Productivity Tools and Motivation

By Jeff Patterson

There are some fabulous blogs and websites online to help the writer to learn all kinds of valuable tips and information.  No matter where you are on your quest to be a writer there are sites that will help you to be more disciplined in you efforts to write.  There is something available to help whether developing a story, a novel, a plot line, characterizations, dialogue, publishing, editing, re-writing, etc.

One of the most recent blog entries I've discovered features an item of how you can be more productive with your daily efforts to write, or frankly to accomplish anything if you are willing to work at it day after day.  Adam Dachis writing for the LifeHacker Blog contributed an article back in February entitled How Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Fixed My Procastination Problem. 

I'm inspired by the idea of a productivity tool that can help me accomplish some of my goals using the Seinfeld method.  I learned of this process earlier last year and applied it to some of my activities.  It worked, for awhile.  But I eventually became lazy and distracted by some other significant life events that were occuring at that time, and so dropped the plan deferring my efforts to later.

The death of a parent in this case kept me from following through on my long term goals.  The immediate problems were far more urgent and more important.  But now that those issues are behind me, I feel ready to start once again, in an even more ambitious attempt to work the plan more successfully this time.  And I have no doubts as the the efficacy of the Seinfeld method.






A FREE check off calendar based on this method is available from the The Writer's Store.  The calander is often referred to as Don't Break The Chain.  The idea as you may gather by reading the articles I've linked to here is that you take anything that you're trying to do, or wanting to put into practice every day and check it off each day that you have completed the task.  Originally, Jerry Seinfeld's purpose was to write a new joke everyday.  My efforts are multiple and for me quite ambitious, but I also think very do-able as well.  In my case, starting today, I've set up a Don't Break The Chain calendar for each of several areas that I am working on.

• As a drummer, I've set up one for checking off my drums and percussion practice so that I'm strongly reminded and motivated to spen at least some time each day concentrating in this area.  As I've been doing this the past few days I'm already seeing and improvement and enhanced focus to my practicing time.  The same follows for the several other areas of concentration. 
• One for Writing, to increase the amount of focus around the completion of several Novels I'm working on and my person jounals.
• Another focuses on Exercise, again with the entent of doing something everyday. 
• One for Drawing and developing my skills as a cartoonist and artist.
• One for Recording to make sure that I make some efforts to move forward on my songwriting and recording projects. 
• And lastly one designed to encorage myself into Blogging on a regular basis. 

My efforts in the past, while productive have been very hit an miss.  Hopefully with a better motivation process in place I'll be able to be more consistent in these efforts.  Time will tell.  But I'm committed to making a daily effort to move forward in all of these areas.