Tag: Productivity

Perspective Shift

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Sometimes my brain gets tripped up on an idea, and it takes years to undo the sprawling mess of nonsense thoughts that result from that one, core nonsense idea.

What I want to talk about today is a prime example.

This is probably going to sound unhinged for a bit––probably because it is unhinged––but here’s how I used to think:

I used to get annoyed every time I had a new idea. Because I was getting ideas faster than I could do anything with them, and they were forming a backlog that was only ever getting bigger and, someday, was likely to overtake and/or crush me. Then I was going to be dead having left a bunch of unfinished stories and projects and it would be such a waste.

I used to wish the ideas would stop for a bit. Or at least slow down so that I was getting them at a much slower rate than I was writing, and therefore I wouldn’t constantly feel torn between all of my various works in progress. If I only had one short story idea per year, for example, I could write that and then still have plenty of time to get all of the words for my novels done. Or vice versa. Ideally, I’d have a ‘one in, one out’ method of working. But only once the backlog was cleared

I genuinely used to stress myself to near sickness over this.

But here’s how I’m coming at it now: it’s a reframing issue. Continue reading →

On Laziness

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I have noticed a trend, both in people I know personally and others I follow on YouTube, and it’s been slowly driving me nuts. It’s a trend I mostly see in women who not just work hard, but overwork themselves to the point of burnout several times a year. And it’s this:

If and when they finally do take a break, they say some variation of “I’m having a lazy day.”

No. You’re not.

You’re resting. You’re recovering.

There is a difference, and it’s a significant one.

Even if you think you’re saying it as a good thing, e.g. “I’m having a lazy day because I deserve it,” the word lazy is negative. Because definitionally, it’s a crappy character trait.

Rest, however, is a good thing. Not just a positive thing, but a necessary one.

You’re not lazy, you’re TIRED.

You need to give yourself a break in more way than one, and avoid falling into the trap of feeling bad or guilty for doing it.

Sincerely, someone who learned––and is still learning––the hard way.

March Check In

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I have two partially written blog posts saved to my drafts folder titled ‘How I Stay Organised’ and ‘How I Stay Motivated.’ They’ve been there since at least December, which maybe seems ironic on the surface––someone professing to be organised and motivated leaving something unfinished for three months, but I don’t actually think those things are incompatible at all.

It’s actually because I’ve been organised and motivated, albeit in different areas, that those posts so far haven’t been finished. Because the truth is that even the most organised and motivated person in the world (which I am most certainly not) can’t do all of the things––the things they want to do, the things they need to do, plus all the things everyone else wants and needs from them. It’s too much. Compromises must be made. Sacrifices simply have to happen.

And so, this blog has fallen a little by the wayside as other things have popped up and taken priority.

I really enjoy blogging when I’m in the flow of it, and it’s definitely something I’m going to come back to––both in general, and those posts in particular. When that will be, though, I’m not sure right now. But thank you, if you’re still reading this; following along and keeping up with me. I appreciate it, and I hope you’re well.

What Am I Doing?

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

To say life has felt manic recently would be a gross understatement, and I haven’t really been documenting any of it here, so let’s catch up.

What am I doing? Such an excellent question. One I’ve actually been asking myself.

I’ve been editing books (for myself and others), formatting books, building websites, filling in applications and reports, juggling some tricky personal life things, dabbling in a lot of art, and writing very little.

Things have been scattered. I’ve been scattered. Sometimes it’s felt like my brain is going to explode.

Last week I released two books (poetry pamphlets Linchpins and Flinch) and a lot of last-minute technical issues meant that I was running around putting out fires when I should have been celebrating. As it stands, I’ve barely mentioned the books since they went live. I need to get on that, obviously, but I also want to make sure that I step back and do really take that time to celebrate.

I’ve been doing so much, and so much of what I do is incredibly enjoyable and rewarding for me, but sometimes I get so caught up in the action, I forget about the reward entirely.

It’s the 4th of October and I find myself not even able to think about NaNoWriMo this year. There’s just so much I have to do between now and then.

On top of that, I think the turn of the seasons is playing with me, and my thoughts have gotten all existential. I’ve been asking myself if I need to rebrand to include art somewhere in my tagline/bio. Then I’ve been going beyond that and asking myself just who in the hell I am anyway.

If you’ve followed this blog for any real length of time, you’ll know I’ve gone through similar phases before. And I trust from those past experiences that things will calm down again and I’ll regain focus and it’ll all be okay. At least until I end up in this place again––which I can laugh at, writing that sentence. I know I don’t have to take everything so seriously.

There’s a quote playing in my head that I can’t quite place this moment. Something along the lines of, ‘Jeeze, relax. Take a siesta or something.’

Not terribly bad advice, that.

Summer Successes and Autumn Goals

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

This post is third in a series. You can find part one (covering January to April) here and part two (May to August) here. As outlined in those previous posts, I’m tackling this year in chunks, setting myself goals for four months at a time, rather than having a single set for the whole of 2019.

It seems to be working out.

My only year-long goal – the Goodreads reading challenge – has me sitting at 44 books completed off a total of sixty. That’s 73% complete/4 books ahead of schedule.

Before I get into my goals for the rest of 2019 going forward, let’s take a minute to recap on my summer goals and how well I did (or didn’t) achieve them.

In May, I set myself the following tasks:

  • Lose more weight
  • Continue to submit my first novel to agents
  • Make edits to my second novel and send it to beta readers
  • Draft yet another novel during Camp NaNoWriMo in July
  • Attended two publishing conferences
  • Complete my tax return

From that list, what I didn’t do was lose weight or write a third novel. The number of things I achieved (listed below) definitely outweigh these two failures, which I’m obviously delighted about, but they are still two pretty big failures. Though I will point out that I did take part in Camp NaNoWriMo, as planned, and got a few words towards book three in my trilogy. Overall, I wrote 25,000 words during July, much of it fanfiction works in progress that I wanted to get out of my head at long last.

