in this fallacy. So don’t. 

Take a breath. 

Relax the tension in your jaw, forehead, and shoulders. 

You don’t need to do it all now.  Focus on a few tasks everyday. 

Great progress is made by days forming into weeks, months, and years. It’s little steps together making the bounds. 

Pitfall II: Comparing

Looking up to someone’s success is a good motivator, but comparing yourself to them is disheartening. 

It’s easy to be jealous of someone’s career, or doubt whether you will achieve their level of success. 

But don’t compare their current success to your road towards success. Like you, they had their own doubts and discouragement. They were working long and hard before they found there success. 

Be heartened and strive to reach their level, not compare your beginning to their middle.  

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Pitfall III: Don’t Flatline 

 In a video lesson from the business success Grant Cardone, we receive a warning about flatlining. In the first minute of his video, he speaks on the importance of expanding your business. 

He says if you are not growing, you are flatlining—you die. If you are barely growing, gravity will pull you down to a flatline. He says success comes when you are growing exponentially.  

To me, slow growth is not always bad. But I do believe we need to recognize where are line is now, and decide where we want it to be.

We can’t share our stories at a flatline. We need to continue growing. 

Here’s Grant Cardone’s audio and visual explanation (first minute): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDrAKDTimK0 

3 Strategies

With the pitfalls explored, we now move on to discuss 3 strategies to help you organize your projects and minimize stress. 

These are strategies I’ve come across which I’ve adapted to fit my own needs. Their purpose is to help you make more progress by working smarter. 

Use them separately or together, whatever suits your creative process. 

1.  The Quad-List

Here is a strategy I adapted from Stephen Covey. 

Divide your paper into four lists: 

1. Critical and Urgent: Important things that need to be done now. 

2. Critical but Not Urgent: Important things that do not need to be done right now. 

3. Urgent but Not Critical: Time-sensitive tasks that need to be done but are not important. 

4. Not Critical or Urgent: Things you want to do at some point, but don’t need to be done right now and are not important to your business/goal.

Divide your tasks into these four lists, and find out where you need to be prioritizing your energy for the day. Obviously the urgent tasks need to be taken care of, but the critical yet urgent ones also need to be addressed. 

Hitting all of these targets is where the second and third strategies in our tool box come into play. 

2. Top 3 Tasks 

I have seen this strategy in a few places, perhaps most notably from Michael Hyatt and his Daily 3. 

The strategy is to prioritize three tasks daily. These 3 tasks are set apart form your to-do list as the 3 things you focus on that day. 

The purpose for this strategy is so you don’t spread yourself thin touching on every project, but maximizing your productivity by focusing your energy. 

You can have the small tasks still in your to-do list like going through emails, but choose to only work on a maximum of three major projects a day. 

To help you streamline your focus even more, let’s explore the final strategy.  

3. One Focus Per Day

This is an adaptation of a strategy I’ve read about in a few places but can’t remember where. 

Instead of frenzied multi-tasking, have one focus or streamlined focus a day. This may sound like a reiteration of Strategy 2, and it is in a way. This strategy, though, has a broader concept. 

The idea is to not only have the max of 3 major projects a day, but to be even more streamlined with the topics of those three projects. It’s easier to be productive when you aren’t switching to multiple areas of thought. When you can, try to keep your projects in related topics to not disrupt your train of thought. 

Example 1: Dedicate a day solely for fiction writing, research, and building your story boards on Pinterest. 

Example 2: Instead of intending to update your website but never having it checked off your list, set a day majorly dedicated on website design, updates, and SEO work.

When you are drafting or editing a novel, I do believe that has a spot in your Top 3 even on days dedicated to the technical aspects of a website. Or, maybe you’d rather block out weeks to focus on your novel. 

I don’t think there is a wrong way to create, as long as your strategy enhances your creative process and productivity

Your Success

Building a writing life can be discouraging at times, but once you can recognize your pitfalls and find the right strategies, your road to success will be paved to the finish line.

So start examining your pitfalls and try these strategies today. 

You’ve got this!