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Note: I'm re-upping this one from 2013, as it seems a useful follow-up to the Robert Caro post. Also see this piece on Advice for Academic Couples (excerpted from my book The 7 Secrets of the Prolific.) - Best, Hillary Oh, the things people say to writers! “What do you do?” “What do you write?” “Is there any money in that?” “Where have you been published?” “How’s the book coming along?” (Alt: “When will you be done with that thing?”) “Why don’t you just sit down over a weekend and just finish it?” “You should write like Stephen King!” “You should put a vampire in it!” “Why don’t you just go on [popular TV show]?” And, the ever popular, “When are you going to get a real job?” These are the kinds of (often, but not always) well-meaning questions, comments, and conjectures that bedevil writers. A little planning can help a lot in terms of coping, however. Below are strategies for: (a) increasing your tolerance for difficult questions; (b) maintaining conversational … [Read more...]
How to Cope With Clueless Questions, Crass Comments, and Crazy Conjectures
Back from Taiwan! And some great links!
Dear Friend, My books and coaching will help anyone get a strong start in 2019 - both make excellent gifts! (Coaching hours usable for up to a year after purchase, and you can be located anywhere.) I recently got back from two fantastic weeks in Taiwan, where I visited my partner, currently a visiting professor at National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Hsinchu. While there, I also gave a presentation to a group of faculty and students on Catalyzing Student Productivity. (Some will recognize the procrastination / perfectionism framework I've been using, and teaching, for years. I never tire of it!) I loved Taiwan! The people are incredible nice, and they also love dogs, so I felt a real sense of kinship! While I was away, some great productivity links came in. Please see below for a few – and whatever you are planning to celebrate, this month, I hope you celebrate it to the max! Hillary Here are the links: If You’re Not All-In About a New Opportunity, Just Say No Someone at … [Read more...]
The Best Productivity “Tool”
Just a little Tweet thread I came up with after seeing someone ask what the best productivity tool was. Hope you like it / find it useful! Follow me here, and also on my Facebook page. So many people searching for the ultimate #productivity tool but no tool works as well as the abilities to: (1) turn down unwanted work (and other obligations) and (2) trim the scope of your projects. — Hillary Rettig (@hillaryrettig) October 30, 2018 Delegation is crucial, too, but still takes time and energy. Saying no and trimming scope >>> delegating. — Hillary Rettig (@hillaryrettig) October 30, 2018 And delegation, done right, takes more time than a lot of people think. It's not simply handing stuff over and "poof" it gets done. You have to train, support, manage, check the work, follow up. More like investing five hours to get ten or fifteen back from the "delegatee." — Hillary Rettig (@hillaryrettig) October 30, 2018 If time is the ultimate luxury, it is also … [Read more...]
Why an Anime Girl (or Raccoon!) Might Be Your Next Productivity Buddy
Back in Cambridge, MA, where I used to live, a group of writers used to meet regularly to get some work done. After a quick hello - no chit chat, latte ordering, or other delays - they all sat down and started working. It was so quiet you could hear the proverbial pin drop, and everyone got tons done during those sessions. That's all it takes to do your work, in many cases: someone sitting next to you doing theirs. They don't even have to be doing what you're doing. Someone could be sketching or doing their travel receipts while you're writing or studying and it's all good. While it's okay to check in with your buddy once in a while, or gently offer advice and encouragement if they're stuck, mostly what you, and they, are providing is presence. My theory about why this works is that we're such intensely social creatures that, for many of us, the solitude needed to do our work is itself an obstacle to productivity, raising feelings of isolation and even abandonment. Add to that a bit of resentment--as … [Read more...]
Thank you Fast Company!
I'm kvelling! A few weeks ago a wonderful Fast Company writer, Stephanie Vozza, approached me for input into an article on how to be as productive as possible during the summer. I told her that I actually thought the opposite: that summer should be for relaxing, and, moreover, that in summer people often relax into their authentic selves. So the goal should really be to carry one's summer productivity habits and attitudes into the rest of the year, so one can live more joyfully and authentically all year long. It was a pretty contrarian view and, to be honest, I didn't expect Stephanie to rework her entire article around it. But that's exactly what she did! Huge props to her and also to her editor for approving the switch! The result is this article and I couldn't be prouder or more honored. I hope it inspires many people (including all of you, my FB friends) to live their summer life all year long. Many thanks to Stephanie and Fast Company! Also, here's a blog post in which I also explored this idea. … [Read more...]
Parenting Is Not a Zero Sum Game!
From Evelyn Tsitas, an exceptionally useful blog post about what it took for her to write her thesis: Admit it, if you are a mother, there is always that nagging voice somewhere – yours or some critic – that says ‘intense focus and study at the expense of much of everything else in your life will be bad for your young children.’ Rubbish. Low expectations, complacency and laziness* are limiting. Constantly pushing your boundaries and challenging your comfort zone, on the other hand, teach children not to be limited in their aspirations while at the same time reinforcing that anything worth achieving takes hard work, and sacrifice.If you are completing your doctorate and fretting about your children taking a back seat, don’t worry. The mum up late studying, turning down social invitations, spending holidays at the computer or university library may be absent from her children’s lives in some ways, but she is abundantly present in ways which matter in the long term. I can tell you first hand that far … [Read more...]
Do You Have a “Room of ReQUIETment?”