Here’s the full list of what I actually did achieve: Continue reading →

2019 Goals Part Two: Summer

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Back in January, I changed things up a little and only set myself one goal for the entire year. That was my 2019 Goodreads challenge to read sixty books. By the time this post goes live, I should have completed twenty-two of those, which means I’m on track.

With regards to other goals, I wanted to focus on things in the shorter term so I decided to plan things a few months at a time and no further. Although it’s not fully accurate, for the sake of simplicity, I’ve split my 2019 into three segments which I’m calling Spring (January to April), Summer (May to August), and Autumn/Winter (September to December).

My Spring was pretty good, all in all. I had my second wedding anniversary in February and my thirtieth birthday in March. I spent a lot of January catching up on all of my accounts for my freelance work so I could get my tax return in before the deadline (which I did!). The rest of that month and part of February was spent doing voluntary work and, when I stepped back from that, I threw myself into decluttering the house following the Kon Mari method.

It felt good to get rid of things and, in the process, simplify my life (simplicity being a big theme of mine, the past few years). The end tally was: 4 bags of clothes (between my husband and I), 1 bag of bedding, 1 [big] bag of books, 8 boxes of komono/miscellaneous items and an untold number of trash bags and recycled things. I also paired down a lot of my social media profiles. Continue reading →

On Headspace

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

It’s been just over a month since I published a blog post about having limited time/energy and how that finally made me decide to cut out some things from my day-to-day.

Before that, I had been trying to cut back on my responsibilities for a long time, gradually decreasing the number of hours I spent volunteering and doing client work; because I was strongly aware I was doing too much but couldn’t find another way to live. I can’t think how many times I burned out just in the past two years.

For a while, it seemed like I was going to be permanently exhausted no matter how much I tried to lessen my load, because it was still too much. Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. Well so, it seemed, did my calendar. Before I even began a month, it would be filled with so many appointments and events that I felt exhausted just looking at it. Not exactly the best start.

The problem, I think, was the mental energy my responsibilities were taking more so than the physical work or literal hours. I get anxious, and everything seems worse in my head. Overwhelmed became my state of being.

So how’s it been, now that I’ve gone from trying to do less to literally giving up some of my roles? In a word: amazing. Finally, my calendar is under control and I can actually think straight. I cannot emphasize enough what a difference it’s made to both my mental health and to my writing.

What a novelty, I can actually write! You know, that thing that was always supposed to be my main priority and the main reason I tried to do all of the other things to “support” it.

The number of blog posts I’ve been able to write in the past month alone speaks volumes. They’re like my journal to the world, bringing all of my thoughts and feelings into a single narrative and making sense of them. There’s a direct correlation: if I’m blogging a lot, my mind is processing things well and not just stuck on sending out distress calls.

The way I was[n’t] functioning before was counterproductive. Now I’m back to being productive, and nothing makes me happier than getting shit done.

Lesson learned; experiment successful. Yay me!

A Literary Audit

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Literary Audit 2016The tax year just having ended, I’m taking stock of my business from the past twelve months – doing accounts and such – but, seeing as how my business basically boils down to a lot of words in a lot of places, I thought it was time to crunch some numbers on those, too.

I’ve done this before, but the results of that literary audit weren’t very organized and are now massively out of date.

But what exactly is a literary audit? I hear you ask.

Well, it’s the process of looking hard at everything you’ve written/created/had published, and putting together some facts and figures based on what you find. The purpose of this is two-fold: to see how far you’ve come, and to give you a better idea of where you might want to go with your work in future. You might find, for example, that you have written a lot of short stories, but that you’ve only ever submitted a tenth of them to journals, blogs, or competitions. Knowing that leaves you with the obvious next step of going out and making a fresh round of submissions.

SIDE NOTE: While I’m on the topic of submissions, have you heard about Submittable? It’s a website that lets you submit your work to relevant publications quickly and easily. I can’t recommend it highly enough (read more about it here).

How does one conduct a literary audit? I used a spreadsheet with several tabs, and way too many midnight hours.  Continue reading →

Productivity, Procrastination, Deadlines, and Goals

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

Before I get onto the main point of this blog post, I really recommend watching this YouTube video about procrastination. (Yes, I mean that all irony aside.)

I agree with the conclusions of the video – that there are no such people as non-procrastinators, and that procrastination falls into two main types: short term (in which there are set deadlines) and indefinite (in which there are not).

I suffer from the latter.

Now, that isn’t exactly news to me, but what has changed is my approach to the issue.  Continue reading →

Current Ploy for Productivity

Posted on by Ellie Rose McKee

I watched a TED talk once (I love TED talks!) in which some scientist or doctor or something said that people most likely to reach their goals A. actually outline their goals (rather than keep them as vague ideas just in their heads) and B. don’t necessarily have more self control than those people who fail but, rather, put things in place to take them out of the path of temptation, so they don’t need to fight themselves in the first place.

Well, I like setting myself goals, and I’m not particularly good at sticking to them, but this new thinking resonated with me. As such, I have a new ploy to stop myself from getting distracted on the internet when I should be writing, which is (drumroll please!): disconnecting the internet before I go to bed.

Genius, right? Okay, well, to some people that may sound daft, or obvious, and certainly not worthy of a blog post, but hear me out.

Turning off the Internet before bed means that you’ve already got a good chance of success before you even begin your day. Going offline is so much harder half way through the day, when you’re already lost in a sea of cat GIFs on Tumblr.

Continue reading →