#2 Use Four Lists
Do you use lists to help you prepare to write? These four lists can help you organize, focus, prioritize, and manage or decrease distractions. The first list: Before you start to write, make a list of everything you need to do after you stop writing: errands, tasks, projects large and small. Once these to-do items are on your list, don’t let them, regardless of how pressing, distract you from writing. While you are writing, if you think of additional items, add them to the list and keep writing. (I keep my to-do list on paper, not on my computer, so my eyes don’t leave the screen while I quickly jot the additional item. It’s too easy, if I leave my manuscript screen, to go ahead and send the email, pay the bill, and numerous other online tasks.) Your writing time is a priority. Don’t waste it checking less important items off your to-do list. (No matter how satisfying that can be.) You will do them later…after you write.
The second list: As you write, don’t stop to check a reference or search for an article or retrieve a book. This list contains everything you must do before your next scheduled writing session so you can move your work forward. Again, don’t stop writing.
The third list: As you approach the time you will stop writing, e.g., to go to class, to meet a friend, to take a break after 60 to 90 minutes of writing, in the last 5 to 10 minutes before your ending time, begin writing as quickly as you can about what comes next and next and next in your flow of thoughts. This can be bullet points, topic sentences, just an outline. This list of ideas is what you will return to when you start to write again. It will help you more quickly get to productive writing – rather than returning and having to figure out how and where to start. You have a roadmap of where to go.
The fourth list is a new one I am using, suggested by Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Burkeman encourages us to make lists of things we will not do…to give us time to do what we must or want to do. “I will not spend my time on social media, watching a show, cleaning the apartment (it’s perfectly OK to list tasks you don’t really want to do!) until I complete this manuscript, this chapter, this 90-minute writing block.” You write it on the list to help you persist in your commitment to the more important project you must complete.
Have you written yet today? You can do this!
Burkeman, O. (2021). Four thousand weeks: Time management for mortals. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.