Continuing on last week’s Harry Potter theme, I want to ask you: Do you have a “Room of ReQUIETment?” Of course that’s a play on Room of Requirement, the fantastic room at Hogwarts that could be anything, supply anything, a student needed. Back in 1929, Virginia Woolf published A Room of One’s Own, which discussed, among other things, a creative woman’s need for space and privacy. (Of course, men need these things, too—it’s just that fewer women had them in Woolf’s day.) But physical space isn’t enough. You also need a quiet, capacious mental space that’s free of judgment, worry, and external concern; and in which you can invent and play and create freely. I call that your Room of ReQUIETment. Create it using the nonperfectionism techniques I’ve written about in The 7 Secrets of the Prolific and elsewhere. See also: Harry Potter and The Boggart Perfectionism Joyful Productivity and The Woodland Trail Metaphor … [Read more...]
The Problem With Daily Word Counts
This list of the daily word counts of famous authors has been making the rounds. The top producers, by far, are the late thriller writer Michael "Jurassic Park" Crichton and the late British historical novelist R. F. Delderfield, who both apparently wrote 10,000 words a day. Then we've got one 6,000-word-a-day chap (thriller writer John Creasy), a few 4,000 and 3,000 words-a-day producers (Anne Rice, Iain Banks, Frederick Forsyth), and a host of 1,000 to 2,000 word producers. On the low end, we've got Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene (one of my idols), and Civil War historian Shelby Foote, who all clock in at a meagre-seeming 500 words a day. There are huge problems with this list. First, it's a hodgepodge. It contains famous writers and obscure ones; literary novelists and formulaic pop-fiction ones (plus, as noted, at least one historian); those writing by hand and those using computers; privileged Victorian and mid-century-American white male writers and less-privileged contemporary female writers … [Read more...]
Marriage Equality and How to Cope with Success-Related Losses
Last week was amazing, here in the U.S. We started with despair (at the murder of the nine black parishioners by a Confederate-flag-wearing white supremacist in Charleston), followed by hope (a newfound widespread rejection of said flag), relief (the Supreme Court ruling preserving the Obamacare subsidies), and, finally, jubilation (the ruling establishing marriage equality as a fundamental right). Whew! The marriage equality ruling was amazing not just because it represented a vast amount of liberation, but because it happened decades ahead of schedule. "I didn't expect to see it in my lifetime," is a common refrain among middle-aged and older activists. Although some gay and lesbian couples have been attempting to marry for more than forty years—in some heartbreaking cases, legally-recognized gay marriages were invalidated by courts—up until a scant eleven years ago, there hadn't been a legally-protected gay marriage in the U.S. That there's some lightspeed progress. Young activists, in … [Read more...]
Don’t Let Unintended/Unwanted Consequences Hold Back Your Projects
Reblogged from the Thesis Whisperer. The anonymous author of this piece, originally entitled "What's it like to Finish?", does a great job of articulating how even a great success, like finishing a thesis, will almost always yield some unwanted consequences. Often we at least intuit these, and the fear of them can cause us to procrastinate, since delaying our project is a great strategy for avoiding them. All of this applies to all writers and other creative workers, of course, and not just Ph.D. students! Your thoughts, experiences, and questions are, as always, welcome in the comments.--Hillary In the weeks and months leading up to the submission of my PhD, I found myself imagining what life would be like on the "other side." As a means of forcing myself over the final hurdle, I visualised how amazing it would be to be free of the thesis, to once again recover my weekends and my academic freedom, and how relieved I would be to hand over the culmination of three and a half years’ work. And yet, when … [Read more...]
How to Deal With Your Family Over the Holidays
For many people, holidays are incredibly stressful. Even leaving aside issues related to family history and dynamics, when people who happen to be related but don't have much in common get together there can be multiple points of contention, including food, politics, and religion. Here are some tips for coping. 1) Educate Yourself (or Refresh Your Education) in Effective Communication. My favorite communications primer is actually a classic parenting book, “How to Talk so Kids Listen and Listen so Kids Talk,” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. It’s a quick read with fun cartoons, and I recommend it to everyone regardless of whether they have kids. You can use its tips and techniques for getting along with, and resolving conflicts with, everyone, including adult family members, friends, and coworkers. This New York Times article on resolving family conflict is also excellent. It turns out that there’s a whole host of simple things you can do to defuse conflict, like sitting down or stepping … [Read more...]
My Most-Read Posts from 2013
My most-read posts from 2013, in case you've missed any of them. Why, in Writing, Process Trumps Product, And Why You Shouldn’t Worry About The Quality of Your Work This is Called Situational Perfectionism Why You Shouldn't Wait for Ideal Conditions to Start Your Project What to Do If You are Stuck in the Middle of a Project Amanda Palmer on Why Artists Should Self-Promote (Bonus: How To Do It Without Selling Out!) Want to Get More Work Done? Then Show it Early and Often Six Things You Should Never Say to a Photographer Live from Kalamazoo: A New Shot at Love How to Measure Your 2013 Successes so as to have a Happier, More Productive 2014 (Part I) (Part II's coming!) Giant Page of Tips for Finishing NaNoWriMo or AcWriWriMo (useful for any writing project!) … [Read more...]
Thank you AmEx OpenForum…
...for including this blog on a list of The 10 Small Business Bloggers to Follow in 2014! … [Read more...]
Welcome! My goal is to help you recognize and overcome any disempowering forces in your work and life so that you can reclaim your joyful productivity and achieve your personal and professional goals more quickly and easily than you ever imagined! Thanks for checking out my site, and I always welcome your comments, suggestions, and questions at 
